Creflo Dollar - The Administration Of The Holy Spirit - Part 2
The Holy Spirit's trying to equip you. The Holy Spirit's trying to do everything he can so that you can live the life that's pleasing to God, so you can do the things that will be pleasing to God. God's not gonna ever ask you to do what you are not equipped to use to do it. He's not gonna do it. If the Holy Spirit talks to you about forgiveness, he has poured and equipped you with supernatural ability to do it. But if you allow your emotions to have the control over your life that the Holy Spirit should be having over your life, then your immature emotions have become your guide, rather than the Spirit of God becoming your guide.
So, what's leading your life, emotional immaturity or the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the one we've got to trust. Now let's look at John. John chapter 16 and verse 8. And I'm going to make some adjustments in some of the things that I've said in the past to bring more clarity to what you've heard in times past. John 16, verse 8. He says, "And when he"... And that "he" is referring to the Holy Spirit. "When he is come, he will reprove," convince, "the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment".
Now, I want you to pay attention to something. The Holy Spirit doesn't come, that word "reprove," or convict, or convince. He says, "And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment". The Holy Spirit doesn't convict people, listen to this, of things they do that are wrong. That's what I thought. The Holy Spirit does not convict people of the things that they do, that those things are wrong, but of the fact that they are not believing on Jesus. Or here's how I wanna say it. He's trying to convince them that "your issues are all involved in your refusal to trust, rely, and believe on Jesus".
In other words, he has not become a part of your everyday life, and so those things that are happening, the Holy Spirit's trying to convince you, "Well, they're happening like that because you refuse to trust God. You refuse to believe Jesus for that. You refuse to believe Jesus for your provision. You refuse to believe Jesus for your health. You refuse to believe Jesus for your protection". Do you know that's the reason why a lotta stuff like that is going on with people? They won't believe Jesus. Now, think about the world we're living in right now. They're not believing Jesus. You know, you don't have a job, and then you go through stuff because you refuse to believe Jesus. You know what it means? You know what it's called when you refuse to believe Jesus? It's called disbelief. Disbelief is your refusal to accept and to trust and to believe Jesus. It's a refusal to believe or to accept something as true.
"I won't believe it. I won't accept it as true. I just don't believe that Jesus can help me in these finances. I can't believe that Jesus can help me when I'm depressed. I just can't believe Jesus can help me in my relationships". And you wonder why people go through stuff, and I'm talking about even Christian people: because they refuse to rely, trust, and lean and believe on Jesus in their everyday situations. And, you know, I look at other people who believe him. I mean, soon as something happen, they're turning and talking to Jesus. They're turning and trusting in Jesus. They're turning and relying on him. And do you know if you'll take those people versus the other people, these people always end up just fine. Always end up all right. It's not a big, gigantic check that fell from a cloud and entered into their mailbox, but they always seem to turn out all right because of their reliance upon Jesus.
It's one thing to call yourself a Christian when you come to church. But when you leave the church and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday come, what's that relationship like between you and God? What's that relationship like? Who are you turning to first? Who has priority in your life when you get in trouble? Are you turning to Jesus, or are you turning to the government? Are you turning to Jesus, or are you turning to self-preservation? Who are you turning to? Simple message but it's a wake-up call this morning, because I'm telling you right now life is not the way the New Testament says it should be for a lotta Christians because the Christian people are not believing. The Christian people are refusing to accept as truth that this administrator can help us in every area of life. Holy Spirit is a game changer. He is a game changer. And to be ignored, to ignore what Jesus has done, to ignore the blood of Jesus, to ignore him dying so that we can have these rights and privileges, so that he sent the Holy Spirit back to us, he sent him. The Bible says he sent the Holy Spirit to us, and we just don't pay him any attention at all.
So, the thing that just really blesses me is that Holy Spirit is not trying to convict you of the wrong you're doing. The Holy Spirit is trying to convict you of the fact that somehow, some way you're not believing on Jesus, or you're not... yeah, you're not believing on Jesus. You're not accepting Jesus. You're not trusting Jesus. That's what the Holy Spirit's trying to do. He's trying to do that with everybody. He's trying to get you to the point will you accept what Jesus has done? And, I mean, what a tragedy to have Jesus to have done everything that he's done for us, and we don't even accept it. We refuse it, and then we rely upon ourselves to achieve. And that's going right back to the greatest sin in the Garden of Eden, trying to be like God without God.
