Mike Bickle emphasizes the necessity of worshiping God in spirit and truth, as outlined in John 4:23-24. He explains that true worship requires a genuine relationship with the Holy Spirit and an accurate understanding of God's character and our identity in Him. Bickle warns against false assumptions that lead to superficial worship, urging believers to engage their inner man and maintain a spirit of obedience. He highlights that God is actively seeking those who will worship Him authentically, and that our approach to worship must align with His terms. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a deeper, more intimate encounter with God through sincere worship and understanding of His Word.

I ask for your grace on the speaking and the hearing of your word. In Jesus' name, amen. Tonight I want to talk about worshipping God in spirit and truth. In John chapter 4, verse 23 and 24, Jesus highlights the two primary components in the type of worship that God seeks after. And he said this, verse 23, true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. And he went on and said this most dramatic statement, he said, the Father is seeking such to worship Him. The Father is actually searching for people that not would worship according to their own ideas, but they would worship Him on His terms. They would worship Him in His way. On His terms and in His way. And the Father's eyes are going to and fro across the earth. He's looking for people that will worship Him specifically with these two components. And of course, that's what we want to do, right? If that's what God's seeking, then we're saying, Lord, let my life be an offering. Look no further. Here I am, Lord. Although He's looking for millions that would do this. Verse 24, God is spirit. And those who worship Him, they must worship Him in spirit and truth. If they're going to worship Him, He requires that it's this way and not another way. It says in 1 Samuel chapter 13, this is about David. God sought for Himself a man after His own heart. God is searching right now across the earth. He's searching for people that would respond to Him in the way that He wants them to. Not in their own way. Many people have different views of how to seek God. God says, seek Me according to the way I say to do it. And it must be according to spirit and truth. Paragraph A, God's invitation to worship Him is His invitation to encounter Him. When it says to worship Me, those that worship God, it's talking about those that encounter God. And of course, the thing that we long for most is to encounter God. And I just want to save you time on a little bunny trail going off the path. You cannot encounter Him except you pursue Him in spirit and truth. These two components. Roman numeral two. Worshiping in spirit. What does it mean to worship God in spirit? Well, there's two things that I want to point out about worshiping God in spirit. Number one is to worship Him by the aid of the Holy Spirit. We must cooperate with the Spirit. We have to cultivate a friendship with the Holy Spirit. And the idea of this is that we need to be at peace and in unity and on good terms with the Holy Spirit, not quenching Him, not resisting Him and quenching Him because He's the only escort we have into God's presence. It says there in 1 Corinthians 2 that nobody knows the things of God except the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit of God does not give us encounter, obviously we cannot have it. Now that's real simple. That's not very profound. But where people fail to do the logic, it's our only possible way to encounter God and to worship God is if the Spirit is manifesting Himself in us. So if we quench Him or if we get into a relationship with Him where we're resisting Him, we are not going to be able to connect with God. Number one, there's a supernatural element to worship that we can't produce. We can't go forward if the Spirit's quenched. We're helpless. Therefore, here's what I recommend. We need to greatly prize and guard the promptings of the Spirit that come to our heart. The Holy Spirit prompts our heart in many different ways at many different times saying, don't do this, do this. We feel the promptings of the Spirit and I want to urge you to prize these promptings. Don't cast them off quickly by living careless in your relationship with the Lord, with the Holy Spirit. We need Him happy and moving inside of us or we can't worship because the only possible way we can worship God is in spirit with the aid of the Holy Spirit. We can't be on negative terms with Him. And so, you know, it's the idea that people do one thing. I'm thinking of our IHOP world now as a 24-hour prayer ministry. We do one thing outside the prayer room, then we come in the prayer room and we want to encounter God. We can't encounter God if we're in a negative relationship with the Holy Spirit by what we're doing outside the prayer room. Because we bring our relationship with the Holy Spirit with us. And that's the one relationship we cannot afford to be crosswise with because we can't go forward in God. Number two, we can't feel God's presence. We can't feel His power unless we have a healthy relationship with the Holy Spirit. Wes Hall had a dream. We mentioned it last night. At the end of number two here, in this dream, the Lord spoke and He said that what God cares most about is the progression of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. I won't give the details of the dream, but that was the message. What God cares greatly about is the progression of the Spirit in the life of a believer. How that we're progressing, how the Spirit is little by little taking over more of the areas of our life. Paragraph B, the second dimension of worshiping God in spirit. We not only need the Holy Spirit, we need the supernatural dimension. B, we need genuineness in our heart response. We need to worship with our spirit. Paul mentioned this concept in Romans 1 verse 9 where he said that he served God with his spirit. And what he meant is he didn't just serve God outwardly, he served God with inward reality, with genuineness