The Power of the Spirit

0:00:00     Hey there, everyone, don’t miss today’s more faith, more life podcast. I’m going to talk to you about alternate lifestyle, the one that God gives you through the power of the Holy Spirit. Hello everyone, and welcome to another more faith, more life podcast. Today we’re going to talk about alternate lifestyle. Yep, an alternate lifestyle. You know what that alternate lifestyle is? That is living by the power of the Holy Spirit, living in the word of God, living in the power of God, all these kinds of things.

0:00:26     And so we’re going to talk about it and start with the power of the Holy Spirit and help you understand everything. Everybody can experience the power of the Holy Spirit. Do you remember what, well, maybe you don’t know. I’ll remind you what Jesus said before he was taken up to heaven, and I hope that you’re a believer that he was raised from the dead. I hope you believe that. And before he went up, he said, listen, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, all right?

0:00:57     And when he, so he said, go to Jerusalem, stay there, stay together, don’t go around, don’t move, don’t do anything, wait, because there’s power coming to you. And that’s what happened. And then we have the upper room and we have, we have the day of Pentecost when we think they were in an upper room, but either way they were meeting and the Holy Spirit came upon all of them. All right? Now we have a great prophecy too, from the Old Testament that says that the Holy Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh.

0:01:32     Now why is that important to you? Because in the Old Testament, which is what you may have heard, that you may not read it too much, but there’s some great stuff in there. And then the Holy Spirit would come on. People, yes, but only certain people, like people that we know by name. And the reason we know them by name is because it was such an exceptional thing that this person had the Holy Spirit upon them. Okay?

0:01:57     So you can name them like David or, you know, Jeremiah or Daniel or whatever, whoever these people are, and the Holy Spirit would come upon them, you know, remember Samson, you know, the Holy Spirit would come upon him and he’d have this great strength, you know, and so that would happen. But in the New Testament, then, once we get the new covenant through Jesus, something changes that God must have been very excited about and that Jesus must have been very excited about, because all of us, he says, here’s what’s going to happen, the Holy Spirit is going to be poured out and we say all flesh, meaning anybody and everybody that wants to receive the Holy Spirit, you still got to be a believer in Jesus and who he says he is. And then you can receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and it’s a holy spirit led life, and anybody can.

0:02:51     In fact, the prophet Joel in the Old Testament says, even your sons and daughters will prophesy. Now, that word prophecy, I don’t want to get into that much because some people say, well, that’s, you know, preaching and prophecy are the same thing. Others do it, and they, they start speaking in Elizabethan English, right? Thus saith the Lord, and they have the these and the thous, and others try to predict the future.

0:03:16     But either way, a remarkable moment came. It said in acts four, these people, they were in, they were in this room, and they were all praying, right? And the room where they were was shook. It began to shake. And it said everybody, everybody was filled with the Holy Spirit, and everybody began to speak. And it says in NIV, the version I’m using in the Bible says prophecy. But they began to speak for the kingdom of God.

0:03:50     You know, they began to speak the principles and the ways and that and glorify God and praise God. And it was happening. Everybody there had a mouth all of a sudden saying great things or prophesying great things. We may be preaching great things. We don’t know how it happened or how exactly, and it doesn’t matter. What does matter is everybody that was there, you just, you just had to be there. You could have just been, for once, right at the right place, at the right time, and wham.

0:04:21     Now you’re one of these inner circle people that’s living by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so they were all filled, and that’s a prophecy fulfilled there. That on all people, anybody, all people can have the power of the Holy Spirit. And, you know, it could be on different levels. You may never be a preacher. You may never be a singer. You may never be an evangelist or whatever. You could be a Sunday school teacher, maybe. Or maybe you could be a worship leader, whatever.

