This sermon emphasizes the importance of the gifts of the Spirit for ministry in the 21st century, highlighting the need for supernatural manifestations of the Spirit's power. It calls for a shift towards embracing and actively seeking the gifts of the Spirit, such as wisdom, knowledge, faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, tongues, and interpretation of tongues. The speaker urges for a revival of the supernatural in churches, encouraging leaders to pray, teach, and provide opportunities for the congregation to experience and operate in the gifts of the Spirit.

Alright, well my topic is a passion for the gifts of the Spirit. So let me read to you 1st Corinthians 12 verses 1-11 and then we'll jump in. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that you were Gentiles, carried away to these dumb idols, however you were led. Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. There are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities but it is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But one in the same Spirit works all these things distributing to each one individually as he wills. Let's pray. Father we pray as we talk now together for a few moments about this important subject of the gifts of the Spirit. And Lord as we heard that great encouraging word earlier about the reality of the necessity of the baptism with the Spirit. And Lord in these days especially Lord how we need your power to come upon us and to work through us. And Lord we readily admit today that we are not sufficient for these things. Lord we need all that you've got for us. So Lord help us, help us today to maybe just get a new perspective on the gifts. Lord help us if this is more theoretical than actual in our church experience and in our personal lives. Lord help it to become actual we pray. So move now by your Spirit among us we ask in Jesus name. Amen. So my intention here today is not to give a detailed explanation of the gifts of the Spirit. But rather to argue for the necessity of the gifts for ministry in the 21st century. Now I don't know how strongly I'm going to have to argue. I think most of you would probably agree with me that this is something that we vitally need. Now I think most of us, most all of us here realize that the world has changed considerably over the past 20 to 30 years. It is a different world today than it was 30 years ago when I entered into the ministry. It is a different world again I think most of you realize that. The humanist revolution that really began to manifest itself in the 60s and 70s has pretty much permeated the Western world today. As a result the culture has been submerged in moral relativism and large sections of the church have been swallowed up by theological liberalism. Now some conservative evangelicals have responded by seeking to develop a more intellectually robust presentation of the faith. Now I want to say up front I'm all for that. I'm all for that and greatly appreciate the ministries of men like Tim Keller for instance or Ravi Zacharias perhaps, Al Mohler, others like that. I appreciate what these men are doing. Some of the younger generation of evangelicals have adopted the missional approach, which in its best sense refers to engaging the culture with the gospel right where the culture is at. The most well-known name associated with this movement I think would probably be Mark Driscoll. Now all of this is good in my opinion, but it's not enough. It's good, but it's not enough. We certainly need sound doctrine, we certainly need good apologetics, and we need to be engaged with and relevant to the culture that we live in. I don't dispute that, but we must never forget that the Christian faith has been, still is, and always will be supernatural. And ultimately carried along not by intellectual arguments or cultural relevance, but by the power of the Spirit of God. All of those other things are fine. I'm happy to see what's happening there. But if that's all we've got, we're in trouble. We need more than that, and thank God we have more than that. Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and John Wesley, apart from the amazing things that happened through them in the spiritual sense, these guys were extremely brilliant men. They were intellectual giants, really, in many ways. But it was the power of God that brought those great awakenings, not their mental genius. Larry Norman, Lonnie Frisbee, and Love Song were certainly culturally relevant, but it was the power of God that brought the Jesus people awakening, not their relevance. Oh, how we need that power in our midst today. And the gifts of the Holy Spirit, I believe, are intended by God to be a manifestation of that power in our midst. Are we thinking in those terms? Are we thinking in terms of the necessity of the supernatural thing that God intends to happen? Listen to what Paul says later on in the Corinthian epistle here. You know, you're familiar with the passage, 1 Corinthians 14, 24, and 25. Paul says this, But if all prophesy and an unbeliever or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced by all, he is convicted by all, and thus the secrets of his heart are revealed. And so falling down in his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you. Paul's talking about an unbeliever being converted by a manifestation of the Spirit in the fellowship. He comes under conviction through the prophetic thing that's happening there. So to me, there is a need. There is a need. And unbelievers need to see the power of God, and Christians need to experience the power of God, and these gifts will supply that need. Now, I've chosen to look at this particular group of gifts for a reason. It seems to me that the gifts here in 1 Corinthians 