from his heart. And many, their relationship with God is what they do externally, meaning that's what they focus on. But beloved, we cannot worship God if our inner man is not engaged. Our inner man must be engaged with God in reality or we cannot worship God. We have to worship in spirit, in genuineness from our inner man. Our inner man must be responding. It's not just our intellect, it's not just our hands. We're going to go to the ministry outreach, whether it's the prophecy teams, the healing, the feed the poor, the evangelism, the intercession conference, whatever. We're just going to serve God and we're going to go through the motions. We have to engage our inner man. That's what this is talking about. We've got to serve God with our spirit. Paragraph C, we must have sincere intentions to obey God without hypocrisy. There is no substitute. I've said this over and over and others of you can say it just as well if not better. There's no substitute for a spirit of obedience. We can't go into the prayer room and try to do something for a couple hours and then go out of the prayer room and not maintain a spirit of obedience. It's just absolutely futile to try to encounter God or to worship God because that's what it means here. In John 4 when it says those who worship God, those who are going to encounter God, they must do it in spirit. Now, it's important to know that seeking 100% obedience is different from attaining to it. I don't concern myself with how much I attain. I quit doing this years ago. I quit measuring how far I am. Because measuring just gets you proud if the measurement's good and it gets you depressed if the measurement's bad. I put my energy on seeking to obey in the present tense 100 fold. And I don't measure if I'm further along than I was 3 months ago or 3 years ago. I don't even go there. I just want to go hard in the present tense with sincerity. And I just leave the measuring to others who want to do that. I have no interest in that. Well, the second dimension of worship is worshiping God in truth. Top of page 2, worshiping God in truth. What does it mean? Because God says if you're going to worship Him, you must worship Him this way. And this is the type of worship He's seeking. He's seeking worship that's in truth. This means it must be according to the truth. It's according to the truth of who God is. The way that we approach God is really significant. The image we have in our understanding of who God is, is really an important part of our worship and our encounter. This is as important a part as worshiping in spirit, the two dimensions of that. Worshiping God with truth. So much of the church today is focused, so much of the ministry of the church, the teaching ministry of the church, is focused on how to grow your ministry or how to have more friends or more comfort or more things. I'd say the vast majority of the preaching in the pulpits in our nation is how to get more now. More comfort, more friends, more ministry skills, how to get more people paying attention to your ministry. How to get more now is what most of it's about. And there is clearly, that is biblical. How to get more now is in the Bible. It's not the main message of the Bible, but there is a dimension where that's truth. But the most neglected reality in the kingdom of God is God. I mean, it's really true. In terms of the preaching ministry in the churches, the most neglected subject in the kingdom of God is God. The personality of God. I want to encourage you that we cannot worship God except we're growing in a more accurate understanding of who God is. His personality. And that's what we do every Friday night. We talk on the subject of who God is. The intimacy with God, the knowledge of God. I'm not going to develop that right now, but I just wanted to highlight this truth to you that that's why every week I devote an evening to this subject. Intimacy with God, the knowledge of God. It is second to nothing in the kingdom of God. If we're going to encounter God or worship God in the way that God, well, there's no other way to do it. And so much of the activity of the kingdom of God today in the church in the western world is not according to the truth of who God is. Again, it's their own agendas and pursuit of things that are in the Bible, but it's without growing in any foundation as to who God is. Paragraph B. The second part of worshiping in truth is worshiping according to the truth of who we are in God. Who we are in God. And who we are in God is we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. We are the bride of Christ and we are the sons of God. When we stand before God, men and women alike, we stand as the bride in the place of His affection and we stand as sons as the place of ruling and reigning of authority with Him. We are in the most honored place imaginable as the bride and as sons and we stand there because we have the gift of righteousness. We've become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Now, it says here in Romans chapter 6 that when we present ourselves to God or when we worship, because presenting ourselves to God and worshiping is a very similar concept. The way that you present your heart to God, when you come and offer yourself to God, here's what Paul said, you have to do it as those as being alive from the dead. You have to do it as being alive from the dead. Paragraph 1, our standing before God. I'm going to talk about being alive from the dead in a moment. It means as being who God says we are unrelated to our spiritual achievements. We are alive from the dead because God gave His righteousness to us. We stand before God alive in a position of honor, in a position of acceptance because of what He did, not because of what we do. And the opposite of presenting ourselves alive from the dead is to present ourselves to God with condemnation and shame. That's the opposite of presenting ourselves alive from the dead is presenting ourselves coming before God in worship and in prayer and bringing our heart, but we have condemnation and shame on our heart. Number one, our standing before