0:04:48     But you know what? You can be a parent. You can be a mom, a dad, a friend, aunt, uncle, good neighbor. You can be a good worker at work, that you’re walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, that people see a difference in you and you see a difference in you, and your life starts becoming different. It’s an alternate lifestyle of being filled and walking by the spirit of God rather than the way everybody else walks around. Right? Selfishness.

0:05:16     The Bible kind of calls it in the flesh or carnal or whatever. But, you know, you’re just being selfish, self-centered self you, everything’s you and you’re walking that way. You can be a believer in God and do that, but that’s not walking by the spirit. And it’ll cost you. You can’t experience the things of God that God wants for you. If you’re going to just cross it out and say, well, I’ll just be like everybody else and go to church or whatever.

0:05:40     And, and so when, then what happens is, and what we need so much of today is when the Holy Spirit comes on people. I mean, really comes when you have a great move of God. There is also the spirit of humility. And if there’s anything we need today in the body of Christ, it’s humility. Right? We have, we have the opposite. What’s happening is people are trying to, this is my opinion. People, men, women leaders are trying to do things and accomplish things by the power of the Holy Spirit.

0:06:14     At the same time, though, they’re feeding their ego or they’re feeding their insecurities. They’re feeding their personal value. So I’m going to do these great things. So what happens in so many services across the world, right? God’s trying to move. Maybe somebody’s sick and they want to pray for the sick. Or somebody’s in a wheelchair and they want to help them get out of the wheelchair, great. But what do they do?

0:06:41     What is so popular today and has been for since the 1950s and sixties? What’s so popular is turn it into a show where the whole service shuts down. One person is doing the praying, the other person is getting prayed for. Everybody in the, now the audience, it’s not a congregation church anymore. It’s an audience watching with bugged eyes out. What’s going to happen? Are they going to come out of the chair and you try and you pray for him once, you pray for him again. Now he said, get up out of that chair. And everybody’s, the whole thing shut down.

0:07:16     And I can’t imagine Jesus having to pray for 5000 people. And he went out and he said all of them were healed. I used the number 5000. Whatever crowd was there, everybody was healed. And I can’t imagine him stopping and saying, okay, everybody watch how I do this. Watch and take 1520 minutes per person. Have you ever seen that? Yeah. Ten minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes per person. Okay, let’s pray again. Now get up and try again. How do you feel?

0:07:45     Okay. A lot of people do that. I might be criticized for even saying it. But how could Jesus do it? He would have just gone through the crowd, wouldn’t he? Don’t you see it? If there’s 5000 people there, 2000, 3000, and everybody gets healed, how’s he going to do it? He’s walking through. The power of God is present to heal and people being healed by the power of the Holy Spirit and it’s just flowing and going and flowing and going.

0:08:09     And if there’s a demonic person, right. We don’t want to draw attention to the deliverance. Jesus would say, right, quiet, come out of them. Be quiet and come out of them. That was his general rule, right? General rule. One time he had a conversation, but that was rare, right? And so the power of the Holy Spirit, then it comes on us and it should humble us and realize something is happening that’s not of me. I can’t be the center of attention.

0:08:37     I can’t stop the show. And now the show starts up around me. Maybe we’re worshiping, the music’s going and somebody wants to prayer. Okay, everything’s. Let’s watch our favorite pastor, our favorite evangelist, whatever. Let’s watch him in action. Let’s watch him in action. That’s totally against the Holy Spirit working because the whole idea of the Holy Spirit being poured out was what? Being poured out on everybody.

0:09:03     If you want healing to happen in your church or a prayer meeting or a home group or whatever, everybody should pray for it. It shouldn’t be one person stops and everybody else turns into an audience. And the thing I like about that is everybody’s just interceding for healing, come, Lord. And that if everybody’s praying, there could be that I’ve done it in our church. Of course I walk through and lay hands on people sometimes and do it. But the nice thing is if everybody’s participating by the power of the Holy Spirit, I can’t and no one else can go away and say, well, Pastor Steve healed me when he prayed for me.

