Mike Bickle emphasizes the transformative power of walking in the Spirit and fostering a relationship with the Holy Spirit. He explains that while believers face a constant battle between the flesh and the Spirit, there is a promise of victory through fellowship with the Holy Spirit. Bickle encourages believers to actively engage in dialogue with the Spirit, which will empower them to overcome sinful desires and live in alignment with God's purpose. He highlights that this relationship is not just about being forgiven but about experiencing the indwelling presence of God, which enables believers to contest sin and live righteously. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a deeper communion with the Holy Spirit to unlock the fullness of life in Christ.

Well, tonight I want to continue on a subject I've been talking about for a while, walking in the spirit, and particularly, fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit. It's a subject we looked a little bit at last week, and a subject that might be new to some of you here, but I ask you just to follow along, read the verses, and jump in and ask the Lord to make this real to you. It will really, really, really change your life if you take hold of this. Galatians chapter five, Paul the Apostle gives one of the great promises in the New Testament. He says, I say then, he's giving his conclusion about what's important in life. Here at the, near the end of the book of Galatians, he goes, I say then, I sum it all up. Walk in the spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. What a dynamic promise that there's a way in this life to not walk out, to not walk out the lust of the flesh, the sinful lust that all of us are so familiar with. Then he goes on in verse 17, and he talks about how great this promise is. And the reason that's what he's addressing is because he's saying in verse 17, the flesh wars, or lusts, or wars, it's the same word that some translations take the word wars. The flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit will answer back. The spirit will get involved in this war and war against the flesh on our behalf. And the reason this is such a great promise in verse 16, that we would not fulfill the lust of the flesh, because there's a war, it's a violent war, and very few ever get victory in this war. And that's what Paul's really saying in verse 17. This war is hostile. This war is violent. This war is meant to take you out in terms of your purpose in God. But in the midst of the hostile war, Paul says in verse 16, there is a way of victory. There's actually the ability to not yield and give yourself to the lust of the flesh that war against you. Paragraph A, the flesh in Paul's theology includes physical pleasures, but it also is talking about sinful emotions as well. Not just sinful physical pleasures, but sinful emotional responses of our pride, and anger, and defensiveness, and bitterness, all of these kinds of things. There is a way where the spirit will enable us to have victory over this dimension of our life. Paragraph B, Paul describes the violent war inside of every believer. And we are all familiar from just our personal experience that the flesh is warring against the spirit's purpose in our life. The flesh is warring against our relationship with the Holy Spirit. The flesh wants to shut down our communication with God, and he wants to disqualify us in our purpose in God. Beloved, that's serious. There's a hostile power that wants to shut down your communication with God. To end your relationship with God is the desire of darkness. But also to cancel out your purpose in God so you will end up disqualified in your divine purpose. But Paul gives us an encouragement at the end of verse 17. He says, it's not just the flesh just trying to take out your spiritual purpose in relationship with God. He says, be encouraged, because the spirit is gonna get involved in the war. The spirit is going to war back, but only to the degree that you cooperate with the spirit. The spirit is saying, I have far more power than the flesh. However, I will not get involved in this war in fullness except you invite me in on my terms. Some people say, Holy Spirit, help me. Holy Spirit says, that's a good prayer, that works. But you have to invite me into the war on God's terms, not on our terms, because we'd like to just kind of carry on business as usual, throw up a prayer kind of on the run, bail me out, God. And the Lord says, it's gonna take a little bit more than that. But if you will invite me in to this battle in your life, I promise you, I will go to war against the work of the flesh in you. I will give you power. I will give you insight. I will give you new motivation. And I will give you the ability to win this war. Paragraph C, at the end, I wanna talk about it, because I've already said the first part of C. We are not promised in this war, we are not promised that all the fleshly desires would be gone. We're not promised that the war would be over. He didn't say, if you walk in the Spirit, the war will be over. He didn't say, if you walk in the Spirit, you won't have any more problems with desire. He says, if you walk in the Spirit, I'll give you the power not to walk out those desires. I'll give you dominion over them. Paragraph D, we will walk in the Spirit to the degree that we fellowship with the Holy Spirit. Now, that's the phrase that I want to really focus on. One of the great benefits of the new covenant is that at the new birth, when we were born again, the Holy Spirit came to live inside of us. And the Holy Spirit is a powerful person. We will experience the power of the indwelling Spirit most if we fellowship with Him. We're gonna experience a little bit of the work of the Spirit, no matter what we do. The very fact that we're unbelievers and we get saved, that is the work of the Spirit already, with very little cooperation on our part. The Holy Spirit will do a little bit, but if we will fellowship with Him, if we will develop an active relationship and a dialogue with the Spirit, He will allow us to experience His power at a far greater measure. Now, the passage that I'm looking at is 2 Corinthians 13, verse 14. And it says that, talks about, it's this phrase, the fellowship of the Spirit. The NAS is the New American Standard, which is the