Mike Bickle emphasizes the foundational principle of abiding in Christ, which involves a continuous dialogue with God and agreeing with the Holy Spirit's leadership in our lives. He explains that God chooses to release His power through our voluntary love and relationship with Him, rather than out of necessity. Bickle highlights the importance of cultivating this relationship through prayer and obedience, noting that spiritual growth and joy come from actively engaging with God. He warns against spiritual passivity and encourages believers to seek a vibrant relationship with God, which is essential for experiencing His power and presence in our lives.

to release your blessing upon it. We thank you by the Holy Spirit to come and touch our hearts in Jesus' name, amen. Well, this evening, I wanna talk about abiding in Christ. It's really just Christianity 101, but I find that we constantly need to be reminded and called to return to these basic foundational principles. I need it in my own life as the director of IHOP. I constantly need to be reminded to the basic fundamental principles of the kingdom of God, and that is connecting with the Lord, which Jesus gave the term abiding in Christ. Roman numeral one on the handout, and you can get this handout on the website if you want it, and you don't have it, or you can get it at the back. The foundational principle, the foundational premise of the kingdom of God is the fact that God releases His power through voluntary love. He will not release His power in the natural realm except His people choose to respond to Him in a voluntary way. God has a great amount of power, and He doesn't need people to release it through. He wants to release it through people. He doesn't, it's not something that hinders Him, except He has chosen to only release His power through relationship with His people. Back in Genesis chapter one, before God created human beings, He did a really good job releasing His power. I mean, He released, He created the heavens and the earth, and He did a good job. And then after He created Adam and Eve, He said, from now on, I'm going to only release my power through people who voluntarily line up with me and who voluntarily connect their heart to me. I mean, this was a massive decision and determination in the heart of God. He doesn't need us to release power. He chooses to release power through people. This is a statement about His fatherhood. This is a statement about His passion for relationship. It's not a statement of need. It's a statement of His desire. Paragraph A, we pray thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And the idea, the premise is that God wants to release the heavenly power to the earthly realm. And this is how God changes our hearts. This is how He changes our city. This is how He changes our nation. He releases the power of heaven into the earthly realm. But the key is, the issue is, He will not do it except we line up and relate to Him in a very specific and definitive way. As a father, He wants to share His life and His power with His family. And so that's what He's chosen to work through us and in us, paragraph C. The father has chosen to release His power of His presence in us and through us in direct proportion to how much we live in relationship with Him by dialoguing with His heart and agreeing with His heart. Now, those are the two main issues that we're just gonna break it down. Real simple, He wants us to dialogue with His heart. He wants us to talk to Him. He wants a running dialogue between our heart and His heart. Now, it's not the sort of thing that is unbroken 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but intermittently throughout the day, we talk to God and He communicates back to us through impressions or just through the sense of His presence, through giving us a resolve for righteousness, that's part of the way He speaks to us. And we talk to Him, we ask Him for help, we give Him our love, we pay attention to Him, we direct our focus upon Him, all of those are ways in which we dialogue with the Lord. And the Lord is only gonna release His power in us and His power through us to the degree that we will dialogue with Him. As simple as this is, it's amazing how easily we get distracted from this. But it's not only the issue of dialoguing with His heart, it's agreeing with His heart, which is the same thing as obedience, because we come into agreement with the Holy Spirit's leadership in our life, we call that obedience. And so the Lord says, I will give you more, but only in proportion to the measure that you dialogue with me or you agree with me. In John 15, that's called abiding in Christ. Jesus took these two phrases and He brought them together under one term called abiding in Christ. But it's this issue that God in His zeal determined, He says, I have power to release into the natural realm, both in our hearts, in us and through us, but He's saying, I'm not gonna do it, except you dialogue and agree with me. And to the degree you dialogue with me and to the degree you agree with me, I will release the power of the age to come in you and I will do it through you. Now again, this is simple Christianity 101, we all know this. But then the question we ask, if we all know this, which we do, why is it we are so hesitant to follow through with these simple things in our everyday life? And right here at IHOP, the International House of Prayer, we're a prayer ministry, but I still say, I've said this