Bill Johnson - How to Live a Life Filled With the Holy Spirit
We know more about Jesus, who lived on the earth for 33 and a half years, and actually, most everything that’s written about Him, with the exception of a few verses, covers a three-and-a-half-year period of time. So we know more about Jesus, who was on Earth for 33 and a half years, than we do about the Holy Spirit, who has been here for 2,000 years. Right? He’s not a cloud. He’s not a whisper. He’s not a force. He’s not energy. He’s a person. The Bible teaches us that by God’s word, all things are held together—everything is held in place—and there’s that mysterious glue, if you will, that holds everything together, and it really is the Spirit of God.
The most dominant feature of our being together in this room is actually the presence of God, and it’s crazy to think that I could live this far from the greatest reality on Earth and be unaware of it. Wow, the God Himself, who according to Scripture is described as the Spirit of Resurrection, raised Jesus from the dead. So here’s a tomb: you have the corpse of Jesus, and the Spirit of God comes, and Jesus is alive. He raised Jesus from the dead; Jesus did not raise Himself because He was dead. True, the Holy Spirit raised Him up. Now that same Holy Spirit is resident in everyone who believes. The desire of the Lord is to clothe Himself with you.
It’s a very interesting passage in Judges. If you’d turn there—very interesting passage in Judges 6—I think this is during the lifetime of Gideon. He is the figure that we’re going to point to for just a moment. The Holy Spirit doesn’t speak of Himself; He always directs attention to Jesus and to the Father. But the Father and Jesus talk about the Holy Spirit. I still don’t understand the whole blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. It’s the worst thing that can happen, the worst thing that a person can do. I don’t understand it, but as you hear Jesus talk about it, you can hear the reverence that He has for the Holy Spirit. If you want to know how much God trusts you, you can figure that out by seeing what He has entrusted to you.
Wow, the Holy Spirit has been given to every believer as a down payment, a seal. A seal protects contents and reveals ownership. So the Holy Spirit is the seal that marks ownership—that you belong to Jesus—and the contents are protected. He’s imparted to us the Holy Spirit, who is bigger than the universe, to live inside of you and live inside of me. Ephesians declares that the fullness of Him is to fill us, yes, His fullness is to fill us, yes. Now, there isn’t a thought that can hurt your head more than that one: the One who fills the universe, for that fullness to fill you. I don’t get it all; I know it’s beyond comprehension.
But here in this story of Gideon, in verse 33 of chapter 6, it says, «The Midianites, the Amalekites, and the people of the East gathered together. They crossed over and encamped in the valley of Jezreel. But the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon.» Then he blew the trumpet, and the Abiezrites gathered behind him. He sent messengers throughout Manasseh, who gathered behind him. He also sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they came to meet him.
Alright, so obviously here there’s going to be war; there’s going to be conflict. But there’s a phrase that I want you to see in verse 34: «But the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon.» Now this is New King James; who has New American Standard? What does it say? What does New American Standard say, somebody tell me? «The Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon.» What about NIV? Anybody have NIV? Yeah, what does it say? «The Spirit of the Lord came upon him.» Okay. Any other translations? Yes? «The Spirit of the Lord clothed him.» Excellent, excellent!
Alright, that’s actually more accurate than the other ones. Here, the original language says this: «The Spirit of the Lord clothed Himself with Gideon.» Clothed Himself. We think in terms of the Spirit of God coming upon us because we see that throughout Scripture; the Spirit of God would come upon the prophet, then they would prophesy. But in this particular story, Michael Thompson shared this with us, goodness, 28 years ago, I think, 27 years ago, where the Holy Spirit came and took Gideon and put him on like a glove—clothed Himself with Gideon.
The Holy Spirit longs to reveal Jesus to this world. He longs to reveal Jesus, and He wants to do it through surrendered people; self-willed people can’t reveal Jesus; yielded people can. And so, He’s constantly looking for the surrender, for the yes, as it was in Gideon’s case where He put him on like a glove and demonstrated who God was in the situation. Pastors, teachers, and theologians are constantly asking the question: What does it look like to be full of the Holy Spirit? We all probably have our own theological things that we value most—like miracles, or power, or prophecy, or whatever. Fill in the blanks.
