Joyce Meyer - The Importance Of The Holy Spirit

We need to know the Holy Spirit as a person, not a person like we are, but a person, and I say that he's a person because he has all the traits of personality. Everything that makes a person a person, he has it. The Holy Spirit is not an it, he's not an influence, he does influence us, but he's much more than an influence. He's not just a power or a presence, although he does all those things. He is a person. He has knowledge, he has a mind, he thinks, he knows things, he has feeling, and he has will. And I want to just share a couple scriptures with you just to verify my point.

1 Corinthians 2:11, "For what person perceives (knows and understands) what passes through a man's thoughts except the man's own spirit within him"? So, I can look at you and you can be sitting there smiling at me, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're paying one bit of attention to what I'm saying. You can be thinking about something totally different. Well, I don't know it, but your spirit knows it. You know, the inner part of you knows. Well, it's the same way with the Spirit of God. He is the only one who fully knows the mind of God.

So, when we pray to know the mind of God on something, it's very important to realize that the Holy Spirit is living in us, and he's the one that will reveal the mind of God to us. So, when it comes to quote, "Hearing from God", or being led by the Holy Spirit, we talk a lot about the still, small voice or many times when God speaks to you, it's gonna sound like your own thoughts but there's a different emphasis on it.

And so, there's a lot of ways that we can hear from God, and I'm not get into teaching on that. That's another teaching for another time, but I want you to know that when you have the Holy Spirit filling your life, you can expect to have a greater and a different level of communication with God than what you might have without that. It has nothing to do with your salvation. We're saved by the blood of Christ, but when we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we stay filled with the Holy Spirit, and I don't think it's just a one-time zing that we get, I believe that one day in the world sucks out everything you've got and you need to get a fresh filling every morning in order to get out and function the way that we should, and being all filled up with the Holy Spirit is not about being a Christian, it's about living like a Christian.

Like one of the gifts of the Spirit that we'll read about later in 1 Corinthians 12 and that scripture starts out, "I don't want you to be ignorant concerning the gifts of the Spirit". And yet, there are many people that are ignorant concerning the gifts of the Spirit. They lack knowledge. And there was a time in my life when I didn't have the slightest idea what those gifts were or were they available, or should I want them, or should I just assume if God wanted me to have one, he'd give it to me? I didn't know. And I'm sure that there are people even here tonight that you don't know. Maybe everything that I'm saying to you is gonna be totally like an eye opener and maybe for some of you, it's just gonna be a refresher.

I taught this in chapel at my ministry this week and so many people said to me, "Boy, did I need that! Man, it brought a fresh awareness of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in my life". And I mean some people that were seasoned believers sent me text messages, "That's exactly what I needed to hear". So, we need to realize that the Holy Spirit wants to do supernatural things for us, in us, and through us and one of the gifts of the Spirit is a word of knowledge. Now, that basically just means that you can know something that you don't know, that the Holy Spirit can cause you to know something that you don't know and chances are, many of you have words of knowledge at different times but you don't even know what it is.

You think it's just a coincidence, or an oops, or whatever. I believe that God functions that way a lot as I preach because I'll have people say or write to me, "How did you possibly know that about me? How did you know that's what I was going through"? Well, I don't know, but the Holy Spirit knows and the Holy Spirit's in you, and the Holy Spirit's in me, so he's got this great communication thing going on where if we pay attention to him, we can know things that we don't know. But I had an interesting thing happen in a meeting just a couple of meetings ago and, you know, I always want to be bold and step out in the gifts of the Spirit if I feel like God's wanting to use me.

And so, before I came to the platform, back in the back, I kept just kind of seeing in my heart, this little boy about 8 or 9 years old with brown hair, and I felt like the Lord was putting on my heart that he had autism and his mother was a single mom who had been convinced that it was all her fault. And she just felt overwhelmed and didn't have any idea what she was gonna do. So, you know, of course, you go through what everybody else goes through. "What if I'm just making that up or what I'm just thinking it"? And see, the thing about those kind of things is sometimes you have to step out in faith.

Now, honestly, when you've got 5,000, 6,000 people in a room and you step out in faith, you're not taking too big of a chance because you might have somebody in the whole building that has that need so it's not like I'm the bravest person on the planet, but it was quite amazing by the time it got finished. So, I told my story and then pastor mike came to me the next morning. He showed me this picture of this little boy that was like 8 years old and he had all this brown hair and he said, "Here's your boy". He said, "His mother was absolutely blown away. It was life-changing for her".