for years, and I say it tenderly and kindly, that the hardest thing to do at IHOP is pray. Because we don't wanna be confused by the fact that there's a worship band, a worship team up on the platform, and 10 of them are singing, but that doesn't mean the 300 people in the room are actually dialoguing with the Lord because they're sitting in the room. And I believe that the greatest challenge for everyone in the kingdom, whether we're in IHOP or not, will always be to do these simple things. Being at IHOP does not make us immune to this. It's not like, well, we're a prayer ministry, so we've settled that issue. Well, I'm the leader of this prayer meeting and I don't have this issue settled. I constantly lose my focus on this reality while training and teaching people in prayer, calling them to prayer, I myself find it a real issue that I need to be deliberately focused on to keep this dialogue going in my life. It is not automatic by any means. Matter of fact, the only thing that's automatic is that that dialogue would diminish. We would kind of think naturally that just by virtue of loving God and being in His kingdom, things would just naturally get better and better and better. Well, it's like a garden. A garden doesn't naturally get better and better and better. It naturally gets more and more weeds and more and more problems. But if we cultivate the garden and we put blood, sweat, and tears into that garden, then because of an intentional, focused, exerting of ourself into that garden, the garden will be cultivated. Well, the same thing is the garden of our heart. It's the same principle and the same reality. I'm gonna read paragraph C again. The Father has made a significant determination, a significant determination. I mean, He created the heavens and the earth without us, and He did well. He doesn't need us to release power. But after He created humans, He said, from now on, I will only release power into the earthly realm through my people as they dialogue with me and as they agree with my leadership. And those are my terms, dialoguing and agreeing. The biblical terms is pray and obey. But I'm just using different terms because these are just terms I think of in my own personal life with the Lord. I talk about, I think about dialoguing with Him through the day. That's the same thing as praying. Obviously, it's the exact same concept. And obeying with the Lord, obeying the Lord, some folks can reduce that to only avoiding the big scandalous sins. That if we avoid the, you know, the big 10, whatever they are, the, you know, the big ones out there, whatever list you might come up with, then therefore, we're obeying the Lord. But the Lord wants us to live in agreement with the Holy Spirit's leadership day by day in our life. So it's more than just obeying that kind of, you know, general sense. I'm talking about a very specific, deliberate coming under the leadership of the Holy Spirit in our thought life, in our speech, in our eyes, what we set our eyes on. In our culture today, there's so much perversion being offered through the internet. It's a global problem wherever the internet is. It's not just a US problem. It is a significant increasing problem that's vexing the entire earth. And it's only gonna become worse and worse. It's gonna be a far greater problem in 10 years than it is today. And it's already a problem of a huge magnitude. And in Job 31, verse one, Job said that he made a covenant with his eyes. He made a covenant with his eyes that he would not look upon anything that incited lust in his heart. And beloved, we need to make this covenant with our eyes and coming into a relationship with God where we agree with him, we're coming under the Holy Spirit's leadership. It involves areas like the covenant we make with our eyes. This is not a small thing. It's not like if we stay away from the top 10 scandalous sins, that's just a hypothetical number. I don't know what categories you might put them in, that everything's okay. If our speech, our eyes, the way we spend time and money is if we are not consciously seeking to bring it under the Holy Spirit's leadership, we are not in the relationship in which power is released in us and through us. And a lot of believers, I mean, a lot among us, we have a vision for the power of God to be released in us and through us, not just through us, but in us so we feel the power of it on our heart. I don't want just the power of God being released through me to touch others. Certainly I want that and we want that. I want the power of God released in me to where my heart feels the freshness and the power of the true grace of God. I want the power of God in me, not just through me. And so we all have the vision for that. We all have an, this is what we're going for. This is what we're, it's what we're a part of this community because we all have a common value. We want more experience with God as defined in the scripture. But it's simple as, I mean, as easy as it is to have this vision, we're going for it. I want to make it simple. We will never ever experience more except we dialogue with God more and we agree with the Holy Spirit more. It comes down to those two realities. No matter what terms you use, we can never escape those two realities if we are going to experience the power of God inside our life or we're going to experience the power of God in a way to minister to other people. It comes down to those two issues. The Lord says through his word, will you talk