SEP 15 2021 | Holy Spirit Workshop Hear Part 1

Sea Change Church · Holy Spirit Workshop Hear Part 1 · September 15, 2021
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Welcome to the Holy Spirit class here at La Jolla Christian Fellowship. It is our course on the Holy Spirit. We do it every single year and we dive into different elements of the Holy Spirit. Last year was spiritual warfare, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This course is on hearing from the Holy Spirit, getting the Spirit's direction, how to get direction for our life, how to know when the Holy Spirit is speaking to us, how to even intuit or interpret when something is perhaps of just natural comfort or when the Holy Spirit is actually comforting us himself.

How do we know when we're interacting with the Spirit? Jesus says the sheep will know my voice. And so the understanding of Scripture is that if you're one of his sheep, we will get to a place in our lives where we actually understand. We know when God is speaking to us. And this is an acquired language. Hearing from the Holy Spirit is an acquired language. It's much like French. It's much like English. It's much like any other language. It's much like any other language. And it's something that we actually need to practice. It's something that we need to immerse ourselves in.

The more you immerse yourself into it, like that immersion language teaching, the more you will begin to know his voice. Let me make it clear that the Holy Spirit speaks in certain ways to all of us in the same ways. And then there are certain ways that the Holy Spirit will uniquely speak to you. God speaks to individuals based on who they are. God, I'm a visual. And so I get lots of pictures. I'll just get a picture in my mind.

My wife won't get that. My wife won't get that. My wife will more often get a feeling. My wife will get a real sense of peace. And some people really hear from the Holy Spirit through their emotions, through their discernment. And sometimes they'll have a spirit. Like I, I, one of my spiritual gifts is a gift of discernment. And sometimes a heaviness will come over me, but I'm not feeling heavy personally, like I have a depression or any other kind of heaviness on me.

But I'll just feel a heaviness when I go to certain places. And I've learned to understand that when I get that feeling, which I didn't know what it was at first, when I get that feeling, there seems to be some spiritual darkness around. I've come to know that because I've tested that spirit. I've tested the voice of the spirit and I've come to find that the fruit that I found after being in a certain situation matched what I thought the Holy Spirit was trying to tell me.

So like I said, some people hear through emotions. Some people hear through dreams and all these things. Next week, we're going to talk about the primary way we hear from God through the spirit. It's through the word of God. All of us want that mosaic experience, right? We all want a burning bush. We all want an angel. We all want all of these ways in which something manifests in front of us. What we need to understand when we're hearing from the Holy Spirit, first is that God speaks to you uniquely.

So there's going to be a language that he speaks to you within the grander framework of how he speaks to all people that are believers. He speaks through his word. Bible also said he speaks through creation. So if you're at the beach, don't be surprised if the spirit speaks to you because it says the heavens will cry out. There's different ways to hear from God and the Holy Spirit. But what we're going to find next week is the primary way that the Holy Spirit speaks to us is through the word of God.

God gave us his word for a reason. And that's the primary thing. And the other thing, too, is I want to I want to D. I don't know if it's D mystify or I want to start minimizing the way the Holy Spirit spoke in the Old Testament and to have us as new believers stop glorifying it because it was a secondary way of revelation. What do I mean by that? The Holy Spirit for believers is within our hearts. As we'll see in a moment, the Holy Spirit indwells you.

He means to speak to you from within. Before we had the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit had to speak to us from the outside in. Now that you have the Holy Spirit within, we no longer like Moses need to go into a temple to experience God. We no longer need to go up to a mountain where we meet him face to face. We no longer need an angel to come. We no longer now angels might show up. There might be times where God chooses to do that dramatically.

But what I have found is that many believers would rather have an ecstatic experience with some outside presence. Let's say they're from God. I believe that angels still speak. I do believe that God still does that. But they would rather have that be primary over learning how to intuit what the Spirit of God says within them. What the Spirit of God is trying to draw out within you. It says, I believe in Corinthians, this is one of the verses I'm trying to memorize, so I haven't quite memorized it yet.

I know it's in Corinthians. That the Spirit of God searches the mind of God and actually makes the mysteries, the mind of God, I'm paraphrasing, known to us. The Bible says that you don't even know your own motives, which is interesting. And so this is one of the things that the Spirit wants to do. Is live within you to understand the depths of your motives and to make it known to you. To reveal himself to you. So I want to demystify.

And I want to take away any desire. Not desire, because we would love to see those things. But to understand that God wants to speak to you through the Holy Spirit that dwells within you. And it is within you. And that Moses would have traded anything in his possession to give up his mountaintop experiences, his face-to-face experiences with God in the temple, if he would have known that that Holy Spirit that he was speaking to, that God himself would dwell within him.

You see, Moses never had that experience. Moses never had the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Where now he wasn't going into the temple. He became the temple of God himself. And that's what the Scripture promises. And so, the first thing we want to say, and this is not in the notes, this is just the preface, is that God wants to make himself known to you. And this is one of the beliefs that I think that we need to overcome, as I'll just say in a moment.