And that's why God likes to do things like that sometimes, it's not so somebody can stand on the platform and look like they're super spiritual, but the gifts of the Spirit are for the good and the profit of everybody, and this woman desperately needed a word from God. She felt overwhelmed and over her head, and she felt guilty. And she had driven 2 hours, is that right, to come to that meeting. Wasn't even, she just needed to hear from God and right away, first session, God says that to her. Things like that can change your life.

Now, these kind of things don't necessarily happen all the time but, you know, it's being filled with the Holy Spirit, like pastor mike always says, it's not about being a Christian, it's about being a dynamic Christian. How many of you want to be a dynamic Christian? You want to have the wisdom and the power of God. So he, there's different gifts and we're gonna look at them later, but I thought that was a good example to share with you about how God can cause you to know something that you don't know. He knows the mind of God.

1 Corinthians 12:11 talks about the will of the Holy Spirit. "All these gifts, achievements, abilities are inspired and brought to pass by one and the same Holy Spirit, who apportions to each person individually exactly as he chooses". Now, I want to look at 1 Corinthians 12, and I'm just gonna read you this list of the gifts of the Spirit. I don't intend to get into a deep teaching on these things tonight because I have a different purpose, but I want you to be aware of them and I want to say to you that there's a lot of good material available on being filled with the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit and if you're hungry, and you want to learn, then you can get some of it. And we have a book called, "Filled with the Spirit". I've got another book called, "Knowing God Intimately", that just came out in paperback and it's about all the Fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit.

And let me say that you don't want to seek the gifts of the Spirit just to be a showoff and not seek the Fruit of the Spirit because love is the most important thing of all. Amen? And here again, I'm aware that some of you are just like, "I don't have a clue what you're talking about". Well, that's exactly why I'm talking about it. That's the whole reason I'm talking about it because so many people, and I cannot even imagine how many people watching by television you're like, "What is she talking about"?

Well see, the thing is is I went to church for many, many, many years and I had no idea that we could have a victorious, overcoming life, instead of being overcome by everything, we could be the overcomers if we knew how to receive the strength and the infilling, the power of the Holy Spirit on a regular basis to help us be people who can instead of people who can't. And let me just throw this out to you 'cause one of the things that one of the men at my chapel wrote and said to me, he said, "The thing that you said that impacted me the most was, 'you have not because you ask not'". And see, we can't presume and assume, you need to ask. So every day I pray that I will be strengthened with all might and power in the inner man and that I will be filled, and refreshed, and refueled with the Holy Spirit.

I don't know if you are aware of pastor Tommy Barnett, but he's mine and Dave's pastor and a great man of God, been in ministry for 50 years, I guess, or more and really respect him. And he was at our board meeting and did some leadership training for us a couple of weeks ago and he said that three times a day, he stops what he's doing, and he asks the Holy Spirit to guide him, to direct him, to lead him into the will of God, and to enable him to do everything that he needs to do. I think we need to have a little better communication with this wonderful person who's come to live on the inside of us who brings us the presence of the Father, and the presence of Jesus the Holy Spirit who has such an awesome, amazing ministry to us, and I think that you can see this ministry in your life just grow dynamically, and you can be so much closer to God than what you ever have been if you'll simply learn to just ask.

And so, hopefully by the time we finish tonight, you're gonna realize, "Well, the Holy Spirit's the comforter. When I need comfort, I don't have to run to my friends. I can ask the Holy Spirit to comfort me. The Holy Spirit is my strengthener. Man, when I need strength, I can ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen me", and so on and so forth. So, what do you think? Does it sound good so far? And just think, we got three more sessions after this one. So, 1 Corinthians 12:1 says, "Now about the spiritual gifts (the special endowments of supernatural energy), brethren, I do not want you to be misinformed". That's another word they translated, "Misinformed", in the King James, it's, "Ignorant".

