John Bevere - The Secret to True Intimacy with God

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Now, a final secret that I’ve learned when it comes to intimacy with the Holy Spirit is this: if you don’t engage with Him, He will be silent. You know, something I’ve noticed in my 24 years of traveling to churches is that when the person driving picks me up, if I go to a really good church where they’ve developed capable workers, the person who picks me up is trained. Do you know what one of the things they are trained to do? Not talk to me. Yeah, their leaders say, «Don’t you talk to him unless he engages you.» Are you following me? I’ve gotten into cars before, and I do it on purpose: I start by asking my driver about his family, about the church, how long he has been with it. I realize that these guys won’t talk to me if I don’t say anything. I can sit there and open up emails, and they won’t say a word to me all the way to the hotel because that’s the way they’re trained.

Now, I find the Holy Spirit is a little like that; He will not engage you unless it’s an urgent matter from Jesus, like, «Hey, there are three men down there waiting on you; get down there,» or «I want you to go join this chariot.» Okay, but if you don’t engage Him, He remains quiet. He’s waiting for you to engage Him. This is why some Christians say the Holy Spirit has been quiet to them; they ask, «Why doesn’t God talk to me?» Are you engaging Him? Do you understand His personality? Are you realizing you are talking to the third person of the Godhead? Yes, they are one, but don’t separate them or confuse them. Are you with me? So talk to Him. You would be amazed at how He will respond if you talk to Him. Are you with me?

This is why many people say, «God hasn’t talked to me in weeks or years.» Why? They don’t engage Him. He’s almost like that driver; he won’t say something unless engaged. They’ll look at me; they’re trained to say, «Okay, the service is at 7; we’re going to pick you up at 6:25.» They know they have to say that to me, but if I don’t engage in conversation, we’re not going to have it. As a speaker, I have to make a real point to engage with the people picking me up. Lisa does the same thing because I want to know why I go to places, and they say, «Oh, your wife is amazing! She talked to us; she made me feel like I was the most important person in the world.» You know, that’s my wife; she will just make you feel so at home.

Now, Jesus continues His instruction to the disciples at the Last Supper, and listen to what He says: now here it really gets good. He said, «Oh, there is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now.» Now listen, He’s looking at these 11 guys: «I want to tell you so much more, but you can’t handle it right now.» Now, that gets my attention; that puts my radar sensors up. Right there, when the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. In other words, there are things I want to tell you that I can’t, but when the Spirit of Truth comes, He will—did you just see that? He will not be presenting His own ideas; He will be telling you what He has heard. He will be telling you about the future. He will bring Me glory by revealing to you whatever He receives from Me. All that the Father has is Mine. This is what I mean when I say the Spirit will reveal to you whatever He receives from Me. Remember Jesus said it was best—everybody say best—that He goes away. The best thing for you guys is that I go away. Right now, we see the continual benefit of this in these words I just read you: there is much more Jesus wanted to reveal to them, but He couldn’t do it. Then He said, «But when the Spirit of Truth comes.»

So, if you recall, after Jesus was raised from the dead, 10 of the disciples were in a room with the doors locked, and boom! He appears. Now remember, He’s not a spirit because He said, «Handle Me. A spirit doesn’t have flesh and bone like I have,» but He walked through a wall. Now that’s pretty cool; that means we’re going to get to walk through walls when we get our glorified bodies! Okay, so the disciples are amazed. Thomas is not there, and a few days later, they all come to Thomas and say, «Dude, we saw Him! He like came in, and we touched Him.» Thomas said, «You’re nuts! What have you gone back to drinking since He was crucified? You saw Him? I will not believe it unless I put my finger in His hands and my hand in His side. I won’t believe it.» So what does Jesus do? He pops in a few days later; this time, Thomas is there. He said, «Okay, Thomas, come here. Let’s take care of this first. Put your hand in My side; put your fingers in the holes. See, I’m alive.» Thomas collapses and goes, «My Lord and my God!»

Now, listen to what Jesus says: «Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have touched Me, you have handled Me, you believe. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.» Now, I used to think, «Jesus, that seems kind of harsh! The guy’s already groveling on the floor; he’s already saying please forgive me my unbelief,» right? And then Jesus looks at him and makes a statement like that. I thought that’s a little hard; that guy’s repentant. The Lord spoke to me and said, «I wasn’t rebuking Thomas; I was making a statement of fact. What I was saying is it’s much more blessed to not see Me because you can go to a deeper level of relationship.»

Now let me explain what’s happening here. There are three levels of relationship you need to write this down. Number one, it is the lowest level of relationship: that is the physical. Everybody say the physical! Okay, this is the level of relationship that many people unfortunately get married off of. Right? «She’s got a great body; he’s got a hot body,» and they ignore everything else. «I can ignore that; I know we don’t get along; I know we don’t talk very much together, but my goodness, I need this girl,» and they get married. So they get married on the physical level, right? Unfortunately, the soul level wasn’t developed, so what happens is, after marriage, after the honeymoon basically wears off, she goes to her interests with her girlfriends, and he goes to his interests with the sports, and they lose contact with each other because why? They got married based on the physical.

Okay, are you following me? All right, the next level up, I’ve already mentioned, would be the soul or the personality of a person. Now this is the level at which David and Jonathan connected: «The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David.» That was a comment made by the writer of Samuel. David made this comment: «I am distressed for you, my little brother Jonathan; you have been very pleasant to me. Your love for me was wonderful, surpassing the love of a woman.» He was not talking about a perverted relationship with Jonathan; he was talking about how their souls were so tightly knit, so connected in their souls, that it surpassed the connection of soul he had with his wives like Michal and Abigail. Well, actually, it was just Michal then! Are you with me? Because Michal was the only wife he had then. Now, I want to say this: this is the level where hopefully marriages connect too.