But the point is that walking full of the Holy Spirit is a lifestyle of valuing a person. It’s not about ministry, but it must overflow in ministry. If ministry is the target, then we always have another reason to be full of the Spirit of God—to perform or produce—rather than just the relationship. The yielded surrender to Him will always result in Him doing something extraordinary. But when I seek Him only so that I might be used, I always have a mixture of motives, part of which is that I would feel much better about life and part of which is I would look good myself, perhaps respected among peers.
When the Holy Spirit works in and through somebody, it’s the most wonderful thing because you get to participate in something you’re not worthy of. And whenever you receive a gift you’re not worthy of, it does Him no honor to discard it. If you’re given a gift you’re not worthy of, it increases your sense of indebtedness; it increases your awareness of His heart, His purpose, His intentions. Faith can only operate where you have understanding or conviction where the Lord is good. It only explores the goodness of the Lord; that’s what faith does. And it comes not out of determination; as I’ve already mentioned, it comes as the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
It comes literally either as a gift that He gives us or a fruit. In other words, He gives us the seed of something that we grow through use, but the source is still Him. The dependency on Him for greater faith is really significant. The fact is, this whole deal is about dependency; it’s about trust. Let me give you just a—not a silly example, but a simple example that started something in me, oh goodness, at least 15 years ago. I was at a particular church, and I had given, I think, about six or eight different words of knowledge—things that we were going to pray for healing. I remember calling out the first one; I don’t remember what they were—something knees and eyes and whatever. So I called—I just remember calling out the first condition, and I said, «If you have that condition, just raise your hand.» And they did.
All I can tell you is that one person looked different than the rest, and I can’t tell you why. What I have found about my life is that if I stop and analyze it, I’ll kill whatever I thought I saw. It’s like whatever was in that jar just evaporated. So I don’t stop and analyze; that’s for later when I look back. I’m in this moment and there’s just a guy over to my left; he just looks different. I can’t say there’s a light on him; I don’t know what it was; he just looked different than everyone else. I said, «You know what? Check it out; I think it’s already healed.» And he began to move around, and the miracle took place when it was spoken—he was absolutely healed.
So I had, like I said, six or eight other words, so we celebrated that miracle, prayed for the rest, and actually, we didn’t pray for the rest because I was trying to get the whole group that needed a miracle in one time. So I called out second, I said, «There’s some kind of a growth in the back of the eye or something,» and three or four people put their hands up, but one looked different. And what I thought is I thought, well, this thing with the knee was a one-time experience; now I’m going to call out all the other conditions, and we’ll pray as a group and pray over these folks.
But every word of knowledge I gave, this is the only time this has happened like this before, and it introduced me to something. Every word of knowledge I had, every time I had them raise their hands, someone would stand out, and I can’t tell you why, but they did. And every one of them was healed instantly; as soon as they moved, as soon as they tried to do something. So there were six or eight of these conditions that were healed instantly. Like the girl in the video; she stood out; I don’t know why.
Experiences in God shape perception. Oh man, I hope this makes sense. It’s like you look at a field, and it’s not barren anymore; you can’t explain it. You still see it’s dry. You know, you look at a relationship that looks absolutely dead, and it just doesn’t look dead anymore. You look at this opportunity that seems like the most hopeless situation, but something’s happening in you, and you can tell it; you can feel it. Your perception is changing; it’s not mind over matter; it’s not you doing mental gymnastics to try to imagine an answer before it comes. I don’t even want to say that that’s evil; I’m just saying that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the Spirit of God at work in this heart of faith where now something looks different. I don’t mean the whole world looks different; I mean the problem you’re facing looks different. I mean the barren field doesn’t look barren. I mean the marriage that is on the rocks or the couple that can’t have children or the bankruptcy that’s taking place in a business—it doesn’t matter what it is; suddenly things look different, and I can’t tell you why, but I’m going with perception. I’m moving with the perception because I was born again to see.