Lemme give you a few examples of this, 'cause I wanna make sure you understand what I'm saying. The Holy Spirit will not convict about your lack of giving, but he'll convict you about your lack of trusting Jesus with your finances. So, we think, "Well, I'm convicted 'cause I didn't give". Or, "I'm convicted 'cause I haven't given in a long time". No, what the Holy Spirit is gonna do is, "Why is it that you don't trust God with your finances"? He's getting to the root of the thing. You're thinking he's just busy trying to make you feel bad. He wasn't sent to just make you feel bad. "Oh God. I feel bad, I shouldn't did that". No, no, no. That what the Holy Spirit wants to do is, "Uh, why is it that you don't trust Jesus where your finances are concerned? Won't you trust Jesus where your finances are concerned"?
So, we're coming to a time right now, and I thought about this earlier. We're coming to a time right now where people are losing their jobs. They don't have money to pay their bills. They don't have money for food. It's the fact that what about Jesus? Why won't you trust him? Why don't you lean on him? And so, they're gonna need jobs, and this is a great time for you to know that you can trust Jesus where your financial situation is concerned. And, you know, there are some people who'll say, "I know I can, but it's gotta be more to it than that". Well, see, I know it's gonna start with that. If you just start with that, then he can do some stuff. He can do some amazing things. Who would have ever thought that during a pandemic, some of you have had some of the most outstanding promotions and increases on your jobs, and some of you started new businesses in the midst of a pandemic, and some of you have just been financially sustained in the midst of the pandemic. Why? 'Cause you chose to trust God. And so, why not trust him now?
Okay, the job dissolved. Why not trust him now? Okay, how you gonna pay the rent? All your money spent, little bit to buy some food. Baby need a pair of shoes. I'm gonna tell you how to do that: receive the conviction of Holy Spirit and trust God where your financial picture is concerned. So, Jesus is not coming to make you feel bad for not giving, but where he wants to come is to convince you that you can trust Jesus where your financial situation is concerned. Let's do some more examples of this. This is big. All acts of sin come from the one act of not accepting and trusting what Jesus has made available. That's big. All acts of sin comes from the one act of unbelief, or disbelief. One or the other. Unbelief or disbelief is gonna be the foundation for every act of sin, not believing and not resting in the relationship with Jesus Christ. That's a big thing.
You think about it. When you do sin, you're sinning because you're not trusting and relying on the relationship you have with Jesus Christ, and this New Testament is all about your reliance on your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, Adam and Eve's sin wasn't eating the fruit, but it was not believing in the goodness of God. Something else happened there. God said, "You can eat of all the trees of the garden, but don't eat of this one right here", so the sin wasn't that they ate the fruit of the tree. The sin was they refused to accept the goodness of God. That they had every... "You can eat of all". Can you imagine the number of trees that were in that garden. "You can eat of all the trees of the garden". And that was the big sin there. They accepted the lie that God had withheld something good from them. They doubted God, and they believed the devil.
Look at Genesis 3:5. They accepted the lie that God had withheld something good from them, and, you know, a lotta people today are accepting that lie. God is withholding provision from you. God is withholding healing from you. God is withholding peace from you. God is withholding happiness from you. That's a lie, because you haven't accepted the goodness of God. God is good, and God wants to do you good and make you happy. The goodness of the Lord has been given to cause a man to repent, to bring a man to change his mind, so what God's gonna do is say, "I'm gonna show you goodness so we can change your mind about some things".
Look at this in the Garden of Eden, verse 5, "For God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil". They believed the devil more than they believed God, and in this day and time you believe your immature emotions more than you believe God. You believe the norms and values of the world more than you believe God. You believe what they say on social media more than what it says in the Word of God. That's where we are, ladies and gentlemen. And so, you move down to David. Look at David's life in Psalms 51:4, if you'll flip over there. David said, and this is so interesting. He says, "Against thee, and thee alone", in verse 4, "Against thee, and thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speaketh, and be clear when thou judgest".