God is based on what Jesus did for us. It's not based on our diligence. We have no need to bargain with God as we approach Him after we sin. After we sin, we repent sincerely. We thank God for the truth that His righteousness has been given to us as a gift. We push delete on our sin and shame. And we stand before Him with confidence with no need to bargain. God, if you forgive me this one more time, I vow to you, I swear to you, don't do that kind of thing. God doesn't want your bargainings. He wants you to have confidence that what His Son did is sufficient for you to stand boldly before Him in this position of favor as a son or as the bride. Continuing in paragraph one, we can't work through the unsettled issues of our life without confidence that God's smiling at our life. It's very, very common for people to try to work through the issues of their failure, but while they're working through the issues of their failure, they have these real heavy issues in their heart that are unsettled. It's real common to have unsettled issues in our heart. But to have unsettled issues in our heart that are sinful and negative and bondage and to come before God and we think God's angry at us, we can't come with an open spirit. We're running from Him and not to Him. We cannot endure the process that's necessary to get healed at the heart level unless we have confidence God is smiling on us. We have to know what He's made us to be in His presence. Shame hinders our ability to settle the issues. You've heard the saying that guilt is when you do something wrong and shame is when you think that you are wrong and your whole personhood is wrong. Guilt has to do with we did an act that's wrong and we feel conviction for it. We feel guilt. We feel conviction. And we're guilty because of an act. But shame is when our whole person feels rejected by God and dirty before God. And I tell you, shame is one of the great hindrances in the church. I mean, of these four things. The first one, we need the Holy Spirit. We need to worship in spirit. We need the Holy Spirit's help. We need to be on really good, friendly terms with the Holy Spirit. We need to be serving, worshiping God from our spirit, engaging our inner man in reality. Not some pretense, but in reality. We need to know who God is so we have the right image of God. And then we need to know who we are so we have the right image of who we are before God. And these are four of the main things that are lacking in the church. It's not an accident that the devil is attacking the four things. These two broad areas of worship in spirit and truth. The two things that God demands if we're going to worship or encounter Him. And Jesus said you must worship Him according to these two broad areas or these four general areas. It says here in 2 Corinthians 5. If anyone is in Christ, he's new. The old things have passed. In terms of standing before God, God is not relating to you based on your failures yesterday. He's relating to you based on what His Son did, not based on what you did. I'm talking about relating to you in terms of opening His heart to you. He's not opening His heart to you based on your failure. He's opening His heart to you based upon Jesus paying the price for us. Look at verse 19. God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Look at this. He is not imputing or counting. You could put the word counting there. He's not counting sins against us. This is amazing. God is not counting your transgressions, your sins against you. He's not counting them against you. Why? Verse 19. He made Him. It's Jesus. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin that we could become the righteousness of God. God has wrapped us in the garments of righteousness. Did you know that a million years from now, you will not be more acceptable to God than you are right now? God will not open His heart more to you a million years from now than He is today. You've been in the eternal city for a million years minus a minute. God will not have opened His heart wider than He is now. Because the righteousness of God that He's given you cannot be improved upon. Your standing before God will not be improved upon when you're in a resurrected body. It is completely we have access to His heart right now. We are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Paragraph 2. Our diligence and spiritual maturity definitely impact our quality of life. They don't impact God's desire to open His heart to us nor God's acceptance of us. But our diligence definitely impacts our quality of life right now. It definitely impacts it. It impacts the measure of peace that we have or anxiety. It impacts our ministry destiny. In this age and the age to come, it impacts our reward. It impacts our function in the age to come. Diligence really matters, but it's not the issue that determines whether God opens His heart to you. It really matters on your place in the kingdom and your quality of life. But it doesn't matter in terms of God opening His heart to you. He opens His heart to us based on what He did in Jesus. Some people get so excited about the fact God opens His heart freely to us that they play down diligence and they'll be really grieved when they find out that the work of diligence and its reward would be lacking in their life. Diligence is a very, very important thing to have, but it doesn't make God open His heart to me or to you. Diligence determines our quality of life and our standing and our function in His kingdom. Paragraph C. God can smile over our life in a general sense while He's contending with us in a particular issue. I mean, God is always wrestling with me on an issue in my inner man, mostly related to thoughts and speech. I mean, I do wrong things as well, but mostly the thing He contends with me on is on the issue of the way I carry my mind and my words. Maybe if you're younger you say, oh, that's neat. No, that's serious with God. That's not like a, well, I wish that was my biggest problem. That is your biggest problem, actually. It's everyone's biggest problem. And so I know what it means for God to contend