Welcome to Studies with Stearman.

Join us as we look deeper into the Bible.

Strengthen your faith with us, even as we see the day approaching.

And now, here's Gary.

Well, as promised from last week, we're going to talk about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

And if there is a church doctrine that has been pulled and twisted and turned upside down

and backwards and reshaped and molded and flaked and formed, it is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

And it is not an easy doctrine, but because our study

in Ephesians has brought us to Ephesians 518, I want to stop a little bit and talk about the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 518 says, and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the

spirit.

We talked about this a little bit last week.

In the context of the Lord's will, the verse that immediately precedes this verse says,

Wherefore?

In other words, for all the reasons that I have laid out for you, wherefore, be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.

Paul says, I want you to understand the will of the Lord. Well, you know and I know that discerning the will of the Lord is problematic.

It's something that can occupy a lot of your time.

It's something that can cause puzzlement and uncertainty.

It's something almost mysterious in a way, and yet the whole epistle to the Ephesians

is built around understanding what the will of the Lord is, followed by this

sentence and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the spirit.

And then immediately after that, it says, speaking to yourself in Psalms and hymns and spiritual

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