translation that I used for about 20 years. And now I use the New King James. And the New King James says, if we have communion with the Spirit, that's a great phrase. But I love this, the terminology of the New American Standard Bible, if we would fellowship with the Holy Spirit. Roman numeral two, the new birth. The uncreated God living in the human spirit. Beloved, this is beyond exaggeration. I mean, you can't exaggerate the fullness of what this reality's talking about. When we were born again, the Holy Spirit, I'm talking about a real person, the uncreated God, the God that existed in eternity past, fully God, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit isn't just God the Father's agent to go do tasks. He is Himself fully God. The Holy Spirit is a real person with real emotions, with divine intelligence, with the fullness of God's power because He is God dwelling in our spirit. Now what happens often in our thinking, we think about the new birth, being born again, and we think of it as being forgiven. We think of being born again mostly in terms of we're forgiven, we're going to heaven. Beloved, we could have, the saints had forgiveness on their way to heaven in the old covenant. The distinctive of being born again is not that we're forgiven going to heaven. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the saints of old in the Old Testament, they had that reality. But it's something more than being forgiven. When we're born again, we are born into a new reality into a vibrant connectedness with God in our spirit. This is absolutely fantastic. There is a dynamic connectedness to God Himself dwelling in the human spirit. This is far beyond anything the saints in the Old Testament had. Paul the apostle gives the implications of this in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, I mean 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 17. It says, to the person that's joined to the Lord, that's born again, it's the same general idea. That person is one spirit with God. That statement is so dynamic in its implications. Let's read this again. He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with God. God comes to take up residency in the human spirit. God dwells inside the human spirit. Paragraph B, 1 John 3, verse 8 and 9. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifest. Or the fact He came into the world is what that means by manifest. For this purpose, the Son of God became human and came to the earth. That's what it means by manifest. What's the purpose? To destroy the works. To destroy the works of Satan, the works of darkness. To destroy them. That's the reason Jesus took upon Himself the form of a man and came to the earth. To destroy the works of darkness, the works of Satan. Look at verse 9. It's important that we link verse 8 and verse 9 together. Because the work of darkness, the work of Satan of which the Spirit of God came to destroy is sin inside of the human experience, inside of our members, of our body. Verse 9, whoever's been born of God does not sin. And he's talking about habitually. They don't sin as the rule of their life. If they're genuinely born of God, they change their posture of now they're warring against sin instead of seeking out ways to sin. They go to war against sin. They completely have a new posture. Doesn't mean they have victory all the time. Doesn't even mean they have victory in the immediate, but they change their posture. And that's what 1 John's talking about. They go to war against sin instead of seeking out ways to sin freely. And the reason that we go to war against sin is because God's seed remains inside of us. God's seed. And the word there is the sperma of God is in the human spirit. Beloved, the angels do not have the seed of God. Only born-again believers have the seed, the very seed of God. God, the uncreated God, God, the spirit dwelling inside the human spirit, and its purpose is to destroy the works of Satan in our lives. Often when you hear 1 John 3,8 quoted that the purpose of the Son of God being manifest was to destroy the works of Satan, we think of physical healing, and that's really good. He did come to destroy sickness. But the main point on John's mind in this context is that Jesus appeared on the earth. I mean, he came to the earth, became man, and he came to the earth in order to make a way for the seed of God to be given to us. That's what was on his mind, that we would be born again, not just be forgiven. There's forgiveness in the Old Covenant, but that we would be recipients of the life of God dwelling in our spirit so that sin would be contested with power in this age, and then completely removed in the age to come. But that sin would be contested with power. The Holy Spirit, the seed of God would be in us. We could take a stand against sin, and we could contest it. We could challenge its work in us with power and with insight, and we could prevail. That's what the seed of God is, the emphasis of the seed of God in this passage. Of course, in the overall sense, the seed of God is in us so that we could commune with God, that we could have deep, profound intimacy with God's heart. We would know his mind and know his heart. But John focuses in on this one element of having the ability to contest sin in our members. So being born again isn't mostly about being forgiven, though we are forgiven. The glory of being born again is that we receive the life of God, where we're not just forgiven, we can actually contest sin and overcome it on the inside in this life. We would go to war against sin because we have every reason to believe we can defeat the works of darkness in our being. Now, I'm not saying that on this side, before the resurrection, that we're going to have the absence of the struggle in our inner man. Remember, don't limit the flesh to just physical things. Don't limit the flesh to immorality or addictions to various things. The operation of the flesh is bitterness and envy and pride working in our heart and our mind as well. Beloved, we have every reason to believe we can contest, we can challenge sin, and we can get victory over it, that it would not have dominion. It would challenge us back. It would war against us, but we would win the battle. Paragraph C. Paragraph C, Hebrews chapter seven. And again, I'm quoting from the NAS or the