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I just don't. We talk a lot about God the Father and a lot about Jesus, and we should, but I went to church for many, many years and, of course, I heard of the Holy Spirit in the benediction, but I never heard a message on the Holy Spirit or how important He was to me in my daily life. And so, we want to dig in tonight, and hopefully, everybody can leave here knowing how important the Holy Spirit is to you.
Well, who is the Holy Spirit? We usually refer to Him as the third person of the Trinity, but "third" doesn't mean that He's any less than the other two. It's not like one is the most important, two second important, and three is kind of on the bottom of the ladder. We serve one God in three Persons. Of course, that doesn't make any sense to us. We can't figure that out mathematically in our heads, and one big favor you could do yourself right now is if you would just make a decision to stop trying to figure God out because you're not going to. He just doesn't do things the way we would do them.
I'm just going to read you two scriptures I think that will verify the fact that the Bible talks about all three persons of this one amazingly wonderful God that we serve. "God said, 'Let us,' Genesis 1:26, 'Let us—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—make mankind in our image, after our likeness, and let them have complete authority.' Wow, everybody say 'authority.' Authority—that's something else I never heard about. I never knew that I had any authority. I just thought, well, whatever happened, good or bad, was God, and I just had to put up with it. There were so many things that I just didn't know because nobody was teaching them to me.
'And let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame beasts, and over all the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth,' including the chief creep, the devil. In creation, Father God always refers to us in 'our' and not 'I.' Matthew 28:19, 'Go then and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.' When Jesus left the Earth, He sent the Holy Spirit to represent Him and to act in His behalf.
And in John 16:7, Jesus said, 'However, I am telling you nothing but the truth when I say it's going to be better for you when I go away because if I don't go away, then the Holy Spirit can't come.' Now, I'm sure that the disciples just couldn't make any sense out of that at all. How could anything be better than having Jesus right there with you? Well, the thing that's so much better about it is because Jesus was in a human body, just like I am, and I, if I'm here on this platform, can't be across the street, and Jesus couldn't either. But the Holy Spirit is not confined to a body. He's in every believer. If you've received Christ as your Savior, you're the home of God now. That just blows my mind.
You're the new temple of God, not one made with human hands. But see, we—that won't go in—that we're the home of God. If we really believed that and if we really believed that God was with us all the time, we wouldn't do some of the things we do. Wow, I hope somebody in this building tonight really wants to get on with it and be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. Like I said, I want you to feel good, and I want you to know how much God loves you and how awesome you are, but I also really want people to understand that we have got some serious problems, and they're not just in the world; they're also in the church. Church, and I—there are great churches; I'm not picking on any church. When I'm talking about the church, I'm talking about all of us, everywhere, all around the world. There are millions of us, and if we could ever stop fighting long enough, we might get something done.
Now, John 14:26, I want you to really look at some of these words with me. 'But the Comforter—see, when you need comfort, you really don't have to call up a friend and tell them your problem and say, can you comfort me? It's okay if you want to do that, but you have a Comforter living inside you—and so, when you're hurting, ask Him to comfort you. You have not because you ask not. He's your Counselor.' I'm not against people going and paying for counseling if that's what you feel like you need to do. Sometimes it's good to talk to somebody, but I didn't have the money for that, and I had a boatload full of problems, and I can tell you, the Holy Spirit was my Counselor and walked me out of the horrible mess I was in because of the dysfunctional way that I grew up. So, if you can't afford counseling, you don't have to be concerned. The Counselor—not a counselor, the Counselor—lives on the inside of you. He's our Helper, Intercessor—He prays through us and for us—Advocate; He's like our lawyer before the Throne of God; Strengthener—oh, does anybody need strength? I'll tell you one thing, I do—and our Standby. I love that the Amplified Bible says that. I love that it's like, you know, if you go on standby on an airline, it's like you don't have a seat, but you just stand by to get the first available seat. Well, the Holy Spirit is just standing by all the time, seeing if we'll let Him do something in our life. That's right, amen.
Now, you don't pray to the Holy Spirit; you pray to the Father in the name of Jesus through the Holy Spirit. He leads you and guides you. 'The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, in My place, to represent Me and act on My behalf, He will teach you all things.' So, the Holy Spirit is your teacher. I'm a teacher, but He is the Teacher, and He will cause you to recall and will remind you of, and bring to your remembrance, everything I have told you. Maybe you're young enough that your memory still doesn't need any help, but I'm finding I need a little more and more help all the time these days, amen.
John 15:16 and 17 says, 'You have not chosen Me, but I've chosen you, and I have appointed you, and I have planted you.' I drew a circle around that, and I just want to ask, has God planted any of you somewhere where you don't want to be? I mean, God puts us places, and He doesn't always put us somewhere that's really comfortable for us. You tell God you want to be used by Him, and then you cry because you're the only Christian where you work. You ask for opportunities.
I have planted you, why? That you might go and bear fruit and keep on bearing. God hasn't called us to be busy; He's called us to be fruitful, and that your fruit may be lasting, that it may remain and abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name (and here again, I love the Amplified Bible for this; it explains what it means to pray in Jesus' name), when you ask, when you say in Jesus' name, it says you're presenting to God all that I am. So, thank God I don't pray in Joyce's name. When I go to God, I'm not presenting all I am and my good record for the week; I'm presenting all that Jesus is. You understand that when you pray in His name, you're going through Him to the Father. Aren't you glad you don't have to try to get there because of your good merit? And verse 17, of course, is probably one of the most important verses in the Bible, and this is what I command you: that you love one another.