with me on issues. But at the same time, we can have the confidence that He's smiling over our life though He's working and He's contending, He's resisting. I mean, He's calling for a breakthrough in our life and a new level of obedience of a various issue. Now, if you get sloppy with that area, that area of sin grows into other areas. We don't want to be, well, this is one area and I'm just going to kind of let that one go. No, we've got to be up to date in our aggressive pursuit of friendship with the Holy Spirit. We want to be up to date in the yes in our spirit with the Holy Spirit. And we get lazy about an area of sin in our life that the Holy Spirit's highlighting, that area grows to two and three and four. It does grow like cancer. It doesn't just stay the same. But here's my big point in paragraph C. The issue that God's contending with us on doesn't define our whole life with God. God still can smile over your life though He's wrestling with you on an issue. Still the general sense of how He views you is with favor and with a smile. He longs for you. He desires you. But He says, I am going to win that issue in your heart. Roman numeral four. Our inheritance in God is a fully alive heart and a fully alive mind. We want a mind and a heart that's fully alive in God. This is the essence of the covenant. Here's what it is. God says, I'll put my laws or my word. You could put the word word there. I'll put my laws or my word into your heart. And I will put my laws into your mind. I promise you. I covenant with you. I will put my laws into your heart. That's some of your emotions. He's going to put His laws into your mind if you want Him to. In this age. I mean, He's going to do it in eternity. I mean, the age to come to everybody. But beloved, this is our destiny right now that God promised. This is at the very core, the very essence of our relationship to Him is this promise to put His word in our mind and heart. What a fantastic promise. You can't get a promise more powerful than this. Except for the initial promise that God forgives us. A, heart. God promises to empower our emotions until we feel the power of His word. Until we feel desire. He wants us to feel the desire for righteousness. He goes, I'll put my word in your heart. I will. If you will put the word in your heart. If you will put the word in your heart, then I'll breathe on it, and I'll turn the water into wine, so to speak. You fill your mind and heart with that, and I will transform it supernaturally when it's on the inside of you. It's not enough. God's, it's not enough. I mean, it's not only that He would empower our emotions. Beloved, we want to feel the power of His word. We want to read the word and feel His presence and love, feel desire for righteousness. We want to hate iniquity or hate areas of compromise. We want these godly emotions. Those are part of our covenant inheritance. But it's not only our heart, it's our mind. God promises to write them, to release a spirit of understanding on our heart, on our mind. He will give us living understanding in our mind. It's fantastic. He says, well, I'm not a Bible teacher, or maybe I don't have a public ministry, or I don't have, I haven't gone to Bible school, I don't have this or that. Beloved, if you will spend time in His word, He will give you living understanding. You don't need all the ministry resources that we've got more than we can use, you know, around the world today with all the technology, which I think is fantastic, all these resources. But as Stuart says, if you've got a raw Bible, like it's just a raw Bible, and I'm going to go in there with my pen and notebook and a raw Bible. You've got an open heart, He promises to write the word on your mind and heart. Let's look at paragraph C. God promises to write them. Top of page 3. In the Old Testament, when God gave Moses the two tablets of stone, He gave him these two big stone tablets, and He wrote the commandments, the Ten Commandments on these two tablets. And it says in Exodus that He wrote with the finger of God. It's like the fire of God. It doesn't actually say the fire of God, but in the Charlton Heston movie, the fire came, so I go with fire. You know, the Moses movie, fire came and wrote, thou shalt not. I went, whoa. So I always picture fire. But God with His finger, with the fire of God, He wrote on tablets, on stone. On stone. And Paul the Apostle quotes this idea in the next verse here in 2 Corinthians 3, and he says the essence of it is God wants to write on your heart in the way He wrote on stone. And we come before God and we say, God, my heart is like stone. Well, all of us, that's the nature of all of us, is to come before God with a dull spirit and a stony heart. Lord, my heart is so cold and stony. The Lord says that's the only way that people come to me, a cold and stony heart, unless I change them. Nobody in and of themselves comes with a tender heart. When it says in this 2 Corinthians 3, it says not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh. That is the heart. He wants to tenderize our heart. He wants to tenderize our heart with His Word. But so many of you might say tonight, my heart is like the stone. The Lord says that's no problem. Stone is no problem for me to write on. I can write on stone if you'll present yourself before me. He's good at that. That's no challenge to God's power to write on stone. And that writing by the finger of God on stone is a picture. It was meant to be a picture of writing on the heart by the finger of God. I have used the analogy for years. It's like we take our cold heart and we put it before His bonfire. It's like, you know, you take a heart, it's like, you know, it's like a pound of frozen hamburger, you know, and it's frozen. It's as hard as a rock. You put that frozen hamburger in front of that fireplace, in a short little bit of time, it's going to begin to melt little by little. It's going to fall out. It's going to become tender. We bring our cold heart before the bonfire of God. It won't happen in a moment. You put that pound of hamburger there and it's as hard as a rock. Five