Rabbi Schneider - Listening with Your Inner Man
We're going line by line through the book of Romans, and we're going to be picking up today in the eighth chapter and the fourteenth verse, which was where I left off last time. Now, there's much that I said last time, but I want to continue because this is such an important verse. Romans 8:14. Hear the Word of God. "For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God". It's really interesting how much emphasis the epistles of Paul and the letters of John place on being led by the Spirit. Listen to this again because I'm going to contrast it. Listen. "For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God".
You see, when the New Testament writers wrote the New Testament for us, whether it was Peter, James, or Paul, or John, they didn't have a Bible like you and I have today-one book with all the different letters of the New Testament, all the pages of the Hebrew Bible. They had fragments in some of the synagogues from the Hebrew Bible. But they didn't have today in written form the complete New Testament as you and I have. And so they were totally depending on the Spirit. Now, the words of Yeshua had been circulating to the churches. Paul was writing letters to the different churches. He wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus, he wrote a couple letters to the church at Corinth, etc. And it was being passed on verbally and eventually written down for others to read as well, copies being made. But they were totally dependent, beloved, on the Spirit.
And unfortunately, I think the challenge that you and I are facing is that we don't depend on the reality of the Spirit of God enough. You and I today sometimes are not aware that the written word of God alone is not enough. We need a marriage in our life between the written word of God and the Holy Spirit at work. The Spirit and the Word, beloved, work together. So Paul said, "Those that are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God". But if we're not aware of the Holy Spirit, if we're not listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit... What do I mean when I say "listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit"? Jesus said, in the book of Revelation, "He that has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches". And so Yeshua is saying, "Listen, if you can hear what the Spirit is saying, then listen".
But if we're not expecting the Holy Spirit to speak to us, if we're not actively listening... And what do I mean by actively listening? I mean that we're very conscientious, beloved, listen now, of our inner man, of our inner man. Because the way the Holy Spirit speaks to us, the way that we're led by the Spirit is primarily through the inner man. It's through the witness of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And so we develop what I call the art of intuitive listening. And to be able to better be led by the Spirit, to hear the voice of the Spirit, to discern the leading of the Spirit... Because once again, Paul says, "Those that are led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God".
And so to be led by the Spirit, we must become conscious of His leading. We must be able to discern the movement of the Spirit within us. And the way that we do that is by practicing discipline in our life in which we're taking time every day to disconnect from the world to simply look up and know that He is God. You see, the Lord told us in the Psalms, "Be still and know that I am God". But if we're not taking the time to discipline ourselves, to just sit before Him, to simply be still, if we're not taking the time to build that discipline in our life, it's going to be very difficult to be led by the Spirit. Instead, we're going to be led by technology, we're going to be led by our smartphone, we're going to be led by the culture, we're going to be led by the pressure of life, the pressure of our job, the pressure of relationships, the fear of man.
You see, we need to break all that off and set aside time to just develop a conscious awareness of God's presence in our life. Many of you that have been following my ministry, you've heard me talk about this often, but it is so very important. A good tool that I like to recommend to people is the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. You can live stream it. And basically, it's just sanctified worship music, singing unto the Lord, not with real high energy, but just soft because the Holy Spirit is primarily gentle. David said, of the Lord, "Your gentleness has made me great". Remember, Elijah said that the Lord is primarily... He's not in the earthquake. He's not in the fire. He's in, listen now, the still small voice. The voice of the Holy Spirit, the leading of the Holy Spirit it's such an art. It require such an awareness that if we haven't developed the awareness, if we're not listening, we'll miss it.
Listen again to the verse we're focusing on. Paul said, Romans 8:14, "For all who are being led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God". A few weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a service that I just showed up to encourage a friend. I just wanted to bless this brother. So I drove down to where he pastors on a Sunday morning, and I got there. It was a small little church. And I got there, he said, "Hey, would you be willing to share just for about five minutes"? And I said, "Sure". So I sat down and I said, "Lord, what would you like me to share"? I didn't go there to preach. I went there just to encourage this brother.
So there was something that was already stirring in my heart that would have been real easy for me to communicate because it was really passionate in me. And I said, "Lord, what is it that you want me to share? I'm feeling this particular passion about what I've been meditating on before you, but I want to make sure that this is what you want me to share". And as I was sitting in my seat, in the pew there-it was really just a chair-looking up to the Lord, "What should I share"? I faintly saw... And beloved, this is what I want to stress. It was so faint what I saw. It was so far away what I saw. But I saw a scripture reference. And it was different from what was in my heart that I wanted to share. But when I inquired to the Lord, "What should I share"? I saw... Again, it was so faint. It was so far away. But I saw in the spirit a Scripture reference.
Again, if I hadn't developed a spiritual sensitivity, I would have never even known it because it was so vague. But I saw it. It was like a silent, seeing, and hearing. And then I went to open my Bible to look up what that verse said and I just randomly just opened my Bible to be able to turn to where that verse was. But when I looked down to where I'd randomly open the Bible to, beloved ones, it was on the verse that I just saw in the Spirit, which is not a verse that I had turned to often. And so it wasn't like my bible was worn out there and it just turned to it because it had been worn. The point was I was led by the Spirit. And the way that I was led was not the Lord speaking to me with a thunderous voice that I couldn't have missed. No, rather, He spoke to me in such a way that I saw in the Spirit in such a way that was so subtle, that if I hadn't developed my spiritual sensitivities by simply practicing being still before the Lord every day and waiting on Him, asking me just to become sensitive to His voice, if I hadn't been practicing that discipline in my life, I would have missed it when He spoke to me.