12 are different from those in Romans 12, or you might even want to add Ephesians 4 in there if you care to. But it seems to me that there's a difference here, and this is the difference. The Romans 12 gifts are supernatural gifts, but manifested in a very natural sort of way. As you go through that list of gifts there, you see that they're obviously supernatural, because the text tells us that. But then you have in that list things like serving, giving, leading, you know. And when you see somebody serving, you see somebody giving, you see somebody leading, there's not anything overtly supernatural looking about that, is there? You just look at it and say, wow, man, thank God for that guy's gift to serve. Or thank God for that guy's gift to give. Or thank God for that guy's gift to lead. These are certainly spiritual gifts, but they manifest themselves in a more natural kind of a way. But these gifts here in 1 Corinthians 12 are different. They are supernatural and manifested in a supernatural way. And these are the ones, quite frankly, that I think we have a tendency to sort of neglect a little bit. A tendency to not want to invest a whole lot of energy in trying to cultivate this, because there's a certain element to it that's just a little bit, it's a little scary. You know, it has a potential to be a little bit messy. It can get kind of weird and unsettle, you know, just the stability. So I think that we do that sometimes. But listen, this is the thing. We're living like this. The skepticism in the culture today is probably at an all time high regarding the Christian faith. And all of the things that we've talked about, you know, all of the arguments that are being put forth and all of the efforts by the new atheist and Islam and all of that. We have at our fingertips, if you will, we have access to supernatural power that will cut through so much of that. That will cut through so much of that and get, like we read there, right to the heart of where people are at and convict them and bring them to repentance. Now, quickly, let's just, we read over these, but let me just, again, real quickly. So supernatural manifested in a supernatural way. A word of wisdom. A word of wisdom. This is not getting wise through studying. This is something that God gives you instantaneously because you desperately need wisdom for a situation that you find yourself in or a person that you're ministering to or counseling or a crisis. You need wisdom and you don't have it. You need something beyond yourself that you don't have. And boom, God gives that word of wisdom. Or that word of knowledge. God knows everything. And there are times when he wants to give knowledge to his people about circumstances, situations, things that will awaken a person to the reality that, man, there's a God. That person couldn't have known that. How did they know that about me? How did they know that that was going on in my life? You see, these things can trigger a person's realization to the reality of God. The word of wisdom, the word of knowledge. And then faith. This is certainly extraordinary faith. This is faith for the moment. This is faith to do extraordinary things. This isn't the faith that saves you. It's not the faith that we walk by daily. This is the kind of faith that Jonathan had when he said, the Lord doesn't need the whole army to save us. He can save with many or few. Hey, let's go see if God wants to give us this camp of the Philistines. That, I think, was kind of an Old Testament example of what Paul is talking about here, faith. Then there's gifts of healings. Healing, supernatural, not medical, medically assisted healings. Those are great. Of course, God does that sometimes. But I wonder, have we just become so accustomed to looking to modern technology and so forth that we're not thinking in terms of supernatural healing? That's what we're talking about here. We're talking about supernatural kinds of things. Gifts of healing, miracles, prophecy, tongues, interpretation of tongues. Here's the question. Are we believing in the supernatural manifestation of the spirit today? Are we making room for the Holy Spirit to move in this kind of way in our fellowships? Are we truly modeling our ministries after the New Testament picture? That's what we want to do, right? We've always said that, you know, when people ask us, well, what's Calvary Chapel about? Well, you know, we're we're about the Bible. We're about getting back to the Bible. Well, what do you guys do? Well, you know, we do what the scriptures say, the book of Acts, the New Testament epistles. But I think we have to ask ourselves the question. Is that theoretical or is it real? Are we just we we in our heads? That's what we do. But do we do it in real time? Do we do it in our churches? Again, chapter 14, Paul, he describes the activity at a gathering in the Corinthian church. He says whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Now, I've read some commentators who have said that this was a criticism, that Paul was rebuking them for having these kinds of things, that this was kind of an out of order thing. I don't know. That didn't seem to me like that's what Paul's doing. He says that this is what's going on. And then he simply says this, let all things be done for edification. Then he goes on to give instruction to make sure that when you're doing these things, you're doing them within the biblical framework or within the biblical boundary. So here is something I want to throw out that might sound a little radical, but believe me, it's not. Have we focused so much on teaching that we've neglected the ministry of the spirit to the further edification of the body through a broader range of gifts? I think we as a movement of churches, I