We'll get to that. There's three primary things that we're going to speak about at the beginning. And it is the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit. But I put at the beginning a core question that, before we get to how the Holy Spirit speaks to us, is to ask ourselves, what's the purpose of the Holy Spirit? Before we start hearing from the Holy Spirit, we need to understand who the Holy Spirit is, and what his position is, and what his role is in regard to the church.

So, I would say that there are two primary, I would say there's three primary purposes. Now, the Holy Spirit is infinite. God is infinite. The Holy Spirit is infinite. And we need to understand that there's more than three. I tried to boil it down to three in particular that I think are important. The first is the most important job of the Holy Spirit, and that's as a seal of salvation. The primary job of the Holy Spirit is to indwell you and to put a seal.

It speaks about a seal in Ephesians. I'll read that in a moment. To seal you for salvation. And it says that it is a, it's almost like a stamp of approval in waiting to be, before you get to Judgment Day, and that seal will be before you and will be there on Judgment Day with you to show that you were sealed in the Holy Spirit until redemption. It's like you're waiting to be redeemed. You can only think about it about a piece of fruit that, you know, it gets a stamp on it at first, but it needs to go to the inspector, so to speak.

The inspector then approves it to take it to the next level. That is what the Holy Spirit is. Let me read that as a seal of salvation. And understanding it says in Ephesians 1, 13 and 14, In him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who has given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of his glory.

So we see that the Holy Spirit is not just there to equip and service and comfort and all the other things. The primary reason we need the Holy Spirit is because it is a seal of salvation. It is God's mark of ownership upon our lives after we have believed in him through faith. The next that I just spoke about, I prefaced at the beginning, was it is an indwelling presence. 1 Corinthians 6, 19. Do you not know that your bodies are what?

Temples of the Holy Spirit? Who is in you, whom you have received from God. You are not your own. Now, being a place where the Holy Spirit dwells, and living in the understanding that you're actually a temple of the Holy Spirit, and not treating your body just so in so much of like, how do I eat? How do I take care of myself? I think those are elements of the temple of the Holy Spirit. But in regard to everything from thought life to every, you know, in regard to your tongue, to the way in which you live your life, that your body is actually, are you treating it as a sanctuary?

And what happens in a sanctuary, especially in the Old Testament? The sanctuary in the Old Testament is a place where the Spirit of God envelops. It is a place where the Spirit of God is cultivated. And so, I think, before we start hearing from the Holy Spirit, we need to re-identify ourselves as a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. And then if you really want to hear from the Holy Spirit, which I think people want, it's like this, you want a new fence around your house, but are you willing to dig the holes and build the fence?

Yes, there's a lot of things we want, but we're not often willing to do the hard work to actually get the results that we want. If you're going to hear from the Holy Spirit, and this is what today's primary message is about. It's not about hearing from the Holy Spirit. It's about preparing yourself to hear from the Holy Spirit. It's about, do we have the desire? Do we really want to hear from the Holy Spirit? And do we really want to hear what the Holy Spirit has to say?

And so, it is about creating this dwelling place for the Holy Spirit and this in-dwelling place for God. And so, we see that Christ's primary desire is to dwell within us. And so, are we creating a sanctuary within our heart? And how do we create a sanctuary? What are the ways that we create a sanctuary? So, there's many ways to do that, and there's many keys to heaven that Christ has given us to unlock heaven. I'm preaching about that on Sunday.

In fact, I'm going to take the sermon I was going to preach, and I'm going to preach it this Sunday. A lot of it is about the keys to heaven. And those keys to heaven are meant to unlock the things of heaven, to loose on earth, and to bind on earth, to loose on heaven, and to bind in heaven. A lot of this work can be done in our hearts as we loose forgiveness in our hearts. One of the ways to cultivate a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit where that Spirit of God will indwell, where the flame will burn brightly.

Remember in the book of Samuel, where Samuel was in the temple, and the word of the Lord spoke to him when he was with Eli. And Eli couldn't hear the word, but Samuel, as a young boy, heard the word. It's said that the light of the Lord had grown dim in that time, and his job was to keep the light up. Well, God is a consuming fire, and God consumes sacrifice. God can't consume what you don't sacrifice. And so what we see is it is meant to burn brightly, and much of the fire in the temple, which burns brightly, which is God's presence in the indwelling of his temple, happens when we sacrifice.

How do we sacrifice? Well, we sacrifice by the sacrifice of forgiveness. We do sacrificial giving. In a couple weeks, I'm going to be speaking about sacrificial giving. There's a difference between giving, and there's a difference between giving to the point where you actually, it affects your lifestyle. That's sacrificial giving. Both are amazing. The one is sacrificial. God, the greater the sacrifice, and he desires mercy, not sacrifice.