So verse, let's start in verse 6, "Now there are distinctive varieties of operation of working to accomplish things, but it's the same God who inspires and energizes them all in all. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Holy Spirit the evidence, the spiritual illumination of the Spirit for the good and the profit. To one is given in and through the Holy Spirit the power to speak a measure of wisdom, and to another the power to express a word of knowledge and understanding according to the same Spirit: to another wonder-working faith by the same Holy Spirit, to another the extraordinary powers of healing by the one Spirit: to another the working of miracles, to another prophetic insight (the gift of interpreting the divine will and purposes): to another the ability to discern and distinguish between the utterances of true spirits and false ones".

And boy, do we need that. Man, do we need that. I mean on a regular basis I pray for the discernment of the Holy Spirit to function and flow in my life so I don't think somebody wants to do me good when really they're out to use me or do me bad, or to think that something that somebody's saying is right when really it's not right at all. Let me say loudly, we need to stop believing everything that we hear on the news and everything we read on the web. Amen?

"And to another various kinds of unknown tongues, and to another the ability to interpret such tongues". And I'm sure you'd all like me to stop right here and give a big Bible lesson on speaking in tongues, but I'm not going to. I'm just gonna tell you that it is a wonderful gift and it is amazing to me that anybody who operates in these gifts, or believes in these gifts, they're called Pentecostals or charismatics. I wish that we could get beyond labels. Why can't we just be the children of God who believe the Word of God? Amen. Amen.

I mean some people, you know, say this one's a prosperity preacher and that one's, you know, this and that and something else. And it makes it sound like that's all that person ever teaches and that they're way out of balance on it and that's just, it's just silly. I mean, we all should believe the Bible and so really, no matter what denomination you're from or what the doctrine of that denomination is, and I'm not trying to offend anybody, we must believe what the Word of God says above what men say. And we're making a serious mistake if we don't do that. So really, if you're more interested in some of these gifts, then you need to study, and grow, and learn, and, you know, not every book you read is right on but most books, there's enough good stuff in it that you can learn something from it.

I'm reading a book right now on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. It's the third time I've read this book in my life and I love everything in it, but there's one part in here about one paragraph and I just didn't agree with it at all so I just wrote outside, "I don't believe this". So see, you don't have to swallow something just because somebody else says it. If you don't bear witness with it and you don't feel like, you know, you can be open to having your mind changed, but the point is is don't throw out somebody's teaching just because you find a thing or two that you don't necessarily agree with. Amen.

Now, real quickly, don't have time to park here but you need to be, we all need to be content with the gifts that God gives us and when I talk about gifts, it's not just those nine gifts that are listed there in Corinthians, but there are different manifestations of the power of God that work through us. I have a very strong gift of communication. I heard my husband say to somebody the other day, "That is one woman that can talk about anything". And the scary thing is I could probably sound like I knew what I was talking about.

And I mean when I was a kid in school, when I was in high school, I mean if I didn't know anything or hardly anything about the subject, I could write a paper on it that was brilliant. But then there's a lot of other things that I can't do. I mean I'm not great with all this modern technology and, you know, I mean selfies were out 3 years before I knew what they were. And I've still only taken one in my whole life and I I'm like, you know, maybe I'm wrong. I've spent all these years teaching people to die to self and now everybody takes pictures of their self all day long. So, for my birthday tonight, Jackie brought me a selfie pick. It's like stick, a selfie stick. So, you put your camera in it and you hold it out here, and you can take pictures of yourself all day. But I mean my 5-year-old grandson can work my phone better than I can.

So please, find what you're good at and do a lot of it. Amen? Find what you're good at and do a lot of it and the things you're not good at, either don't do any of it or do the least amount you can. Because you're gonna enjoy your life a lot more if you don't spend it trying to be a ten at something you're never gonna be more than a three at. Spend your time developing your strengths. I'm good at talking so I just do it a lot, works out good. Now, the Holy Spirit also has a mind, the mind of the Spirit, and that mind of the Spirit is in us.

Let's look at Romans 8:5, "For those who are according to the flesh and are controlled by its unholy desires set their minds on and pursue the things which gratify the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit set their minds on and pursue those things which gratify the Holy Spirit". Verse 6, "Now the mind of the flesh which is sense and reason without the Holy Spirit".

I love that. That's what the mind of the flesh is, it's just getting up here in your brain and trying to reason everything out and make sense out of it without considering at all the spiritual side of things and what the Holy Spirit wants to say or do. See, I can look at something and my mind says there's no way I can do that, but then my spirit says, "But all things are possible with God". So, we have to stop living off the top of our heads. I hate it when I ask somebody something and they say, "Well, off the top of my head". It's like, please, do not give me something off the top of your head. I can get something off the top of my head.

