Reverend Raymond Osborne, Pastor

Please Note That Most Messages Follow
The Revised Common Lectionary

Catching the Spirit!
Ephesians 5:15-20

Camp Meeting was an event of a lifetime for me! I think I enjoyed everything about Camp Meeting with the exception of the heat and then I looked around and I saw that I wasn’t alone! Everyone was hot! I enjoyed the food, I enjoyed the dynamic preaching, but you know what I enjoyed the most? The singing! I loved the singing! I enjoyed the Camp Meeting Choir specials and I really – really enjoyed just sitting in front of tent #50 and picking the guitar with John Malcomb and singing the old hymns, the Southern Gospel songs, and the praise choruses. While the Holy Spirit of God was consistently present throughout the week, for me, I felt His presence most of all during the singing!

I remember Cam Conover spoke to us about the Holy Spirit and I also intend to speak to us this morning about the third personality of the Holy Trinity. There is such a misunderstanding about the Holy Spirit. One of my beliefs is that people worship in different ways and while I may not agree whole-heartedly with someone’s particular style of worship, I believe we have the God-given right to worship as we feel led by the Holy Spirit.

I will never forget an experience I had early on in my ministry. I was singing in a Southern Gospel group and I’m sure as Doug and the Freeman sisters can attest, there’s no telling what kind of worship you might find yourself singing in. We had accepted an invitation to sing in a little church in the hills of Wilkes County. First we couldn’t find the road the church was on and then once we finally found it I began to get suspect as we drove so far back into the woods the mail boxes quit! I mean the mail didn’t even go out that far Doug!

We finally found the little white church and people began to come in. I have no idea where all the people came from but this much I do know they came there because they decided too – there was no stumbling on this church by accident!

We sat up and we did several numbers and everything went really well. We were into the singing and the people were into the singing and you could just feel the presence of the Holy Spirit.

At the end of the service, the pastor asked for anyone who wanted prayer to form a line up the center isle. The pastor then called a young man over and whispered something in his ear. The young man then walked over to me and said, “Pastor said that since you are a preacher she wants you to join her.” I thought about that for a second and finally decided, “Yes I can do that.”

I went up front and the pastor handed me a bottle of oil. I had never anointed anyone with oil before but I knew that James 5:14 says, “Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.” So as long as we were remaining in Biblical boundaries I was cool with that.

Now there were two lines forming, one for the pastor and one in front of me. As the first two people approached I watched the pastor. She took the bottle and placed a little bit on her finger then she took her finger and spread the oil from one side of the person’s forehead to the other.

My first client was a jolly lady of about 400lbs who looked not to have a problem in the world! She came and stood in front of me. I took the oil, placed some on my finger, and began to spread it across the lady’s forehead. Right before I reached the other side BOOM!! She dropped to the floor and began to roll and shake! I thought I had killed her!!! I handed the bottle back to the pastor with these words, “I don’t think I believe in THAT kind of prayer! And ladies and gentlemen I ran out of that little church as fast as my feet would carry me, I looked up to Heaven and said, “Lord don’t do that to me no more!!”

Would you believe me when I tell you that I still get nervous when I go in Christian Supply stores and see those little bottles of oil?

Would you believe me when I tell you that it took years for me to overcome my fright when people mentioned the name “Holy Spirit?”

I have been a pastor for over twenty years and I have served all kinds of churches. I have served churches who taught me a new meaning of “Worshiping in the Spirit” and I have served churches that no matter how hard you looked you never could find the Holy Spirit.

I called James McBride earlier this week and asked him to place on the sign across the road “Come and Catch the Spirit.” Have you ever been to a ball game or a concert and you got so caught up in all the excitement you found yourself waving and screaming and laughing and crying?

I often come home from one of those events and find myself asking, “Why can’t we get THAT excited about God? Why can’t we get THAT excited about being a Christian? Why can’t we get THAT excited about Jesus?”

It’s my hope that as people drive by that sign they will get some idea that Union United Methodist Church is a place where the Holy Spirit of God can be found and experienced in a way that is not threatening, but empowering. That we can convey to those who enter this place that we are people who love the Lord, one another and who ARE excited about Jesus!

We find in our Scripture this morning a command, an order, a mandate. We are to be filled with the Spirit of the Living God. But what does that mean? And how do we do that?

What does it mean to be “filled with the Spirit?” It means that you know without a shadow of a doubt that you have had a personal encounter with the resurrected and living Jesus!”

I remember watching on the news an aircraft carrier that was in the midst of the Kosovo crisis. The news was broadcasted from on that ship that morning. In the background was a jet ready to take off. The camera zoomed in on the jet, which was piloted by a young man who had no way of knowing if he’d come back or not. Just before taking off he looked right at the camera and saluted. I found myself in the middle of the living room floor, on my knees, in tears pleading to God for peace. When I got up I knew I had just encountered the living Jesus!

Have you noticed the price of gas over the past few months? I remember selling my 1966 Roadrunner when gas got up to 75 cents a gallon and never dreamed that there was coming a day when I’d be paying more than twice that amount. But regardless of the price let me let you in on a little secret; if your car runs out of gas it won’t go no further. In order for your fuel tank to have gas you have to go to a gas tank every once and a while and put some gas in it.

How do we become filled with the Holy Spirit? We do that by spending time with God, opening ourselves and letting Him pour His Spirit into our lives. Does it mean we begin to roll on the floor? No. Does it mean we begin to speak funny? No. What it does mean however is that we become so filled up with God and His sweet Holy Spirit that it overflows into the lives people who surround us in church, at work, at home, and in play.

It may mean that we raise our hands and arms in praise, it may mean that we share a testimony of God’s goodness in our lives, it may mean that we allow a tear to escape every now and again. Children there is nothing wrong with that. Raise your arms, raise your hands, shed a tear, give a testimony, but above everything open yourself and allow God to pour into your life His Holy Spirit. When you do you’ll know and understand what it means to “Catch the Spirit.”

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