In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of being fruitful and becoming spiritual mothers and fathers. He encourages both celibate and married individuals to bear fruit in the Lord and embrace their role as spiritual parents. The speaker highlights the privilege and uniqueness of receiving the ministry of the Holy Spirit and integrating it with the teaching of the word. He urges the audience to share their testimony and the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives with others, especially those who may not have had the opportunity to experience it. The sermon concludes with the reminder to ask the Father for more of the Holy Spirit, regardless of one's feelings or experiences.

I've had such a privilege, by God's sovereignty, I've raised in a country where the opportunity for education has been incredible. I've had a great high school education. I got to have a stellar undergraduate education. I think I had to go to graduate school and have an incredible experience there. I've been working on a doctor of ministry. I am that 0.0001% of the world's population has really had the luxury to learn and to study. And here's one thing that I have learned after a lot of years of reading a lot of books and studying. I thought it was really important to have the right answers, and that's not unimportant, but I've learned when you're learning, it's more important to ask the right questions. It's been a big part of my learning experience is what are the right questions to ask? What are the right questions to bring to a learning endeavor? What are the questions that are most important? Because it's getting the right question that of course leads you to the right answer. And so I'd like to talk this morning about asking the right question. Ask, seek, knock. It is very tempting having been to myself many healing conferences, and conference is just an unhelpful word. This has been an odyssey of some sort, hasn't it? A process, a pilgrimage. We should call it healing pilgrimage, but in America then we think of milestone-ish, and that's not very helpful. So, you know, it's some kind of journey into a life more deeply in Christ, what you've been about the last couple of days, right? And it's very tempting as you leave a conference like this to ask the wrong questions rather than asking the right question. And I'd like to put before you, I was able to ask several of us who have been on this journey, what are some of the wrong questions that many of us are tempted to ask as we leave a time with the Lord as we are preparing to do right now? One question, and these aren't necessarily even bad questions. These aren't questions you should be ashamed of having asked in the past, but these are questions that are ultimately not going to be very helpful in your learning endeavor of becoming like Jesus Christ. One question that can be an unhelpful question is, why wasn't I completely healed? It's okay to ask it, but it's not going to probably get you very far. Why wasn't I completely healed? First of all, what is completely healed? Seeing the face of Jesus Christ when he ushers in the fullness of the kingdom of God on earth, I think that's going to be complete healing. But why wasn't I completely healed? Which quickly leads to a spiral of introspection, right? There must be several reasons why I wasn't completely healed. If you operate out of any shame and if you're a human being, it's likely that you do. There must be something wrong with me. That's why I wasn't completely healed. Well, in part, the answer is, yes, it's called your sinful nature. There's something wrong with you. There's something still wrong with you. There was something wrong with you when you got here on Thursday. Something still wrong with you. You've not been fully and completely healed in your sinful nature. You are battling in Christ until you see him face to face, becoming like him and putting to death the old self. That's true. But you can easily spiral into a thousand unhelpful questions. Did I really experience the Lord? Can be another unhelpful question. Or was that just my feelings taking over? Did I really experience the Lord in that moment? It seemed very powerful at the time. Now that I'm stepping back or I'm driving home or I'm reflecting on that time. Maybe that really wasn't the Lord. Maybe I just had a kind of emotional response or reaction. You could begin to dismantle the very thing that was a move of the spirit and somehow place it simply in the category of the natural. I wouldn't ask that question. I take it as the Lord. If I didn't feel anything, did I not receive anything? Some of you have sat here for the last two and a half days and you've watched people on your right and your left feeling. Really envied them. You'd really like to feel and you really haven't felt anything. And if I haven't felt anything, have I not received anything? It's actually an unhelpful question. If you've come here, you've named the name of Jesus, the holy name. You said, yes, you've received him. You've taken him in. Don't spend too much time. What's the right question as you leave this place? Jesus teaches us in Matthew to ask. He, Luke expands on this teaching of Jesus's, which is on the Lord's prayer. He makes it clear that when we ask what we're ultimately asking of the father is the Holy Spirit. Rather than focusing on several specific questions around your feelings or your experience of what really happened or is it complete or was it legit? Discipline yourself as a learner of the way of Jesus to spend most of your inquisitive energy asking the father for the Holy Spirit. That's the question to ask as a learner as you come out of here. I don't know what happened with my feelings. Father, would you give me more of the Holy Spirit? I don't know what happened in that moment where I did feel something and it was overwhelming. Would you give me more of the Holy Spirit? I don't know how I'll ever be completely healed. Would you give me more of the Holy Spirit? This is why this is so important. In the same way that my education is, puts me in a very unique place as to those who've been able to receive such opportunity. So has the last two and a half days, brothers and sisters, put you in a very unique place. There are fellow Christian brothers and sisters who've never had opportunity to receive the ministry of the Holy Spirit as you have. Millions who have never known the ministry of the Spirit, the teaching of the word integrated with receiving his presence. There's millions of brothers and sisters never had opportunity. Don't even know the opportunity exists. Don't even know the places where you can go throughout the world that are like this. They don't know about that. And then there are so many who are lost, who do not have the Lord Jesus Christ. They do not have the Holy Spirit and they have no concept whatsoever of what has just been given to you and what's been given to me. And so as you ask the right question, well, would you give me more of your Holy Spirit? You ask it. Yes. For your healing. Yes. For your restoration. But you ask it because you leave this place on mission. You leave this place having received much. You say, but my healing is not complete. And we say, welcome to the secret of Christianity. We walk out incomplete, depending, surrendering to the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, but ask for a chance to minister what you have received here next week. Look for a chance to speak a word of hope to those who have no hope, to speak a word of joy to those who have never known joy, to give testimony to how God met you in his word or in prayer and the sacramental ministry of the font or holy communion. Tell someone about what you received this week. You must take it out because you've been filled with the Holy Spirit for this purpose. And here I'll conclude. What are the first two words, at least that are recorded that God says to humanity? What are the first two words that we have recorded in the Bible that God says to humanity, be fruitful, intrinsic in that exhortation. Be fruitful is be a spiritual mother, be a spiritual father. You got this yesterday with your celibate or married, be fruitful, be a spiritual mother, be a spiritual father, bear fruit in the Lord. That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. You may say I can only bear the fruit of a small line right now. That's all I got. Bear the fruit of a small line. Some of you are so full. You're like, I feel like an orchard. Bear an orchard, bear fruit, give testimony. What the Holy spirit is doing in your life. Share with someone this week, a word of hope, a word of joy, and thereby be the spiritual mother women that God made you to be from the very beginning. Be the spiritual father men that God made you to be from the very beginning. How much more will the father give the Holy spirit to those who ask praise the Lord in the name of the father and the son and the Holy spirit. Amen.