Creflo Dollar - The Administration Of The Holy Spirit - Part 1
If you have your Bibles this morning, go with me to the Book of John 16, and beginning at verse 13. We've been talking about the cross being the defining line for really everything that's going on in our lives. And we are under the New Testament; we are under a new covenant. We're under a better covenant. And under this new covenant, under this better covenant, we are under the administration of the Holy Spirit and not the administration of Mosaic law through rule keeping. And what I'm going to talk to you today, is we're going to talk about the Holy Spirit. Not an it, not something, but a person. The Holy Spirit has an assignment and a purpose to take care of and he is the administrator of the new covenant. And so, I want to begin a little differently this morning.
A few months ago, I was in the house and the Lord told me to go to my office and just begin to write. And I didn't notice until today that this was about the series that we're teaching right now. And so, it can serve somewhat as a summary of some of the things that we've talked about. But I want to read to you what the Spirit of God dictated to me and then we'll begin to talk about the ministry of the Holy Spirit and him being the administrator, and how basically, we've got to learn how to trust in the Holy Spirit. Because the New Testament won't work in our lives without a trust and a faith in the one who administrates it, the administrator of the Holy Spirit. So let me read this and I pray it blesses you.
"Grace is not an excuse for bad behavior, rather a solution for bad behavior. Jesus died to set us free from the penalty of sin, but his death also made a way for us to produce better fruit and better behavior". Listen to that again, "Jesus died to set us free from the penalty of sin, but his death also made a way for us to produce better fruit and better behavior. The issue is self-behavioral modification versus Holy Spirit behavioral modification". See, it's one thing for you to try to change and modify your behavior through your own self efforts versus the Holy Spirit who has been sent to administrate behavioral modification and who will help you. "You can't say under grace people have a license to sin more, when in fact under grace and the administration of the Holy Spirit, you will sin less. The truth of the matter is self cannot stop sin or bad behavior. That's deception. Only Jesus, through his grace, can accomplish that".
Other than allowing Jesus and the grace of God and the Spirit of God, that's going to be you trying to be righteous by the law instead of you trusting in the Holy Spirit to help you. "Being free from the law of Moses doesn't mean that you are without morals. It means that instead of trying to achieve morality through the law or rule keeping, you will now achieve morality by the administration of the Holy Spirit". People asked me one time, should we even be using the word moral or what does it mean to be moral? It means to have a good character. Yeah, it's a Bible word. It means to have good character. It means to be someone who can bear fruit.
And so, you will now have morality by the administration of the Holy Spirit, and this is to everybody that's trying to be good without God. This is everyone who has tried to defeat that, and tried to overcome this, and tried to overcome that. This is for the people who still don't understand that you can know everything the Bible talks about and still not be successful in everyday life. You need the Holy Spirit. You need the Holy Spirit to help you to be successful. I know a lot of people who know a lot of the Bible and still are not as successful as they would like to be. Why? Because you got to get to the point where you realize it's the Holy Spirit's job. The Holy Spirit's going to help me to behave right. The Holy Spirit's going to help me to overcome that thing in the past.
And here's a good way to look at the things you go through in the past. Don't look at your past and look at it with condemnation and let it you know, cause shame in your life. Look at it this way, I got over that. Look at the things that you've gone through and say, "Thank God, I got over that". Don't let something you got over continue to beat you up for the day. I love what Taffi said at the starting of service today that "I'm not going to let somebody, you know, stay in my mind or let something stay in my mind rent-free". So look at the stupid things you did not to let it condemn you more, but look at those things and say to yourself, "I got over that. I'm maturing and I've gotten over that". And the Holy Spirit is going to help you.
So I'm trying to get people to understand now, in this new covenant, it's about trusting the Holy Spirit to do the things that you've tried to do by yourself and you've not been successful. You've tried to, and maybe you've been successful for two or three months or two or three years, but that thing kept coming back. The Holy Spirit has been sent to give you a desire to do what pleases God, and he is your helper. He is your unseen partner. He is the one that will change you from the inside out. O praise God, the Holy Spirit will change you from the inside out. Outward change isn't good enough. It's got to be inward change. Change has got to happen from the inside out.
