This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
He's called our comforter. He does not expect us to do life
in our own strength. And I want to know that deeper
myself personally, because there's days that I get
frustrated too and burn on and overwhelmed and discouraged or
whatever. And and I don't want to stay in
those places. I want to immediately connect
with the fact that I need the help of the Spirit of God.
And when we ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, He will
definitely come through for us. Amen.
The Holy Spirit is like a sturdy railing, keeping you balanced
when life's weight feels too heavy.
In today's message, Pastor Clark portrays how God is your
comforter. Not expecting you to face life
alone might hit days of frustration, burnout, or
discouragement. Feeling overwhelmed?
Instead of lingering there, you can turn to the Spirit for help.
He's ready to come through when you call, bringing strength and
peace. God knows your struggles and
offers his Spirit to carry you forward.
Now here's Pastor Clark in the book of Acts chapter one with
today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
Father God, we thank you Lord, for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It is the only hope that the world has.
And Lord, you told us clearly that you are the way the truth
of life, and no man comes of the Father.
But through you, everywhere we live, we have an opportunity to
share our relationship with you, Lord, with other people.
I pray, Lord, that you would work in our hearts as a church
family, as a body, where we work, where we live,
friendships, Father, neighbors, that you would open up doors of
opportunity for each of us on a daily basis to be able to share
the gospel with people. Lord, because we know that you
love people and you want us to love people and and father,
we're around people every day that are on their way to a
crisis eternity if they don't know Jesus Christ as their Lord
and Savior. We don't grasp that many times
we get up and we live our lives and we see countless hundreds of
people every day and we don't perhaps at times sink.
I wonder where they're going to spend eternity.
And Lord, you tell us in your word that the only way we can
spend eternity with You is to have you as our Lord and Savior,
to have our sins forgiven, and to have you come into our life
and change us to become like you.
And so, Father, we just ask that we would be used by you.
We know this is Your will. We know the book of the Acts was
written by you, penned by you through Luke the Evangelist to
help us see the beginning of the church and how it thrived and
how it grew and how it increased Lord.
And so Lord, we hold one another up and pray for one another.
We ask Lord God today by your spirit's power, by your Holy
Spirit's power, that you would truly minister to us through the
word of God today and that the book of the Acts would it is a
living book. It's, it's the Acts of the Holy
Spirit through the hands of the apostles.
And so God teach us to trust you and to know you and to walk
deeper with you. And, and God, we, we do all
these things for your glory and for your honor, and we pray
these things in Jesus name, Amen.
God bless you guys. We are in the book of the Acts.
We're starting the series and Acts.
We finished the Gospel of Matthew.
And so I felt that it would just make sense to to see what
happened to the church immediately after, you know,
Jesus was getting ready to ascend into heaven to be with
his father. Before, though, I go to the book
of the Acts. I wanted to talk about the Holy
Spirit a little bit. I've taught this book several
times before, the book of the Acts, and I don't know if it's
because I'm getting older, things are sinking in more, I
don't know. But boy, I'll tell you, these
truths in the Bible are just hitting me at different levels
than ever, ever before. So I wanted to ask you a
question. Have you ever heard this phrase?
God helps those who help themselves.
Do you believe that's in the Bible?
Well, some people do, and we're all conditioned to sort of live
in our own strength. I don't know about you, but I'm
when I review my life and I think about my life, I'm
astounded at times of how much I'm trying to do in my own
strength, which is ridiculous. And so the reason I want to tell
you a little bit about this personally is that the I need to
be reminded about this as much as you do.
And in the book of John chapter 14, it says the heading verse 15
of John 14. And Jesus promises another
helper. He says, if you love me, keep my
commandments and I will pray the Father and he will give you
another helper that he may abide with you forever.
The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it
neither sees him nor but you know him, for he dwells with you
and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans, I
will come to you. And then he says over in the
book of John 15, he says, I am the vine, you are the branches.
And he that abideth in me, and I in him the same bringeth forth
much fruit. Without me you can do nothing.
Really think about that. Without Him we can do nothing.
And then He also tells us about this importance of this witness
that we have the privilege to be able to be part of.
He says in the 25th verse of John 14, These things I've
spoken to you while being present with you.
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send to my
name, He will teach you all things and bring to remembrance
all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace
I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give
to you. Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid. You have heard me say to you,
I'm going away and coming back to you.
If you love me, you would rejoice because I said I am
going to my Father, for my Father is greater than I.
And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come
to pass, you may believe I will no longer talk much with you.
For the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me
but that the world may know that I love the Father.