minutes later, it's still going to be hard as a rock. You keep it there. You keep it there over time. And it will become as tender and pliable as can be in due time. But we got to position our heart before His presence. And the way we position our heart before His presence is by putting the Word in our heart and by positioning ourself in the way that John 4, 24 says, in spirit and in truth. That's the way we position ourself before God. It's the way we encounter Him. It's the way we worship Him. You can say it any way that you want. Worship Him, encounter Him, or position your heart before Him. That's how you put yourself in front of Him. According to spirit and according to truth. In spirit and in truth. I love this verse in Luke 24, verse 32 and 45. The disciples on the road of Emmaus. It's after the resurrection. This is two guys. And they're walking back. I mean, they're walking on their way to Jerusalem. And they see Jesus. They don't know it's Jesus. Jesus has a resurrected body, but they think that He's just a normal guy walking around. Jesus wasn't showing all of His glory, but they're talking to Him about Jesus. And then when it's over, here's what they said. Did not our heart burn while He talked with us and while He opened the Scripture? This says it as clear as can be. This is what God, this is what Jesus wants to do with all of us. He wants our heart to burn with desire while the Scripture is opened to our understanding. And that's what verse 45 says. The heart burned in 32, and the understanding was opened in 45, and it was when Jesus was speaking the Scripture to them. Beloved, we want a heart that burns with desire, and we want a mind with living understanding. It's supernatural. God will give it. If we'll do our part, He'll do His part. Paragraph D. God writes His Word on our heart as we live by His Word. I love this. I love this verse in Matthew 4. Jesus answered. He's speaking to the devil, and the devil's tempting Him, and the devil said, Do this, do this. He says, It is written, Man should not live by bread alone, but man shall live by every word from the mouth of God. Beloved, our heart lives by the Word of God. I'm going to say it again. Our heart becomes alive when it comes into contact with the Word of God in spirit and truth. There's nothing magic about Bible information. I mean, there's many religious people. I mean, the rabbinic Judaism murdered Jesus, and Jesus said they had demons, and they knew the Bible. They knew the Bible well in terms of just pure intellect. There's nothing magic about the Bible. You know, you can't put the Bible on you. You know, people have the superstition about the Bible. You know, they put the Bible on them, and they do funny little weird things. Don't even bother with that. That's not what he's talking about. We have to approach the Bible according to spirit and truth. We have to encounter Him according to spirit and truth. The Bible's not enough. There's not a magical power on the ink on the pages. It's when we encounter Him in spirit and truth, we live. We live by the Word. And I want to ask you, do you really, at the heart level, buy into the fact that you cannot live at the heart level if the Word is not strong in your heart? If the positive way is true, we live by the Word of God. The negative is true. We cannot live without the Word of God. Yet then, why do so many of God's people have no time for the Word? My heart can only be alive to the degree I give myself to the Word, but according to spirit and truth. You've got to add those phrases because some people just say, okay, I'll do the Word. No, it's not the Word in a vacuum. It's giving yourself to God in the Word because according to spirit and truth, you must do it that way. Paragraph D, the most, in the second sentence, the most substantial way in which we feed our spirit and bolster our spiritual strength is by feeding on the Word. Now, that's not the only way that we feed our spirit. We can feed our spirit in other ways as well, in good, godly fellowship, in serving, in humility. Our spirit is served in many ways by hope being established in our heart. But the most substantial way your heart comes alive, and if you buy into this, this will change your life forever. The most substantial way your heart comes alive is when you feed it on the Word of God according to spirit and truth. And again, I would say the opposite. If you don't do this, your heart is not alive or it's barely alive. It's on ICU, intensive care unit. Many believers who even would come around to a place like this and be passionate for Jesus, they're living spiritually in the ICU unit. And you know, the people in the ICU unit, many of them, their appetite is real diminished because they're sick in their body. And when they're sick in their body, their appetite goes. And many people are spiritually in the ICU unit, and their spiritual appetite is really low. They're sick. Their heart isn't living. It's not healthy. Man should not live by bread alone, but man shall live for man's heart should be healthy. The heart of man is healthy when it encounters the Word of God in spirit and truth. You could put the word healthy if you want to instead of live. We live. We are healthy on the inside when we encounter the Word in spirit and truth. Paragraph E. God opens the Word to us progressively, number one, little by little, little portions. God gives us baby steps and giant steps. I love the giant steps, but mostly we get baby steps. You know, in a lifetime of serving God and seeking Him, you may get two or three or four giant steps, but mostly, for decades, you will mostly get baby steps. That's the way of God's kingdom. It's progressive. It's little by little. It's the pound of hamburger that is thawing out just little by little. You don't put it there, and suddenly it's just, you know, it's not microwave. God opens the Word to us accordance with the time we invest in it, feeding our spirit with the Word. I've been asked this over the years. A pastor asked me this one some years ago. I found it startling that he asked me that he was as uninformed on this. I