Last week I preached on the Holy Spirit and I feel I'll go further down that path this week because, as I said last week, I think I said last week, I believe the Holy Spirit is the most important person in the world because Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and the Father is in heaven.
And the Holy Spirit is the only part of the Godhead that is on here, on earth, to help us.
And that's why Jesus was able to say, it's better that I go away because when Jesus was here, all he could do, he could only operate in time and space and help people that were near him.
But now the Holy Spirit can operate everywhere. In you, he can be, you know, helping heal somebody in Egypt today and he can come upon me to preach this morning.
That's why it's better that Jesus went away because the Holy Spirit is working everywhere today and we want to know him.
So Father, I thank you that you have poured out the Holy Spirit on all flesh.
And Father God, I'm asking today that you will make the person of the Holy Spirit real to us.
Father God, you will enable us to know the person of the Holy Spirit more intimately.
And you will help us be empowered by the Holy Spirit and to be led by the Holy Spirit.
Holy Spirit, have your way in Jesus' name.
So this passage Paul was writing to the people of Corinth who are, that's a Greek city, and the Greeks were infatuated and almost worshiped philosophy.
And so Paul begins by speaking about how he came and his words were, his preaching was not with demonstration, persuasive words or human wisdom.
Because that's how a lot of people spoke in those days.
They would quote philosophers and try to show off how good orators they are.
Some preachers still do that today.
But Paul said, I didn't do that when I came.
I came in a demonstration of the Spirit's power.
And he said, that's how I preached.
He said, I preached in the Holy Spirit and that means that the things he said, God confirmed that he was God's man by doing signs and wonders.
And I want to talk today, you know, Paul went to Corinth and he said, human wisdom is not the way.
What the way, the ways of God is all about being led and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
And then in the second part of the voice, the pastors, he speaks about the wisdom that comes from the Holy Spirit.
And you know, what the Holy Spirit wants to do.
You know, first of all, Paul said, the Holy Spirit when he came to Corinth was the key to the power of his preaching.
And he speaks about the testimony of that he gave.
And what God wants to do to you, he says, I, brethren, I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God.
God wants you to give you a power by the Holy Spirit to testify, to have a testimony to the world of what Christ has done for you.
And when you always know when you're actually giving a testimony that is empowered by the Holy Spirit, because he will, Paul says to me, when he gave this testimony,
you didn't want anything, didn't want to know anything except Christ crucified, when you have a testimony that is God is going to empower and touch, it will always include the work of the cross.
Because the work of the cross is the key to accessing the power of God.
So Paul said, I didn't come with philosophy or human. I came depending on the Holy Spirit.
I just told people what God had done at the cross, signs and wonders followed, and it wasn't philosophical.
So the Holy Spirit wants to empower your testimony. He wants to give you a testimony.
He wants to give you a mode of preaching to the world. I'm not the only preacher here.
We all have a commission to preach to the world. And when you're preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit, something is different to just speaking philosophically.
When you speak philosophically, you only reach people's minds, but when you preach in the power of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit brings a force to your words,
and those words are able to cut the human heart and bring conviction. That's what happens when we preach in the power of the Holy Spirit, and that's what Paul did.
He said, I didn't come with all my tracks and all my information, all my philosophical debates and this, that, and the other.
I just came speaking about the cross of Jesus, and I was empowered by the Holy Spirit, and that's what God wants.
That's what the Holy Spirit wants to do to you. He wants to empower your witness and testimony.
Second thing he wants to do, he says, we speak wisdom among those who are mature.
Holy Spirit wants to bring you to maturity, and you can be a mature Christian after five years, or you can be a baby still drinking milk after 40 years.
And the difference is the Holy Spirit. The difference is your relationship to the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit wants to bring you to maturity, and Paul speaks about here, he speaks about,
it's really important to know the context of this passage because there are immature people,
there are even immature Christians, and there are mature Christians.
And this passage unpacks the difference between the two, but he begins by speaking about natural men versus spiritual men,
and it's not kind of gender exclusive. He's speaking about the natural man versus the spiritual man,
and he's speaking about how the rulers of this age, they're just natural people, and they speak a form of wisdom.
They're very confident. They speak a form of wisdom, a philosophical wisdom, and he speaks about the rulers of the age speak like this.