And as the Father gave me commandments, so I do arise.
Let us go from here. And so we have this opportunity
to share our faith. That's why God established the
Church to help us learn how to communicate to one another and
to the world their need of Jesus Christ.
And so perhaps you're here today and maybe you have never really
felt comfortable sharing your faith with other people.
Well, you're not alone, right? We're all beginners at this, and
we're learning how to openly find opportunities to share our
relationship with Jesus. But what I love about the Word
of God, the Comforter, the encourager, the Helper, it says
in John 1526 And the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you
from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the
Father. He will testify of me, and you
also will bear witness because you have been with me from the
beginning. So the Holy Spirit dwells in the
lives of the believer. So we have the supernatural
power and authority and ability to speak to people about their
need of a Savior, Jesus Christ. It comes from the Spirit of God
in us. He is the ultimate witness.
He's the one that testifies of the truth.
And the Holy Spirit always works to magnify the Lord Jesus.
He doesn't draw attention to himself.
And so as we study the book of the Acts today and begin to work
through this, my prayer for us as a church is that we would
find opportunities in daily life to share our faith with other
people, that we would pray and ask God to open up doors and
opportunity that we might be able to present the Lord to
others. And Speaking of crew, we support
a missionary with CREW as a church.
We have for quite some time. He was a student at Northwestern
University studying engineering, had an opportunity to have all
kind of countless job opportunities making big bucks.
But for some reason, the Lord had dealt with him and worked
with him to be part of crew. So he's moved up in the ranks of
crew to be a leader, and we get his newsletter.
His name's Nick, and he comes here periodically.
But I wanted to read some prayer requests.
He asked. Pray for all the students who
attend the winter conferences in January and February.
They do that all over the world, that they would take away
practical next steps in walking closely with God and continue to
grow closer to Him. Back on campus.
Pray that those in the local communities who got to hear
about Jesus and who made decisions to follow Jesus during
the outreaches at the conference would be connected to their
local churches and continually grow in the knowledge and love
for God. And he asked for a prayer for
himself. Pray for me in this season of
discernment as I process my next steps and what I will be doing
after my program ends in June. Especially pray that I would be
trusting God in the unknown. So that's Nick, so hold him up
in your prayers. So let's go to the book of the
Acts. It's right after the Gospel of
John, and we're going to start working through this book just
like we went through Matthew, verse by verse and chapter by
chapter. And before I start again, the
Holy Spirit, he wants us to know him in a deeper way, in a
personal way. God the Father, God the Son, God
the Holy Spirit. He's the helper to comforter and
He wants to help us. And I pray that we have the
humility whenever we're stressed out and we're burnt out and
we're overwhelmed and we're tired or whatever, frustrated in
life that it would dawn on us that we need God's help.
And we just say, Lord, I'm not in a good place right now.
I need your help, Holy Spirit. And that's wisdom, isn't it?
Because He's called our comforter, He does not expect us
to do life in our own strength. And I want to know that deeper
myself personally, because there's days that I get
frustrated too and burn on and overwhelmed and discourage or
whatever. And, and I don't want to stay in
those places. I want to immediately connect
with the fact that I need the help of the Spirit of God.
And when we ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, he will
definitely come through for us. Amen.
So it starts in the first verse of the 1st chapter of Acts.
It says the former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that
Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which He
was taken up, after He, through the Holy Spirit, had given
commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, To whom he
also presented himself alive after his suffering, by many
infallible proofs, being seen by them during 40 days, and
Speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of
God. So Luke is the author.
He wrote the Gospel of Luke, the Evangelist Luke, and he also is
writing the the book of the Acts.
At this particular time, he was not an apostle, he was an
evangelist. He was a medical doctor, he was
a surgeon, and he traveled with the Apostle Paul and his
ministry to help him with some of his infirmities and
illnesses. Luke was a disciple of the
apostle Paul. So we believe that Paul LED Luke
to the Lord Jesus. Luke got all the data and the
information, interviewed apostles and people who are
eyewitnesses of the accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, and he
compiled those things in the gospel of Luke.
And then he's now compiling all the experiences he had traveling
with Paul throughout all the regions.
Whenever the book of the Acts is put together, they believe that
he finished his sometime before 8060.
Because there's no information in here of the crisis that
happened in in Rome when the church was sacked and all that
kind of stuff, and the persecution began to be poured
out upon the church. Luke is a student of history,
and everything he wrote was rooted and founded in evidence,
not theory. Luke, when he wrote these
things, he took his time to be very, very detailed in what it
was he was speaking about the subject matter in the book of
Acts, the Holy Spirit is mentioned 56 times and prayer is
mentioned 39 times, more than any other book of the Bible.