mean, he was a pastor, but a pastor had a large church and a popular ministry, and he said, you seem to be saying that the amount of time you put in the Word, the amount of time you invest in the Word makes a difference. I said, yeah, I'm totally saying that. I go, I don't get your question. Well, actually, I did get his question. I thought his question was so bizarre, I didn't think he was asking it. I said, well, what do you mean? He goes, no, no, when I hear you teach, it's like there's a relationship between the amount of time you put in the Word and where your heart's at. I go, yeah, but I don't really quite get your question. I really did get it. I thought, surely he's not asking something as fundamental as that. Beloved, we don't earn God's favor by the time we invest in the Word. We don't earn His favor, but I guarantee you the longer that hamburger is in front of that fire, the more tender it's gonna get. It absolutely has to do with the time we put in it. Absolutely. It's not a scientific equation. Two hours gives you two units of Holy Spirit zap. It doesn't work quite like that. I wouldn't try to formulate an equation that's scientific, but over the years, if you spend time with the Lord and the Word, it really makes a difference. You may not be able to tell it in a week or a month, but you can certainly tell it as two to three in five-year increments go by. Roman numeral 5. Encountering Jesus by pray-reading the Word. Encountering Jesus by pray-reading the Word. John chapter 5 was a verse the Lord used. It was probably the first powerful time I ever had with the Lord in the Word. Ever. Besides being born again. I was born again when I was 15, and my leader said, You gotta study the Word. I'm 18 years old. I remember I was down in my basement. I remember the day I can still feel it looking back at this. And I was doing that, you know, like 10 chapters a day type thing, and my leader said, You gotta study the Bible. And I was determined to study every book of the Bible. I was determined to be a medical doctor and go to be a missionary. That was my life goal. I got accepted into med school, and I had no thought of being a preacher. I was on my way to go to the mission field as a doctor, and I was going to, like, doctor all day and then maybe at night, preach or something. I don't know, or tell people. I didn't know. Pass out tracts. I didn't know what I was going to do. Figured I'd do something when I got over there. I didn't know where there was. I kept changing where there was. And so I'm determined I'm going to study every book of the Bible on my own. I wanted to kind of, like, pick up the pace because I saw med school on the horizon. I said, I better really get with this. So, you know, my life seemed like it was passing away. And I was 18. I thought, I better get with it, like, now. And that's kind of cute now, but actually, it was the wisdom of God because today is the day to get with it. Today is the day to get urgent about it. It doesn't matter what age you are. Today is the day to get urgent. Anyway, this is the first verse that I ever remember. Absolutely, I mean, a number of verses have touched me a bit, but I mean, really gripped my heart and changed me substantially. It's John 5, verse 39 and 40. It says, you search the Scripture, you do Bible study because you think that by doing Bible study you can experience life. He says, the Bible study talks about me. It points to me. The Bible points to a person. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. He says, but you're unwilling to dialogue with me to have life. And that's how I read it. I put the word somehow. I mean, obviously, the gift of God, just the Holy Spirit. Here's what I wrote down because I was doing a Bible study on John. I was trying to go through all the Gospels and I wrote this, that the Bible study points to Jesus, but I've been unwilling or just neglectful, would have been more accurate, to dialogue with Him, to come to Him, to dialogue with Him, to engage with Him at the heart-to-heart conversation from the word and then I could experience life and I remember it profoundly changed my life. I was so excited. It's like I couldn't wait to tell all my friends, I got one, I got one. What? You got one? I got like a verse that is like really got my name on it. Because all these people that God told me, God told me, God doesn't tell me anything. I got one, a real verse that really got a hold of me. Last week, we talked about Mary who sat at Jesus' feet and she heard His word, verse 39 there, Luke 10. She heard, she encountered His word. That's what it's talking about. We called forth the Marys who will sit at the feet of Jesus, not just to sit there and just kind of stare in the dark, but to encounter His word. Paragraph A, how do we hear God's word? How do we hear it? It says that Mary heard His word. How do we hear it like Mary did? It's not enough to study. You could study the Scripture all day and be like the Pharisees who killed Jesus that memorized whole chunks of the Bible. I like study. We have a Bible school. I believe in study. Study, study, study. I love it, but study is not enough. We must give our heart to God and we must receive from Him as we're studying. In other words, we must come to God in the word in spirit and truth. We must talk to Him. We need to allow the word to create a dialogue, a living dialogue, a continual living dialogue in our hearts with God. The written word is to create a living dialogue with the living word. When the word of God, when we take it on the inside, it is to create conversation. It's to create a dialogue. It's to create a response in our heart. The written word does this, creates a dialogue with the living word, Jesus. Jesus is the living word and we have the written word. That's His name. He's called the word of God. We use the word of God as a love song or as a springboard that inspires our dialogue with Him. If I didn't have the word, I wouldn't know what to say with Him, to Him. It'd be like, help me do this, help me do that. I love you, I love you. Help me do this, help me do that. I love you, I love you. And I'd, you know, just because of the weakness of my mind, I'd wear out. But the word gives me information of what to say. It gives me a material to occupy my heart in dialogue for hours and hours and hours we can do this. And my point isn't hours and hours and hours at one time. That's not my point. My point is the word is, it's not hours, it's years and years and years. We'll never exhaust it. A billion years from now, we will still have this Bible. We'll have the word of God. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we'll be reading it a billion years from now. Paragraph B, when I come before God, I have two focuses, focuses of my mind, two mental focuses in my approach to God. Number one, I come before God as He's on His throne in Revelation 4. On Friday nights, we're talking about God on His throne in Revelation 4. But also, God's not only on the throne, God is also, the Holy Spirit dwells in our spirit as well. In John 7, it says that out of your belly, out of your innermost man, flows rivers of living water. And so, I will set my mind on God on the throne as we're doing on Friday night with the Jasper glory and the Sardius passion of God's heart and the emerald rainbow and the sea of glass. I like to talk into that scene when I focus my mind. But there's another focus too. It's the Holy Spirit dwells in us and I think of the Holy Spirit as a bright shining light in my inner man. Like brighter than the sun and I talk to that light. God is light. Talking to God who is... It just says God is light. That's as deep as I get on it. And I speak, I talk to the Holy Spirit. It says here in 2 Corinthians at the end, it says that we fellowship with the Holy Spirit. I talk to the Spirit in my inner man. I talk to Him. I talk to God on the throne. And it just kind of seamlessly goes between the two. I love it. It's absolutely great. It's a fantastic way to occupy your inner man. And when I go on this living dialogue with God, this active dialogue with God's heart, paragraph C, you want to linger in His presence. You don't want to get in a hurry. You want to take time to linger patiently as you go back and forth from speaking slowly to God. And I really urge you to speak slowly. And I'm going to give you just a minute or two, just a couple of things to say. We're going to end with that. But when I speak these things to God, when I'm dialoguing with Him, I'm using the Bible to dialogue with Him. I speak slowly. Not all dialed up and real fast. Then I pray in the Spirit a little bit. Then I'm totally quiet. And I focus on the throne and sometimes I focus on the Holy Spirit dwelling in me. And you want your soul to be quiet, calm. Paragraph D, and when you approach this active dialogue with God from the Word, take time to record your thoughts. Take time to... I do it sometimes. I'll pray and read the Word without a notebook. But certainly 90% of the time that I go into a prayer room, I have a notebook. I can't stand to be in a place where I don't have a notebook and a pen. Because with a notebook and a pen, we can capture the truths. And when I write down what I say something to God and as I say it, it doubles. And I'm going to say something like, I love you, God. And I say, I love you, God. And then I say another sentence. And it grows in me. And I write it down and then when I say it again, what I wrote down, it goes from one, you know, sentence to two. And then when I write it down and say it again, it goes to three sentences. And understanding unfolds. Top of page 4, paragraph E. I really urge you to take this last page. You can get it on the Internet. If you don't have it, you can get the copies on the back on the way out. If you want them or you get it on the Internet, just download them yourself. And I encourage you to take this and share it with other people and again, rewrite it, put your name on it and make handouts. You have a little Bible studies, email it to people back home and just change it around a little bit, it's yours. There's two broad categories of truth up in paragraph E related to pray reading the Word or meditating on it. There's two broad categories. First, there's the categories that focus on exhorting us to believe something. Like God says, I love you. I want you to believe it. I forgive you. I want you to believe it. I will lead you. I want you to believe this. There's truths that God wants us to believe. The second broad category, number two, is truths that He's exhorting us to obey. Like He commands us, bridle our tongues, serve one another, humble ourselves, give our time and our money to Him, invest in His kingdom. There's many exhortations to obey Him. Many different types. Those are the two basic types of Scripture that I think of when I'm pray reading the Word. The exhortations to believe something, the exhortations to obey something. Paragraph F. Now when we pray back truths, or we dialogue with God, exhorting us to believe God in His Word, I do two things. Number one, I thank Him for the particular truth. Like, it is a declaration. Like He'll say something, the Word will say, God so loves the world. And instead of just saying, cool, that's good to do that, but you don't want to end it with that. I like to pause, and I want to pray it back to Him. I want to thank Him. Specifically, I want to say, God, I thank You that You love me. I thank You that You've forgiven me. I thank You that You have forgiven me. I thank You that I ravish Your heart. Song of Solomon 4.9. We turn these simple truths, I mean, we turn these truths into simple declarations of thanksgiving, and we take time to say thank You, and God tenderizes our spirit with that. I think that many people read a verse, says God loves you, and you go, wow, underline it, highlight it in green or purple, email it to your friend, but they never actually stop and say to God, thank You that You love me. They don't actually talk to God. They talk about God, but they don't talk to Him about His Word. So you want to pause and say thank You for it. And number two, you want to ask Him to reveal it more. Lord, I thank You that You love