And so, I continued to write, "The Holy Spirit is the agent that changes bad behavior and gives you the desire to do what pleases God. We preach the fear of God as if you can achieve that without the Holy Spirit. We preach the fear of God, like yeah, it's going to be up to you to walk in fear, and it's going to be up to you to walk in reverence". But what about all the people who have tried with all their hardest to walk in the fear of the Lord and tried with all their best to reverence God. That's Holy Ghost infused. You need the help of the Holy Spirit to be able to do that. "We shame people and condemn people by saying that their bad behavior is a result of not walking in the fear of the Lord".
We got to stop shaming people when they're not or don't seem to be as successful as we are, because if we could all look in the booth in the back in the corner, and in the dark of everybody's life, you will find out that everybody got an issue. But for every issue, the Holy Spirit has been sent to help to change that issue in your life. Praise God. "No bad behavior is a result of, you know, refusing to believe Jesus and not submitting to the Spirit of grace". It's not in the case, and you'll hear this, this morning, of not believing. A lot of people believe Jesus, but they just refuse to believe on him. They refuse to trust him. They refuse to rely on him when it comes to what you would call the little things in life. You don't rely on him to help you with a bad attitude. You don't rely on him to help you to mature in your emotions. You don't lean on him to help you to be a better mate in your relationship.
And so it's not that you don't believe in Jesus, it's you're not relying on him. You're not trusting him. And he wants to walk with you every day. We've got to learn how to live an everyday life with Jesus, not just a Sunday life with Jesus, not just a church life with Jesus but an everyday life with Jesus. "The truth of the matter is that if bad behavior or sin means that we don't have the fear of the Lord, then since everybody sins, and don't behave perfectly all the time, that same statement would be true for everybody including one who accuses others of not having the fear of the Lord". And so Proverbs 9:10, I want to read that real quick because I believe that certain things that happen are infused by the Holy Spirit. And verse 10 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy is understanding".
Look at this in the New Living Translation. He says, Proverbs 9:10, he says, "Fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment". Now, this is all true. This is all according to God's Word. Here's what I want to say about this, "The respect and reverence for God is Holy Spirit infused not self-effort infused". We're going to have to trust in the Holy Spirit to help us to have that reverence. You know, the Bible says, that we love because he first loved us. If we did not have the Holy Spirit pouring supernatural love on the inside of us, we would not be able to love some of the things that we've chosen to love. And I want you to know that, and I want you to see that life in the New Testament is not going to be the way Jesus want it to be without us trusting in the Holy Spirit.
Well, do we just sit around and do nothing? Are you telling us just to believe God? Listen, "While it's true that the works of God is to believe, it is also true that the Holy Spirit will lead and guide you into what to do, when to do and where to do it. If we are doing what he's leading us to do, then we continue to be faithful to the last thing he told us to do and be ready to adjust our doing as a result of following his direction". So we rest while doing or working. We're not resting from doing or working, but while we do and while we work. And then finally I wrote, "We know that there are things that have to be done in the natural and we depend on the Holy Spirit to direct our lives in the natural, going to work to direct our lives in the natural, paying our bills, providing for our family, raising our kids".
So we're not telling you that there's no work. What we're trying to get people to understand is that after you learn about the grace of God, after you learn about the difference between the Old and the New Testament, here's where the rubber meets the road. Now that you know these things, will you allow the Holy Spirit to come and do only what the Holy Spirit can come and do? Some reason, I think people think that they can be successful if they just continue to get a bunch of knowledge. And listen, "In all your getting, get understanding". But even with all of the knowledge and even with all of the understanding, will you come to a place where you will trust, depend and rely on the Holy Spirit to get you there?