They're the ones that cruels through the ages, he says, but what they're speaking about, it's all coming to nothing.
It's all going nowhere, and it's all coming to nothing. Eternally, it has no value. It has no weight.
And he speaks about these people, they speak like this because they're merely natural men.
And a natural man, he speaks about, eye has not seen nor ear has heard.
What he's saying is that the difference between the natural man who can never mature and the spiritual man is the natural man,
the rulers of the age are natural men. They are led, they're informed, all their intelligence comes from the five senses.
They are sensual. So everything they learn, everything they process, everything they speak comes from seeing, hearing,
testing, tasting, all that sort of stuff. The five senses. They are sensual people, and they are led,
and they are informed by their five senses, and they depend on their five senses for receiving information,
processing information, and distributing orders. They are sensual people. But he says a mature Christian is not sensual.
He doesn't, the thing you've got to know, if you're going to mature in Christ, the way you reach maturity in Christ,
at the end of the passage it says, we have the mind of Christ. A mature Christian has the mind of God,
knows how to access the mind and the thoughts of Christ about decisions you make, about the future.
You actually can tap into the mind of Christ. But in order to do that, you've got to know access does not come through your senses.
Eye has not seen it, nor ear has heard it. They're the senses, things that have entered in the hearts of man.
So where do you receive the mind of Christ? How do you walk in the mind of Christ, which brings you to maturity?
You know, we have a thing in Australia, it's called ASIO, and it's our intelligence agency.
But I think the Americans have got a medical name, they call it the Central Intelligence Agency.
You know, intelligence. And the Holy Spirit contains God's intelligence.
The Holy Spirit is God's central intelligence agency. You know, you can be educated but not intelligent.
I've met lots of people. They're highly educated but not intelligent.
And you can be completely uneducated but intelligent. Very intelligent, but completely uneducated.
And the key is knowing the mind of Christ, because He knows all things.
And God wants to give you the mind of Christ. He wants to give you access to the mind of Christ.
And this passage just tells us how we get the mind of Christ. It's a progression.
And how we get this mind of Christ which contains hidden wisdom.
And He says, it comes, this mind is revealed by God to us, verse 10, through the Spirit.
And He says, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and you've got to understand, some people, they know when we receive the Holy Spirit
and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we receive power, and then they start to speak about the Holy Spirit like He's a force.
Like wind, wind is a force. Wind has no personality. But the Holy Spirit is not only power and a force, He is a person.
And He is a person who wants to, He says here, the Holy Spirit reveals things to us through His Spirit.
So the person is somebody who wants to reveal things that God knows to you.
And it says, the way He does this, the Spirit searches all things. Yes, the deep things of God.
So, you know, we have Google. What do we call it? It's a search engine.
And it's a thing that in your computer, it brings to the surface things that are relevant just to your request.
And they release this information.
And the search engine can take things that are not obvious, that are hidden, and bring them to the surface.
And those things are brought up that are relevant to the request you make.
And God, and Paul says the Holy Spirit is like that, and He searches all things, all things, and brings to the surface things that are relevant to your life, to your battle you're facing, to your future, to your past.
He searches, the Holy Spirit searches, and then it says He reveals. And reveals means things that are hidden are now disclosed to you.
Things that only God knows, deep things. And He brings them to the surface.
And this information is released to the heart and then the human mind. And this is what we call intelligence.
This is real intelligence. It's accessing the deep things of God that are hidden from the world, that only He knows.
The Holy Spirit goes and gets them when you need them, brings them to the surface, and speaks them into your heart when you need them.
This is what intelligence is. This is how we receive the mind of Christ.
And you notice this passage says the Spirit searches all things. Yes, the deep things of God.
That is so important. He searches all things. Because the Holy Spirit, you know, you are going to make a decision today.
This is where people get in a mess. You have information and intelligence about the present.
But the Holy Spirit knows all things. He has information about the past, the future, and sorry, the past, the present, and the future.
He knows all things. And we get in a mess when we make decisions based on what we know today instead of waiting on the Holy Spirit who knows past, present, future.
He is able to lead us into making good and wise decisions because He doesn't give us information just based on the present.
And sometimes, you know, you've got stuff in your past. You've got stuff in your past.
But the Holy Spirit knows what you need to free you, to get free. And the Holy Spirit says He will show you the things to come.