New American Standard translation. It's talking about Jesus's priesthood. It's kind of an unusual verse, but I think you'll be able to follow it. The writer of Hebrews says that if another priest, and he's referring to Jesus, arises according to the likeness of Melchizedek, you don't have to figure that out right now. Just think, whatever. That's not my point tonight. This priest who has become such, he became a priest. Now, here's the phrase. According to the power of an indestructible life. Now, what this verse is talking about is talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is a priesthood according to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is described here as the power of an indestructible life, a life that cannot be, that can destroy all that wages war against it. Earlier, we talked about Galatians 5.17, where it says the Spirit is warring against the flesh. Now, again, not just physical things, but against our fleshly mindsets as well. And when He's warring, He's not just convicting us of it. It's far more than that. He's empowering us. He's giving us power and motivation. He's giving us insight in this war. Some people say, yeah, I can sense the Spirit warring against the flesh. I feel so miserable all the time. Now, that's only part of the war. The conviction is only the introduction of the war, but it's the power and the resolve and the ability to rejoice in victory over these inward manifestations of the flesh. But anyway, in this war, the Spirit's warring on our behalf. I love this. He says, I'm on your side. I'm in the battle. You're not in the battle alone. I am in the battle with you, but you have to invite me in on my terms. You have to do it my way in the battle. And when I come into the battle, I come with the power of an indestructible life. I can destroy every power that resists me. The life of God is far inside of you, is far more powerful than any addiction. If you would yield to it, if you would develop a friendship with Him, if you would strengthen and cultivate your connectedness with the Holy Spirit, He would come with indestructible power. Immorality can be destroyed by the Holy Spirit. Drunkenness can be destroyed. Insecurity can be destroyed by an indestructible life. God, the Holy Spirit looks at bitterness, looks at resentment, looks at pride and says, I can easily conquer that if you yield to me. This is no problem to me. Pride and anger is destructible. My life is indestructible. It's unconquerable. You cannot conquer my life if my life is yielded to. That's the key. Of course, that's what we're talking about here. Top of page two, paragraph D. God created us in three parts, spirit, soul, and body. Then on other occasions, Paul the Apostle talked about, he combined the spirit and the soul together, and he talked about the inward man. It's called the inward man versus the outer man. The inward man is the spirit and the soul together. But when he was being more comprehensive in his description of the human makeup, he said it's spirit, soul, and body. And in this, the order is important because the spirit is to have dominance. When Adam was created, his spirit had dominance over his soul, mind, emotions, and will, and his spirit man had dominance over his body. When Adam sinned and his fellowship with God was broken, the reverse took place. The body became the part of our makeup that we were most conscious of. We felt its powers, not just its negative powers of lust drawing us into things, it's fatigue. We are aware of the weariness of our body, the sinful desires of our body, the sickness of our body. Our body became the thing we were most aware of. The order was reversed. And then our soul, which is our emotions, our mind, emotions, and will, second. But the part of our being that we're most unfamiliar with, but the part of our being that was meant to have the preeminence in our experience was our spirit man. And when we were born again, that was the first step to our spirit having dominance in our life. And as we fellowship with the Holy Spirit who dwells in our spirit, then we begin a journey to where our spirit gets in its proper place in our human experience. It's number one leading us, our soul and our body. Beloved, that can happen even in this age where our spirit has more prominence in our life decisions and the way that we carry our inner man, the way we carry our heart, our spirit can have, we can be more aware of God, the Holy Spirit, and give it a place of leadership, give our spirit, inhabited by the Holy Spirit, give our spirit man the leadership of our life. Now, of course, that's the goal. And the more that we do that, we enter into righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. But I can assure you the devil wants the order to remain like it is. He wants our body to be the thing we're most aware of as our body. And the voice that our body speaks out to us, feed me, pamper me, take care of me, he wants our body, the voice of our desires of our body to have dominance. That's what the devil wants. But the voice of God in our spirit, our consciousness of God, our awareness of our fellowship with the Holy Spirit is to be first place. First Peter, it talks about, First Peter chapter three, verse three and four, it calls it the hidden person of the heart. The spirit man is called the hidden person of the heart. What an amazing statement. Paul calls him in Colossians 3.10, the new man. The new man. The new man is the human being who has God living in their spirit. That's what the new man is. The old man is the human being devoid of the Holy Spirit. Their human spirit did not have the life of God living in them. That's what the old man is. The old man is who we were without the Holy Spirit living in us. But the problem that Paul challenges is that people are born again, the spirit lives in them, but they still live in the same order of body, soul, and spirit. They live as though the spirit is not in them. They live like it was in the days when all they had was spirit, soul, and body without the Holy Spirit. They live like the old man still. So when Paul talks about put away the deeds of the old man, he says don't live like the spirit's not in you, desiring to communicate with you and to empower you. Don't live as though the spirit doesn't want to war against this negative force in