And I always wonder when he said, "Lord, my sin was against you, and you alone". And he said it again over when, in 2 Samuel chapter 12:10, he said, "Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thy house; because thou has despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife". And he talks about that was a sin against God, and against God alone. So, what was the sin against God? The sin was I did not trust and rely on you. I got into self-preservation. I wanted to please myself. I mean, even God even said, "You know, if you wanted another mistress," or however he said that. That's a weird thing for me, but he said, "Whatever it was that you wanted, all you had to do is ask me, and I would've gave it to you". He would not rely on God, and so what happened?
When you go into self-preservation, you deny trusting and relying upon God. And that's what we're doing every day under this new covenant, where we'll go so far in trusting God, and then eventually, throughout that process, we go back to self-preservation. And that doesn't work. That's the sin between you and God, the sin of not accepting his goodness, the sin of not relying upon his relationship, the sin of not believing him as Jehovah-Jireh, the one who will provide and take care of you. And I think the greatest temptation of what I'm preaching on is about to happen, because people get into a panic. And panic is groundless fear, and all of a sudden you know, you find yourself saying you trust God, but then when the opportunity for self-preservation to come, you forget all about God, and you go down that road of not trusting him. And God is, through the Holy Spirit, is gonna convict you to say, "Wait a minute. What about me? What about me"?
Look at Genesis chapter 39:9. You know, the Lord said to David in 2 Samuel that when David committed adultery and murder, he had despised God. And the root of David's sin was against God. It wasn't against Uriah. It wasn't against Bathsheba. It was against God. And a lot of the sins that show up in our lives, it's not the sin that we committed against that person. It was I didn't rely on God. See, if you're gonna be a real for-real Christian, then what I am preaching on now is paramount and must take precedent in your life. Look at Genesis chapter 39:9, Joseph dealing with his master's wife. He said, "There is none greater in this house than I".
And, you know, let's look at verse 8, I wanna read into verse 9. Genesis 39, verse 8 and 9. He says, "But he refused, and said unto his master's wife, Behold, my master wanted not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath. He's committed it into my hands". Verse 9, "To the point that there is none greater in this house than I," because of the authority that's been given to me by the master. He says, "Neither has he kept back anything from me but you, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God"? Isn't that amazing? He called the sin a sin against God. Well, the sin was, "How can I go ahead and accept this pleasure and not accept and trust and believe that my God can grant me this, that my God can be responsible for this"? And he says, "If I do this, I do this not trusting in him, but I do this on my own to bring myself pleasure".
That was a revelation to me, to think that "wait a minute. It's when I step away from God and trust. If I step away from God and belief. If I step away from God and he's my source and he's the one that meets all of my needs". He's the one that will take care of me, but I just don't know what it is about saved folks. You know, we just can't simply rely and trust on him, and the celebration is much better when you know you trusted God for the whole thing. I'll tell you one thing. Sometimes, people wanna do it in their timing, and God knows that your timing is the wrong timing because you're not as prepared as you think you are. And you're asking God for stuff that he know you ain't ready for, and I've seen people do that. They work real hard and got some of it, but it destroyed 'em. 'Cause they weren't ready. Because they were not mature enough.
Maturity, for a Christian, man, maturity and emotional immaturity, they're gonna work together, because your emotional immaturity will be corrected by your maturity with God. And the more you are trusting and relying on God, that's mature. A Christian who knows how to stand and believe and rely and trust God, that's spiritual maturity, because then you begin to produce the fruits of spiritual maturity. But don't nobody wanna hear that. That's church stuff. Until you get so messed up. So, everything you have tried just doesn't work. Everything that you've done only lasted for a while. I don't know about you, but I don't wanna live my life from miracle to miracle. I wanna live my life in perpetual blessings, where those blessings go from one blessing to another blessing to another blessing. And it is not my responsibility.