So the Holy Spirit knows what's in your future ten years from now. So He knows the sort of spouse you need.
You only know the present. And so the Holy Spirit wants to take those things and its knowledge about the past, the present, and the future
because He knows the end from the beginning. And He searches all things and releases to you the information that is needed.
The problem is who do you take advice from? And I want to tell you that where your life ends up depends very much on what advice you listen to.
It depends very much on what voices you listen to. It's very, and it took me a long time in my Christian walk to realize this.
The importance of the voices you listen to because, believe me, your life is a direct result of what you listen to.
And the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit wants to release to you the wisdom to make good choices because He knows yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
All about yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He knows all things. You just know the present, a little bit about the past.
You've got no idea about the future. And a humble person knows that the finite mind is so limited,
but we're able to receive the mind of Christ through our relationship with the person of the Holy Spirit.
So He knows all things. He also says here that the Holy Spirit searches all things,
and He says that we may know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
And He didn't say you may know about the things. He said you may know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
What has freely been given to us? Because Romans 8 speaks about this.
It's not just, you haven't just been chosen, you're not just saved. Romans 8, verse 31, I think, says,
What shall we say to these things if God is for us? Who can be against us? For He who did not spare His own Son,
but deliver Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
But see, the Holy Spirit can only reveal to you the things that God has freely given to you.
What has He freely given to you? We say, well, salvation is a free gift. Yeah.
But how many Christians do I know that are still struggling with guilt and shame 15 years after they've been saved
because they do not know in their Noah that they're being pardoned?
But the Holy Spirit brings a conviction that you just know in your Noah what God has freely given you.
I remember I met my wife. People say, how do you know you're going to marry her?
How do you know she's right? Well, I just knew it.
It's something the Holy Spirit gives you. You know in your Noah.
Not about, you don't have the, you don't have all the scriptures about forgiveness,
but you know I have been a sinner. I'm guilty and I deserve to die on that cross, but He has pardoned me.
I get to go completely free. Not only I'm pardoned, but I know I am loved by God
and there's nothing I can do that can ever separate me from that love.
How many people come to me and they say, I think I've blown it with God.
I say, the Bible says nothing, nothing, nothing, no height, no depth, no nothing at all can separate you from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus.
The Bible says also that because of Christ and His death on the cross, He came,
He lived a perfectly righteous life for this sinner
and then He died on the cross for all my unrighteous acts
and when I put my faith in Him, I'm not only forgiven, but I become the righteousness of God in Christ.
So I know I have received freely, not by anything I've done, the righteousness of God in my life.
And that's why people walk in and say, I'm just a dirty sinner.
I said, no, that's because the Holy Spirit has not yet revealed to you.
He has not yet revealed to you the things that have been freely given.
You have been given the righteousness of Christ through the power of the Spirit.
But you don't know it.
You don't know it in your Noah till it has been revealed by the search engine.
You know, we also know we have received mercy.
I deserve judgment, but because Christ died for me, I received mercy.
And not only I've received mercy once, but every time I've failed, I have received mercy over and over again
because His mercies are new every morning.
So when I receive the judgment because of Christ, I'm in Christ, I'm living in the mercy of God.
So the Holy Spirit shows me all these things, my pardon, my freedom, my righteousness,
blessings of peace, blessings of joy.
They're all mine.
And the Holy Spirit then shows me, this is what produces hope in a Christian,
and He makes it real to you, the future glory that is ahead.
That heaven is not just a theory, but heaven's where I'm heading.
And what a difference that makes.
Heaven has been freely given to me.
There's no sin in heaven. My sin has been cleansed, so I'm free to enter heaven.
That's where I'm heaven. Because of that, I have hope.
But only the Holy Spirit reveals these things and makes them real,
so that I know it, not by head knowledge, but I know it in my heart, because deep calls unto deep.
So the Holy Spirit knows all things, and I need to trust Him when I make decisions.
I need to get my advice from Him and not my self, who only knows about today.
Who's made a mess of decisions?
This is when you go into the chastening of God.
I did it again.
I remember one day, I was sitting there, in India, I was coming home and God spoke to me really clearly in the airport.
And don't ask me why He said this, but He said,
I want you to just don't get guest preachers for a season, just you preach.