to me more throughout the day? And will you agree with the Holy Spirit more throughout the day? And if the answer is, I don't really talk to you. I think about you occasionally. I don't really talk to you much. And the idea of coming under the Holy Spirit's leadership and my words and what I look at and how I spend my time and money. I don't really go there in a real specific way. I kind of avoid the big, the big negatives. And after that, I just feel like I'm doing okay. And the Lord says, well, you can be in my kingdom. I love you. I believe that you love me, but you'll never ever go deep in experiencing the power of God in your heart. This is where it stalls out right here at this issue. Paragraph C, let's read it again. The Father has chosen that he's going to release the power of the age to come. He's going to release the power of the Holy Spirit in us and the power of the Holy Spirit through us in direct proportion to how we respond to him, both in dialoguing and agreeing with the Holy Spirit. I'm going to have you turn the volume down just a little bit if you would. He will not violate our free will in this. He will not force us to do this. Even though he loves us and even though we can have a real relationship with him, he says to me through the word, I don't hear it in some, you know, a mystical experience, just through the word of God, Mike, I love you and you love me, that's good. I have more for you, but I won't give it to you except in this context. Does it matter if you're the pastor of a church or the leader of a ministry, if you've been in the kingdom for many years or just a few years? Every one of us, every one of us live by this premise in our relationship with God. He will give us more if we will focus on those two issues. And I'm just trying to make this really simple, just kind of by way of reminder why it is we're in the kingdom and what it is we're about. And there is no increase of power on the inside if we don't increase our dialogue. And the reason, one of the reasons, not the only reason, but the main reason I read the word of God is because it's fuel on the fire to increase my dialogue with God. It's not the only reason I read the word of God, but it's the primary reason I read the word of God. The word of God is like the wood on the fire. The fire is the Holy Spirit. We put wood on the fire of our heart and it fuels the fire. When we read the word, it increases our dialogue with the Lord throughout the day. When I get too busy and I meditate on the word of God less, my dialogue with the Lord decreases. When I read the word more, my dialogue with the Lord, just in a daily basis, I'm talking about just intermittently through the day is what I mean. I don't talk to him all day, every day. It doesn't work that way. But the more that I read the word, the more that the word is like the wood and fueling the fire, the more that I have a spontaneous dialogue that goes on in my heart throughout the day. And then I could go to prayer meetings in a real focused way. I can dialogue with the Lord, but I want to dialogue with the Lord more than just in prayer settings or in worship times. I want to do it throughout the day because I know I cannot experience more except through this way. And I want to experience more. It's no mystery. We don't have to ask God, Oh God, please show me what's hindering it. It's really clear. Talk to me more and agree with me more. That's called abiding in Christ. It's as simple as that. Paragraph D, James 4, verse 8. We're going to get to John 14 in just a moment here. The Holy Spirit draws close to us only as we deliberately draw close to him. He says it right here. James 4, verse 8. Draw near to God and God will draw near to you. Now the drawing near to God starts with us. Now technically, I mean theologically, the Lord stirs us up so that we will draw near to him. I mean, he's even on the front end of it. He stirs us so we'll draw near to him and then he responds by drawing near to us. But he's at the very beginning stirring us and wooing us and wowing us so we will draw near to him. So he's on both sides of this drawing. But in James chapter 4, James begins with the believer taking initiative. Now again, we've been stirred up by the grace of God. None of us even think to draw near to God except the Lord has stirred our hearts to even think the thoughts. The only reason we're even motivated to be here, to worship, to even hear the word of God because God has stirred us with desire of some sort. So we give the Lord credit and honor for that. But that stirring of the Lord, it must go to the next level. We must specifically and deliberately draw near to God. How do you draw near to God? Just real simple. Again, I could break it down in five categories or 10 categories and I'm sure that you could as well. But in one simple sentence, dialogue with him more and agree with the Holy Spirit's leadership in your life. That's bottom line. That's where it's at. If you do those two things, all the other dimensions of drawing near to God will take care of themselves. If I talk more to the Holy Spirit and I agree more with him, instead of resisting and neglecting his leadership in terms of my eyes, my words, my time, and my money. If I agree with his leadership more and I talk to him more, I am drawing near. And when I draw near to God, I put myself into position where the Lord says, in that case, now I will draw near to you. I will release my power in you. You will fill my presence