So that when it's over with, you can say like some of the people of old have said, "This is the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes". That's what you should be working towards, is being able to say that all the things that have been done in my life, all of the corrections that have taken place in my life, all of the things I no longer desire, all of the great things I now desire, all of the things that I've gotten over with, that I don't have that issue no more, at the end of the day, he should get the praise, not you. He should get the praise. It's not because of your life coaching. It's not because of your self-preservation. It's because one day you decided, "I'm going to trust the Holy Spirit. I'm going to trust him and I'm going to go to him, and I'm going to take everything to him. I'm going to take my bad attitude. I'm going to take my condemnation. I'm going to take the way I treat people. I'm going to take my anger, my hurt, and my brokenness, and my fear, and I'm going to go to God every day and say, 'Lord, help. Lord, I trust you. Lord, I need you.'"
And then through that process, you begin to see the administrator of the New Testament causing things to change in you. And you will lift your hands up and say, "How great thou art". And truly now, truly now, you will know what it means to have a real relationship with God through the Holy Spirit, knowing that you depend on him for everything and not on your intelligentsia, not on your latest revelation. You're depending on the Holy Spirit, the agent of change, to come and to make it so in Jesus' name. I pray you got a hold of that, amen.
So let's begin. Let's go back to John 16:13. Let's learn about the Holy Spirit. Let's learn about the administrator. Let's learn more than what we've learned in traditional church, that if it was left up to just some of that knowledge, the Holy Spirit is just, you know, the agent that causes you to shake, rattle and roll. If it was left up just to the knowledge of tradition, you know, the Holy Spirit is, you know, he does all of this other stuff. And we don't understand the Holy Spirit is the administrator of this new covenant that Jesus shed his blood and gave his life so that we can have access to it. So without the Holy Spirit, the manifestation of the new covenant is going to be very hard to achieve. He is the agent that has been appointed to help you to bring this to pass.
Now, let's look at John 16:13. It tells us something. "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come", well, has the Holy Spirit come? Yes. "When he, the Spirit of truth". Now, notice what they refer the Holy Spirit as, "the Spirit of truth," "the Spirit of truth". When he will come, "He will guide you into all the truth," praise God, "For he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come". Every Christian under this new covenant should not be in the dark. The Holy Spirit will show you things to come. So notice here, he's not just here so you shake, rattle and roll. He's going to show you some things to come. It is imperative that we develop a life trust, living this life with the Holy Spirit.
Now go with me to Titus chapter 2:11. These are just four Scriptures I want to share before we start, so you can understand that the Holy Spirit plays a very important part in changing us on the inside, but he needs us to trust him. In verse 11, he says, "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation has appeared to all men". That means that what Jesus did, he did for everybody. For whether you're saved or unsaved, he did it for everybody. It's available to all men. Verse 12. And notice what happens here in Titus 2:12, he says, "The grace of God that bringeth salvation has appeared to all men". And notice what he does, "He will teach us to deny ungodliness. He will teach us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. And that we should live soberly, and righteously and godly in this present world".
Well, I can imagine us trying to accept that responsibility without the Holy Spirit. It's not going to happen. But when you trust the Holy Spirit, he's going to teach you. Someone says, "How does he teach you"? You have that personal relationship with him every day. He's going to teach you, he's going to change your desires and you're going to recognize that the thing that you used to want to do, you're not going to want to do it anymore. He's going to teach us that denying ungodliness. Listen, he'll teach you how to deny ungodliness. He'll teach you to deny ungodliness. Think of that, think of that. How is it that we get over in a new covenant and we get under grace, and we don't even recognize that denying ungodliness is one of the benefits of being under grace and the Spirit of grace, the Holy Spirit is going to work with you to deny ungodliness.
I don't know how many time ungodliness knocks on your door, but everybody has an opportunity every day to follow the Holy Spirit. He'll lead you away from it and start teaching you to deny it, rejecting it. He'll teach you how to say, "No I don't want that". Right now, you may want it. Throughout your life, you may have always wanted it. And what do you do with a person who says, "I'm saved but I don't want the Holy Spirit teaching me these things. I just don't want to do it". "Yeah, I know it's right to do that. I just don't want to do that". Wow. And so you are a free moral agent. You have a right to decide that you don't want the Holy Spirit to teach you. You have a right to decide that you don't want to deny godliness and then you proceed in it. You have a right to decide I don't want to deny worldly lust, and you can just continue to do that. You have a right to decide, "Wait a minute, I don't want to live soberly. I don't want to live righteously. I don't want to live godly in this present world".