you. Live in contact with the Holy Spirit. That's the new man. It's the man that lives with a new identity before God and the man that lives in contact with the Holy Spirit. We got a new identity. We're sons before the father and we're the bride before the bridegroom God, the son. We have a new identity, but it's more than that. We have a new connectedness with God and that connectedness with God is God in our spirit, the most intimate connection, God in us, the seed of God, God dwelling in the human spirit. That's the essence of the new man. Paul says why would you live like the old man? Why would you live as though you don't have a new identity? And why would you live as though there is no connectedness with God inside of you? Why would you continue living with your body having predominance over your human makeup? Why would you let it dominate you like you did before you had this invasion of God into your experience? Paragraph E. In prayer, we focus our mind on God in two ways. This might be new to some of you that are just new with us here in the last week or two. This very important biblical concept. We focus our mind on God in two different ways. That is biblical. It's emphasized throughout the whole New Testament. Number one, we focus on the Father who sits upon the throne. That's what Jesus said. When you pray, say this, our Father in heaven, our Father on the throne. On Friday nights, we just began a series on Revelation 4, which is the great throne room scene of God in the Bible. There's more insight in Revelation 4 about the throne of God and God's person on the throne, what God's like on his throne. It's fantastic. And I have, in my own experience, have been very, very enriched by studying the 15 key phrases in Revelation 4, verse one to seven, 15 of them. And these 15 phrases are insights into the beauty of God on his throne. And when we pray before God, we go before the Father on the throne, and we are to be strengthened in our prayer life by understanding a little bit. We don't understand much, but what we do understand really makes a difference about God on his throne. I wanna encourage you that if you don't have a time to participate in the meeting itself, which is, you don't need to, with internet and with tapes and CDs and notes, and iPods and webcasts, you can be all over the world, you know, and still participate in this Friday night class. I wanna encourage you to do that. If you've not developed your understanding of the beauty of God on his throne, the gaze, the scene into which we gaze when we pray and worship, I really encourage you to take a little bit of time to catch up. Well, I mean, we've been in two, three weeks, but we're gonna be on it for some weeks. We're gonna look at each one of those 15 phrases. But the second way, the second way in which we focus our mind is on God, the Holy Spirit, dwelling inside of our spirit. This is new to some. It's the saints throughout church history have spoken of this glorious reality. Some of the great books on this have shown up throughout church history. These, you know, often called the mystics, and it's too bad they're called that because when you hear the word mystic, we automatically think, well, I'm not one of those, so what have I got to do with it? And just the term mystic kind of sets them out of the way. And the truth is that God dwelling in our spirit is the essence of being born again. That's what being born again means. Again, we've reduced born again to being forgiven. I love being forgiven. Without being forgiven, I'm history. I'm not undermining forgiveness. I love forgiveness. I mean, a whole lot. But I want to commune with God. I want the new man, the connectedness with God in my spirit. Look at what Jesus said in John 7, verse 38. He said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. And it went on to verse 39 to say this. He spoke of the spirit. That out of the human heart, rivers flow. And Jesus was talking, the river was the person of the Holy Spirit. That's the point. I like the King James, the KJV. That's what it means on the PowerPoint. It's the word belly. Instead of heart, King James said, out of our belly. The new American standard, instead of the word heart, puts our innermost being. I love that. Right out of our belly, out of our innermost being, our inner man, the hidden person of the heart. The hidden person, the person that people can't see by looking at you across the room. Now, if they talk to you, they'll see it. Because if they talk to you, and this hidden person of the heart shows himself or herself forth in meekness and in power and in wisdom. But if they look at you, if they kind of look at you at a distance, it's a hidden person. They don't have a clue there is a supernatural dynamic operating in your spirit until they come into contact with you. Then that hidden person is made manifest through your words and your lifestyle and the spirit. It's more than your words. The spirit that's on you. It's called, Paul talked about renewing the spirit of the mind. The whole inward atmosphere of your personhood. The spirit of your mind. You have a different spirit. Some people can say the right words, but they don't have, they don't have a renewed spirit. But this hidden person, I'm kind of on a bunny trail here. This hidden person, you could come into contact. You can't see it by just observing a person. But when you come into contact, close contact with them, you go, whoa, your words are different. Your choices are different. Your countenance is different. But more than that, you've got a different spirit. And it's a hidden person that is only made manifest when you come into contact with that person. Anyway, Jesus calls, describes this hidden person as the heart with a flowing river. Now a flowing river, I like this word flowing river. Jesus described in the book of John, the Holy Spirit, like a flowing river here in John 7 on the inside, and like a wind that blows in John 3, in the born again chapter, the chapter where he's talking about the born again experience. He likens being born again to the wind blowing, and it has a surprise dimension and element to it. So here we have a flowing dimension, meaning there's a, it's ever replenished. It never stops. It flows. It ever flows like a fountain. He said it never, never ends. It's a flowing river. There's