think we honestly have to ask ourselves that question. Now, please don't misunderstand me or think that I'm degrading teaching and preaching in any way. I'm not. I am as convinced today or as committed today to teaching and preaching as I was when I began 30 years ago. I'm absolutely committed to it. I've never wavered, not even in my thinking for one moment on it. But I'm wondering if we haven't deprived the body of an additional blessing by not cultivating a fuller, richer body ministry where every member is receiving and imparting gifts as the spirit wills. I mean, realistically, when we look at our churches, can we say that we've got a New Testament thing going here? Now, I'm taking for granted, and I think it's legitimate. We're all teaching the word, and we need to keep teaching the word. But there's other things beside teaching the word that make up the life and the ministry of the fellowship. And I think that if we just have this one-dimensional thing, after a while, it just, quite honestly, it just gets old. You know, people hear the same stories over and over and over again, and they sit in the same seat week in and week out, and they're never filled or inspired or moved. Or, you know, they never experience a gift of the Spirit working through their lives, and pretty soon, basically, you've got a dead situation. This is happening. This is happening. So, here is the most important question of all. What do we do? What do we do? Well, here's what we do. We, first of all, pray. We pray. We, as pastors, need to go to Jesus, the head of the church. Remember, we need to go to Jesus, the head of the church, and ask if we are missing something here. Lord, are we missing something here? Lord, this is your church. Is everything you want happening in this church happening, Lord? You know, it's so easy, isn't it, to just, to get in a routine, to get in a comfort zone, to, you just, this is what you do, and you do it week in and week out, and never stop to ask the question, Lord, do you want to do anything different? You know, I think sometimes we say that we're open to that. Lord, here we are. We give you this meeting. Lord, you just do what you want to do here, and then we go right back into our groove, right there. And, you know, if the Lord did want to do anything, we didn't even give him a chance to suggest it to us, because we had to get right back into the routine. It's a routine that we get into. So, we have to ask the Lord, Lord, are we missing something here? We need to pray with those in the ministry with us. We need to get together with our ministry team or our staff, however you refer to the guys that work with you, and seek the Lord. Lord, are we, is this what you want to do here? Is there more that you want to do here, Lord? Are we missing out on things that you're wanting to do in this fellowship to bless your people and edify your church? We need to sincerely do that, and I think also that if we do sense, as we're praying and asking the Lord if this is the case, if we sense that the Lord is saying, yeah, you know, we need to make some changes. I do want to do some different things. Then what we need to do is we need to begin to cultivate that amongst ourselves as a ministry team. The congregation is never going to get on board with anything if they can't be led by the pastoral leadership. They're not going to naturally do it. They are going to follow our lead. But are we, as leaders in the church, are we, I mean simply, are we full of the Spirit? Are we moving in the gifts of the Spirit? Are we exercising the gifts of the Spirit amongst ourselves? Do we gather together to pray as a team? And when we're there, are we open to the prophetic word? Are we open to laying hands on one another, praying for one another, maybe healing, things like that? Are we doing things like that? You see, because if we're not doing them, it's never going to happen in our congregation. It's got to start with us. But as we begin to do that, as the Lord directs us and we respond in obedience, it's going to happen. It's going to ultimately trickle down to the people. But that takes us to the next step. So number one, we pray. The second thing we do is we have to teach our people about the importance of the baptism and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But that's not all we do. That's not all we do. We just don't teach them. We have to then give them an opportunity. And this is where I can personally tell you that I had made a mistake many times over. I'll tell you a quick story. Years ago, when I was pastoring this at Calvary Chapel, I was getting increasingly frustrated at what I saw going on in the body. And it was basically this. We were an active church. We were doing a lot of things. But I noticed it was always the same people that were serving. And they were just a very small number of people compared to the people that were actually coming to the church. And this went on for a while. And I kept saying, you know, these people, they're getting burned out. Every time we have something to do and we ask for help, these are the ones that show up. I mean, it was maybe, like, maximum 10 percent of the church. Where's the other 90 percent? And, you know, I was actually kind of frustrated at the Lord for some reason. Like, Lord, this is your fault. Why aren't you getting these people to, you know, get on board with the vision you're giving us and so forth? And I remember one time I was just kind of expressing that frustration in my heart. And the Lord said this to me. It's your fault. I said, well, what do you mean it's my fault? You know, I'm telling them, hey, come on, get involved. Look at what we're doing. Look what God's leading us to do. How is it my fault? They're the ones that