Prayer and the person, the Holy Spirit are discussed.
And so this is really the foundation of what makes things
work in this earth in regard to the things of God, prayer, and
the power of God, the Holy Spirit.
Theophilus, this person that Luke's referencing here was some
type of perhaps Roman dignitary. It appears in the Gospel of Luke
that he had an interest in Christianity.
And so Luke actually sent the letters to this fellow
Theophilus. That's about all we know of him,
of everything that Jesus began both to do and teach.
So everything that Christ did, and we studied that in a book of
Matthew from the beginning of his birth to the eventual
crucifixion and ascension, resurrection, are all detailed
in the Gospels. And so everything we read in
Acts is grounded and founded in the historic aspect of Christ
being truly a human being, fully God in human form, human flesh
who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the
dead for our sins. And so he's giving again the
details and everything now that is culminating in the outpouring
of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost is rooted in this evidence that
until the day he was taken up after he through the Holy Spirit
of giving commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen.
Remember the last thing we studied in the book of Matthew,
chapter 28. He said go into all the world
and preach the gospel, right. Some of you are starting to fall
asleep. Preach the Gospel unto every
living creature that entitizing them in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. And lo, I'm with you always,
even and to the end of the age, right?
And so that was a commandment not only to the apostles, but to
us as the church, as Christians, as believers to spread the
gospel. And so it says that whom he also
presented himself alive after his sufferings.
And we read in First Corinthians 15 that Christ died for our
sins. According to the scriptures, He
was buried. He rose again on the third day,
according to the scriptures, and ascendeth into heaven.
He was seen by over 500 witnesses after He rose again
from the dead, literally seen by many, many witnesses.
So He presented himself alive after his crucifixion by many
infallible proofs. He was seen by them during the
40 days. He would come in and out of
their lives during this time before He ascended to tell them
more and more things about what it was he wanted them to
accomplish. And he was always speaking about
the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
I was reading something this morning about fasting.
And fasting sometimes is a good thing to do, especially for
media right now, How much more media fee do we need about
what's happening in the world? It's very, very overwhelming and
at times very, very depressing. And we need to pray for peace.
We need to pray for these world rollers to come to their senses
and be able to sit down and talk about the issue before more and
more people are slaughtered needlessly.
It's heartbreaking to see what what's happening to these
people. 1.4 million people are out of that country of Ukraine
now trying to find a place to work and to live.
And where do they find food? We're going to be involved with
some other Calgary's across the world financially and helping
and if we all help a little bit, that's going to be significant
in regard to refuge and relief. We have missionaries on the
ground in Ukraine who are actually helping people get out
of the country. There's a Calgary Chapel in the
farthest western region in Ukraine, which is surrounded by
NATO countries that Russia isn't going to mess with over there.
That's about as safe as you can be in Ukraine, that particular
region. And they are already helping in
the church, providing things for the people who are moving out of
out of the Ukraine. But this need of understanding
where we are in time in regard to the work of the Holy Spirit
and what it is he wants to do in the days that we're living.
And so I, I look at the time we're reading about in the book
of the Acts prior to the persecution and the difficulty
of living under a Roman rule as a Christian.
It's a difficult time in parts of the world to live as a
Christian under various types of dictatorships in the world.
And then this is other places other than what we're dealing
with right now with Russia. We have issues in Iran and we
have issues in China. We have issues in North Africa,
we have issues in Venezuela, we have issues in Colombia.
There's rulers that don't have a lot of good things planned for
the people of those countries. So when you look at Acts, Acts,
this isn't a past tense book. It's a living book right now in
regard to what it is we're dealing with in our own world
today. In verse 4 it says in being
assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart
from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father.
Now remember in John where Jesus was talking to His followers
telling them He would send them the comforter, the helper.
OK, this is real time now for them.
They're told specifically to wait until the Holy Spirit is
going to be poured out upon them.
Now, they had experiences with the Holy Spirit, as did the Old
Testament believers, the Old Testament Saints.
But the Holy Spirit before Pentecost came upon people and
then he would depart from people.