But the greater the sacrifice, it seems that God seems to burn and consume those sacrifices. And so, if you really want to hear from the Lord, you have to ask yourself the question, do I really want to have my inner self, my inner woman, my inner man, be the kind of place where the Holy Spirit can consume and dwell that is full of sacrifice, that is full of praise, that is full of all of the things of the temple? If you read the Old Testament about the temple, and the temple worship, and the praise, and the sacrifice, and the offerings, and the thanksgiving, all of those things create a place where the Holy Spirit dwells.

When the Holy Spirit starts dwelling, and he dwells there anyways. If you're a believer, you have a seal. But a seal doesn't mean that you have a fullness. A fullness can come and go. I've seen the Holy Spirit full on people's lives, and I've seen them walk away from it, and I've seen God just go, have you ever seen a pastor, and you don't have to say any names, that was full of God's authority, full of God's power, full of God's things, and it wasn't a timing issue, because sometimes seasons are done, and it's time for a pastor to move on, and God used them, and God just said, it's time to graduate you to retirement, or your next season in life.

But I've seen it before, where God just goes, and they're up there, and they're preaching, and they're sweating, and doing the whole thing, and they're just trying to whoop it up, but there's nothing there anymore. That's the difference that we see when God has an indwelling fullness. And so the question that you need to ask yourself first is, am I willing to pay the price to create a temple, to create an interior being that is a temple?

I'm going to talk about those elements tonight just for a few moments before we have our time of experiment. So that was the indwelling presence. Now the third component that we see, and these are the ones that you are most familiar with. I think when we talk about the Holy Spirit, we too often focus on gifts, we too often focus on Him as a comforter, and I hate to use the word too often, but so often we want the gifts of the Holy Spirit so we can have some sense of self-fulfillment.

Like, well, I'm useful to the church. I have gifts. I can do something. I can preach. I can teach. I can work with the youth group. I can have mercy. And so the Holy Spirit so often, I think, is peddled to us to give us a sense of self-worth as opposed to shown to us to be equipping us that we might be servants of God to do what He tells us to do no matter if we want to or not. I have a phrase. It's a little bit, well, maybe I won't use that phrase, but I think, I'll use this term.

Purpose lust is rampant in the church today. They sell personal purpose as if it is the end all and be all. That if you can find your purpose, what God has called you to in life, the one thing that you want, if you can find that, then you will be happy, then you will have peace, then you will have joy, then you will have all the things that Christ promised you anyways by just being in love with Him. You see, Christ promises all these things in Himself.

We are supposed to know what our purposes are. It is. Our purposes are. We are supposed to know what God has called us to, and that comes secondary. But the purpose has become in place of being a servant. The purpose has become the thing that we have been telling Christians that you have to go after and get. And this is only something that's been available to Christians for the last 150 years. There was no purpose for 90%, 95% of the world for 6,000 years.

My name is Stottmiller. That means we baked. We made a bunch of bread. And we did that. And our next family in generation after generation did that. There wasn't, how can I go find myself? And so the reason I'm saying that is we are, I think we oversell the giftings. We oversell the ministry. And we oversell it because we think you should have the Holy Spirit so that you can know who you are in Christ. And I think that is important, except we put off Christ.

So that you can know who you are. Because there is intense need for meaning. And I want to say, before we go into hearing from God, I want us to ask ourselves the question, do we actually want to hear what God might tell us? Or do we want to hear from God so that we can do and hear what we want to perhaps hear? You see, so many people want to hear God speak to them about what they think they want to know. What they think they want to be told.

Because God has all this good news about your purpose, your soulmate that you're going to find, and all those things are important to God. I'm not saying they're not important. But what if you get there and you don't like what he has to tell you? Do you still want to hear from God? Do you want some of the words that Paul heard from God? Do we just want to fall in love with Jesus? And so, I think we undersell what the Holy Spirit has meant for.

I think that we undersell that the Holy Spirit, one, is a seal of redemption for you, and is an indwelling presence of God himself that gets you, if you just got that, it's enough. You want to know the problem for most now? After we've been peddled, you know, your purpose and your meaning and all this, and you can find it. And I think God means to do that, but he means us to do it in him. That I think what we have is people that, perhaps sometimes, care more about hearing from God for their own fulfillment, as opposed to hearing from God so that they can be kingdom servants.

And I see, you know, you see this in ministry a lot as well. But, with that said, let's talk about what also the Holy Spirit is. First, he's a resourcer and a quipper. He's a resource and a quipper. We have John 14, 26. John 14, 26, and this is the NIV, New International Version, says, But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will do what? Will teach you all things and will remind you of what I have said to you.

So we see that the Holy Spirit is a teacher, and it's a reminder. Now, a lot of times we've got to go to the classroom. You know, so many people say, I never heard from the Holy Spirit, but we ask them, Hey, have you read the Bible? Do you read the Bible? The answer is no. Don't read the Bible. Or, do you have a plan to study the Bible? The primary way that I hear from the Lord is not from pictures, is not from thoughts, is not from dreams, is not from prophetic utterances, is not from tongues.

