Being a friend to the Holy Spirit

I wanted to talk a little bit about the Holy Spirit, what He is like, and what it is like to walk with Him to accomplish ministry. Real ministry will flow from your relationship with God, Jesus, and His Holy Spirit, and it is not just merely a bunch of knowledge that makes us ministers of the gospel. The Pharisees of old knew the scriptures well but lacked enough real relationship with God to even recognize that He was standing right in front of them in the person of Jesus Christ. There was no power flowing through the Pharisees lives, it was all just talk and external show; but for simple fishermen that just knew and walked with Jesus, they became empowered by the Holy Spirit to go out and heal the sick, cast out demons, and to preach the gospel.

The wilderness has all been about being prepared so that we can be vessels of the Holy Spirit, and so that He can flow through our lives to help other people. God builds relationship with a human through the daily interaction of His Holy Spirit and in time we get to know Him as He truly is. It is out of this actual foundation of relationship that is built between us and God through His Spirit, that we can become conduits of His power and anointing to help others. Around the later stages of the wilderness, you should just care about people anyway, and about having enough of God flowing through your life to truly help them. When we learn to get to know the Holy Spirit, we see that He cares deeply about what hurts people, and that He desperately wants to help them.

The Holy Spirit is a real person with real feelings and He can be rather sensitive about certain things that we do, think, or say. He will talk to you during a day and teach you about what is really important to God and in doing so, our heart is slowly reshaped into God's heart. The Holy Spirit will go after any flesh, selfishness, rebellion, pride, or fear that keeps us from serving God fully. He will point out little things now that could actually become big things later, in hopes that these wrong attitudes and actions can be corrected on a small scale, so that God can trust us on a larger scale. God can never trust mans flesh; He can only trust in Himself formed in that man, so our self-life must be replaced with His Spirit-life. As we cooperate though, we go from level to level, and we learn to love and serve others with right hearts and attitudes as God does.

Now we are reaching a time in history where many Christians will be empowered by God's Spirit all at once, and where many people will be getting saved all at once. All of your wilderness time and relationship building time with the Holy Spirit will be put into practice as you walk through a day and do what the apostles of old did. You will walk together with others who have been prepared just like you have been, and together under God’s direction you will go and demonstrate the power of God to a very lost, fearful, love-starved, and hungry world. We must be careful in the days ahead to practice all that we have learned and to fellowship with the Holy Spirit on an even a closer level than normal. Although God is love, you have probably also noticed that He can be very severe if need be, so we must stay in step with His Spirit and not offend Him with careless or selfish behavior. We must continue to honor Him and focus on helping the lost to get saved.

You may not necessarily agree with how someone else ministers. But if it is the same Holy Spirit that is working through their lives as in our life, then we must do our best to not dishonor the Holy Spirit just because we may not necessarily be crazy about the person that he is using. If someone is sinning, or if they are teaching error, then they should be confronted; but generally the Lord will step in and deal with them if something is getting that far out of balance. God rarely will flow through anyone in power that is practicing sin or error. He will pull His anointing back until they repent. We need to ask the Holy Spirit about people and see what He has to say about them. There may be no shortage of criticism for those that walk in God's anointing, so just understand that you will have all manner of evil spoken against you if you are a friend of the Holy Spirit.

Our focus in the days ahead should be upon entering into an even deeper relationship with the Holy Spirit so that we hear the truth clearly about things. We must also have a heart full of love so that we do not become bitter with the evil that comes against us. It will only be with the power of God through His Spirit that we are able to help anyone, so we have to do things His way and allow Him to take the lead in all that we do, think, or say. As we get to know God better through the daily friendship and fellowship of His Spirit, we should also be able to get to know and walk with others who have a deep relationship with Him better as well. Flesh will never get along with flesh, but as the Holy Spirit flows through us, we should be able to recognize that in others and be friends with them because He is living through them. We must be careful not to grieve or offend the Holy Spirit. This is the time for us to become better friends and servants of God and of His Spirit, and with those that allow His Spirit to operate through their lives. There are many souls at stake here, and God is looking for people that He can trust to flow through in power.