Now, Ephesians 4:30 tells us that the Holy Spirit can be grieved. Well, you can't be grieved if you don't have feelings. So, let's go for a minute and look how many of you would like to take a quick look at what kind of things grieve the Holy Spirit? Because I don't want to do that, do you? That's something that I really, really, really don't want to do because if he lives in us and he's grieved, then we're gonna feel that grieving too.

Ephesians 4:29 is where we'll need to start. "Let no foul or polluting language, nor evil word nor unwholesome or worthless talk ever come out of your mouth". Isn't that interesting how conviction fell right there? "But only such speech as is good and beneficial to the spiritual progress of others". I mean, you know, we say some of the dumbest things. I mean, so insensitive. I said to somebody the other day, good gracious. I had bought this top and it was a size I normally wear, a medium, but it was just really way too big for me.

So, I said to this person who's larger than me, I said, "You know, this thing is way too big for me, but it probably will fit you". I don't think that really helped her make spiritual progress that day. She probably had to spend the next hour getting out of the pit of insecurity. So, I'm just confessing here so I can let you know that we all have a long way to go. "That it may be a blessing and give grace (God's favor) to those who hear it. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God do not offend or vex or sadden him, by whom you were sealed (Marked, and branded as God's own, secured) for the day of redemption (and final deliverance through Christ from evil and the consequences of sin)".

Now, what in the world does it mean to be sealed by the Holy Spirit? Well, really bad example, but I keep my crackers in a ziplock bag because I want to keep 'em protected, and fresh, and good. They're protected in here and so they're sealed in here. And we are like in the Holy Ghost ziplock bag as we walk through the earth. Amen? And hopefully that doesn't sound disrespectful, but it's like we are sealed and branded, the Bible says, as God's own. So, when the devil looks at you, he sees the mark of God on you, but you need to know that that mark and brand is on you. And you need to say, "Devil, shut up. I belong to God and I am none of your business".

Now, you know, I know that my children do things they shouldn't do, and especially when they were younger, they did things that they shouldn't do. And they're my kids, and I'd correct them, but if a neighbor, a next-door neighbor came over and tried to tell me everything that was wrong with my kids, I would have been really put out. And so, God feels the same way when the enemy tries to accuse us to him. "Let all bitterness and indignation", now, this is really important, verse 31, "Let all bitterness and indignation and wrath (passion, rage, bad temper) resentment (anger, animosity) quarreling (brawling, clamor, contention) slander (evil -speaking, abusive or blasphemous language) be banished from you, with all malice (spite, ill will, or baseness of any kind)".

So, here's the deal, if we don't want to grieve the Holy Spirit, then we need to really pray for God to give us lots of help on using wisdom with our words, and we're gonna make mistakes. "No man can control the tongue", the Bible says that. We need God's help on a regular basis, but at least to have that awareness of the power of words and at least when we say a bunch of dumb stuff, be willing to repent. I think a lot of times we just don't think it's a big deal, ya know? Gossip, talebearing, telling people's secrets, uncovering people's sins. "Oh, did you hear? Did you hear? You would never believe".

Come on, let's go back to the little golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". There's no such thing as a happy life without an abundance of forgiveness. I've had to forgive somebody this week. There's rarely ever more than a few days that go by that you don't have an opportunity to be offended, but you don't have to take offense.

The Bible says, "Don't take offense and don't give offense". So, we say to somebody, "You offended me". No, you took offense. It wasn't that they offended you, you took it and a lot of times, most of the time, people don't even know what they're doin'. When I said, you know, "Boy, this blouse is way too big for me, but I think it'll fit you", I mean, I wasn't trying to be rude or offensive. I was trying to give her a gift. But I did a really bad job of it, amen? And I'm supposed know what I'm doing. And I think it's just nice, you know, when those things happen just say, "Ooh Lord, I'm sorry", you know? It's good to stay in that kind of communication, that kind of conversational relationship with God where you don't let things linger.