The primary way that I hear from the Lord is from the Bible. And I will say that in the last few days, the Lord has kept giving me Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, three or four times it's shown up in different readings. One time I just opened my Bible and it was there. Verses, like in Proverbs, it says, better one handful with peace than two fistfuls with striving. Another one I think says, better a plate full of vegetables with contentment than a feast of meat with, I think it says strife, is what the word might be.

There's two or three verses that this week, when I was getting ready to make some decisions, the Holy Spirit reminded me, before you make that decision, do you realize that you're going to lose peace, you're going to lose contentment, but you might get two fistfuls, but you're going to get some striving with it. And so not only did he teach me this week as I read it, he reminded me two or three times during the week.

This is what this scripture says. So that's one way we hear, but primarily it's through the word. But as we look at this scripture here, there's a key word at the very beginning. So let's just look at what it says the Holy Spirit is. And the NIV says that the advocate, so advocate is this idea that the Holy Spirit, the advocate is speaking to you, that it is speaking for you, it's advocating for you. That's kind of like a lawyer sense of the word.

In Romans 8.26, it picks up on it, it says, in the same way the Spirit does what? Well, that uses the word helps. The Spirit helps us in our what? Weakness. We don't know what we ought to pray. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. So interceding, that is something the Holy Spirit does, and he's an advocate for us. I don't think that that translation of that word is the right word. I think there's some other versions of the Bible that have a better translation.

Going down to the Holman Christian Standard Bible, it says that they use the word counselor instead of advocate. The New American Standard Bible uses the word comforter, which is really interesting, because the Spirit of God is definitely a comforter. And then also, that the Spirit of God is a helper. And that's in the New King James Version. So we see all those. I guess, ultimately, what is the Holy Spirit? What is the person of the Holy Spirit?

I would say that the Holy Spirit, if you had to narrow it down, primary purpose is to equip and resource us with what we need in the moment. The primary job, besides being the seal of salvation, which I really wanted to highlight, because I don't want this to be an all-about-us faith, but it is a seal of salvation, and an indwelling presence is meant to resource us. Now, when you are resourced, there has to be a means of communication, or else you won't understand the resource.

If you are given a key, and there's a hundred doors in front of you, it's going to be very difficult. Being given a key, and told which door to go that works on, or what the code to the lock is, is very, very helpful. So, we have to understand that if the Holy Spirit is meant to resource us, to open doors, to close doors, to give us comfort, because there's a lot of things that can give us comfort, how do we know that the Holy Spirit is giving us comfort?

How do we know that the Holy Spirit is directing us to something? There has to be a means of communication, and this brings us to what you're all here for. How do we hear from the Holy Spirit? And why do we need to hear from the Holy Spirit? Well, we need to hear from the Holy Spirit so we can get our marching orders, or we can receive what we need, in order that we can be resourced for the moment. The Holy Spirit wants to resource you for today, for tomorrow, for your life, wants to give you words, and meanings, and understandings, and wants to lead and direct you.

So, we have to understand that God wants to communicate to us. And so I put 1 Corinthians, oh, forgive me, the Holy Spirit is also a giver of gifts. I didn't say that. The Holy Spirit is a giver of gifts. You know that as well, and that's part of the resourcing. So forgive me for missing that. 1 Corinthians 12, 7, and 8. Before I get to the core question, the Holy Spirit works in each person in one way or another for the good of all.

Now, stop right there. That goes back to the beginning. You are a unique individual. God is going to work through each person, it says, in one way or another. There is a multiplicity of ways that God can speak. The primary way is through the Word of God. Like I said, there is also natural revelation. There are also prophetic utterances. There are dreams. I've had all of these. I've actually had two visions, or I've actually seen visions.

God has spoken to me through movies. He's spoken to me through reading a book. He's spoken to me through looking in the clouds and just thinking. He's spoken to me in my thoughts. God speaks through a multiplicity of ways. But what we want to do in this course is to help you find a filtration system. That's what we're going to talk about next week. In order to discern, is this really from the Holy Spirit? Because the enemy's prime job is to deceive you.

He wants to bring deception into your life. And I meet with believers all the time that are walking in deception. Or they begin to accept one thing as truth when the Bible says that that is not true. You especially see this in engagement relationships in regard to physical boundaries. As the enemy tries to deceive people with different arguments of why holiness doesn't matter because your end goal is going to be marriage anyways, or things like that.

The devil will seek to deceive you. And so we need to lean upon a filtration system. I'm going to talk about that next week. It's called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. And it's four points that we use to filter what God and what the Holy Spirit is. Out from John Wesley. And it was how to understand what the Holy Spirit is guiding you. And so we're going to keep filtering down from a macro teaching to a micro teaching where you can look at each thing you think from hearing from the Spirit.

You can take it to this filtration system and say, yes, this is from the Lord. Now, or no, it's not. Now, we know the scripture says that we only see in part and we only hear in part. So let me just assure you that you're going to get this wrong a lot. Okay? You're just going to get it wrong. Part of following the Holy Spirit is getting things wrong. If God didn't want you to get things wrong, it would have made you perfect.

