It was a typical Sunday night in my home church. Attendance was normal, the music was normal…nothing was out of the ordinary. It was one of many occasions when my pastor asked me to preach and the sermon was about the crucified life as described in Galatians 2:20. Yet something was different. I still remember having an unusual sense of the Holy Spirit working within me as I preached. Afterward I looked at my sermon notes and realized I had completely changed things as I preached. The content was the same as I had written in my notes, but the sequence in which I presented it was radically different. I hadn’t noticed until I was finished preaching. It seemed as if the Holy Spirit had literally taken over and I was just His mouth piece.

The next day a friend told me he another friend had been listening to the live radio broadcast while driving. They had discussed how different my preaching seemed that night…it was as if the Holy Spirit had clearly and powerfully spoken through the radio. It was not normal to them…it was different.

That was one of the early moments in my spiritual journey when I realized that the Christian life cannot be lived and ministry cannot be done in my own strength as effectively as they can in the power of the Holy Spirit. God reminds me of this truth from time to time.

Starting this Sunday, I’m going to preach for three weeks about the Holy Spirit as we wrap up the series “UNHINDERED.” We’ve been talking about being an unhindered church preaching an unhindered gospel. Well…the truth is we can’t do that without the Holy Spirit. I pray God uses the next three Sundays to do some incredible things among His people.

Pastor Steve Hogg