Very simple. I had 'love' tattooed on one of my ankles here, that one, so I remember to walk in love. Sometimes we need to be reminded, don't we? The Comforter, the Counselor, the Helper, the Advocate, the Intercessor, the Strengthener, and the Standby will not come to you into close fellowship with you. Can you say "close fellowship"? Close fellowship. And He said, 'I'll never leave you nor forsake you, but I'll be with you always, even to the ends of the earth.' And God is in heaven, Father God is in heaven on His throne in heaven, Jesus sits at His right hand, and the Holy Spirit lives in us, bringing us the presence of the Father and the Son, and we're to be in close fellowship with Him. You can talk with the Holy Spirit all day long. He wants to lead you and guide you. He's a wonderful friend.
Now, Jesus didn't actually start His public ministry until He was 33, so He trained 33 years for a three-year ministry. John the Baptist trained 30 years for a ministry that lasted four to five months. I wonder how many people would be willing to do that. We want to get born again and get a platform because we got a gift. Amen. And I'll just throw this out for good measure, why not? The Bible says not to put a new convert in leadership because if you do, they'll become puffed up with pride, and people do that all the time. Some kid will get saved, and they can sing good, so the next thing you know, they're on the platform, and then the next thing you know, they got a record deal, and then they're traveling all over the country, and then the next thing you know, they fall into sin, and another embarrassment comes to the name of Christ. And as leaders in the body of Christ, we should not do that to people. You got to have some preparation, you got to have some training, got to have some experience. Amen. Don't be in such a big hurry to get where you think you're going. Don't run out ahead of God. I mean, when God called me to teach or told me I was going to teach, I thought for sure the next day I was going to the world. Well, it didn't work that way. It did not work that way. We all, if you're going to be worth your salt, you're all going to have to have your own little wilderness experience. Thank you, whoever that is. Some of you are in training right now, and you don't like what you're going through, and you don't understand it, and it doesn't seem fair, but later on, you will understand. I look back at my life now, and gosh, there's so much that goes on in a life, but boy, we can learn from every single thing that we go through. And when you, when you get to my point, it's like I look back, and even the mistakes I made, it's like I learned from those. Instead of being so upset about where you're at, ask God what you can get out of it. What can I reap out of this? How can this make me a better person? Amen. Oh, and by the way, just so God's not alive to serve us, we're supposed to be serving Him. Just in case you didn't know that, I wanted to be sure that I told you that. He's not like this spiritual slot machine, you know, where you throw in a prayer and pull a lever and expect to get a download of everything you want. Matter of fact, why don't you just take a vacation from telling God what you want. Come on, I dare you. Just give it three months and don't ask Him for anything except more of Him. Come on, we're going for it tonight.
But Jesus, now I want you to get this, Jesus did not try to go out and do any mighty works until He was baptized in the Holy Spirit. Now, we're going to have to cross some denominational lines here.
Luke 3:21 through 23, "Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and while He was still praying, the visible heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the bodily form of a dove, and a voice came from heaven saying, 'You are My Son, My Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.'" Now, the next thing the Bible says after Luke 3:21-23, then we go right to Luke chapter 4, "Then Jesus, full of and controlled by the Holy Spirit—see, the only way that you can handle a wilderness fight with the devil is if you're full of and controlled by the Holy Spirit—He returned from the Jordan and was led in by the Holy Spirit for during 40 days in the wilderness, in the desert, where He was tempted, tried, tested a little bit exceedingly by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they were completed, He was hungry." Now, I want you to watch this. The devil waited until He was at His weakest, and he does the same thing with us. He waits until we're really tired, or like a lot of times for me, I mean, you would not believe some of the stupid stuff that happens to us when we're out on the road. And it's because I need to be able to keep my mind on what I'm doing, but the devil works overtime trying to get me flustered and frustrated. We got to the FBO today; we had been guaranteed four automobiles; they had one. Nobody knew where the other were. Here's what I want you to understand, I'm so serious about this message tonight, when we are frustrated, tense, irritable, upset, you can't sense what the Holy Spirit is doing or wants to do. And this is exactly why the world is so full of strife and stupidity. Anyone else, do you ever have a temptation to get upset about this little stuff? Oh, come on, don't give me that. You know, the devil was called Lucifer, and he was one of the archangels, very beautiful, but he had a problem with pride, and he decided that he was going to lift his throne above the Throne of God, and God said, "I'll show you what you're going to get." You got kicked out of heaven, and he took a third of the angels with him, which I guess proves that angels have free will, and so the devil can only be in one place at one time, but he has a lot of little helpers; they're called demons. I know this is like, but see, if Paul said, "I don't want you to be ignorant," he—we need to be informed. Now, I'm not big on just talking about the devil all the time, and everything that happens is not the devil, and you know, every time you do something wrong, it's not the devil that made you do it, but there are a lot of things that are the devil, and the Bible says that we war not against flesh and blood, Ephesians 6, but against principalities and powers and wickedness in high places, and all the stuff that's going on in the world today, even though the enemy works through people, it's the enemy that is behind it. And people just keep getting mad at people and talking about people and gossiping about people, and we need to get to the source of the problem. How do you overcome evil? With good, Romans 12:21. If we would all walk in love and really just even start by liking each other, I—well, I—you're one of those tongue-talking people. No, that's not right. Everything's not right until you do it. So, the devil waited until he was really hungry, really tired, and really ready to get out of that place. The main way the enemy speaks to us is by putting thoughts in our mind. That's why we definitely need to know the Word because if you don't know the Word, you won't recognize the lies of Satan. Amen. When you know the Word, let's say you've done something wrong, and you've prayed, you've admitted it, you've confessed it before God, you've asked to be forgiven, and then tomorrow you still feel guilty. If you really know the Word, you'll know that that's the devil trying to make you feel guilty because if the sin's been forgiven, then there can't be any guilt attached to it.