You know? The Bible also says in Romans 8, 26 and 27 that all things do what? They will work together for good. For those that love God and are called what? According to His purpose. Which means if you're called according to His purpose, He's like, Oh, you know, Holy Spirit, I thought I heard from you. And I've had a few times where I thought I heard from God and I made a mistake. And I didn't. Actually, there was a season where I actually got really frustrated with the Lord because I was sure I heard from Him and then I was wrong.

So we had to have a little battle for a couple of years. And I was pouting and I wasn't going to listen to the Holy Spirit. And so I didn't worship and I didn't want to hear anymore. And I was still a pastor and everything, but I was very upset at the Lord. And, you know, He told me it wasn't about answers. That's the one thing. It's not about getting answers. It's about a relationship with Him. But what I've known is we don't have a filtration system to hear from the Lord and then you just do the best you can.

But one thing I have known is that the amount of times I miss, the more I'm in that indwelling presence of the, I'm creating that indwelling presence of the Spirit and the more I'm obedient and the more I've listened to Him and the longer I've walked with Him, probably the less major mistakes I make. And I usually know right away when I've made a mistake. He's just, sometimes He's so close and you've walked with Him for so long, it just, you just become so fluent in the language.

Now let us not grow arrogant, the Scripture says, where you, you know, this is where people get off and they start thinking, I hear from the Lord all the time. And then you get these, you know, I was in a Pentecostal movement for a very long time. I'm still a closet charismatic. I wouldn't say I'm Pentecostal, but I'm a closet charismatic. And there's a prophet movement where prophets get lifted up to this super high place because they've got the pipeline to God.

And I love myself a prophet and I've had some great words for some prophets. But if God still wanted to work on the prophet system, which is Old Testament, it's New Testament too, but it's primarily in the Old Testament because no one had the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, then he would have just had prophets keep going. But prophets are a secondary measure. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit through Scripture, through these other things in the Wesleyan quadrilateral that I'll talk about, are meant to give us an anchor so that we can follow Christ and know Christ.

So, moving on, it says that the Holy Spirit works in each person. This is 1 Corinthians 12, 7 and 8. In one way or another, for the good of all. One person is given the gift of teaching, words of wisdom. Another person is given the gift of teaching, what he has learned and knows. These gifts are by the same Holy Spirit. There's a core question now before we're kind of circling the tower now and then we'll come in for landing in a few minutes.

How does the Holy Spirit communicate with us individually? And a better question might be, how does the Holy Spirit not communicate with us? Let me say that again. I want to change your, I want to change paradigms. One of the things I love changing is paradigms. And one of the paradigms is, does God ever speak to me? I think I have found that it's easier to answer, when is God not speaking to me? Then when is he speaking to me?

I can think in every moment, almost every moment that I live, I have a sense of direction through knowing the scripture, through walking with Christ, of what is right to do and what is not right to do. Meaning, not, hey, should I take a walk right now or should I not? I'm not talking about navel gazing. I've seen some people that navel gaze the Holy Spirit where it's like, you're just not living in the world anymore, you know?

But when I walk outside, I can choose to dwell on negative thoughts, I can choose whatever, or I can immediately tune in and say, God, what are you saying? The question of God, what are you saying in this moment is a great question. God, what are you doing? Even, it was funny, even when I was sick with stomach flu this week, I was really, it's interesting when you get sick how close you get to God, you know, and how all of a sudden your empathy for other people that are sick, it's like, oh my gosh, I can't imagine like being really sick for a very long time.

But even in that moment, I just thought about some friends that are sick and I was actually laying, I'm not super spiritual or godly or anything, but I was just laying on my bathroom floor because I don't know why the bathroom floor feels so good in those moments. I'll just leave it at that. But like, I don't know why a bathroom, a cold bathroom floor and huddled masses like the Statue of Liberty talks about. But I just began to like think about other people that were sick.

I thought about Olin and his chemo treatment. I thought about, and I just began to pray for people. And I just, as I was thinking about this today, I was thinking, when's God not speaking to me? It's oftentimes a paradigm shift. The devil wants believers to think that God is into playing a cat and mouse game with you. I'm going to go hide. I'm down here. If they seek me good enough, I might, no, I'm going to run over here now.

Oh, they might find, that's not God. God is a revelator. God wants to reveal himself to you. He wants to reveal himself so much to you that he sent his son to die on a cross that you might have the indwelling presence because from outside wasn't close enough for God. He wants to be in you. And if the Holy Spirit is within you, then the Holy Spirit is available to you at all times, even if you don't have a feeling to go along with it.

This is another lie of the enemy that every time you have truth or hear from God, there has to be an emotion to go with it. That you have to, oh, I feel a sense of peace. You know, I got the sense of peace. Now, I love having a sense of peace to know, hey, you know, God is this, you know, today when I made some decisions not to do something based on that scripture, I felt like a peace. Okay, that's the right decision.