So I want to encourage you today. If you really love Jesus, if you're really hungry for God, I mean, you want Him more than anything else in your life, and you're willing to do anything to find Him, to be led by Him, to be walking in divine alignment with Him, to be living under His anointing, beloved, it takes some spiritual discipline. And that's why Paul said, as you've heard me say many times, "Bodily discipline is profitable," because it helps you in this life. But he said spiritual discipline is even more profitable, because it won't even it won't only rather help you in this life, but it's even going to bear proof for you in the life to come. And so we need to be led by the Spirit of God. And we have to play our part to come under His voice in order to be successfully led by Spirit and to bear much fruit as a result.
The Spirit Himself testifies... This has to do with what I was just saying. "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God..." Now, let's focus really down deep on this for a second, because I don't want us to miss that. Because a lot of times we know we hear scripture and we don't really get a full impact from it because it just... Some of it is just words. We intellectually understand it, but we don't really grab a deeper revelation. But I want us to consider, "The Spirit Himself testifies" listen now, "with our spirit that we are the children of God".
See, oftentimes today Christian people are running around looking for the manifestation of the Spirit. They're running around looking to get a word from somebody, a prophetic word from somebody. They're running around looking to see a miracle, looking to see a physical healing. They're running around to different places, even not only in their own city, but even times across the United States or around the world, to where God is moving. And they're looking for the Spirit primarily by looking for His activity through outside phenomenon. And we praise God for when the Lord manifests His glory in the earth by doing miracles.
We praise God when we see and experience the gifts of the Holy Spirit manifest. These are all great things. Healing, miracles, tongues, all these things are fantastic, and they're life to the church. The church needs the gifts of the Spirit. But beloved, there's something below and deeper than this. And that is the internal witness of the Spirit, where He bears witness with our spirit so we can sense not only that we're the children of the Father, that were children of God, but we can also sense His leading. So that we have a sense within us as to whether we should call this person or not call this person, whether we should take this action that we may be considering about any given detail of our life or not take that action.
If you're in ministry, the Spirit will lead you whether to go this direction or that direction. And how does he lead you? Listen, listen to verse 16 again. "The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit..." And where's our spirit? Our spirit is not out there somewhere. Right? Our spirit is not out there somewhere. Our spirit is inside us. And so if we're going to have the witness of the Spirit leading us, we have to become sensitive to what is going on inside us.
Many years ago, over 37 years ago, I can only go back... it was in 1978 the Lord revealed himself to me supernaturally in a vision, as many of you know. Approximately three years after that, I was sitting down one morning and I was going through a deep season of repentance. And suddenly as I was just sitting down during this great season of repentance in my life, the Spirit of the Lord, literally, beloved ones, He manifested Himself above my head so that I visibly saw Him just like Acts 2 when the disciples visibly saw the Spirit manifest his tongues. I didn't see Him with my physical eyes, but I saw Him with my spiritual eyes as clear as I had seen anything in my life with my physical eyes. He manifested Himself above my head, and then He came... Listen, this is the point I want to go to. He then came through my head and took possession of what the Bible calls our inner man. And in that instant, I realized that when the Bible says we have an inner man, we literally, scientifically have an inner man.
There's something inside us that has physicality to it. It's the place where the Spirit lives. And I noticed that day when the Spirit manifested Himself above my head that He can listen now through my head. In other words, His primary way of imparting Himself to me was not in my head, but rather it came through my head, and it was in my inner man. And so listen again, I want us to become people that have learned how to discern the movement of the Ruach HaKodesh. We call in Hebrew, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit inside us, the Ruach Elohim, the Spirit of God. "The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God". That's why Jesus said, "You believe because you see".
And that was fantastic. That's why He did the miracles, so they'd see and come to Him. But then He went on to say there's something more. He said, "But blessed are those that can believe without seeing". That's where He wants to bring us all to. Practice becoming aware of what's going on inside you. Too many of us, my beloved friends, we're out of touch with what's going on inside us. We live in a culture that's out of touch. Even children today, by and large, little kids they don't play outside anymore. They're not rooted to the earth. They're not even rooted to real relationship. They're rooted to their video games and their smartphone games and rooted to some type of pseudo-reality that's outside themselves in technology.
We're living in a cultural crisis in which people are no longer rooted to themselves. They're no longer aware of who they are in the outside. They're looking outside themselves for life. And, beloved, that is not only a pseudo-reality but it's a reality that stems from the powers of darkness, whose purpose is to disconnect us from our inside where God is when we receive Him. And be connected to a pseudo-reality of technology instead so that He can control us through demonic input that's being generated, not by God's Spirit that's bearing witness with our spirit on the inside, but that rather we're being controlled by the world.
And so let's get back to ancient truths. Let's get back to divine wisdom. We need to pull back from all the technology. We need to pull back from the world. And we need to recognize that you and I have been connected to God by being created in His image. And then when we receive Yeshua, He comes to live inside us. And by walking in that supernatural reality of knowing that we've been created in His image and in His likeness and that the way we fellowship with Him, the way we commune with Him, the way we abide in Him is by becoming aware of His spirit inside us.
When we enter into that zone, we're going to be led by the Spirit of God. "For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God". Verse 16, "The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God". Beloved, this is Rabbi Schneider saying today, God loves us so much. We don't have any way we could possibly comprehend how much He loves us. And only is we put Him first and seek to disconnect from the world in order to be connected to Him will we enter into the deeper realities that His word has promised. And Jesus is even now declaring over our lives.