I was born again to see; I was born again to live from a different place—not just divine reasoning. Reasoning under the influence of the Holy Spirit is a very important tool, so I don’t want to downplay the mind at all. Jesus honored it and recognized it time and time again, but what happens is the mind, not under the lordship of Jesus, is not neutral; it is at war with God. According to Romans 8, it’s actually at war. So the purposes of God—there’s something in us that is at war with the purposes of God, and that’s when we give ourselves to the carnal mind, which is actually warring against what God is trying to implement, what He’s trying to reveal, what He’s trying to draw us into—into this calling role where in the journey with Him, we learn to see and perceive.
We learn to act and respond according to the actual conviction of the heart. Faith is the conviction. When I have a decision to make, I look at two or three things, whatever is in front of me. All I do is look at—let’s just say I line up three things. I look at that, I look at that, I look at that, and I wait to see where I have conviction—not understanding. I’m not looking for understanding; yet that’ll come later. I’m just looking for where does my heart burn; where is there conviction?
Benny and I were driving from Weaverville to Redding, definitely a long time ago. We were singing in the Spirit; we had two boys at the time; Leah wasn’t born yet, so that tells you how long ago that was. We got to about the Lewiston turnoff, if you’re familiar with the 299, and we were just singing in the Spirit, and the boys were completely calm—which was like parting the Red Sea; it’s about the same level of miraculous right here—they were calm in the back. And we were just literally singing in tongues, and then suddenly, Bal Lou and the turnoff—a fragrance filled the car.
I didn’t know if she smelled it; she didn’t know if I smelled it, so I just kept driving. We’d sing for a bit; I go, and we sing some more, and then I started to notice I could taste it! Wow! It was exactly like granules of sugar that you could put on your tongue. I’d stop, and I’m driving down, I’m tasting this smell, this fragrance of the Lord filled the car, and I could taste it. We got down by Whiskey Town Lake, and I said, «Did you smell that?» She goes, «Yes, did you smell that?» We exchanged notes.
But sometimes His world breaks into ours, and we have all kinds of things that happen. We have the gems that show up in oil and the gust of wind and the gold flakes or glitter. Micah actually, somebody I know of a case where gold mixed with oil—unidentifiable oil mixed in—the gold. In another case, a guy who was a scientist type came and got some here and had it tested, and it was Micah—a mix, sick-sided like the Star of David. Yeah, amazing!
So sometimes we, you know, the feathers come; people get real ticked off at that one. You know, they get mad, like I didn’t do it. If I was going to ask for something, that wouldn’t have been on my list. But you know what? Since it happens, I’m good. Sometimes He wants to do something to see if you’ll be embarrassed or if you’ll celebrate.
So Lord, we just invite You to teach us—teach us how You move, teach us how You work. We just say yes, yes and amen, yes and amen, yes and amen. Chapter 8, to me, is the crown jewel of these five chapters. It’s the crown jewel because the highlight, the emphasis in this chapter, is our relationship with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the central person, the central theme in this chapter. It’s not Abraham; it’s not the crucifixion; it’s not—it’s the Holy Spirit who has been given to us in this chapter.
It’s important for this reason: everyone in this room that is born again, you are born again because He spoke, you listened, and responded. None of us found God; He found us. Yeah, yeah! It’s like running from God through this forest, and you trip over a rock and you look up, and He’s looking at you. You say, «I’m so glad I found you!» That’s basically how all of us got saved. We ended up seeing that there was only one reasonable option, and it was to give ourselves to Him.
Anyway, all of us are alive because we heard Him speak and we responded. The Holy Spirit is the central person in our lives, and every triumph, every victory, every enablement, every bit of grace—everything that we experience in this life in following Jesus is there and is active because the Holy Spirit is in our lives. The Holy Spirit is God on Earth; everything about our life either succeeds or fails because of our relationship with Him.