But a lot of times we're looking for an emotion. Sometimes God does speak through our emotions. That's why he gave them to us. But emotions are not always a sense that the Holy Spirit is speaking to us. Have you ever known that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you and you get angry about it? You know, it's not always based on trying to create some emotion that we have, but it is some connection. And the paradigm I'm trying to shift with people is this, is to understand that God is always speaking.

God wants to speak to you when you cook your dinner. God wants to speak to you when you walk. He wants to speak to you at the last thought before you go to bed at night. He wants to speak to you in the morning. He wants you to speak to him. God wants to be there on your walks. He wants you to see him in the green of the trees. I was just in Ireland for three weeks. Green. God spoke to me just through the color green.

I don't know what he said, but I felt him. Like, I was just like, I'd got up in the morning and I would just sit there. I'd sit like an hour. First of all, silence is really valuable. That's another way to hear from him. I was at this place 180-acre organic beef farm. So it was just me and cows and a little dog and my family in the middle of nowhere. 180 acres is a lot and no sound. Zero sound except swallows and dog and cows.

And just silence to sit and just feel his presence as he spoke to me just in being. Like, learning how to experience God. You know, the monastics talk about this. There's a book called Practicing the Presence by a guy named Brother Lawrence. It's about practicing the constant presence of God and to experience that. And so here's the paradigm. If you are living in a God never speaks to me, I want to see if you can flip that as an experiment with your journal because I'm going to encourage you to have a journal at the end of this to keep track of God speaking to you.

is to, whenever you stop and you have to ask your question, when is God not speaking to me? So if you have a moment, wherever you are, even if you're in Vons, ask yourself, is God, can God say anything to me right? What is God saying? You might be nothing and say, well, when I was at the store I heard absolutely nothing, felt nothing, he didn't speak to me. My sense is, is that God is speaking more than he is not. And he's speaking in a multiplicity of ways, speaking through your emotions, your mind, he's speaking all of the time.

The key is just to tune it in. Remember, some of us were alive before cable. a couple of us were alive before cable. And we had the, remember the rabbit ears? I mean, I still grew up, I grew up in the last generations of, I didn't get, we didn't get video games until 82 really. And so I grew up in the last bike riding generation in America. Rode our bike, come home and the lights are off. You know what I mean? That was, it was the golden age almost, you know, it's like over now.

But remember we had those things, you'd have to like tune it in and then, like I'd be watching Bonanza and then it would go out and I'd have to like, oh, you know, I don't know, the satellite must have moved or whatever. It's, it's the same way we want to open ourselves and receptivity. I'm going to talk just quickly about how we make ourselves available to God. but I want you to ask yourself the question on a regular basis, is God speaking to me now?

And realize that God is speaking to you all the time, constantly, constantly speaking. I, I, I don't want to, sometimes when I say things like this it's discouraging because people aren't, they haven't had as much experience with it as other people or myself. Um, but I rarely have a moment where I slow down and think, okay, God, what are you trying to say? Or I don't get some, at least, light sense of what God is saying in the moment.

Just be still, breathe, sit, ask forgiveness for your wife. It's always like, or I love you, or, I don't know, it just, he's there all the time. So I want to shift that paradigm. If you're going to be a person who hears from the Holy Spirit, who walks in the Spirit, you're going to have to be a person who expects to hear from the Spirit. You can't walk in the, in the untruth that he is a God who wants to hide from you and play hide and seek with you.

No, he's a revelator. Final book in the Bible is called what? Revelation. You know, it's for a reason. Jesus died on the cross, he is revealing himself and he's been doing that over and over. A few more things. Um, I said this earlier as you turn your notes over, preparing the way for revelation. Chris, could you give me another water? Chris, would you give me another water? Okay, thanks bud. The first question, and I've already asked this a moment ago, is do you really want to hear from the Lord?

We already asked that question. Do you really want to hear from the Lord? Do you just want to hear what you want to hear, or thanks so much, Bo, or do you actually want to hear from the Lord? What if the Lord doesn't tell you what you want to hear? It's a really good question. Do you really want to hear what God has to say? And I would imagine you do, because hearing from God is everything, eternity and more, and we do want to hear from the Lord.

But, we have to, like I said at the beginning, get past where we just want to hear what we want to hear, so that we can feel some sense of self-worth. Although God wants to tell you that you're worth more to him, you're worth his son to him. I mean, he will tell you how much you're worth to him. But he doesn't want you to prove it, and he doesn't want to give you a bunch of gifts and send you on a purpose mission in the world so that you can feel good about yourself.

It's not his desire. His desire is to let you know that he created you, he loves you, you are his daughter, you are his son, you are adopted by him. You know, the world's having an identity crisis right now. They think if they just find the right identity, then they're going to find purpose. It's not going to happen. Identity is found in Christ alone. So here's a couple truths, and do you really want to hear what he wants to hear, and preparing yourself to hear from the Lord.