This is because God was, I think, raising me up and wanted me to preach all the time,
but also I think He wanted me to guard the pulpit because of things that were being taught around the church in those days.
And I just knew it. I just knew I heard from God.
But after I got back from Australia, my kind of mind took over.
And I thought, well, you know, the people, the people might get sick of hearing from me.
Might get tired of hearing from me.
And someone came to me and said, you know, this guest guy I know in Queensland, we should get him down.
And so I said, okay, forgetting.
I need the Holy Spirit to inform me of all things.
He said, yeah, let's get this guy in.
Man, if you're in the church then, it was such a disaster.
I spent an entire evening after the first meeting like Joshua on my face before God.
And then I had to go to this guy who invited him and say the next day, I'm canceling you.
And then I spent six months in God's school of chastening.
Because He never leaves you, but just after six months, He said, you know, this is...
I'm here with you, but these are lessons you learn, painful lessons from not listening to the Holy Spirit.
But see, He knows all things.
This is what you've got to know.
He knows all things.
All things.
It's so...
And you know, this is...
I think being led by the Holy Spirit, I said last week, it's harder for intelligent people because your mind,
your natural mind will get you places.
It'll get you success and things like that.
But the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will take you so much further.
So we've got to know He knows all things.
We've got to know He wants to reveal to us what we've been freely given.
So it's things are not a theory, but the truth is lifted and we can see in our hearts who we are,
what God's really done for us at the cross, where we're really heading,
so we can walk into all the promises God has given us.
And then He says here, He says, the Holy Spirit, this great search engine, searches all things
and reveals, yes, the deep things of God.
And see, the Scripture says, deep calls unto deep.
What does that mean?
It means God is a Spirit and you have a mind, you have a body, you have a soul, mind, will and emotions,
and you have a spirit.
But the Spirit of God doesn't speak in your soul.
It doesn't speak to your body.
The Spirit of God, deep, the Spirit of God calls unto deep.
He speaks to your spirit.
And He wants to show us, yes, the deep things of God, the deep things of God.
What are the deep things of God?
Some of the deep things of God are to do with the direction He wants to take you.
In Acts chapter 16, you see Paul wanted to go into Asia, what we know today as Turkey.
But the Bible says very, very clearly in Acts 16, and if he'd trusted his human decision making,
he would have gone in the wrong direction.
But it says, when he was there, when they had gone through Persia in the region of Galatia,
they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia.
After they'd come to Misia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them.
And when they stopped and didn't just press ahead in their flesh,
a vision appeared to Paul in the night, the man from Macedonia said, come over here.
So the deep things of God are to do with direction.
And in Acts chapter 21, verse 11, Paul was going back to Jerusalem,
and a man called Agabas came, he came from Judea.
Now when he heard these things, both he from Paul pleaded with Paul not to go to Jerusalem,
and Agabas took a belt and tied Paul's hands and feet and said,
this is what they're going to do, thus says the Holy Spirit, so sell the Jews at Jerusalem,
bind the man who owns the belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.
So that was something unknown to the human mind, something nobody else could know about the future,
but the Holy Spirit revealed something deep, not surface, not superficial,
about what was going to happen tomorrow.
And Paul was able to listen and be directed, and this is where God wants to take us now.
It's so important, I just know what's coming in the future, that you reject human wisdom,
and we learn to receive the wisdom of God that comes from the Holy Spirit,
so that we can receive the mind of Christ. It's so important.
I remember a time myself where I learned this lesson, and I'm still learning it,
but 20 years ago I got a vital lesson.
I was in Austria, and I was working for a mission group, and I was over there,
and see, the Holy Spirit will sometimes just disturb you.
And sometimes that is just to get to pray, and many times even overseas,
I've been woken and just I'm disturbed in my spirit, and the Holy Spirit is saying pray,
so I start to pray in tongues and pray in the Spirit, and the next day I may come into a dangerous situation,
but somehow I'm protected. The reason is because I've been praying in the Spirit,
and God has already gone ahead of me.
That's what the Holy Spirit wants to do.
But when I was in Austria, I remember the Holy Spirit was disturbing me, and I just clearly heard.
Now I'm in a conference, and I'm kind of new to the role, and the Holy Spirit said,
go home. And when you get a word from the Holy Spirit, it comes packed with meaning.
