Removing Obstacles // Holy Spirit Series // John 14, Acts 2, Acts 19 // Doug Glynn // 05.17.26

This Pentecost Sunday message continues our series on the Holy Spirit by exploring Jesus’ surprising promise in John 14:12: that His followers would do the works He had been doing, and even “greater things.” For many of us, that promise can feel almost too big to believe. But Jesus was pointing toward what would become possible through His death, resurrection, ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. 

Pastor Doug helps us “read the room” by acknowledging that people come to this topic from very different starting places. Some are new to the language of the Holy Spirit. Some grew up around beautiful or confusing expressions of Spirit-filled ministry. Some have studied the gifts deeply, while others have been Christians for years but still feel unsure what to do with the Holy Spirit beyond affirming the right doctrine. The message also clarifies that the Holy Spirit is not merely power, anointing, a feeling, or an experience. The Holy Spirit is a Person, the personal presence of God who speaks, leads, comforts, convicts, teaches, empowers, and forms us into the likeness of Jesus. 

Using John Wimber’s famous question, “When do we do the stuff?”, Doug considers why many followers of Jesus have not expected or experienced the Spirit’s empowering presence in the ways described in the New Testament. The message then walks through several common obstacles: confusion about what it means to be “filled” with the Spirit if the Spirit already dwells within every believer, theological resistance to the gifts of the Spirit, and a passive posture that says, “I’m open to it, but I’m not going to ask for it or seek it.” 

The sermon lands in Luke 11, where Jesus says the Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask, and in 1 Corinthians 14:1, where Paul tells the church to “eagerly desire” the gifts of the Spirit. The invitation is not hype, pressure, or chasing an experience. It is a call to trust the goodness of the Father, ask for what He delights to give, and zealously seek the gifts of the Spirit so the living presence of Jesus can continue His work through ordinary followers of Jesus.