aren't getting involved. And the Lord said to me this. He said, you never really taught them about the baptism and the gifts of the Spirit. And I protested. I said, of course I have. Lord, I've done many series. I did an eight-week series. I did a 12-week series on these very topics. And then the Lord showed me. You did that, yes. But it was information, and you never gave them an opportunity to receive. You taught them about the baptism of the Spirit, but you never gave them an opportunity to receive it. So here I am, busted, convicted. You're right. That's true, Lord. What do I do? Lord, put on my heart. Do a series on the baptism of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit. Do it on Sunday morning. Don't do it on Wednesday night. Do it on Sunday morning when everybody's there. And after every message, give people in the congregation an opportunity to come forward, have hands laid on them, and receive the baptism of the Spirit. So we did. I did an eight-week series on the baptism and the gifts of the Spirit. Every Sunday morning, we asked people to come forward. We had hundreds of people that came forward. I mean, I still have this picture in my mind today of 80-year-old people coming forward to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. I think we prayed almost over those eight weeks. We probably prayed for every single person in the church. Every person responded over that eight-week period of time. And you know what happened? Absolutely revolutionized our church. We never again had to beg anybody to do anything. The Lord launched us into the missions thing as a result of that. And, you know, that thing is still going on today almost 20 years later. You see, this is what I'm saying, guys. It's not enough just to impart the information, to just give it theoretically. We have to give the people an opportunity. And we have to believe that God is going to meet them and do it. And sometimes, isn't it just our own lack of faith that keeps us back? Well, Lord, what if I do that and nothing happens? Or, you know, what if they don't? You know, what if it doesn't work? You know, that's not our problem. We don't have to worry about that. I can't make anything happen. I'm not supposed to make anything happen. I'm just supposed to obey the Lord. The Lord tells me, you teach it, you give an opportunity, I'll baptize them in the Spirit. I'll give them gifts. So, we've got to pray. We've got to teach them and give them the opportunity. And then thirdly, we need to take the step of faith. We have to step out in faith and lead the body in this kind of ministry. You know, I really think it's a mistake, honestly, to relegate this to the back room, the side room, across the campus somewhere else. Say, there's going to be an afterglow over there somewhere. Try to find it. You know, there'll be seven or eight people over there. I think that's a huge mistake. It needs to happen right there, with the congregation. I'm not saying it needs to happen on a Sunday morning like that. Quite honestly, I wouldn't do that on a Sunday morning. I did what I just told you I did about praying for people, and we still do that today. A couple years ago, this just came to my mind. A couple years ago, I was teaching on this subject on a Sunday morning. I was teaching on the baptism of the Spirit on a Sunday morning. And at the end of the message, I said, Is there anyone here today that would like to receive... Before I could finish, two guys jumped up and ran to the front of the church and fell down on the floor on their knees, like, Here I am. I want to be baptized in the Spirit. And, I mean, everybody was looking like, What in the world is happening here? Well, the amazing thing was, because I talked to the guys afterward, they had both just gotten out of jail. They had received the Lord in jail. Somebody told them to come to this church, and they knew if they were going to survive outside of jail, they had to be filled with the Holy Spirit, so they wanted it right then. And I ran into one of the guys still, one of them bachelors. I ran into one of the guys recently. He's serving the Lord. He's doing outreaches with the gangs and stuff. I mean, it's just a beautiful thing. But, okay, what am I saying? We've got to take steps of faith, and we've got to make room for this to happen in our churches. This is my thinking. I believe that we should have a service sometime during the week where Acts 2.42 is all happening in one service. Now, we use Acts 2.42 as our general model for ministry, right? And it's a great model. Of course, it's a biblical model. What is it? Continuing steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, teaching. Fellowship. Breaking of bread. Prayer. We say those are the four foundational things of the church. They are. Fellowship, of course, is not just hanging around talking to people after church. But fellowship, this is where the whole gifts and all this body ministry, it's all included in the word fellowship. That's what it means. It doesn't mean just shooting the breeze or catching up or maybe saying a little prayer here or there. I think today we've just sort of, you know, we substituted fellowship or we substituted just socializing for fellowship. It's not fellowship. It's socializing. Socializing is okay, but not as a substitute for fellowship. We need fellowship. And fellowship, you know the word, koinonia. I don't need to give you any kind of a lesson on that. But, you know, that word means to one of the things it means, it means to share. We're sharing with one another. What are we sharing? We're sharing what Christ has given to us with others. And, of course, the gifts would be there as well. So I'm thinking that as much as we use this as a model for our