We know David in Psalm 51 when he prayed his prayer repentance
after his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, he prayed
in that one section and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Now for a New Testament Christian, that would be a weird
prayer because we the Holy Spirit doesn't leave us as
Christians. He's in US and he'll never leave
us or forsake us. But we can quench the Holy
Spirit and we can grieve the Holy Spirit by living in our own
power and our own strength. The Holy Spirit wants to fill us
every day afresh that we have strength and power and wisdom,
ability to to live for the glory of God and the blessings of
other people. But in this instance, they have
not received the Holy Spirit in the indwelling yet permanent
indwelling. And this didn't happen till the
day of Pentecost. The apostles received the Holy
Spirit at different times. Jesus breathed on them and said
receive the Holy Spirit for ministry and the miraculous
things that they did. They didn't experience this
complete experience that you and I experienced when we got saved
and we were born again. When we were born again, the
Holy Spirit came to dwell in us at the moment we were born
again. It tells us in First Corinthians
12/13, For we are all baptized by 1 Spirit into the body of
Christ at our conversion, at our belief.
It tells us in Romans 8-9, if any man have not the Spirit of
Christ, he's none of his. So some movements in
Christianity will say to people, have you received the Holy
Spirit? And they asked this in Acts.
We'll get into that down the road.
Since you believe, well, you can't be a Christian if you
don't have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in the
believer. The Holy Spirit does not in
dwell the unbeliever. And the only way you can have
the Holy Spirit is to be born again.
I don't know your experience when you were born again, but
it's pretty significant for most of us because there's a way of
life and a new sense of being an experience after you're born
again that you didn't have before you were born again.
You just know that you know that you know.
And it tells us that his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, bears witness
with our spirit that we are the sons and daughters of God.
So when you come into a church like this, and maybe you've
never been here before, if this is your first time, we welcome
you. You can feel connected
immediately because you're with other people who have the same
Spirit. You do the Holy Spirit.
And so he's commanding them to not depart from Jerusalem, but
to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you have
heard from me. And he said, for John truly
baptized with water. And he's referring to John the
Baptist baptism, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit
not many days from now. Therefore, when they had come
together in verse 6, they asked him saying, Lord, will you at
this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?
And this is a great question for them to ask because God will one
day restore the Kingdom in Israel.
This will actually happen the second coming of Christ when the
millennial Kingdom begins. But this is not the particular
point in time that this is going to occur.
But they're familiar with the, you know, Ezekiel 36 and these
prophecies that are going to one day be fulfilled.
They're asking him the specific question.
They're thinking there's going to be a literal Kingdom right
now. We're going to have freedom.
God's going to roll and reign, and we're not going to have to
deal with Roman government or Russian government or Ukrainian
government or American government or whatever
government you want to say. The good news is one day the
Lord himself will be the ruler and he will rule with an iron
hand in Jerusalem. There won't be anybody else
telling the Lord what to do at that time.
That's when there will be real peace, That's when the nations
will be under his role and reign and they won't have these rogue
governments behaving the way they are now.
But anyway, he says it's not for you to know the times or seasons
which the Father has put in his own authority.
People love to sort of plan and in her mind study.
This is when I think Jesus is going to come and they have it
all calculated. They can use computers now and
algorithms and figure out dates and based upon different feasts
in the Old Testament or whatever.
I've never met anybody that got it right yet.
You know, Jesus isn't anyone that knows the big the return of
Christ to this world to set up the Kingdom, and that's the
Father. We're so glad you joined us
today on this edition of Living Waters of Grace.
Pastor Clark is teaching through the Book of Acts, which is the
only book that chronicles the history of the early church
immediately after Jesus's ascension.
It gives us a front row seat to how the Gospel began to move
outward, starting in Jerusalem and reaching into the heart of
the Roman Empire in just three decades.
A small group of frightened ordinary believers became a
bold, spirit empowered movement that transformed the known
world. Acts is not just a history
lesson. It's a reminder of what God can
do when His people are surrendered, obedient and filled
with the Holy Spirit. Their perseverance still
inspires us today. May we follow their example and
live faithfully for Christ in our own time.
We hope today's message encouraged you.
Living Waters of Grace is a ministry of Calvary Chapel,
Westmoreland. If you're in the Greensburg, PA
area, we'd love to have you join us in person.
Our Sunday service begins at 10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St.
Unit 6B. Be sure to visit
calvarychapelonline.com to confirm times and learn more.
If you are in the Greensburg area, you can listen to Grace FM
on the new 91.7 frequency. Please pray about supporting
this outreach. Gifts can be sent to Grace FMPO
Box 716, Greensburg, PA 15601. Stay connected through Facebook,
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Join our e-mail list, submit prayer requests, and give online
all at calvarychapelonline.com. Thank you for tuning in and
spending this time in God's Word.
Be sure to join us again for Living Waters of Grace.