This is what this whole first week is about. Truth. First, we must dispel the lie that God is not primarily concerned about making himself known. I already shared on that a second ago. Colossians 1, 26, and 27. The mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now, what? Disclosed to the Lord's people. To them, God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles, what? The glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

God's entire purpose is to make himself known to the Gentiles, to the entire world. And the way in which he wants to make himself known is through you, that scripture says. That you are the pipeline. Do you think that God wants to hide himself from you so that you can run around and have to seek him that will cause a disruption in his main purpose that use you to get the message out to others? No. He wants you to know him deeply.

He is there to be known by you deeply. He is there to revelate himself to you through the Holy Spirit that you might make him known. He wants you to know him well. And as you know him, you will come to know yourself. The only way to know yourself is to know God. If you want to know who you are, know God. He will make himself, you cannot seek to know yourself. You will never find yourself seeking for yourself. And you will never find yourself seeking God for your own purpose of knowing yourself.

You will only know yourself by seeking him. He will reveal who you are as you seek him fully. This is totally true. And this is why I am so frustrated with the purpose, the sale of purpose, you know, as we peddle it. Because we are so addicted to meaning. We want meaning outside of Christ. And it sells. It just sells, sells, sells. And they know it sells. You know? So we see that there in that scripture. So the first is truth.

Dispelling the lie that God is not primarily concerned about making himself known to. When is he not speaking? I've already hit that enough. The second one is desire. We must understand that the Holy Spirit often communicates according to desire. The Holy Spirit communicates according to our desire to hear from him. Matthew 6.33 says, but what? Seek ye first the kingdom of God and what? His righteousness. And you'll have everything else you want.

That's so true. That's what I just said. If you want everything you want, then seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. The thing is is that oftentimes the things you thought you wanted are going to change because you're not going to care anymore. So many things that I thought I wanted I don't even care anymore. I just want to know him. I want to kiss his feet.