0:09:36     How do you know it was me? How would you know it was me? If everybody there is praying, somebody, maybe they got the gift of healing. Maybe the person sick got the gift of healing. But we don’t know and we don’t care. Cause we’re not trying to show ourselves, we’re trying to humble ourselves. And why is that so important? Look how much you’re losing in this prideful generation, right? God humbles the proud. The proud get humbled, you know, but he, but he opposes.

0:10:06     You know how to oppose. You’re the opposing team. God opposes the proud. Think about it. Think about it. Think about our culture. Think about our churches. Think about our inner workings. Think about pastors, leaders, evangelists, teachers, apostles. Think about Sunday school teachers. Think about people at work who carry a Bible. Think of those that don’t. Think about all the pride and ease that is in people today who consider themselves part of the body of Christ.

0:10:33     It’s really bad, and we pay for it because it says God opposes the proud, but he shows favor, favor to the humble. Could you use a little favor? Ah. Are you going the wrong direction? You want to give favor? How do you do it? Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord. Humble. Down. Down. You’re standing up so tall. Prideful ego. Nobody talks to me that way. I’m a somebody. I’ll prove. What? You’re going the wrong way, buddy. You’re going the wrong way.

0:11:07     Down. You must decrease, but as you decrease, you will increase, because as you decrease, then he does the increase, and then he exalts, raises up and shows favor to the humble favorite in everything you do. Pride is not worth it because you can’t do anything. What are you so proud about? I used to say that to people. I think it kind of, I don’t know if it angered them or offended them or what, but I said, there’s so much pride on some of our churches and our Christians. I said, how could that be?

0:11:40     I mean, what have you done to be proud of? If, I mean, if you’re going to be prideful, do something to be proud of. But you know what? You can be doing nothing, nobody doing nothing, sitting around doing nothing with your life and be full of pride. Right? Full of pride. So take it. Take that as the Holy Spirit come. The Holy Spirit. It’s an alternate lifestyle, humility, alternate lifestyle that God then begins to raise you up and give you favor and things go better.

0:12:13     We still got battles sometimes, but things go better. And so I’ve been in services where people miss it, too. Like we talk about. They all prophesied, they all spoke, they all said something. I don’t want you to put it in prophecy. Like I said, they’re all going, thus saith the Lord, or I can’t say that word. Gregorian. Thank you. Gregorian chant oh, so domino. No, no, no. They didn’t all do that together.

0:12:45     They just split open the heavens and God came down and they all began to just explode in the things of God. Well, we’ve had people, then we’ll say prophecy, and they’ll come and they’ll prophesy there’s going to be a great revival. Have you heard that one? There’s going to be a great revival of souls. How about this one? There’s going to be a great revival, and it’s going to be among the teenagers or the young people.

0:13:08     I probably heard that a hundred times in the last few years. Very popular to say it because all the parents go, yay. And all their kids are going, what? But the parents are the ones yelling, okay, but that’s not how it works. See, how it works is we prophesy, we proclaim. I don’t want to just say prophesy. We proclaim, we preach, we talked. We have a voice, right? Everybody has a voice for God. John the Baptist said, I am a voice.

0:13:39     Who are you and what do you do? I am a voice. But then we are supposed, we are supposed to fulfill what we just said. We fulfill what we said. So I’ve been in all these services all around the world, and somebody will stand up and they’ll probably, there’s going to be a great revival of you. It’s going to be among the teenagers, and God’s going to come down and sweep through this and then they leave.

0:14:03     Well, if that’s true, why didn’t they stay? Why didn’t they do it? If you can, if you see it, why didn’t you get up and say, and I’ll be here next week, I’ll be here tomorrow night. All you young people, all you teens, you come because God’s going to pour out his spirit, huh? But then they just do it. And then they go some other church and say something, same thing or whatever, or around, or travel around or something, be a part of the fulfillment.