And, you know, the minute that somebody hurts your feelings or you start to feel that unforgiveness, the best thing to do is to is even say out loud, "I will not be offended". Talk to God, "I will not be offended. Help me not to be offended. Help me not to be offended", because the quicker we forgive people, the easier it is to do it. It gets harder the more we rotate our minds around and around what they've done, then it begins to take roots in us. Let's try to believe the best of every person. Now, there are 25 names of the Holy Spirit in the Bible, 25 different names of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. I don't expect you to remember these, I don't even know that they'll mean that much to you, but I think that I'm just gonna take a minute to read them because I just want you to see how much he's talked about all throughout the Bible and how just the different things that we can look to him to do.

So, he's the Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jehovah, the Spirit of the Lord Jehovah, the Spirit of the living God. Aren't you glad that we serve a living God? I'm so glad I'm not worshiping some guy that came and said a few things and then died. Wow. The Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of his Son, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit of promise, the Spirit of holiness, the Spirit of judgment. We don't care for that one. The Spirit of burning. Whoo-hoo, yeah, the Spirit of burning. The Spirit of truth. The Holy Spirit reveals truth to us. Thank God for truth.

I just read a little book, it's not very big but it's called, "How to kill 11 million people". Now, you're like, "What in the world are you doin' reading a book like that"? Well, because it's about how did Hitler manage to kill 11 million people? Why didn't all these people in the prison camps just rush the guards and so the answer was, he lied to 'em. He lied to 'em. First of all, when he was politicking, he promised everybody that his way of life was gonna be better, and they were gonna have more money, and better jobs, and you know, blah, blah, blah. We hear some of that today, don't we?

Anyway, he lied to them about the prison camps. When they got on the trains, he lied to them about where they were going. He killed these people and it was all based on lies. But I am so grateful that we have the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, living on the inside of us and that he will reveal to us when we're being lied to. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding lives in you. The Spirit of counsel and might lives in you. The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, the Spirit of life. Man, we're not walking around... The oil of gladness, and I love this, we get to laugh.

I decided 2 weeks ago, the devil doesn't know how to laugh. That is just my own private thing there but, you know, I don't see any scripture where he's laughing. But God laughs and we laugh. Did you ever think about how powerful a laugh is? It's very powerful. The oil of gladness lives in us, the Spirit of grace, the Spirit of grace and supplication, the Spirit of glory, the eternal Spirit, and the comforter. Now, John 16, verse 7, okay now, this is so awesome. Jesus said, "However, I am telling you nothing but the truth when I say it is profitable (good, expedient, advantageous) for you that I go away".

Now, I'm sure that that just cramped the disciple's brain. "What do you mean I'm gonna be better off if you go away? How could anybody be better off if you go away, Jesus"? He said, "Because if I do not go away, the comforter", and in the amplified Bible, the comforter in the original language is a word that cannot possibly be described with one English word. You have to use many different words to describe what that word means. The counselor. When you need a word of counsel, you should always go to God first, always go to him and let him counsel you through his Holy Spirit.

Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong to go to a counselor or to go to someone for counseling, many times that is very helpful but you don't want to go to somebody that doesn't have the counselor. Always go to God before you run to anybody else and then let him speak through whoever he wants to speak through, or let him do it himself. "The counselor, the helper", boy, I love that. We're gonna talk about that pretty exclusively in one of these sessions. "The advocate", that means that he pleads our case. "The intercessor", he prays for us and through us when we don't know how to pray as we ought. He prays through us. "The strengthener". One message is gonna be on that. "And the standby", I love that word, the standby.

I don't know if you know what it's like to stand by on an airplane but it's like if you couldn't get a seat and you'd like to get on that plane, you can go on standby and you could literally sit right at the gate and wait to see if there's an opening. So, the Holy Spirit stands by you just in case there's something you need where he can jump on board and help you. I love it, I love it, I love it. "He will not come to you", now, this is such an important part, "Into close fellowship with you". Can everybody say, "Close fellowship"? "But if I go away, I will send him to you to be in close fellowship with you". Say, "Close fellowship". I love that.

God created us for fellowship, and he wants to communicate with us. A relationship is not one sided. You just don't do all the talking and God never says anything. God speaks. He speaks in many different ways. He speaks through nature, he speaks through the still, small voice. He speaks mainly through his word. God can even speak through our circumstances. God speaks in our heart. Sometimes he speaks even through desires, not desires of the flesh, but real true desires of the Spirit. And if you don't believe that God can talk to you, you know, when we talk to God, it's prayer but if we say God talks to us, they think we're paranoid. And, you know, you go in certain circles, and they just, I mean you just about get run out of the building if you say, "God said", but to me, I don't understand that because it's all over the Bible. "My sheep know my voice. The voice of a stranger, they will not follow".

