Holy Ghost

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...

...and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters."

Genesis 1:1-2

When I was in seminary,

I had a professor take his glasses off one day.

He was cleaning his glasses,

and he looked back at the back row where I was sitting,

and Dr. Matthew said,

"Don't let us ever forget one thing.

We do not just worship the Father.

We worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit."

Like, when that feeling, the presence of the Holy Spirit comes,

and the Holy Spirit is God on the Earth,

and I'm telling you, for a drug addict to feel that,

there's nothing better.

The Holy Spirit, to me...

is God's presence here on Earth.

It's the spirit that convicts us...

speaks to us, moves us.

There's nothing more fulfilling

than having that one-on-one personal relationship with the Spirit.

He's a gift from the Father,

and if you ask for bread, He won't give you a stone.

If you really want Him...

the Holy Spirit coming on a person's life

is the gift of His goodness as a perfect Father.

He will not give you a stone if you ask for bread,

and neither will He not give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.

He is the great gift of Heaven.

"Holy Ghost"

I want to show you something.

Something you've never seen before.

Some say He's dead.

Some say He's silent.

Some say He's a figment of my imagination...

but the Holy Spirit is real,

and I'm going to prove it.

This is a movie about risk.

I want to take the greatest risk possible as a filmmaker

to make a movie that is completely led by the Holy Spirit.

No plan, no safety net.

Just show up wherever He leads me,

find the adventure, and make God famous.

Jesus on Earth is Jesus in one place,

but when Jesus is no longer present on Earth in his fleshly body,

He is now present in every one of us,

and so He's present in us because of the Holy Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit is here, Jesus is here.

In fact, He's called the Spirit of Christ.

He's call the Spirit of Jesus, and so I have Jesus in me.

The main goal of the Holy Spirit is to make Jesus present everywhere.

One of the first things I felt God tell me was to go to Salt Lake City,

so I took two friends of mine, Will Hart and Jamie Galloway,

to the heart of Mormon country.

We just got off the plane and headed towards the Tabernacle.

One of the first people we met was a 21-year-old kid

who admitted that he'd been haunted by dark spirits

ever since he and his friends slept in a graveyard.

According to us, we agree that we each other over,

and now we're haunted

just because we slept in a cemetery, and now we're in different continents,

and we're all experiencing stuff on a day-to-day basis.

How would you like that to leave you and never come back?

In a way, it would be sick

because she hates the fact that I have stuff that follows me around the house.

I could do that for you.

- Could you? - Yes.

How so?

I was a kid that had night terrors so bad, I had to be hospitalized.

- Damn, son. - Yeah.

- All right. - And then I came to Jesus.

He freed me, and He gave me this special power

to help other people be free.

So I could take that away.

What religion are you?

Just Christian, no religion.

- Just Christian? - Yep.

Christian in a Mormon state, huh?

- How's that working out for you? - Ironic. Ironic.

Okay, put your hand out. Watch.

Holy Spirit, I want you to touch my friend.

Show him you're really real

and break him free from all the haunting spirits

that have been assigned to his life.

You feel that?

- Watch. - I feel something in my hand.

Double it. Double it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's weird.

Holy Ghost, I ask you to send Your power

all the way up his arm as a sign of Your love.

Thanks, Jesus.

Feel that?

My armpit's cold all of a sudden.

Yeah. Watch. Double it.

Double it.

More.

Now, Lord, show him it's not my power but it's Your power.

From the top of his head down to the soles of his feet,

let that power go through his body right now.

You feel that?

That's weird, man. I don't know what to tell you right now.

- Isn't that crazy? - That feels weird.

Now watch. Put your drink down.

Put your drink down.

Put your other hand out.

Watch, 'cause this is a moment.

This is a moment that...

I feel like we're about to play that game.

Nope. No, no. Watch.

Double it, Lord, more.

That stuff is gonna come off your life.

It's the power of the Holy Spirit.

More, Lord.

You feel that?

- That is weird, dude. - Isn't that crazy?

Now I'm gonna put my hand, my finger in the middle of your palm,

and power's gonna go through your body.

It's not my power.

Lord, show him that it's not my power.

It's not my magic. It's the power of the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name, thanks, Lord.

Man.

What do you think about that?

I don't know what to tell you right now, dude.

- I feel weird. - Yeah, watch.

Double it so much he can barely stand up.

No joke, my nipples got hard.

These things happen. These things happen. Watch.

More, Lord, more.

Why are your hands so warm, dude? That's weird.

- Isn't that crazy? - That is weird, dude. I give you that.

It's getting more intense on you. Isn't that crazy?

My arms... It's all the way up...

- Yeah, it's... - Yeah.

I don't know what to tell you right now.

- Yeah. - It's weird.

I believe Jesus is... He's wooing you, dude.

He loves you, man.

- I believe that. I believe that. - Yeah.

Now, I know you're thinking.

This is just a parlor trick,

that we're reducing the Holy Spirit to some sort of experiential oddity,

but I can assure you, as you will soon see,

that the heart of these men is to allow people

to experience the power and presence of God

so that they might enter into a relationship with Him.

I overcame a lot of religious beliefs about Holy Spirit.

That He was a taskmaster.

That He was a control freak.

That He had a lot of chores for me to do.

And I really got to know Holy Spirit, and He's completely the opposite.

He's the most free person in the entire universe.

He's not an it.

He's not some sort of innate substance.

He's not, you know, Star Wars, "the Force is with us."

It's not that kind of a concept.

In fact, I've been in charismatic meetings

where people refer to the Holy Spirit as, like, a blob of power,

and they were, like, pretending to throw, you know, blobs of power

at each other.

I don't think that's the way we should look at the Spirit.

He's not just some kind of blob.

He's not this power, this force.

He is God, but He's God with us.

Of course, as I was soon to discover, there are plenty of fellow Christians

who think I am absolutely out of my mind.

At one point, we happened upon a man and his wife

who were taking a slightly different approach.

How can Jesus be the devil's brother?

What nonsense, what heresy, what lies.

And so how do you approach the ministry?

Well, my approach is to be direct

because I believe that's essentially the biblical approach,

especially when it's dealing with heresy.

Mormonism is a heresy.

So do you ever, like, pray for, like, Mormons and stuff?

Well, certainly.

I need praying for, and certainly they need praying for.

How do they typically react when you pray for them, like, on the streets?

Oh, I see what you mean.

Do I get up to them and...?

- No, no, I don't do that. - Oh, okay.

But, you know, in a general sense, of course I pray for Mormons, yeah.

Okay.

It would be a rather unusual thing to go up to someone and say,

"Can I pray for you?"

Oh, really?

Because it's a misuse of prayer, in my opinion,

but we must pray for Mormons.

So what's a misuse?

What does that mean, "it's a misuse of prayer"?

Well, I mean some people of the charismatic persuasion

will go up to somebody and say, "Can I pray for you?"

They put their hands on them and answer a prayer.

Well, I don't believe that's a biblical approach.

Okay.

I mean, you surely appreciate that in the evangelical world,

there are those, such as myself,

that believe in the cessation of the gifts,

and there are those, the charismatic Pentecostals,