You can decide that, and all of heaven will back up and honor your decision because you are a free moral agent; you have a right to make a decision. You make a decision good or bad. Decision is the open door into reality. It will become real, the blessing or the curse once you make the decision. The Bible said that and gave us a hint. He says, "I've placed before you, life or death. I've placed before you a blessing and the curse". He says, "All of these things are placed before you. I place before you a holiness and I place before you, wickedness. I place before you all of these things". All of that stuff is before you. You know what? You choose. He says, "And I will not take that away from you". And he says, "I'll give you a hint, choose life". And when you choose right, you going to live right, and it'll be a blessing to your family.
I think we live in a world right now where we're busy blaming the devil for stuff instead of looking at the individual choices that people are making. You are a free moral agent. Nobody is making you do something you don't want to do. You remember years ago, there was this show, "The Flip Wilson Show," and he played the part of a woman, Geraldine, and the little thing used to come up saying, "The devil made me do it". The devil can't make you do something you don't want to do. But here's the truth also: neither can God. God's not going to make you do what you don't want to do or what you don't choose to do. And the devil can't make you do what you don't want to do. You have a choice.
Life is a series of decisions, and you've got to check out how you're deciding. Enough of this blaming everybody else for what you do. Enough of you blaming everybody else for how you came out. Enough of you continuing to go in your past and finding crutches and using those crutches to try to justify why you are the way you are. Because God is greater than all of those things. He's greater than your past. He's greater than what you got and what you didn't get. He is greater than your pain and no pain. God's greater than all of that. And what God is saying, "If you just make a decision and just trust me, I can help you change, and I can help you be what you ought to be. I can help you to be the thing that will unlock the doors and allow the blessings to flow in like a mighty river in your life".
If you're depressed today, you know, somewhere along the line, you chose it. Just like Taffi said, "See to it that you be not troubled". That was a choice. You can see to be not troubled or you can see to be troubled. It's a choice, and we got to accept responsibility for those choices, choices that are in our lives. Look at Romans chapter 5:5. Romans chapter 5:5. And I know this is a long foundation, but hey, if I just preached on the foundation today, it would be cool. I'm learning not to rush to try to finish a message, just preach where I think the Spirit of God is, which is more important right now because you're not here and I'm not where you are. And so, I have to trust the Holy Spirit to minister to you. I can't see your face. I can't see you making faces. I can't see you getting up, walking out because you don't like what I'm saying. I can't see none of that. But the Holy Spirit is present, and I have to have him. I have to have him. It's just amazing to me.
I am preaching up here by faith, that somebody is listening on the other side. I am preaching by faith that somebody who needs this is on the other side. And I can't tell you what it feels like just in the natural, when I finish preaching, wondering, was anybody on the other side? Did anybody hear what I was saying? Then, well, how is the Holy Spirit working on the other side of this camera? And I have to believe that, and I have to trust that, and I have to wake up every day living my life to trust him. Look what he says, he says, "And hope maketh not ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us". There it is. The Holy Spirit pours supernatural love into our hearts, giving us the ability to love beyond our natural ability.
And some of you who have decided to get a pandemic divorce, and you know, you made a decision to do that. And after the divorce is final, you're going to look at it, and check it out, it's going to be something real small, something that you could have dealt with, something that you could have handled, something that the Holy Spirit could've easily resolved in you. There was a challenge that took place in the pandemic, and that challenge was an opportunity for great change. There was a challenge that took place in the midst of financial situation, and that challenge was an opportunity to produce great change. You had an opportunity to deposit wisdom into your wisdom account. But we keep running away from those opportunities to change.