And I just, in my spirit, I knew that my new family was in danger.
There was no physical information, and I couldn't contact Michel for some reason.
Remember, I couldn't, but I just went to the head of the thing, and we're in Austria,
and this great conference, everything's paid for, and I'm supposed to be here.
I said, I'm going home.
I said, someone's going to take me to the airport now.
So I had to get driven, and I went all the way to Frankfurt Airport,
and they said, oh, the flight's full.
And I miraculously got on the flight, and the same thing happened in Singapore,
and miraculously I got on the flight, even though the flights were booked.
I got home, and when I walked in the door, my daughter had a fevral convulsion,
and she was like overheating.
Michel didn't have a license.
She couldn't drive.
And I was there literally, literally one minute in time.
I picked the baby up, rushed the baby to the North Shore Hospital.
But that's when I learned the importance of how the language of the Spirit
and how important it is to be yielded to the Holy Spirit.
That's one of the deeper things, the deeper things.
So Paul says, you know, this Holy Spirit is the key to the mind of Christ.
He has hidden wisdom, which the world doesn't know,
and He's the search engine that knows all things.
He goes deep into the mind of God, and He brings it up to the surface.
The things that you need, and He knows all things.
He knows the things freely given.
He knows the things that are hidden, and He knows the things which are deep, deep things.
And you say, well, how do I walk and know and receive the mind of Christ in a practical way?
And I want to tell you, there is a, Paul says here, he says, these things,
now we have received, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit is from God, received.
Now that means we have things in the world that we call receivers.
And so in this room right now, there are radio waves blasting all over the place,
and we can't hear them, but if we had a receiver, we could hear them.
But here it is.
In this room, there are AM radio waves, and there are FM radio waves.
If I have an AM receiver, I cannot hear what is on FM.
If I am a natural carnal man, God doesn't speak on that frequency.
If I am led by my five senses, God does not speak on that frequency.
He's on FM.
He's speaking as a Spirit into my spirit.
And this is why so many Christians, I believe such a small amount of Christians are able to receive from God,
because they live in the five senses, and God wants to change it in this season.
He wants people to know, hear His voice, have the mind of Christ,
and we are going to need it because of what's coming.
So need it.
So we have to be on the, to receive it, you have to have the right receiver.
And that is to know how to receive from God.
It's not difficult.
You've, if you're a Christian, it's what says here, if you're a Christian,
now we have received.
You have got the Holy Spirit.
Just that you have to learn to listen to the person of the Holy Spirit living in you.
And in order to do that, you've got to be on the right frequency.
And the Bible says, it's not a secret, but so many times it says, in the Scriptures it says,
be still and know.
I believe one of the great enemies of being able to be led by the Spirit of God
and receive the mind of Christ is human busyness.
When you have a problem, when you have a dilemma, it's not the time to pick up the phone,
it's not the time to rush around, it's not the time to be Martha,
it's time to be Mary and be still in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.
So you need to be still.
And there's something really instructive.
Elijah, we're told, is the man of the Spirit.
He is the man of the Spirit.
And when the Holy Spirit told him rain was coming,
but there was just a little puff of a cloud in the future, Elijah did something really instructive.
Elijah says when he knew what God wanted, knew God said rain, even though it was only a little puff of cloud,
he actually put his head between his knees.
This is a great way to pray.
Why did he put his head between his knees?
I tell you what it's all about.
It's about closing out the outside voices.
When you want to hear from the Holy Spirit, there are many voices.
There's your voices, the devil's voices, other people's voices, everyone has a voice.
The trouble is, apart from God, I've learned, everyone, even good people, are manipulative.
Everyone has a bias.
So you've got to get your head between you.
You've got to shut out all the voice.
You've got to have a secret place where you go, turn off your phone, get rid of the TV forever,
and just get before God.
So the TV is the one thing that will stop you hearing.
Get before God and till the Holy Spirit in a still, quiet vase just speaks to you.
And when he speaks, you know because there'll be peace.
Even if it's hard, there'll be a peace.
And one of the things that will happen when the Holy Spirit speaks to you,
one of the evidences that you've heard from the Holy Spirit says here,
the spiritual man does not receive the things of the Spirit for they are foolishness to him.