I’m not referring to an emotion, although emotions are included. I’m not talking about feelings, although feelings are included. It is a relationship with a person. This Christian life is a relational journey, and it is a relationship with God on Earth, who is the Holy Spirit, who perfectly represents Jesus, who completely and perfectly manifests the will of the Father.
I’ve been fighting for an adequate illustration, and I’ve not yet come up with one. Maybe I will by next week when I won’t need it, but right now, have you ever, you know, just gone through life, and somebody says, «Oh, what a beautiful song»? You didn’t even know a song was playing, but as soon as they mention that song, you could hear it. Right? It wasn’t made up in your mind; you could actually hear it, but you weren’t aware of it. Your awareness became heightened to that sound when somebody mentioned it.
Maybe you’re just going through life not thinking of anything, and someone says, «How do you smell that?» All of a sudden, you weren’t smelling it before, but as soon as they mention it, you go, «Yeah, meat,» or other things. But meat primarily—yeah, barbecue! Thank you, Jesus! You become aware; you have a heightened awareness.
What I’m looking for is for us to have a heightened awareness of the presence of God. I’ve had certain things happen to me through the years where I became unusually aware of Him, and it’s terrifying and wonderful all at the same time, and I don’t want to live any other way. Heightened awareness—it’s not imaginary; it’s not that—it’s like Jacob said in the Bible when he woke up from that dream, «God is here and I didn’t even know it!» Suddenly, heightened awareness to a reality that existed before he was aware.
The Holy Spirit lives in you; He’s also called the Paraclete—the one called alongside to help. So the whole point is I would like today to just help with a heightened awareness of God on Earth, that I have actually received as a down payment of an inheritance. Now, I don’t understand that. If there was ever a mind-boggling thought, it’s the fact that God gave us Himself as our inheritance, and the initial payment is the Holy Spirit Himself.
He’s called the down payment in Ephesians—the down payment of our inheritance. Larry Randol made a comment years ago; he said, «If God is as big as He says He is, He shouldn’t be that hard to find.» With someone that large in my life, it should not be that hard to discern, and if He is, I must have my heart and mind anchored in things that are very inferior that have deadened what He has created in me as a capacity to recognize Him.
Alright, amen? Good point? Verse 1 of chapter 8, «There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.» Verse 14, «As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.»
Now go back to verse 1: «There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.» Those who are in Christ walk according to the Spirit. That is the testimony of Scripture. Those who are in Christ—the evidence of my conversion is that I don’t live according to carnal values, fleshly expressions, and values, but instead by the Holy Spirit Himself. My life with Christ is illustrated because of a partnership with God on Earth, the Holy Spirit.
It’s illustrated; it is measurable. He goes on to say that those who are led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God. The reason I want to dwell on this for just a moment—we’re actually going to spend more time later in the chapter—but the reason I want to hit on this for just a moment is that there are certain subjects in the gospel that sometimes feel to me like they have been elevated so high that they are unreachable, and being led by the Spirit is one of those. And it is not; it’s your nature to be led by the Spirit.
Have you ever thought of somebody you wanted to call or maybe swing by and visit? It wasn’t a thundering voice from God; it’s just you know, you just think, «Oh, I should call them!» And you call them, and you find out it was a miracle moment that God actually directed you.
See, Jesus made a statement: «My sheep know my voice.» What does He mean by that? There’s a familiarity to the voice of God to the life of a believer, so much so that there are times where I would have thought it was simply my desire, and I find out afterwards it was actually the voice of God. There’s such similarity! Living immersed in Christ puts us in a place where we constantly are hearing that familiar voice.
I don’t mean overly familiar in a wrong sense, but that familiar voice—it’s not a thundering voice from the outside; it’s that cry from the inside. The beautiful part about this is the more we learn to yield ourselves to this work of the Holy Spirit, the more walking in the Spirit, so to speak, is normal and natural. It’s the normal reaction to a given situation.