You know, somebody says, "Well, I don't agree with you". That is your right. You can make a decision not to agree with anything that I'm preaching on. Ain't nothing I can do about that. My job is to preach the Word the best way I know how and to hopefully preach it from what I am doing, instead of just out of the book. And I'm telling you what Taffi and I know. We trust God for everything, even when it looks crazy and impossible. And we've been in crazy, and we've been in the impossible, but wasn't nobody gonna help us. Wasn't nobody gonna reach out and do us like God. People will come to you and beg you for everything, and then when you completely go broke and ain't got nothing, they gonna act like you ain't existing.
We have to trust God. We have to rely on God. We have to believe God where everything in our life is concerned. I can't do this without him. That's spiritual maturity. Spiritual immaturity is the guy who will allow his life now to be governed by his emotions, and his emotions take him away from God, take him away from the will of God, takes him away from the things of God, and he gravitates more towards the things of the world. Is that you? Are you at that point where your intelligence, you try to lift that above the Word? I mean, you can't tell some people something. Even sometimes when I'm preaching now, there are more people online trying to tell me how to preach it, instead of just sitting your tail down and listening to what I'm saying. And it's like how do you teach somebody that thinks they already know everything?
And so, you know, right now in our lives, I mean, we'll be 40 years next year, and it's like we've been through a lot, but we still will not come to the place where we think we know everything, because we know that spiritual maturity is always remaining teachable. It's always remaining as a student so that you continue to grow. I don't wanna stop growing. I don't wanna get to the point where I'm still saying what I said 40 years ago because I have ceased to grow, and I've ceased to mature, and I've ceased to allow the Holy Spirit to take me deeper and deeper in terms of certain things that I understand. I am calling every world changer to commit your life to rely and to rest and to trust and to accept the truth that the Holy Spirit is your administrator, and through him we move, through him we breathe, and through him we have our very being.
But if you decide not to, oh, well, but I'm telling you one thing. I do know we're gonna stick with the Holy Spirit. Come hell or high water, we're gonna stick with the Holy Spirit, because I ain't never been to heaven before, and I don't ever wanna go to hell. But I at least wanna know that I have a relationship with the one who's in heaven so that I won't walk right past him when I go there. I don't wanna be so busy working for God that I forget to know who he is and have fellowship with him, amen. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord.
Now, look at this. You don't steal because that action reveals a lack of trust in God as your source. See where that comes from? That's the only reason people steal. They steal because they're hopeless. "There is just no other way that I'm gonna be able to get money". And so, they come to the point of, "I'm gonna steal". Well, people ultimately steal because they don't accept or trust in the provision that comes from God. That's why people steal. People steal because they don't trust and believe God. People change their sex because they don't trust that God has made them the way he wanted to make 'em, and because of some things in their mind. They don't trust God anymore, so they trust what, you know, how they feel, you know? Dear God, just think about if we did everything we felt every day. It would be chaotic.
You know, what if you felt like cutting somebody's throat? You can't do everything you feel. I'mma go to that 80-year-old woman in the line at the grocery store. I'm gonna push her 'cause I feel like it. You don't do everything you feel. Allowing your feelings to govern you, your feelings are unreliable. Why? They change, they change, but the Word does not change. And, you know, that time has come, and that the Bible prophesies that, you know, men will call what's good bad, and they'll call what's bad good, and there will be a revolt against what's true and against the Word. And people will walk away from the Word, and people will stop preaching the Word, and they'll start preaching things that people wanna hear, even though it doesn't go with the Word. And I'm not doing that. I'm just not gonna do it. I don't care.
Listen, everybody can leave. I'm gonna stick with the Word, 'cause I got to see Jesus. I got to stand before the Lord, or the Lawd, and I gotta give an account of what he told me to do. I'm sticking with the Bible. I'm not gonna say, "Well, you know, I hear what you're saying, Preacher, but that's old-fashioned. People don't do that today". Listen, you better listen to me. The Word ain't never gonna be old-fashioned. The Word ain't never gonna be outdated. The Word that was truth 2,000 years ago is true today. You're gonna have to make a decision that lines up with the Word, or you're gonna make a decision that you feel is an updated decision that doesn't line up with the Word.