When the Holy Spirit speaks to you, more often than not, natural carnal people are going to say,
are you kidding?
How stupid.
I remember when God spoke to me and said, I want you to go to Pakistan.
I shared this with somebody who was in my family.
I said, this is ridiculous.
But look how much fruit's been bought.
A foolishness.
You know, when you go to say to someone who's not a believer, you say,
I spend my time reading the Word of God and in prayer or fasting.
How do they respond?
Like you spend your time not eating, praying, reading the Word of God.
It's foolishness to them.
They think it's a waste of time.
But it's God.
It's God.
And this is how God wants the church to be led in the future.
Spirit led church is what's coming.
The spirit led church will know how to receive the mind of Christ.
And they will know in the face of dilemmas, in challenges, in the face of giants,
in the face of because there's great problems, there's great evil coming into the world.
Believe me.
We're in a season where the evil is just rising so quickly and things are going to change so quickly.
And the church needs to hear from the Holy Spirit.
Believe me.
If you don't know that in the spirit things are coming, economies are going to collapse,
wars are going to explode all over the place.
It's just rising.
It's in the background now.
But if you know the Holy Spirit, He shows you the things to come.
It's not more of the same.
We are heading towards the end.
But this is what's going to happen.
The Holy Spirit church is going to be able to be like Jericho, like Joshua.
Joshua is facing a giant, a battle that is supposedly unwinnable.
The walls of Jericho were, it was in a strategic location in the middle of the Palestine.
And every time it was conquered they built the walls higher and higher.
And when Joshua got there it was just considered like America today, impregnable.
But Joshua was a man who knew how to get his head between his knees.
Shut out the Word of God and get God's plan.
And he says, I've heard from God.
This is what we're going to do.
Imagine if you said it today.
This is what we're going to do.
That fortress over there, forget about your weapons, we're going to walk around it seven times.
And on the last day we're going to give a great shout.
And the people on the wall were going, what foolishness.
But you know what Joshua said to the people that he spoke to?
He said, walk around that wall and say nothing.
Because I want this word to be the last word.
And that's why the Bible says the man, the man does not receive the things of the Spirit.
Now here it says, he says, but these things we also speak.
We speak them.
This is so important that when God shows you a human, a Holy Spirit strategy,
see the name it and claim it movement gets it wrong because they say you're a being who can create
and you just speak in your words about, that's not true.
But when we hear what heaven is saying, what heaven's CIA reveals to us,
what heaven's strategies and we receive it and we speak it, that's when it comes into being.
We speak, our word is not powerful but heaven's word is powerful.
And when the church is led by the Holy Spirit and we hear from heaven and we speak what heaven is saying,
the church becomes indefeatable but it must be led by the Holy Spirit.
Must be led by the Holy Spirit.
Verse 12 to finish, it says, we have received.
You know, if you're a believer you have received the Holy Spirit.
But Holy Spirit as I said at the start, you've got to realize he is not a force.
He has a personality and I think many people in the church they've got to repent of that,
of just thinking the Holy Spirit is power.
But he has personality and a person has intelligence.
He is the person of the Godhead and he's the intelligence agents, agency of God.
And there has to be a humility that comes into people.
I believe there has to be a humility that says, you know, on my best day, on my greatest day I have,
if I'm led by my five senses and make a decision, it's going to end in tears.
Just is. Or it's going to go nowhere.
But if I know how to wait, to get onto the right, receive, if I get onto the right frequency,
by being still, in quietness, waiting for that still small voice, get my head between my knees,
and when the Holy Spirit speaks, I start to speak it.
I start to declare, I am a prophet to nations in the name of Jesus.
It's not presumption. It's like I've heard what God says and I declare it and it'll happen.
This is what God wants. He wants a Spirit-led church.
He wants us to know that the greatest search engine in the world, the Holy Spirit, knows today, tomorrow.
Knows the key to your deliverance.
He knows who you're going to need for the future. He knows what you're going to need for the future.
He knows the challenges you're going to need for the future.
He knows what you should do because he's gone ahead of you already.
You just know the present.
He wants to reveal to you the deep, deep things that you have received through Christ's death on the cross.
So you know them. You know the truth and you're free.
I know some people that know a lot about God, but they don't know the things of God.
Things that are freely given to them. You've been pardoned.