One of the conversations I’ve had with people of late has been to re—how do you know? How do you know what to do in a given situation? Because sometimes there’s a biblical principle that you—let’s just say there’s a need; sometimes there’s a biblical principle of generosity and sometimes the biblical principle of helping them to earn what they have—there’s a biblical basis for both. How do you know what to do?
The only way you can know is to recognize the mood of the Holy Spirit. It’s His voice; it’s His mood; it’s His compassion leading you. How is He directing you to express life? It’s this relational journey, where it is our nature to illustrate faith. It is our nature to illustrate this life with Christ. Faith is another one of those exalted subjects where people just don’t think they can live by faith, when it’s actually your nature to do so.
It’s our nature in Christ. So we move on to verse 26. It says, «Likewise, the Spirit also helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.» So He considers it a weakness for us not to know what to pray for.
Verse 27: «He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.» Now, I don’t know how you look at this; this is how I look at it. «God, I want a million dollars,» and then I pray in tongues, and the Holy Spirit says, «Man, don’t give him a million dollars. Do not listen to that last request because we’re trying to make him like Jesus, and that’ll only mess things up.» He always prays exactly according to the heart and to the will of God.
He knows exactly the tools, the elements, the issues that will take us to where we are all headed. We all have been predestined, according to Scripture—predestined to be conformed into the image of Jesus. So everything He does in us, He works in us to that end, that the end result was that we would adequately represent Jesus well.
On the last day, that day of the great feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, «If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.» Okay, stop right there; this is a really strange picture because here the Lord says, «Come to Me, anyone who’s thirsty, come to Me and drink,» and out of his innermost being will come rivers.
A drink becomes a river; a drink—receiving of Him creates a river. See, when light touches you, you become light—not the origin of light. Jesus is the origin of light; He is the light of the world. But before He left, He said, «You’re the light of the world.» Wow! When light touches you, it changes your capacity to function. It changes not only the resource that you have access to; it changes your very nature from a child of darkness to now you’re a child of light.
Why? Light touched you. You took a drink of living water, and you now have a river flowing from you. It changes our capacity; every experience in God rewrites our DNA; they change our capacity to function. That’s why no experience is to be taken lightly, whether it’s the quiet moments at the end of worship or the moment maybe somebody’s sharing a concept about an offering and you get this thought, that inspired thought from the Lord. Treasure those moments because He’s talking, and He’s depositing things in us!
Every time He talks, He deposits; He takes from His account and puts into ours. Here’s this picture of God putting deposits into our repertoire, into our resource. And so, here we have this passage: «Come to Me and drink; He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water,» but this He spoke concerning the Spirit. Out of your heart will flow rivers—but this He spoke concerning the Spirit, who now dwells in you.
So the river is the Spirit. This He spoke of concerning the Spirit whom those believing in Him would receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. Wow, this is a very important verse—a very important concept here. I don’t know about you; I know in reading the Gospels, especially in my younger years, I would look at the disciples and how often they messed it up, how often they got it wrong, and I would think often, «Boy, they sure could have used the Holy Spirit living in them because they wouldn’t have blown it near as often.»
It doesn’t prevent them from missing it, but you know when you have the Spirit of God living in you, there’s just that internal witness of right or wrong, of direction. And they just didn’t have that. They didn’t have access to the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I thought a number of times, «Man, they just really could have used that; it’s too bad they didn’t get it until after Jesus left.»
So picture this now: Jesus says—He spoke concerning the Spirit whom those believing in Him would receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. Right now, we’ve got to emphasize something here. Let’s say that I’m an artist. Let’s say that I’m an artist, and I am making a sculpture of this water bottle.
Oh, let’s do painting since painting would be a little more challenging for me. So I’ve got this bottle here, and I’m picking the right—I make sure I have the right color of green, and I’m constantly checking what I have here—making sure I’ve got the label right, the right colors—there’s blue, there’s some kind of a pinkish-red there. So I’ve got all my colors laid out, and I begin to paint this water bottle because I want to get it exact.