churches, we've got a prayer meeting here, we've got a Bible study there, we've got a fellowship hall over there, we've got worship, breaking of bread throughout the week. That's great. That's fine. But I think why don't we combine it all into one service? Why don't we have a service where we've got a little bit of teaching, but it doesn't take up the entirety of the service, where we give people an opportunity to really fellowship, to really minister to one another. We teach them about the gifts of the Spirit, and then we see them maybe laying hands on one another. We've got our elders praying for people, things like that. We're there gathered, worshiping, having communion. We're praying together. I honestly think that one of the reasons why the younger generation is tending to vacate our churches is because they're so dang boring. They're just boring. They're like, what, is this the end of Christianity? It's a Bible study? Is that what it's all about? And some people have that mentality. You get saved and have a Bible study, and you come to as many Bible studies as you can, and that's what determines whether you're a good Christian or not. Now, the Bible study is the means to the greater end of loving and serving God, right? And again, I'm not downplaying Bible study. Of course we need to study the Bible. But we already know that. We already do that. So I don't need to belabor that point. It's these other things that we generally tend to neglect. So what if we did that? What if we took a service and said, we're going to do Acts 2.42 here tonight. We're going to share the word a little bit, but we're going to pray. We're going to lay hands on one another. We're going to let people tell about the things that God's done for them. If there's sick people, we're going to ask them, come up, let's pray for you, let's lay hands on you. I don't know. I think that that would do something. I think the Lord could really work. It's this whole, you know, the buzzword, you guys know this, the community is a buzzword today. And it's kind of an annoying buzzword. It's like if I hear one more lecture on community, I'm going to throw up kind of a thing. But the reality is, God created us to be in a community. He created us to be in relationships. And too often, our churches don't have that element to them. Too often, our churches are more like classrooms. They're more like classrooms. You come, you sit, you listen, you learn, you get up, you go, and you come and do it next week. I mean, honestly, how many people in your church are really engaged in the life of the body? You know, if we have 10,000 people in our church, I would say that maximum 2,000 are really engaged in the life of the body. The other 8,000, what are they doing? Well, I don't know. I mean, you know, they're there. They come to the Bible studies and they give and all of that. And, you know, of course, hopefully they're serving the Lord out in their jobs and things like that. And I'm sure many of them are. But there's something about this. You know, God saves us and he connects us with a family. And he gifts the various members of the family for the building up of the other members of the family. I mean, it's all this mutual thing where we're giving and receiving with one another. And so, in closing, I would just say this last thing. We talk about the last days. We believe that we're in the last days. What is one of the chief features of the last days? I will pour out my spirit on all flesh in the last days. Are we expecting God to pour out his spirit? Anybody here that was around in the late 60s, early 70s, right on through most of the 70s, actually, you know that there was an obvious outpouring of the spirit and there was a lot of spiritual activity that was happening. But at some point, and I don't know exactly when it happened, that diminished. And it seems to me like it's continued to diminish. But we should be expecting, as the Lord's coming draws nearer, I think we should be expecting more and greater manifestations of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. That's what the Bible says. That's what Peter said on the day of Pentecost. What is this that's going on? These men are drunk. This is that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel. In the last days I will pour out my spirit. Well, that was the beginning of the last days. We're at the end of the last days. And we are to be expecting. And if we expect God to do something, if we have faith that God's going to do something, we're going to take steps and we're going to open ourselves up, make ourselves vulnerable to let the Lord do what He wants to do. I'll tell you one last story real quick because, again, it just came to my mind. But, and this is my point that I want to encourage you in. Look, I understand, and maybe I'm not speaking to everybody, but maybe there's some of you. I understand that there's a certain timidity about stepping out in this. I understand that there's kind of a thing where you're just like, oh, Lord, it's just, oh, you know, I just don't know. You know, we get freaked out. We see the crazy things that go on. And we think, oh, no, Lord, I don't want to do that. And, you know, so I think we tend to be reserved about this. Make no, no doubt about it. You have to take steps of faith to do this. It's not just going to happen. You've got to take a step of faith. I was at a, some of you guys will remember this because you were there. We were doing a conference in Canada a few years back. And it was a time of waiting on the Lord. And, you know, we're there and open and prophecy and just, you know, words of wisdom, knowledge, and that sort of thing. I'm standing up there and I'm leading this. And the Lord says to me, I want you to speak in