and you will receive more of the working of the grace of God in your heart. That's what it means for God to draw near to us. 1 John chapter 1, verse 3, it says this. Truly our fellowship is with the Father and our fellowship is with his Son, Christ Jesus. Now we fellowship with the Father and with the Son through the person of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. I mean, John could have easily said, our fellowship is with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Another way you could say it, our fellowship is with God, the Father, and the Son, because the person of the Holy Spirit is fellowshipping with us on the inside. We fellowship with the Father through the indwelling Spirit. Verse 4, John goes on to say this. These sayings we write to you so your joy will be full. Meaning, here's what John's saying. He's saying to the church, growing in fellowship with God, the Father, Son, or Spirit, growing in fellowship with God is the source to internal joy. This is where the heart comes alive. This is where the heart is vibrant on the inside. Beloved, we want our joy to be full. We want a vibrant heart in the midst of the mundane, routine dimensions of life. We can have a heart that's vibrant and radiant in fellowship with God. Our heart does not need to be bound and limited by our circumstances. Our circumstances are either hard or they're mundane and routine usually. Every now and then they're exciting. Every now and then circumstances are exciting, but only for a moment and only occasionally. Mostly our circumstances are hard or they're mundane and routine. But even in the midst of that, what John is saying in verse 4, there can be a vibrant relationship with God at the heart level. Your joy can be full, but a full joy isn't related to circumstances. Full joy is related to fellowshipping with God, connecting with the Holy Spirit. It's the subject again, dialoguing with Him and agreeing with Him. Because if we have a vision to have more joy, if we have a vision to be connected with the Holy Spirit, but we don't break it down in a practical way to where we have an increased dialogue and a greater agreement, then it's just a pipe dream vision. It's not reality. I don't want just a pipe dream vision where we're just, you know, it's just some fanciful dream that we're going to all be close to God and have joy. That doesn't do anything to me. I want it to be real and substantial and hold up under pressure and to hold up under the mundaneness of life. Everyone's life and the whole earth has significant amounts of mundaneness and routine. You know, some will look at the, you know, the famous people on television, whether the political leaders or the giant, you know, the economic leaders with vast millions or the movie stars, and you might be tempted to look at their life and imagine it's one mountaintop of excitement to excitement. It's not. Their lives, even their lives, are filled with routine and mundane and difficulty. That's why there's so many of them addicted to so many things because they're trying to escape the burden of the mundane and the routine. And so people think if I could get more money and more notoriety, have more free time, somehow I will have more joy. My heart will be more vibrant. It doesn't work that way. A vibrant heart is connected to how much we're interacting with God on the inside. Has nothing to do with circumstances. The people who look across the nations with the most privilege, the most money, the most notoriety, the most friends, often have the most addictions to relieve them from the pain of the difficulty that they're bearing in their life. And my point isn't to pick on them. My point is that you don't want to have a false dream that they have the answer being in more money, more circumstances, being blessed, more notoriety, and easier, quote, more time to play. That is not going to make our hearts alive. John says it right here. He says, our fellowship truly, our connection is with the Father and with the Son. And of course he's talking about by the Holy Spirit. And he says in verse four, I write these things to you so that you know we're the source of true joy. It's a joy is a supernatural reality. And joy is the fruit of connecting with God through dialoguing with the Spirit and agreeing with the Holy Spirit. And so if you want an exciting inward life, don't be a movie star. Go deep in God. That's the key. You might end up a movie star. Who knows? But the point is, it's the inward life. That's where the joy is because everyone's life, I'm telling you, I want you to settle this. And most of you settled it years ago. Been in the kingdom long enough. Everyone's life is filled with mundane, routine, and difficulty. Everyone's life on the planet in all of history, including Jesus's life. Much difficulty, much mundane, much routine. King David, Elijah, Moses, every single one of the prophets, their lives were filled with mundane and routine dimensions. All the great famous people who changed the world most of their life wasn't about the high points of where they changed history. It was mostly about difficulty, mundaneness, routine. And John is speaking here with so much clarity. He says, connect with God. Your joy will be full. How do you connect with God? Simple. Talk to him more and agree with him more. I mean, the concept is simple. Doing it's another thing, but the concept is simple. But if we're focused on the right answer, we have a better chance to walk