The Holy Spirit’s primary job is to make us like Jesus. He directs us, He leads us, He empowers us, He does all of that, but really, the bottom line of all of it is to make us like Jesus. And this Scripture says the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. Here’s the deal: the Holy Spirit wasn’t given before Jesus was glorified because then the Holy Spirit would have had to make us like the Jesus headed to the cross and not the Jesus resurrected, ascended, and glorified.
When Jesus said, «It is to your advantage that I go,» He actually meant, «This is to your advantage, my God, because if I send Him to you now, His work will be to conform you like me on my way to the cross, and that’s not who you are.»
Whenever we worry and become anxious, we’re being drawn into a faith in the inferior. The enemy is trying to lessen our awareness of significance. Again, I’m not talking about self-worship or any of that nonsense; I’m just talking about, you know, you get the knock on the door from that lawyer, and you find out you now own this great estate and you have $10 million in the bank, even though you have not yet eaten a meal from your newly discovered resources. You walk out of that apartment with a different attitude.
You’re conscious of something you had no awareness of moments earlier, and yet it’s been in that account for you for months. They’ve been looking and looking and looking for you. You’ve had the resources all this time, but lived completely unaware of it. When you live aware of the significance of the moment you’re in, the significance of the investment of God putting the Holy Spirit in you, what did Jesus say? «You can blaspheme the Father; you can blaspheme the Son, but don’t blaspheme the Holy Spirit.»
What is He doing? He’s describing to us the tenderness, the fragile nature—I’m probably not saying any of that right, but you get the point—of the Holy Spirit. And that’s the One God trusts us with. He’s so confident of His work in us that He put the Holy Spirit in us. You can tell how much somebody trusts you by what they entrust to you; when the Holy Spirit is given to us to make us into the image of this One who is glorified at the right hand of the Father, there is a purpose in the assignment, and it’s more than singing songs on a Sunday night.
It’s more than going to work tomorrow and just making a wage and paying your rent and eating. It’s more than that; it’s the effect that your awareness of His assignment over you has on how you carry yourself. It’s again—it’s not self-serving; it’s not trying to attract people to somehow worship or glorify or do that nonsense; I don’t like that at all.
But it does say, «Arise and shine!» Get up, in other words! Stop sitting there waiting for something else to happen! You don’t need five more prophetic words to act on what God’s already said. Get up! Shine! He didn’t say, «Arise and reflect.» He said, «Shine!» because light is within you.
Well, I don’t know what that means. Well then, figure it out! Figure it out! Don’t sit there ignorant when He’s given us a resource manual that instructs us on how to do life. I can tell you, number one, righteous acts of the saints is the righteous clothing, and it is the radiance of God Himself that shines into the lives of humanity.
So it’s shifting from a self-serving lifestyle into a servanthood lifestyle where we live aware. We have all the resources needed to be effective in our serving of humanity, of people around us. God is the One who takes the simple act of the cash that you give to the guy on the outside of Safeway who hasn’t eaten. He takes that act; He takes the visit that you do to your neighbor who’s been sick; He takes those simple acts, the phone call of a friend that you haven’t seen for years, and they keep coming to mind, and you just step out of what’s convenient, and you make that call.
Friendship. We oftentimes think in terms of having unlimited financial resources in our possession so that we can do great things for God when He’s the One who breathes on the simple things that we’re capable of doing and makes them supernaturally effective. God can do everything better than we can, right? Yep! Anyone who disagrees with that, you’re just dumb. You’re just dumb! He can do everything. Obviously, He can heal the sick better; He can preach better; He can evangelize better; He can prophesy better—everything!
He can do better than we can, but He has chosen not to do it Himself. Even when He took on flesh, and He came to Earth, He did it with the limitations of a human being, dependent on God. Even then, He was not trying to display what He could do. In the Old Testament, we see Him reveal what He can do. Water comes out of a rock, manna appears on the ground every day, the Red Sea parts—extraordinary miracles! I think the greatest miracle in the Old Testament is the valley of dry bones. It’s a valley of a dead army, and the bones rattle and they come together into place, and then God breathes over them, and flesh forms; organs form, and actually life comes back into them, and they are raised up as an army.