You are the righteousness of Christ. It's a free gift. You are heaven-bound.
And he wants to reveal to you the deep things. The deep things. What's coming?
You know, I tell you one of the reasons it's really important.
You know, the Holy Spirit reveals the deep things. The deep things.
These are just beyond things to do with what Christ has done for us. The deep things.
Recently, I said, I'm no longer the pastor here. I'm the head of the church. I'm not the pastor anymore.
He's the pastor.
You know that was from the Holy Spirit.
And you know why it's important?
It's because God doesn't want me doing the things today that I was doing 20 years ago.
But the only way to be shifted in God from your now to your next is hearing from the Holy Spirit.
Holy Spirit. Now's the time.
And God wants to deepen us.
Before we go today, I want us to pray.
When Ezekiel saw in the end times, he saw in a vision the river of God.
That river represented the end times church.
And it started, the river started as a trickle coming from under the temple, the place of worship.
And it deepened the further it went into the valleys.
And by the way, the valleys represent the broken world.
So the more we're willing to go into the broken world, the more of the Holy Spirit we'll have.
But the river started ankle deep. It went knee deep. It went waist deep.
And then they were swimming in it. This is the baptism of the Spirit.
So I want to pray today that if you are ankle deep, God's going to take your knee deep.
If you're knee deep, God's going to make your waist deep.
But I'm going to pray most of all that we are swimming.
That means we don't have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has us.
The Holy Spirit has us.
It's so important in this. I can't...
This is a series we're talking about, the Holy Spirit.
I can't impress how much we need to hear His voice in this time.
Let's bow our heads.
Father God, I thank You that Your Son said,
It's better that I go away. How could that be?
The answer is so that what You were doing through Jesus, You could do everywhere.
And I want to thank You. I want to thank You, Holy Spirit, that You are not restricted.
And that You want to speak to us.
You want to release to us the mind of Christ that brings us to maturity.
You want us to leave the dimension of the carnal where we trust in our five senses.
And You want us to know Your voice, Your sheep hear Your voice.
And so Father, I'm asking You that we would begin a season in this church
where You teach us.
You teach us, Lord, not just from the pulpit, but You teach us in our secret place
how to better hear from You.
Father, You teach us the language of the Spirit,
how You speak in impressions, dreams and visions.
You speak to us through Your Word.
Father, I'm asking that, Lord, You will release to us the intelligence of heaven
for our problems, for our challenges, for the direction we need,
for the decisions we need to make.
Father God, I'm asking You produce in us a dependence upon the Holy Spirit as never before.
And I thank You, Father. You are so willing to speak to us.
And when we have rushed ahead of You,
Father, when we have made choices on our five senses,
we ask Your forgiveness here today.
We ask Your forgiveness. You wash us clean.
Thank You for it, Lord.
Father, speak to us.
Reveal to us what we've been freely given.
Reveal to us who we really are in Christ.
Reveal to us the deeper things, the season that we are in,
whether You are changing our season.
Reveal it to us.
Reveal it to us, Lord, as You revealed to Paul the things to come.
Reveal Your direction for us.
Holy Spirit, we need to hear Your voice.
We just say today, we want to go deeper.
I want to go deeper.
Holy Spirit, take me deeper.
Take me deeper into that river.
Anyone who is ankle deep, bring them to knee deep.
Anyone who's knee deep, just baptize them.
Take them completely into that river, Lord.
And for this church, Lord, we say,
may we not say that we have the Holy Spirit.
May we be able to say the Holy Spirit has us.
The Holy Spirit owns us. The Holy Spirit leads us.
The Holy Spirit directs us, empowers us completely.
We declare and proclaim the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit owns Elam Church.
In the mighty name of Jesus, all the people said,
amen, amen, amen.
Stand up and start to praise God.
Instead last week, worship releases the Spirit.
You know, I just want to, it just, this is what happens.
When we are able to hear from heaven,
and when we are able to receive God's intelligence
and speak what God is saying,
you know those walls fell when Joshua spoke what heaven said.
You know for the praise and worship team,
there are songs you can sing.
But you know what happens when you sing a song
the Holy Spirit wants you to sing?
Atmosphere changes. Lives change.
Captives get free.
Because the Holy Spirit knows best.
That's what we want.
The Holy Spirit.