no end to the supply of it. And it's fresh and it's endless. It's fresh. It's endless. It's alive. It's alive. But the wind, the prophetic picture in John 3, which again is the chapter about being born again, it's not just the element of it's fresh and alive and flowing. It's the element that it's their surprise. There's gusts of wind that come out of nowhere with no guess that it's coming. A moment later, the wind is blowing and the trees are bending over you. Whoa, I didn't see that wind coming. Now, when we think of the wind of the spirit, we typically think of ministry. We think of, oh, blow wind of God, meaning release healings and great works and surprises. And it does mean that way, but that's not what it means in this context. In John 3, it means the wind is blowing on your inner man, means God's gonna inspire you to heroic commitments of righteousness and meekness. I don't mean just to do eccentric things. You know, some people, oh, the wind blowing. I'm here today, I'm there tomorrow. Who knows? I'm unpredictable, I'm unreliable, I'm unfaithful. I have no follow through, but I'll blame it on the Holy Spirit. We're not talking about unpredictables to whether you're gonna keep your word or follow through on your commitments. Because you know, the word follows, the word faithfulness really means follow through. So it doesn't mean an unpredictability on your commitments, because the man or woman of the Spirit is the most reliable. But it means the Spirit's gonna move on your heart in unpredictable ways. He's gonna lead us into unusual, surprising expressions of meekness and love. We'll get ideas seemingly out of nowhere. It's the blowing of the Spirit that will show us how to love better and to serve better and to be more meek and we have the Lord will surprise us with a dream one day comes from the Spirit and He will bolster our heart and strengthen us in our meekness and in our love. It's the blowing of the wind. Well, anyway, in John 7, verse 38, it's called a flowing river. Out of the belly comes a flowing river. Paragraph F, the Scripture describes God as light, as fire, as living water, as a flowing river. Now, this is important. False religions present a counterfeit to God as light dwelling inside of us. The false religions have the rainbow. The New Age movement has the rainbow and the light within. Beloved, that's the counterfeit. But we're not giving away the rainbow and the light within because false religions use it. The rainbow and the light within belongs to the followers and disciples of Jesus Christ. That light within doesn't belong to false religions. Yeah, they've got a false light and who knows what's all behind some of the things that different ones claim. Some of it is demons, but others of it, they're just fabricating their stories. But I wanna tell you, we have a light within. He is God, the Holy Spirit. And right here in 1 John 1, it says, the message which we have heard from God and we declare, here's the message, here's the message. He is light, God is light. He's light on the throne. He's more than light. He's a person that radiates divine light on the throne, but he's also God who is our light dwelling in our spirit. Let's go to the next passage. It says in Psalm 104, verse two, God is described as covering himself in garments of light. He has light like a garment. The Bible talks about God as a consuming fire. And we could go on, we'll develop this in Revelation 4. We'll look at God as light and fire and all these things from the word of God. But here's the point. When we talk to God dwelling in our spirit and we need to talk to God dwelling in our spirit, not just to God on the throne. God, the Holy Spirit is not just the Aaron, you know, the Aaron boy for the father. God, the Holy Spirit is fully God. He's God and he lives in us. This is fantastic. But we dial down the activity and the traffic in our inner man. We just like got so much hectic things going. And we speak to God who is light and who is fire in our inner man. I think of this bright, glorious light in my inner man. And I talk to him. It's not an it, it's a him. The Holy Spirit is not an it. The Holy Spirit is a him, it's a person, it's a he. And I say, God, the Holy Spirit, consuming fire, glorious light. We talk to him in real friendship, in real relationship. Let's go to paragraph H, top of page three. Very simple principle. Beloved, paragraph H will change your life if you do it. It is so simple, but it's so neglected. We walk in the spirit by talking with the spirit as a real person. That's how we walk in the spirit. Somebody goes, how do you do this walking in the spirit thing? And it's real mystical. And there's a couple dimensions to walking in the spirit, but I assure you this, if you talk to the spirit, the other dimensions will take care of themselves. You talk to him. All the other dominoes, so to speak, will go down if you start talking to him. All the other action and reactions inside of you will come into line if you talk to him. The fundamental, I'm reading paragraph H, an introductory way to walk in the spirit is by maintaining an active dialogue with the indwelling spirit who lives in your spirit. This is the key to our transformation and renewal. It is so simple that people miss it. The most uneducated person can do this. You don't need seven steps of training. You could be born again and within the hour talking to the Holy Spirit living in you. You don't need to wait a few months to kind of rev up for it. Born again at three o'clock in the afternoon, you could be talking to the Holy Spirit at 3.01 if you want to. It takes no education per se. Talk to him. It's amazing things that words, I'm still in the paragraph H at the bottom, words quench the spirit or words activate the spirit inside of us. Amazing thing. Says in Ephesians 4.30 that if we speak unwholesome words, the spirit's quenched. Ephesians 4.29.30, we speak unwholesome words, the spirit's quenched in us and then our own spirit is quenched. But the opposite is true. You speak to the spirit, your spirit is activated. Now, activated is not a great word. I don't like the word activated. I just can't think of a better word. The Holy Spirit, when we speak to the spirit, we invite his activity in our inner man. We invite it, we beckon it. We activate it, so to speak. Again, let's put that