That’s—I want the video on that one when I get there! I want! I want to see that one; that’s just bizarre! The Old Testament reveals what God can do, but in the New Testament, the revelation wasn’t so much what God could do—obviously, it all goes back to Him—but the point was the revelation of the New Testament was to show us what one person could do that was rightly related to God. Right? Who had no sin, number one, and number two, was completely empowered by the Holy Spirit. The two qualifiers that enable a person to step into—I’m nervous about using this kind of terminology because there are people that will get weird—but step into that unlimited realm of God Himself.
Not that we become God, but that we become so yielded and surrendered that He can use us as He used His Son, Jesus. The point is Jesus only did what He saw the Father do. He only said what He heard the Father say. He would say, «If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.» Hebrews 1:1 says that Jesus is the exact representation of His nature. He’s actually—as light shines from these fixtures, light radiates—in the same way, Jesus radiated from the Father. What we see in Jesus is the radiation of the Father.
So when Jesus took on flesh, it was to illustrate to us what could be possible. Jesus is called the Christ; Jesus Christ. Christ was not His last name. It’s not like Jesus Johnson or something; it’s not that! The term Christ is a title in the kingdom of God.
Titles point to experiences; titles point to happenings. So when it says Jesus Christ—the anointed one—it’s referring specifically to the fact that He’s been smeared with the Holy Spirit. The word anointing means to smear. So here’s Jesus, the One completely engulfed in and covered in the Holy Spirit of God—the dove that rested on His shoulder and remained. Never departed! Doves are nervous, flighty birds, easily spooked, and yet Jesus walked in such a way that there was never a compromise or a threat to the presence of God upon Him and so He carried and modeled that well to illustrate something for us.
He didn’t—I’ve already made the statement, so forgive me; I’m going to repeat it—He wasn’t just trying to show us what God could do; obviously, everything comes from Him. But He was trying to illustrate what could happen to the person who surrendered. Surrendered and obeyed. Many people surrender in the fact that they give up, but they don’t respond by obeying, by taking risks, by being courageous.
So in other words, «I give up; you are right; I’m wrong; I confess my sin.» Then there’s supposed to be something that we put on called this thing of courage and faith where we work to represent Him accurately and represent Him well. Jesus only said what He heard the Father say.
So imagine with me for a moment that we are standing in Jerusalem, and Jesus is here, and He’s talking, and He begins to speak. He calls out a condition that is to be healed, or He speaks a word into a family that’s in trouble or whatever it might be. We can feel the life from every word. The one thing that was so different when Jesus Christ talked about this morning when he read in the synagogue—when he read Isaiah 61—is that no one had—there was 400 years of silence from Heaven to Earth.
I don’t understand this, but it talks about the 400 years of silence until John the Baptist and Jesus. It was 400 years of silence; there were no prophets, no prophecies, no dreams, no visions—nothing! Everything was shut down for 400 years. So imagine you’re going through the routine out of just raw discipline. You know that it’s right, and you do it because it’s right, but there’s not this overwhelming sense of the Spirit of God upon them. They’ve just committed themselves; they’ve recognized somehow in their heart of hearts that this is true—that the law of God was true—and they are embracing that as their responsibility and privilege in life, but they’ve never had a divine encounter; it just hasn’t happened in 400 years.
So we’ve got ten generations of experience-less people, and Jesus stands to read in the synagogue on that one day—it’s in Luke chapter 4—and He begins to read out of Isaiah 61: «The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; He anointed me to bring release to captives, recovery of sight to the blind,» and He goes through this scripture.
But here’s what I want you to realize: when Jesus spoke, He spoke what the Father was saying, and when He spoke what the Father was saying, the Spirit of God—the Word of God—became presence.
Jesus gave us insight to this in John 6; He said, «My words to you are Spirit, and they are life.» My words to you—words become Spirit, and that Spirit gives life. Alright, so we’re back in the synagogue. We don’t—we’ve never had a vision, a dream; we’ve never sensed the presence of God, and we don’t know anyone who has because it’s been 400 years of silence.