it out. If we're just kind of thinking, well, I want to walk with God and be closer. What are you doing about it? Well, just, I don't know, just trying to walk with God better and get closer. Like specifically, what do you do though? You know, just try harder. In what regard? I don't know. Quit being so pushy. I don't know what the answer is. Well, I'm giving you the answer right here. Focus on increasing the amount of time you dialogue with him from your heart. Focus on coming under the Holy Spirit's leadership in the world, in the realm of your eyes, your words, your time and your money. Now, these are really intense, invasive realities, but at least we know where the issues are of going forward. So we go, okay, good. I'm going to do this dialogue thing. So the meeting's over. We go home. We go to IHOP or go out to eat and so then that, you know, the next, get the rest of the evening. I'm finding I'm not naturally dialoguing with God. It's not naturally happening. There's a vacuum. There's a hesitancy. There's a unknowing. I don't know what to do. We need fuel on the fire. We need to put wood on the fire. We need to begin to fill our hearts with the word of God. Well, I don't have time for the word of God because I'm doing too many other things. Well, that's your choice. But at the end of the day, there will be very little dialogue in your heart and that's the choice you make. But you will never touch the joy of the radiant heart that's available to the human race that only few humans, even only a few in the body of Christ, ever experience it in any kind of depth. But beloved, this is ours if we want it. It really is ours if we want it. But it's going to come down to those two issues. And those are the two practical issues of abiding in Christ. I would describe abiding in Christ a little bit more than those two things. But that's the core reality of abiding in Christ. Talking to him more and agreeing with the Holy Spirit's leadership in our inner man. So we don't have to be in mystery about it. We don't have to be in confusion about it. But when I try to talk to him more and come under his leadership, I find, ah, now I know where the resistance is. But at least I've identified it and I know where I'm going and I know what to work on. Because if you know where you're going and you know what to work on, you have a chance to actually solve the problems, the resistance. Verse 7, he says, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another. Now walking in the light means walking in the light of the Holy Spirit's leadership. Now the light that God gives us increases progressively through the months and years. And the Lord only asks us to walk in the light that the Holy Spirit gives us at any given season. He doesn't ask us today to walk in tomorrow's light. We only walk in the insight that we have right now. And he says, if you will walk in the light, if you will walk under, if you will seek to obey the Holy Spirit in every area, he challenges you, not that you will fully obey, but you seek to obey. And there's a difference. I don't obey every area the Holy Spirit is speaking to me in my heart, but I'm seeking to. And as I attain obedience, then he gives me more light and he raises the bar. And then I say, wait a second, here I am. I finally have got a break through the heart level. I'm obeying you in this realm of my speech. I'm obeying you in this realm of my eyes. I'm obeying you in this realm of my money and my time, the real issues of life. And now you just lifted the bar up. You've just given me more light. He goes, yeah, as long as you obey, I will give you more light the more that you obey. Some guy may say, well, I'm going to quit obeying because all I do is get more light. However, more light means that you draw closer to God and you're experiencing him more as well. But any time that we decide to stop obeying the Holy Spirit's leadership, let's, again, let's take the issue of the eyes. Job 31, verse 1, the covenant with the eyes. Or we take the issue we've been talking about the last few weeks, our speech. Again, don't think of only, you know, the scandalous sins if we're obeying them, if we're avoiding them. We're talking about obeying the Holy Spirit in a really deliberate way. But any time that I say to the Holy Spirit, I'm not going to obey you in the light that you've given me. No, I'm not even going to try to obey you. My relationship with him stalls out right there. Beloved, this may sound intense, but it really isn't. It's really liberating if you hear it right. You cannot have one area of your life, you tell him no, consciously tell him no on. If you do, it doesn't mean you're not saved. It means your relationship with the Lord stalls out right there. Does it mean he's gone? He'll never leave you. He always will live in you, and he'll always be attentive to who you are. His eyes will be attentive to you, but he will not be manifesting his presence inside of you in a way that you feel his presence. It's like the, you know, the little, the little boy gets the train for Christmas, you know, the electric train. And you put one bobby pin on the tracks, the whole power of the Kansas City Power and Light Company can't move that little electric train if the bobby pin is on the track short circuiting the tracks. You get a piece of metal there. One issue where we tell the Holy Spirit, no, I'm not going to obey you in that area. Now, again, there's other, there's areas we don't obey in him, but we're