tongues. And I said, no, no, no, Lord, that's not going to happen. I am not, you know, I'm up here in front of everybody. I'll go sit in the back corner and speak in tongues, maybe. But there's absolutely no way I'm speaking in tongues right here. And, you know, so here I was. And nobody knew this at the time. But for 20 minutes, I was in this incredible wrestling match with the Lord. And it was just like, Brian, I want you to do it. No, Lord, I'm not going to do it. It's just not, Lord, please do not make me do this. This is, no, it's going to be so embarrassing. I don't know what I thought, but I just thought, I don't want to do this. And, you know, the Lord, as he will do, he just said, if you don't do this, I'm not going to use you in this way anymore. I was like, oh, Lord, all right. So, okay, what am I going to do? So, all right, here it is, here I go. So, boom, I just began to speak in tongues. The second I began to speak in tongues, some young guy in the second row began to interpret what I was saying. And his interpretation was so radically ministering to me, I was blessed, convicted, sorry, Lord, forgive me, for holding back the moving of your spirit for the past 20 minutes because of my own stubbornness. But, you know, it was a step of faith. I really had to take a step of faith. And with this stuff, we'll have to take steps of faith. But, like Joey said today, without faith, it's impossible to please God. Our whole lives are about faith. Our whole ministries are about faith. And so, just again, as I close, guys, the Lord wants to do a work. He is doing a work. There's a lot of great things happening, I think, in our churches with different movements. I think it's all good. But let's never forget, we have a supernatural faith. Miracles are part of the Christian faith. And we need miracles today. We need the power of God. The cessationists said, you know, back in the early, late 1800s, early 1900s, when they thought that the world had almost been, you know, entirely Christianized, they said, well, you know, they needed the power of the spirit back then to get things kick-started because of the environment they were in, the culture, the idolatry, the immorality. You know, they needed that power. But now that we've Christianized everything, you know, we don't really need that anymore. We've got our seminaries. I mean, this were the arguments back then. Who would have ever guessed back in 1910 that idolatry and sexual perversion and Islam and all of these things would resurface to the level that they're at today? Nobody would have dreamed it. And as we look at all of this today, we realize as good as our arguments might be, as important as it might be to connect with people on, you know, that relevant level, we better have something beyond that. And the great news is we do. We've got the power of the spirit of God. So, let's ask the Lord for a fresh outpouring of the spirit. But before we do that, I'm going to ask a young guy to come up. Brent, come on up. Brent Yim is a friend. Brent was involved with us here at the Bible College for several years. He pastors Temecula Community Church right here in the area. Brent has brain cancer. He was diagnosed with a tumor a few months back, intense, almost died on the operating table. The tumor's been extracted. And at this point, everything seems to be clear. But, of course, with these things, you know, the prognosis isn't good. But we believe that the Lord is working and wanting to touch him. So, I wanted to ask you guys if we could lay hands on him and pray for him. And if you guys, why don't you just come up and let's lay hands on Brent. And we read about the gift of healing, and let's just ask the Lord to heal Brent here today. All right? Father, we thank you for this opportunity, Lord, to just put into practice immediately what we're talking about here today. And in Jesus' name, we lay our hands on Brent. And, Lord, we pray that you would destroy every cancerous cell in his body. We pray that you would completely heal him. We pray, Lord, that you'd renew his strength. We pray, Lord, we love this guy. We thank you for his gifts, his calling, his ministry, his wife, his kids. And, Lord, we just would like to see him here on earth, helping and partnering and serving with us. So, Lord, would you heal him? That's our prayer. That's our request. We ask it in Jesus' name. And we all say amen. So good. Amen. All right. Well, I would imagine that Damian tonight is probably going to follow up a little bit more on this and praying for the baptism of the spirit and all that. So we'll look forward to that this evening. Let's just close with one final word of prayer. Then I think Roger will come up and talk about some workshops. Father, thank you for the fact that we serve the living God. And, Lord, you're working today. Your power is available today to us. Lord, thank you that we're not left simply to our own devices. We're not left to our own intellect. We're not left to our own charisma, those kinds of things. Lord, we are utterly dependent on you. And, Lord, if we have unintentionally, but yet we've done it. Lord, if we've robbed our churches of this rich and beautiful experience, Lord, forgive us and help us, Lord, to seek you and trust you. And help us to do what you tell us to do. Lord, I don't know what you'd tell everybody else in here to do. I know what you've told me to do at times. So, Lord, whatever we need to hear from you to see a greater manifestation of the spirit, the gifts of the spirit in our midst today, Lord, would you just do that? A fresh work in our hearts personally, in the lives of those that minister with us, and in each of our congregations, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right. God bless you guys.