Jesus stands up, and He says, «The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me because He has anointed Me.» But now something’s happening! Every word He speaks becomes present, and everyone in the room is stunned by what they’re feeling.
I’m not wanting to spend a lot of time there, but I’ve just opened a can of worms, so I’m going to have to take the worms out, fish with them, and then do something else. I don’t know; we’ll see if I can recover from this. But it’s a bizarre situation because He’s talking to a city that is about to reject Him. It says He read this passage; it said He closed the book, He gave it back to the attendant, He sat down. All the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on Him, and He said, «Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.»
And then it says—and my translation has this; I think it’s a bit clearer. I tried to do my research on this. Verse 22 says, «So all bore witness to Him.» Now we know the end of the story; this is His hometown that rejected Him. But it didn’t start that way. He reads; presence released. It says all bore witness—what does that mean? Everyone in the synagogue had something happen in their heart of hearts where they realized this is Him!
They’ve been raised from childhood to anticipate and to pray for the coming of the Messiah. They all bore witness; they all had this thing inside them where they maybe couldn’t have explained it, maybe they could have never taught on it, but they had something going on inside that said, «Wait a minute, this is different than anything I’ve ever experienced before.»
They all bore witness to Him, and they marveled at the gracious words coming out of His mouth. So here they are, first of all, they’re deeply impacted by presence, and now their brains are just on hyper speed as they’re stunned by the grace-filled words coming out of His mouth.
What is grace? Grace is the enablement of God; it is favor, but it is favor that enables. It’s the enabling favor and presence of God. So here He’s reading, and in their heart of hearts, they’re admitting to the fact they have just heard the voice of the Messiah, and then somebody says, «Isn’t this Joseph’s son?» You can imagine the entire crowd—they’re at this moment where they are recognizing in their heart of hearts; they’re admitting to the fact they’ve just heard the voice of the Messiah, and then somebody says, «Yeah, but isn’t this Joseph’s son?»
And you can just see them go, «Of course it is! What was I thinking? So glad you brought that up because you won’t believe what I was just thinking. I was actually just—I’m embarrassed to say it, but I was thinking this could be the Messiah. But obviously, this is Joseph’s son. What was I thinking?»
And they reasoned themselves out of a place of faith—faith that would make that city Jesus’s home base for His miracle ministry that would go all over the known world. It says Jesus could do no mighty works there except lay His hands on a few sick people and heal them.
The next time you think your anointing is being shut down by your environment, just remember that verse! The unbelief that took place in that city couldn’t shut down what Jesus carried because He still carried enough to lay His hands on a few sick people and release healing to them.
What couldn’t happen without unbelief is the corporate anointing where there’s exponential increase. So good! So the corporate anointing was shut down because of corporate unbelief. So good! But personal faith still brings healing and deliverance, and I’m sure the few handful of people that were healed were thankful that He was still able to minister to them in spite of the atmosphere of the crowd.
Come on! Jesus Christ! Jesus, the One anointed of the Holy Spirit! When Jesus died, the Scripture says that had Satan known what was about to happen, he never would have crucified Jesus. Now, Satan did not take Jesus’s life; right? No, Jesus laid it down. Yes, no one took His life. The Roman soldiers, none of them took His life, right?
He had at His disposal legions of angels to come and to assist, and Peter—He laid His life down. When He laid His life down and rose from the grave, the Bible says the Holy Spirit is the one who raised Jesus from the dead. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Resurrection! When the Holy Spirit raised Him from the dead, it made it possible for people to be born again by the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead!
I don’t know if you’re getting a picture of what this means. It means that this same anointing that Jesus walked in is now made available to everyone who believes. It was never meant to just be fire insurance to keep us from hell; it was always meant to be the invitation to co-labor and represent Jesus well—for Jesus to receive what He paid for through courage, through radical obedience, through relationship with Him, to see these things happen in the Earth.