trying to, we're coming up short. As long as we're seeking to and coming up short, there's grace and we're going to keep growing. But there's an area of our life we say, this issue of money, no, don't bother me in that issue. I'm not talking to you on the issue of money. I'm going to spend money the way I want to spend money. The Holy Spirit says, okay, but then know this, our relationship has now stopped growing at this point. I will talk to you more, but if you want to hear what I have to say, I will talk to you about that issue. And the Holy Spirit's kind enough to talk to us about the issue about a hundred more times. But then he stops. He really does stop. And I've seen believers five, 10, 20 years in the kingdom, and they haven't grown at all in 10 or 20 years. And they're mystified and they blame it. Well, the devil's attacking me in warfare. And, you know, I've just burnt out. No, you quit your relationship with the Holy Spirit. You didn't get burnt out. That's, that's a nice cop out. What happened is you and the Holy Spirit are no longer on talking terms. He stopped when you stopped. And if you're going to go forward, you have to go back to that point and restart the conversation again. He will forgive you. He will forgive me. His grace is infinite. I mean, his grace is marvelous. The grace of God is, but he will demand that we will love him on his terms, not on our terms. So we say, I don't want to obey the Lord in the issue of time. I don't want to obey the Holy Spirit in this issue. He says, okay, then that doesn't mean you can't be saved, but it means you can't grow closer to God. You can't draw near to me. You have to obey me on that time. It's invasive. He wants our life because he knows that when our life is under his leadership, we will have a vibrant, radiant heart and we will experience light in life under his care. When our heart is under our own leadership and we're resisting his leadership, we will end up in death and darkness. Every single time we resist him, we are sowing death and darkness into our heart. And then it begins, unintentionally we sow it into the people that we're around, the relationships we care about. We're sowing death and darkness. We don't mean to, but we do. So the Holy Spirit, he's not just trying to be bossy. He knows that he's the only one that can lead us into light in life. And if we walk in the light as he's in the light, if we walk in the light that he gives us, if we, you know, God walks, now this is a strange statement. God walks in all the light that he has. There is not anything, there's no moral virtue that God knows about that he does not walk in. He walks in everything he believes in. He fully walks out. God's character, his thoughts and words and actions fully reflect everything that he believes that is right. All the light that God has, he puts it into action. And so what the Lord is saying through the word here, he says, I want you at the same way, whatever measure of light you have. Now, God has a lot of light. We have a little bit of light, but the relationship is the same. God says, I embrace and I express all the light I have. I want you to do the same. Now, granted, our light is very minimal, but he says, that's good enough. I will increase it as time goes on. It's the illustration of the microscope and the dirty, you know, slide into the microscope. You look under it, you say, oh, there's some dirt there. You clean it off. And then you turn the microscope up on 10 power. You go, oh, the dirt's back. You get that cleaned off. You turn it up to 100 power. Oh, there's more dirt. Clean it off. 1,000 power, 10,000 power, 100,000 power. The point being, the more we walk with God, he keeps turning up the magnifying power of the light in our heart. That's not bad. His point isn't to prove we're guilty. That's not his point. His point is that if we will obey, he will increase the measure, but the measure of light always brings greater power in our heart and greater nearness in our experience to God. And then we can talk to him more and we can agree with him more. This is called abiding in Christ. The Holy Spirit stops talking and he stops imparting more to us when we stop agreeing with his leadership. Now, we can claim the grace of God and go to heaven. We can disagree with his leadership in our thoughts, in our words, in our money, in our time, in a certain measure. I don't know where the line is, but there's a certain measure that most of the body of Christ lives in this way where we draw back, we neglect his leadership and we still in a general way, we love the Lord and we're walking with him, but we have so little power experience at the heart level. And when we stand before the Lord, I think that we will be sad when we stand before him knowing that he had so much more he wanted to give us, but he said, I will not give it except you dialogue with me and you agree with me. I will only give it to you and through you on my terms. Because my terms, if you come under my leadership, it will always bring goodness to you. Paragraph F, God withholds his blessing until the blessing he intends to give us until we interact with him. He says in James 4 verse 2, you have not, you do not have because you do not ask. You do not have because you do not ask. And so the Lord has allowed certain pressures, certain pains in life, even our own spiritual barrenness, the lack of feeling the presence of God, the lack of a burden for the things that he's burdened with, a lack