0:14:26     And, you know, when Jesus, he went into the wilderness to be tempted, he was led by the Holy Spirit. Well, first of all, he was full of the Holy Spirit. Then he was led by the Holy Spirit. And those are two different things. He got filled with the spirit when he was baptized. And he was led, strongly urged, to go into the wilderness. And there he was tempted of the devil, and the devil tempted him. And he said, if you are the Christ, if you are the messiah, turn these stones into bread.

0:14:54     And then he answered back, no, no, no, because we don’t live by bread alone. Nope, nope. He said, well, if you’re, if you’re really the Messiah, then you could worship me. And look at all I have. Look at all I have. Start worshiping me and I’ll give you the kingdoms of this world. And he answered back, no, sir, we’re to worship God and worship him only. And then the last one, he said, well, listen, if you’re the messiah, then you can throw yourself off this cliff and God has promised to catch you. And he said, no, sir, we shall not tempt.

0:15:26     We cannot tempt the Lord our God. Now, why is that important? See, he’s saying scripture. He’s prophesying scripture. He’s mentioning. He’s fighting the powers of darkness by the word of God. But he’s fighting with words that he lives, right? I mean, imagine this. He says, he says, man does not live by bread alone. And then says, give me a pastrami over there. Right? While you’re at it. What? What?

0:15:52     We can’t do that. We can’t say. Say things that we are, say scripture, quote scripture, even that scripture. And then we’ve never experienced it. We can’t say. We can’t talk about that and not be a worshiper of God. Worship God and him only. We can’t worship anything else. But so Jesus, he spoke who he was and what he’d been doing and what he was going to do, right? So when you want to speak out things, you want to fight the powers of darkness. You want to be operating by the power of the Holy Spirit.

0:16:24     Speak prophesy, declare who you are, what you do. If you’re a tither, I’m a tither. I’m a generous person. I love hospitality, whatever it is, you know, I like to help people. I want to work with kids. I want to see teenagers, say whatever it is, whatever it is, and tell. That’s how you fight the devil. Said, no, sir. You can say anything you want about me, but that’s not who I am. Who I am is this.

0:16:51     I am a one who does, who lives on the bread from heaven. I am one that worships God only. I’m the one that does not test the Lord God. That’s who I am. So you can just leave me now because now I win. I win because of that. And so. And so we need to be the walking fulfillment. Fulfillment of it. So we have people. You go to work and there’s somebody. They have a bible on their desk. That’s okay. They’ve got a few scriptures. I saw one the other day at a doctor’s office that a receptionist was doing. It’s great. She had a really great scripture on the wall. That’s good.

0:17:26     The only thing that could fail there is what? To have a scripture on the wall. To have a scripture on your desk or whatever. Like that. And then you’re not living it. Right. Put up there. Love your neighbor as yourself. And then the person with that scripture on their lives, you know, just a rat to other people, you know, hard to get along with and all that. Well, come on, put there what you’re going to live. Fulfill something.

0:17:49     Be by the power of the Holy Spirit. Alternate lifestyle. I fulfill scripture. I not only read it, I not only believe it, but I fulfill it. Because I don’t just read it and walk away. I remember what it says and I do it. So everybody can be filled with the Holy Spirit, right? Your sons and your daughters, men and women, everybody. And we can demonstrate that in the Book of Acts and move forward. And we can then be prophets, so to speak, prophesy, declare, say the things, the fulfillment of who we are, right?

0:18:25     And then? And then we humble ourselves and we submit to God. Humble ourselves before the Lord. And the devil will flee from you. You won’t know. He will leave you alone. He will leave you alone. Because God opposes the proud, but he’s going to lift up and give favor to the humble. That’s what happens with the real Holy Spirit when the real Holy Spirit comes upon people in our day. Next time we’ll take it again in the second part of this as we’re talking about alternate lifestyle. And we’ll see part number two, what’s coming next.

0:18:57     Till next time. Bye.