Now obviously, you know, you can get in trouble thinking that you hear from God. There's learning, there's wisdom, but one of the ways that you learn is by making some mistakes and being willing to go back and say, "Well, man, I thought that was God but it wasn't, and I sure made a fool out of myself so let me learn from this and go on". But see, there's so much, and I hope just some of you, at least some of you here and watching by television, you're kinda like... "Well, I go to church. I go to church. I'm an usher. I believe the doctrines". No, I'm talking about close fellowship. Jesus didn't die so we could have a religion, he died so we can have a relationship with God through him.

And see, God cares about everything that concerns you. I mean the littlest, tiniest things that wouldn't even make any sense to anybody else, God cares about that with you. He's concerned about everything that concerns you, absolutely everything, close fellowship. And if nothing else, I want this message to bring you into a greater awareness of how the Holy Spirit is with you all the time. Jesus said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you. When I go away, I'm gonna send you another comforter". He's been with you and he will be in you. How much closer can you get than in you? Come on. I mean being a Christian is absolutely, taking a journey with God is an amazing, spiritual journey. There is nothing boring and dull about life with God.

Now, if all it is to you is a trip to church each week, go home and act like you're not changed, go back to church, then that's, you're gonna get tired of that pretty fast. But I'm telling you what, to know who you are in Christ and to know your inheritance in him, and to know the power that belongs to you as a believer, to know the power of the Holy Spirit that you can have in your life all the time. Well, there's many other things it says here and I have to get into some of them later 'cause I want to finish up with this, this one scripture.

You say, "Well, you know, do I have the Holy Spirit"? If you're born again, you have the Holy Spirit. I think that that's one of the places where we've made a mistake, you know, is to act like people don't have the Holy Spirit if they've not had some Pentecostal experience. First of all, we want to be careful about putting too much emphasis on experiences. You know, some people have them, some have some that are genuine, some have some that are... You know what I mean. Don't think that the way God deals with somebody else is the way he has to deal with you. The great thing about the Holy Spirit is he knows us as individuals, and he works with us and through us in different ways, and he manifests himself in different ways. And we don't need to be jealous of one another and competing with one another. We need to be working together with one another so we become one body working as a whole unit.

So, in John 20 after Jesus was resurrected from the dead, he appeared to the disciples and the Bible says, "He breathed on them and said, 'receive the Holy Spirit'". But then if you turn the Bible over two pages to the first chapter of acts he said, "Now, go and wait in the upper room for the promised outpouring of the spirit". And that's when they were, the Bible calls it, baptized in the Holy Spirit. They were flooded with the Holy Spirit. They're souls were defused with the Holy Spirit but then even in addition to that, we see Peter was in that upper room and he was baptized in the Holy Spirit but even with that, there are many times where the Bible says, "And Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit, and Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit".

So, we need fresh infillings and fresh visitations from God on a regular basis, and I don't think that we need to make some kind of a law out of how God touches us or how it happens. Some people believe that you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit when you're born again. Some people believe that you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit when you're baptized in water because that's when the Holy Spirit fell on Jesus. Some people believe that it has to be a separate experience that happens at a totally separate time.

You know what? We need to give God a little credit for being able to function and operate in a variety of ways and stop acting like I believe some people probably do receive everything day one when they're born again. You know, let's let God be God and not care how we got it as long as we get it. Amen? All I know is I just gotta be full to overflowing with the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Now, last scripture, Luke 11:13. You say, "Well, wow, how can I have more of the Holy Spirit? How can I be filled? How can I be flooded with the Holy Spirit"? It's very simple. First of all, you gotta be really hungry. You gotta want more. Not more Jewelry, more of the Holy Spirit. Luke 11:13, "If you then, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts that are to their advantage to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask and continue to ask him"!

So, here's what I just want to encourage you, we're gonna pray tonight but then I want you, I'd like to see you on a regular basis, "God, fill me fresh with your Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, fill me. I need your comfort. I need your strength". Talk to the Holy Spirit about his ministr... You don't pray to the Holy Spirit, you pray to God in Jesus' name through the Holy Spirit, but you can fellowship with the Holy Spirit.