of love for the word of God, for prayer, just the normal things of the Bible, our spiritual barrenness. These are meant to stir us up out of our spiritual passivity. So we rise up and move towards him. So we're, I have this picture of, you know, we get into the spiritual couch potato position. We're laying on the couch with our chips and our remote control, spiritually speaking. And we're saying, I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to just kind of veg for the next 10 years. I'm not going to go forward with you. I'm not going to go. I'm just going to be a spiritual couch potato. The Lord says, I don't, I have more for you than that. Says, well, I'm going to do my own thing. I'm just going to do what I want to do. Spiritually speaking, I'm going to just be a couch potato. I mean, you could be a busy body in your life, but spiritually, you're not standing up and pressing into God. So the Holy Spirit says, OK, I'm going to let pain, pressure and your own spiritual barrenness starve you out of that couch potato position. I will be silent until the pain and the barrenness and the pressure is so great. Finally, you click off all of your distraction and you rise up out of your passivity and press into me. He goes, I can outweigh you every single time. And it's not, it's not even a, a, an expression of God's penalizing us. He's not looking back. He's not looking at us saying, watch this. I'll show you who's boss. He goes, no, I love you so much. I'm going to let you live without experiencing my power because you've chosen and I won't give you power except for on my terms. And my terms are you dialogue with me and you agree with me and I will not release my power except on those terms. If you won't dialogue with me, you won't come under my leadership in those areas, your spiritual couch potato. I will just wait and let you live without feeling power and the burden on your heart, the internal pressures, the pain, the barrenness will drive, will create so much tension. You will finally get up and say, OK, OK, OK. And the Lord says, there you go. We could have done this 10 years ago. I'm not moving until you do it my way. And a lot of people are trying to wait the Lord out. They've been waiting 10, 20, 30 years stalled out spiritual couch potato. They might even be busy about doing, you know, ministries in the church, but they're not connecting with God in a vibrant way. They've stalled out. And the Lord says, I will starve you out of that place of passivity. Wait and see. I have more power. I have more time. I have more wisdom than you do watch. And I love you too much to let you go. But I've watched in 30 years of ministry, people go on for decades and they don't move. And the pain mounts up and the bitterness mounts up and the pressure mounts up and their spiritual barrenness gets worse and worse and worse. And they refuse to do the things that will bring them the joy of God. And they're even believers. And they're even in the house of God. I would go as far to say the majority of the believers I know, and I know thousands of them in 30 years of ministry, the majority of them, that's how they live decade after decade. It's like we can't beat the system. The only possible way forward is to dialogue with him and to enter in and to go forward in his way. Ah, we made it to John 14 and we're at the end. We're going to end with this passage. I looked at my notes. I go, well, there it is. John 14, verse 13. Now, John 14 and 15, Jesus sums up the main principles of how his kingdom runs in John 14 and 15. Well, it'd really be more accurate to call it John 14, 15, 16, and 17. Those four chapters have been rightly termed the holy of holies of Jesus's teaching. I've heard that term many times over the years. John 14, 15, 16, 17 is the holy of holies. If you're using the Old Testament tabernacle analogy, it would be the holy of holies of Jesus's teaching would be those four chapters. It's called the upper room discourse because he's in the upper room at the Last Supper. And this is his last teaching. Then he goes to the cross and he gives the highest and the holiest things of precepts of his teaching. In chapter 14 and 15, he sums up on how the principles, the main principle of how God runs his kingdom. And he runs his kingdom through this principle right here. If we dialogue and agree with him, that's called abiding in Christ. We will experience fruitfulness. We'll experience the power of God on the inside. We'll just take another minute or two. We'll read this passage and we'll end with that. It says in verse 13, whatever you ask in my name, and he's not talking about one time asking. The verb ask is in the continuous present tense. Ask and keep on asking is how some translate this. This rightfully translate this verb here. Whatever you ask, that's in my name. In other words, that I can endorse it's in the will of God. Being saying in the name of Jesus is not a semantics, you know, like if you say in the name of Jesus, then it's going to happen. If you don't say that, oops, I forgot to say in the name of Jesus, it's not going to work. No, praying in the name of Jesus means being praying in a way that he can endorse it, praying in a way that he can approve of it. And it's good to say in the name of Jesus that that's that's nice, but that's not the main point. It's not the semantics. It's the spirit behind it. Praying in a way that he can endorse it, that writing a check that he can sign the check is the idea that he