under quote unquote. We activate the Holy Spirit in us. That's a weird term. We invite his activity. We beckon it. We position ourself for the spirit to be active in us. I'm gonna say this again now. We speak words to release and activate the spirit in our inner man and we speak words to stop the spirit in our inner man. Words, it's amazing. It's an amazing thing. Words activate the spirit on the inside of us. We talk to him, simple words. Simple words, only a few words, really easy. And words quench or stop the Holy Spirit's activity in us. Words do. Everybody can say words silently in their heart. You don't even have to say them out loud. The deaf, the mute, you don't have to hear or you don't have to be able to speak. You can say them silently in your heart. Everybody with a human spirit, no matter what condition of their body, can speak words silently to the Holy Spirit. And it activates him. And if we speak words wrong, we deactivate him. Again, I'm using a technical term, which is I'm just understanding that there's better ways to say that. We quench him, we hinder his work in us. Paragraph I, if we just talk to him, he will talk back. If we start the conversation, if we start the conversation, he will enter into the conversation with us. But there's this principle that the rule, the rule of the kingdom is the Holy Spirit says, I will wait until I'm invited into the activity of your inner man. God so honors our free will that he will, he will be in a place of waiting until we invite him. That's how much he honors our free will. He goes, if you don't want my activity in your heart, then you don't have to have it. If you want my activity in your heart, you ask for it. You talk to me. And if you start the conversation, I will enter into the conversation with you. But he wants the onus or he wants the initiative to rest with us in the relationship in this regard, meaning it's his initiative in the big picture. He's the one that wooed us, he came after us. He's inspiring us, he's drawing us. I mean, it's his initiative to bring us to himself. Now he's saying, I will enter into far more activity if you want me to, but I'm waiting on you now. Now there are those occasions where he speaks to us when we don't ask him to, and it's mostly negative. But the rule of the kingdom is by far, by far the principle of the kingdom is he will speak to you if you start the conversation. And when he talks, and you haven't been talking to him for a long time, when he talks, it's time to duck. It's time to get down on the ground and say, Lord, Lord, give me one more chance, okay, okay. Because he's going into a, he's taking the relationship out of its normal order of we volunteer and yield ourself to him. He's breaking in against our will, so to speak, and he's speaking and warning us. Don't, I'm telling you, stop now. I'm telling you, stop. You haven't wanted to talk to me, but I love you, stop. But if we talk to him, he'll talk back. And what I mean by he'll talk back, I don't mean that we'll hear his audible voice. We will have subtle impressions. Subtle impressions will come to our mind and to our heart. These impressions release power onto our mind. They really do. Paragraph J, we will not walk in the spirit. I want you to catch this. This is a bold statement, or I mean, it says, I'm making it clear and strong, but it's a true one. We will not walk in the spirit more than we talk to the spirit. We have this, some folks get this idea, this kind of mystical idea, I'm walking in the spirit. Well, tell me about it. Well, you know, just me and the spirit walking. And it's so nebulous, they don't know what they mean either. They just know it's in the Bible, so they're, you know, they're hoping they're doing it. But he will help us to the degree that we talk to him. Isn't that simple? I'm gonna say it in a different way. We will not obey him more than we talk to him. If we talk to him a scale of one to 10, if we talk to him about a one or two, we will obey him in our inner man at about a one or two. Because we won't have power or insight for our obedience to mature. It takes power. It takes insight for our obedience to mature. I mean, we know enough, we have enough insight to know that drunkenness and immorality and killing people's bad, stealing. But beloved, the Holy Spirit has far more information to give us about walking with him besides those overt scandalous areas of brokenness in our life. He wants to bring us into the heights of meekness. That's when the Spirit is free and alive. That's when we are at our best, when we're in meekness. He will talk to us, he will motivate us, and he will give us insight on how to do it in a way that will bring us to the heights of human experience. Meekness by the Spirit in the name of Jesus and in love with him is the way you will live life at its highest. That's what I mean by we won't obey him more than we talk to him. Some people think, well, I get drunk, not that much. I don't do this much, not that much. I'm pretty obedient. I don't talk to the Spirit very much. I go, no, no, that's just the really low levels of obedience, avoiding those things. Those are just the, those are obedience, you know, entry level 101 obedience. God wants an obedience. He wants us yoked together with him in meekness. Matthew chapter 11, verse 29 and 30. Yoke together with me in meekness. And we will go to the heights of human experience. But we got to talk to him to get insight and power to go into, to enter into that yoke. The moments we dialogue with him, I'm still on J, are the moments we're most aware of his power on the inside of us. K, we talk to the Spirit. I'm just going to say it again. We talk to the Spirit as the way, catch that, as the way to experience the release of power on the inside. Let there be no more mystery. We talk to the Spirit in our spirit as the way to experience power on the inside. That's how you do it. As I shared a couple of weeks ago, you will, if you feed your spirit on the word of God, you will strengthen your dialogue with the Holy Spirit by filling your life with the word. But here's the point I want to make in K. Here's the key word is the word small. He releases small measures of power in our mind and heart. But the power's real. It's small, but it's real. We experience the Spirit's power in small incremental ways, in