I've had some pictures in my mind sometimes when I've been worshiping of just kissing the feet the wounded feet of Jesus and I've just meditated on that and I had just a few times in worship where I was doing that and I just thought to myself if I just did this in eternity forever it's enough. Like I had this moment of clarity and the truth that was so real that was like if I just I'm talking eternity like people are like you're going to get to heaven what are you going to be bored what are you going to do I had this moment where I'm like if I could just kiss his wounded feet like it would enthrall me for eternity there was like a moment of like that was a reality to me that wasn't for me that was from the Holy Spirit the scripture says to Peter this wasn't revealed to you by man he says this in Matthew 16 this wasn't revealed to you by man this was revealed to you by Father who is in heaven Jesus is so worthy to just look at his feet for eternity is more than you can ever deal with and that is the presence of the Holy Spirit but do we desire that what do we desire the thing is and I want to I know I'm hitting this point over and over again is did you come tonight and there's no wrong in it did you come tonight thinking I really want to hear from the Holy Spirit so I can know what to do with my life or did you come tonight say I want to hear from the Holy Spirit to know how I can serve him more love him more and know him more you see that's the shift that's the subtle shift that turns us into worshippers of the Messiah that's the subtle shift that takes us from the Martha life of serving serving serving to the Mary life of sitting at his feet that's the life I want I want the life of of of knowing him when I was in Ireland I kept walking by this I walked by one church it was it was there from 600 AD and no roof on it anymore there was a graveyard and a small church a quarter of the size of this building and the it was weeds everywhere and then the pastors were still buried the priests were still buried in the floor you know they were under the no one had dug them up or anything it was in a graveyard but they were just they used to put you just kind of bury them in the ground so maybe one day I'll just be right here or something like that and those guys I'm like walking over and there's weeds everywhere it was the weirdest little thing to be in and I thought I can't make my life about building some church eventually the ceiling's down I'm on the floor and people are taking pictures of me just selfies you know I've got to I want to do something that matters and I don't want to serve Jesus my whole life and then miss what it was all about I want to know I want to know the Father I want to know Jesus I want intimacy in the Holy Spirit so desire where's your desire when we desire him let me just say your ability to hear from the Spirit he's just going to make himself it's just going to show up like if you do that the voice of God will come lay at your feet like you don't have to chase God around it says if you just if you seek him if you make him a priority is what that's saying that it'll show up you know it's like you become magnetic because God is a consuming fire he consumes those those things last two and then we're done is holiness one of the key blockages to hearing from God is sin sin stops our prayer life it says sin sin just stops stuff sin if you think about you know people that have angiograms and that you know where they have to heart blockage then after removed that's what sin does one of the ways we don't hear from God is because we live in sin I there's two questions we'll tell me they don't hear from God first one is do you read your Bible and the second one is do you have multiple things in your life or one main thing in your life that God has told you to stop doing you know he's told you to stop doing and you haven't stopped the answer is almost always yes I said well then you have heard from God why would he keep speaking if you haven't done it you know what I mean like he loves you and he does but like if you're just saying no on a regular basis like maybe if we maybe if you say yes a few times then he'll open it up it says in in John 14 21 make every effort to live in peace with everyone and what and be holy that live in peace is super important for us right now with everyone whether they disagree with you on this or that or quit being divisive I'm so tired divisive I went to I watched sermons this week from other churches just divisive different sides of the aisle I said stop we need to stop being divisive live at peace with everyone wherever possible and be holy for what without holiness no one will see the Lord without holiness you won't see the Lord you won't hear the Lord so if you're going to walk and do your own thing and then just show up and say God I need direction God I need direction he's gracious enough that he might give it to you I'm not saying he won't but if you want a pipeline of God's direct you want to see the Lord holiness it's your addictions it's your heart it's all those little things that you know he's told you to so in your journal that I'm going to ask you to keep there should be a little section that says what has God told me to stop doing that I have not obeyed in regard to holiness and that brings us to obedience John 14 21 the final thing the one who has my commands and does what and keeps them is the one who loves me and the one who loves me will be loved by my father and I also will love them and I will what reveal myself to them it is an if then proposition one of the most powerful two letter words in the bible is if if my people if if if it is quid pro quo with God if you do this I will do this why because God dwells in covenant you know God dwells in covenant it isn't a works relationship but we need to do the things that God requires of us and God responds to those things and so one of those things is obedience it's when you think God is telling you to do something do it now we're going to talk about that filter system we're going to talk about you know how we make wise decisions and how we make sure we have godly decisions but it is this and so I land the plane today with with this thought God wants to speak to you God is always speaking to you you are the temple of the Holy Spirit that God wants to indwell to use you that he might introduce you to his father that you might have intimacy with him and that you might find out who you are and be able to share him with the rest of the world who needs him so desperately that is the message of the Holy Spirit that is why we want to hear the Holy Spirit and then for the next two weeks we're going to talk about hearing the Holy Spirit because you know what's so fun is I have found that when we do that stuff God can't stop doing all the other fun stuff with us he just can't stop saying hey I want to do this you know that that book you wanted to write or that song you wanted to sing let's do that man I want to hey let's what about this or hey what about that trip I want you to I want what about he's just so excited for you you can't stop a father from just wanting to let all that stuff shows up but we've got to stop putting the cart before the horse the cart sells I'm just saying listen to the majority of worship songs so many of them they're different than the hymns from 200 years ago that stuff sells and I'm not going to sell Jesus because he's called us to a cross and crosses don't sell they do if you want to buy them on the streets of Jerusalem you can buy a whole bunch of them but the real cross that he's going to lead you to it doesn't sell it doesn't sell much you know that is what Christ is called us to that is what the Holy Spirit calls us to so with that I want to talk about some homework this week you'll see in your notes and if you're watching online first thing is start a journal get a journal buy yourself a journal if you don't I'm a guy that buys journals never uses them so I have packs of journals I love beautiful journals I never write in and it's like the plants that you go buy in spring and then they all die in your yard start a journal and jot down every time you think that you hear from the Lord every time you think you're hearing from the Lord jot it down what God's speaking to you you'll be amazed when you pick it up six years later and you're like oh that actually happened that's so weird next out of list number two is add a list of where you need to begin to obey where do you need to begin to obey three sit for ten minutes a day and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal himself to you if you are brave do twenty you can do this in silence or with music you can do it on a walk but just sit and ask God to reveal him you can do it anywhere you want do it according to your personality and then four read a chapter of scripture each day from Proverbs and ask God's spirit of wisdom to speak to you this is a key voice of the spirit all through Proverbs the Holy Spirit is called the spirit of what wisdom you know it's so funny just read the Proverbs every single day the number one book I read every day is the Proverbs majority decisions I make is proverbial like I every day that I get answers every day from from from and it actually makes you wise you know I was I had somebody I really respect Reese I really respect them and they said man I haven't seen you for like ten years but like the wisdom you've gained since then is amazing and I was like Bible that's because I read the Proverbs every day every single reason I'm I think one of the main reasons I'm still married is I read the Proverbs every single day you know the Proverbs will keep you from having to go to plan B in your marriage I'm serious like the Proverbs if I fully believe that if every if couples read Proverbs and they did what Proverbs said there would be no divorces because you can't if you do what the Proverbs say you can't get divorced it just it doesn't work different story different day but read a chapter of scripture this this Proverbs is if you want to hear from the Holy Spirit start reading Proverbs it'll speak directly to your issue every day there's a problem for every day yesterday was Proverbs 31 that's only happens like five six times a year I prayed that for my wife I pray Proverbs 31 for my wife every single day just pray that over her pray that into her life but Proverbs will speak to you every day so do that it's a great wisdom literature wisdom literature is super important we're going to talk about the Bible next week so that's for next week we're going to do a little experiment here in just a second as I turn the camera off but that is the homework for next week and next week we're talking about our filter for how do we hear from the Holy Spirit what are the different avenues he speaks to and then finally the Word of God the Word of God is the primary source and then the final week we're going to get into some of that fun stuff how does God speak to us through dreams how does he speak to us through words of knowledge all that other stuff but we're going to start with the basics and the scripture and those things so with that we will see you here next week and we're just taking a couple minutes as a team to try to hear from the Lord amen amen