me. Show me more. And you want to do it slow, not rapid fire. Thank You, God, that You love me, forgive me. Lead me, guide me. Now lay me down to sleep. You want it slow. I just say real quiet in my spirit. I just say the phrase every now and then. It's quiet. I just say a simple phrase. I'm talking about like three or four words. Oh, show me. I love You. God, You love me. Thank You. 1001, 1002. I'm not counting, but I mean I'm pausing. Show me more. Then I'll pray in the spirit for a minute or two. Then I'll get quiet again. Then I'll just do it. I'll linger there. I'll just linger there for a while. Beloved, this will change your life. Now don't say, God, thank You that You love me. Show me that You love me, and then pray in tongues, rapid fire for 30 minutes, and then go back and say, show me that You love me. Thank You that You love me. No, quiet your spirit and let the symphony, the give and take, the ebb and flow of your heart and His heart, and dwell there, linger there for a while. Paragraph G, on the exhortations to obey God. This is real simple. It says, bridle your tongue. It says, love the Lord your God with all your heart. Humble yourself. Just whatever it is. Live in moral purity. Do not be an alcoholic. I mean there's many, many commands in the Bible. Maybe an area that's an area of bondage. Here's what you do. First, you want to talk to God about that command. You don't want to just like look at it, underline it, and say, oh, yes, try harder next time. Don't talk to yourself. Talk to God. People talk to themselves, oh, I gotta try harder, and they'll talk to their friends, I'm gonna do it next time, and they grit their teeth, and I go, actually talk to God. Commit yourself. Say, Lord, make a declaration. Lord, I declare, I set my heart to obey you in the area of my speech. I set my heart to obey you. I set my heart to love you. And then second, simple, asking for power. Say, help me. Help me. Help me love you. And again, you say it real slow, pause for a minute, pray in the spirit for a minute, be quiet for a minute, say it again, and journal ideas that come to you. Beloved, this will change your life. It will so tenderize your inner man. Paragraph I. If we go to I, I want to say this, and then there's one more point I want to make, it's not on the notes, it's just that when we do this in private with God, then when the enemy comes to us later, we can speak the word to the enemy and say, it is written. He loves me. It is written. He has forgiven me. It is written. I live to obey him. It is written. I have set my heart on him. And we could quote the word in spiritual warfare to the enemy when he comes, but we'll never speak to the enemy, it is written, and declare the word if we don't speak to God, because that word's not in our heart. We can't just memorize it. It doesn't quite work that way. I mean, I believe in memorizing the word could be helpful, but you will learn the word the best by talking to God from your heart about the word in these ways. And then when the enemy comes, you have it. It's on your heart because it's been a part of your conversation dialogue. Paragraph I will end with this. The worship team can come up. The anointing of the Holy Spirit is your best teacher. And I'll say it, I'll say it kind of funny. Do you know who your best teacher is? Your best teacher, your favorite teacher, you just don't know it. Some of you, most of you probably don't know it. Your favorite teacher is you speaking the word from your heart with the Spirit of God on you. Because when you speak the word to God with the Spirit on you, it's a tailor-made, it's tailor-made. It's your personality, your mindset. It's tailor-made for your need. I am clearly my favorite teacher. And I don't mean I'm my favorite teacher when I give a message, a public message. When I am talking to God and writing it down, I get far more. And I'm an avid student. I love to study the words of other people. But when I say it to God, throw a little fasting in, and I commit to obey and thank Him for what is true, I get more thoughts that come. I'm not trying to get thoughts. I'm trying to talk to God. The thoughts come automatically. Not always. Sometimes nothing comes. Sometimes it's really dull and boring. Sometimes the hamburger is still frozen. It's not very tender yet. But 10 years from now, if you do this regularly, I'm talking about like near daily. There will always be some days you miss. You will find out in 10 years that clearly your favorite teacher is what you say in your private prayer life and journal. That will be your favorite teaching that you get. It really will be true. Because the Spirit's in you. 1 John 2.27, teaching you. But it's a tailor-made Bible study, direct from your heart to God's. Amen. Let's stand. We're going to worship the Lord. I want to invite people to come down as we get ready here. You're saying, I have got to bring my life and the Word up to a whole other level. I'm just, I really need to do this. I'm willing to turn off my MySpace. You know, fully grasp it. I'm willing to turn off this and that. I'm willing to miss out on some of the party, some of the fun, some of the hanging out. I'm willing to miss out on stuff. I've got to live by the Word. Because the truth is, I'm doing all that stuff, and my heart's not healthy or alive. I'm hanging out. I've got friends. I'm at every time where everyone gets together and laughs and has a great time. But my heart's not alive. I can assure you, that isn't where your heart's mostly going to become alive. Beloved, we need to spend time in the Word. You know, on evenings, when you're done. Mornings, I don't know. It's all different for everybody. Go to IHOP. In the time you don't have to be there. Open your Bible. Bring your pen. Journal. Write. Say, Oh, my heart is frozen. The Lord says, I'll write with my finger on your heart. I will do that if you want me to. It's your inheritance for me to write on your heart. Go ahead, Misty. Lord, here we are. We're like Mary of Bethany. We want to sit before you. We want to hear your Word. We want to hear your Word. Jesus, take my life.