can endorse that request. He says, whatever you ask in my name that I will do for you. The father will be glorified. He goes on and says it again. If you ask anything in my name, I'll do it. He says the same thing twice. He says, if you dialogue with me, here's what he's saying. Dialogue with me, dialogue with me, dialogue with me. And it opens the windows of blessing from the heavenly realm to the earthly realm. This is what opens the windows of blessing the dialogue. Now, when some people read, you can ask anything in my name, they automatically think of asking for more, for better circumstances. They think of cars, houses, money, open doors. Those are good things to ask for. Those things are, it's biblical to ask for our natural circumstances. But don't think of asking everything as mostly being about circumstances. When I think of this word, ask for anything, I'm thinking about the grace of God on my heart, increasing in revelation, a tender spirit, the fear of the Lord, encounter with God. And the Lord says, if you want those things on your heart, you talk to me about them. I will give them to you. So the anything isn't mostly circumstantial. The anything, beloved, it is mostly internal realities. It does involve circumstances. I don't want to minimize the circumstances, but I don't want to omit the internal life. Most of my asking is that I would feel his presence, understand his word, feel his burden. I want my heart alive on the inside. And he says, well, then talk to me about it. Talk to me about it. Not once. I want you to ask me continually about these issues. Dialogue with me through the day. And again, I don't mean every minute, every day, but just intermittently through the day, sometime with blocks of times and prayer meetings, other times in 10 and 20 second dialogue. Just I say things to him and I open my heart to him just throughout the day, whether it's in staff meetings or study time or coming and going and driving. It's just the intermittent dialoguing with him throughout the day. And again, that increases dynamically the more time I spend in the word. So he says, they're asked, get into the dialogue mode. And I want you to stop and think about how much you dialogue with the Lord. And the point, my point is to make you feel bad about it, because most everybody would feel bad about the answer to that question. I mean, I've talked about the whole billion people in the body of Christ worldwide. Ninety nine percent, I'm sure we'd go, oh, bad question. No, that's a very common reality that that's like, oh, we don't answer that good. I don't want you to feel bad about it. I want you to see it as an answer to going forward in your life. My goal isn't to make you feel bad. Say, boy, he really raked us over the coals tonight. No, that's not the point. My point is that you would leave and say, I think I got an answer to why my heart is stalled out. That's what I'm trying to give you an answer. I'm not trying to give you a scolding. I'm trying to give you an answer. I know what the answer is. I don't always do it, but I at least I know what's going wrong when things are going wrong. When the oil light is on in the car, I know it's oil. I know what the problem is. And beloved sitting in a prayer room is not synonymous with dialoguing with the Lord. You can sit in the prayer room and live in Never Neverland sitting in the prayer room. Sitting in those chairs that gives you a better shot because you're in a good environment and there's a like-minded people. But that does not mean at all you're connecting or dialoguing with the Lord because you're sitting in those chairs. Now he's going to go on to the next issue. I mean the next verses. He's going to go to the issue of agreeing with the Holy Spirit's leadership. He says, if you keep my commandments, he says it three times. In verse 15, if you keep my commandments. Verse 21, he who keeps my commandments. Verse 23, if anyone loves me, he keeps my word. That's the same thing. Agreeing with the Holy Spirit's leadership is what this is talking about. It's not talking about a few categories of scandalous sins staying out of them. It's talking about living under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Then the next chapter, John 15, Jesus uses the term abide in me. But what he's really doing is he's taking the terms he established the concepts of chapter 14, dialoguing and agreeing with God. He puts them together under a new term called abiding in the vine. We're not going to go there. You're familiar with that and you can read it on your own. Got a few thoughts here on the notes. But I just wanted to point us in that direction. So we'll end with that now. So let's stand before the Lord. Have the worship team come up. Let's talk to the Lord about this issue. Again, I'm not trying to scold you. I'm trying to give you hope that there's an answer for a stale heart. Because when my heart feels stuck and stale, I like to know there's an answer. I don't want to feel hopeless. We're not hopeless. The answer is clear. The answer is hard, but it's clear. It will require lifestyle changes, but the answer is clear. I want joy in the midst of circumstances with difficult and mundane circumstances. How many of your lives are difficult and mundane? Everybody's life, not totally difficult and mundane, but our lives are filled with that and we can experience God in the midst of it. Well, I'm done preaching. All right. Let's just wait on the Lord for just a moment here.