very small portions. It parallels the way God strengthens our natural body. Our outer man is the way that God strengthens our inner man. Now at this time, our family, our spiritual family here is on a fast, and we're linked up with lots of other ministries across America. We're on a fast right now. So when this fast is over, it would be ridiculous, and nobody will try this. It would be ridiculous to say, okay, the fast is over. I'm gonna eat in one day and drink in one day enough to strengthen me for one year, because it's obvious. Even the smallest child understands it, that it's little portions of food and water through the course of years that makes us strong through years. It's exactly the same with our inner man. See, we have a disconnect. We know that's true with our outer man. Nobody would try to drink and eat enough in one setting to go for a year. However, when it comes to the Spirit, we wanna go to a meeting, you know, have the prophet of God lay hands on us and get enough at one sitting at the table of God to last us for a year. It does not work that way. He feeds us and He gives us drink in the inner man in the same way He does the outer man, little by little, day after day. And over decades, we become strong. So we understand that the way that we feed and drink is by talking to the Spirit, especially, especially according to the Word of God, meaning we use the Word as our conversation material. We take the Word and we talk to the Spirit. We let the Word create a dialogue in our heart and we obey Him. And when we take the Word and enter into dialogue, which we've talked about a bunch of times and those that are new with us will cover those subjects of how to dialogue with God through the Word and we obey Him. That's key too, we obey Him. Then we have food and drink for our inner man. But remember, it's only incremental. It's only small portions. It's something that has to be maintained all the time in order to get strong over the years. But when it comes to our human spirit, our inner man, we say, hey, you know, I just wanna have this great downloaded explosion of power. I wanna get enough at one setting to last me for a year, couple years if possible. And when we think of our outer man, it's ludicrous. Nobody would ever try it. Paragraph L, the emotional resource of the Spirit or let's say it this way, the power of God on our emotions has nine different facets of the one diamond of our relationship with the Spirit. There it is in Galatians 5, verse 22. The fruit of the Spirit, or you could put the word the result of the working of the Spirit in us. Instead of the word fruit, put the result of the working of the Spirit in us. Is love, joy, peace, patience. The word long-suffering in the New King James is the word patience in the New American Standard. We have those nine manifestations of the working of the Spirit in the inner man. These are nine manifestations of the working of the indestructible life of the Spirit in the inner man if we yield to the Spirit. Meaning if we develop a friendship with the Spirit. Paragraph M. Now this is as simple as it gets. Mark paragraph M. I'm gonna mark paragraph M. Remember this, Mike. Paragraph M. This is as simple as, I tell you, it is this true. It's this simple. We recognize His presence in us, His indestructible power in us. We recognize it simply by thanking Him for it, talking directly to Him. Not thanking Him out, not just testifying, oh, I thank the Holy Spirit. Not even in the sense of going before God the Father and Father, I thank you for the Holy Spirit. That's good. That's powerful. I'm talking about talking directly to Him in your spirit. Has a different, it has a different dimension than even talking to God about the Holy Spirit. I'm talking about talking to the Spirit about the Spirit. Because when you do that, when you talk to God about the Holy Spirit, you can still have the Spirit as an errand boy. When you talk to the Spirit about the Spirit, He's a real person that you become, that you become, develop a friendship and a relationship with. Let me say paragraph B again, M. I mean, we recognize His presence by thanking Him, by thanking Him for it. That's how we activate, I'll say this, we activate the Spirit's power in us by recognizing His presence, and we do that by thanking Him for being present in us. For instance, I'll get quiet and I'll see this glorious light that's consuming fire. He's a person, He's God. And I say, I thank you, Holy Spirit, for your presence, for your presence that is mighty and indestructible life in me. I thank you. Now, let's take the subject of peace. We all know what it means to be agitated. We lose our peace. You know, the business is going bad, the relationship's going bad, the ministry's going bad. Just things are going bad. And our spirit, our heart naturally goes into the stress-out mode, you know, just really frazzled and stressed and agitated. We need supernatural peace. And we can say, oh, God, give me peace. And that's a biblical prayer. Or we can talk to God and the Holy Spirit and say, God and the Holy Spirit, just pause and look into that glorious divine light, that consuming fire, and say, God and the Holy Spirit, don't ask Him, say, I thank you for the peace of God. I thank you for the peace that is indestructible in its power. There is no anxiety stronger than you. And talk to Him. Talk to Him. Beloved, don't expect. It's like if somebody's been in an extended fast or an extended sickness, and the fast is over, the sickness is over, the first day they eat, they're not gonna have all their strength back. So my point is, you don't go out of here and say, okay, I'm gonna try this once. And if I have less than the fullness of indestructible peace, I'm gonna give it one or two tries, and then I'm out of here if it doesn't work. Beloved, you wouldn't go on a long fast and have one meal and expect your strength to be returned, or have an extended sickness where you couldn't eat, and suddenly you eat, and all of a sudden, your strength is back. It didn't work that way. Your strength is built up. We talk to this glorious person, and we don't say, give us peace. But when we talk to Him directly, we say, we recognize His presence. We go, glorious God. And we speak slowly. We speak, I mean, really slow. The fewer words, the better, nearly. I don't even articulate the words out loud. I say them silently within myself, just quietly. There's groans and sighs. Like in Romans 8, 26, it says, the spirit groans. It's like, there's a sigh. It's like, Holy Spirit, thank you. For your peace. You're staring at that light, and you're just pausing. And you can just connect with Him. Now, when people begin to first do this, they say, I can't really quite even locate my spirit. I don't even quite figure this out. We're so used to being dominated by our body and our soul, our mind, emotions, and will just act even. Bouncing off the walls on the inside, just going back and just, mind's running 100 miles an hour, body's screaming at us, saying, I don't even know how to connect with my spirit right now. Just, I go, just stay with it a few moments. Just give a few shots at it. And all of a sudden, you begin to talk to your spirit. Now, this is such a powerful subject. It will truly change your life. But most people, if there was 1,000 people, and we interviewed them, when's the last time you talked to the spirit directly? I don't mean talk to God the Father about the spirit. Talk to the spirit about His ministry. Talk to Him. Most people, there's 1,000 people, I'm guessing, well over 900, way over 900 would say, I've never done that, if you want to know the truth. And I would say this as encouragement. There is a correlation between the fact you've never talked to Him to the fact you're struggling to walk with Him. You wouldn't be able to walk in friendship with anybody you didn't talk to. Now, the guy comes along here. I want you to meet my best friend. Well, tell me about your best friend. I don't know, I've never talked to him. Well, how do you know he's your best friend? Well, I don't know. I drew his name in a drawing once, and I saw his name. He's my best friend, just kind of by faith. You mean you've never talked to him? Well, no, no, I talk about him. He's cool, I've read his book. You mean he's the right thing? You've never talked to him? No, I've never, never, ever talked to him, never. Never once? Never once. You know, most believers have never talked directly to the Holy Spirit, never once. I would encourage you to start off setting a goal to talk to him three to five minutes, five or 10 times a day, three to five minutes. I don't mean start off with a one-hour dialogue. Three to five minutes. What you will find is your ability to focus will increase over time. You will find that your ability to really connect with God in your spirit will increase and increase, just like the sick person who eats food. Little by little, they begin to get strength. It's real, so we have these nine emotional resources. It's really one person, but we need patience, which the New King James is long-suffering, but use the word patience. You know, we're frustrated. We're getting ready to, we've been offended. We're ready to talk out of it. Look at your spirit. Just focus your mind on the God, the Holy Spirit, this glorious light that's consuming fire and talk to him, right? You're gonna be talking right to the person, and your inner man locks into the Holy Spirit. It's God, the Holy Spirit. Don't say, God, give me patience. Don't say that. Say, thank you, thank you. Recognize his presence. Honor his presence by recognizing him. Dignify the fact that he's in you. Don't say, be in me. Say, thank you that you are in me. Don't say, Holy Spirit, give me strength. Say, Holy Spirit, you are the power of an indestructible life. Now, we do, Jesus taught us to do that. We pray before the Father, and I don't wanna break down the nuances. We ask God the Father for strength. We ask God the Father for power. But, beloved, there is a time to talk directly to the Holy Spirit in you. I'm gonna go to one more verse, and then we're gonna end with that, paragraph P here. It says, John 14, verse 17. We'll end with this verse here. Jesus is talking, I love this verse. He's talking to the disciples, and he says, the spirit whom the world cannot receive, because it doesn't see him, and it doesn't know him, but you know him. What a powerful statement. Now, again, I'm using the New American Standard, the NAS. It says, the spirit whom the world can't receive, because it neither sees him, but the NAS says, the New American says, the world doesn't behold the spirit. I like that word, behold the spirit. I like that better than see the spirit, because when we think of seeing the spirit, at least I do, I think of maybe seeing, I think of different, when I think of beholding, I think of standing before a bonfire, just gazing at it, beholding it, and that bonfire is on the inside of us. That glorious bonfire, that glorious light, that flowing river is on the inside. Behold it, stare into that fire, and don't let the New Age movement and its counterfeit scare you away. We do it in the name of Jesus, and in quest and love and obedience to Jesus, in according to the word of God. Everything that's not Jesus and the word of God, we throw it away. We do it because of Jesus, for Jesus, in Jesus, and the spirit gets excited when this thing's all about Jesus. He loves Jesus, and I have a prayer there in paragraph P that you could just read this on your own, and talk to him, but look at this. It says, the world cannot receive the spirit. Now, we can't, that's an important principle. We cannot receive the benefit and the activity of the spirit, because to receive the spirit is to receive its benefits, is what Jesus is meaning, to receive its activity. In other words, start to participate with the spirit and power. It says, the world can't receive the spirit's benefits and power, why? Because the world has not cultivated a friendship with the Holy Spirit. The world doesn't know him, but you know him, because he will be in you. You are those that are developing a friendship with him, therefore, you will receive his benefits of power and his benefits of inspiration. Here's my point that I'm ending with in this verse. We wanna receive more, we have to know him more, know the spirit more. We know him more by talking to him more. Beloved, I wanna receive more, I want more power released. I want more inspiration, I want more living understanding. Then the Lord Jesus would say, if you wanna receive more, know him more, behold him, talk to him, and you will receive his works in your inner man, amen.