Discerning The Holy Spirit Part 2

Hello, welcome to Self Talk. I'm Dr. Ray Self, your host. What is this show about? It's about getting free. Getting free from what, you may ask. It's getting free from anything that keeps you away from God's plan for your life. Anything that hurts you or suppresses you or causes you harm. That's my heart, that's my passion. I want to see you free, I want to see you living your God-given dream. I want to see you being the person God created you to be. Stay tuned for our next exciting topic. Thank you for joining us today, God bless you.

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Hello, welcome to Self Talk. I'm your host, Dr. Ray Self. I really appreciate you joining me. I'm going to be continuing my teaching, or discussing, discerning the Holy Spirit which is a very important topic and I really hope you listen. This show was possible because of a dear doctor friend of mine, Dr. Jess Youngblood of Premier Family Care. That– he's in Arab, Alabama. He's also in Albertville, Alabama, and Bluntsville, Alabama. If you're in North Alabama and you want to see a Holy Spirit-filled doctor, you need to see Dr. Jess Youngblood. He's the one that made this show possible so I'm just, I'm just grateful for him. He's just a very good friend.

So we talked in the last episode about discerning the Holy Spirit and how important that is to your life. You know, when something affects you, usually you pay attention and I'm telling you, discerning the Holy Spirit will impact your life terrifically. And if you do not discern the Holy Spirit, you're headed for problems. If you're a Christian and you do not discern what is of the Lord through His Spirit and what is not, you're headed to some frustration. You're going to run up against a wall, you're going to get into a problem. And then at that point, after you're sort of hitting bottom there, you're getting to this impassable moment in your life. Then you cry out and say, “Oh Lord, help me. Oh Lord, help me.” However, if we had been discerning the Holy Spirit all along, we might not have come up against this wall or this mountain, or this problem. And looking back in my life, I've said this many times. Almost every moment in my life I got myself in trouble, I can look back and there was that still small voice talking to me. But I did not discern the Holy Spirit and I didn't pay attention to that little voice talking to me and I did it anyway. And you've done it too. You know what I'm talking about. You did it anyway because it's what you wanted to do. And looking back at “Man, I wish I had not done that. I think I remember God trying to warn me.” It could have been about a relationship, could have been about a job, possibly a church, or anything. A decision that you regret because you did not discern the Holy Spirit. 

So discerning the Holy Spirit means recognizing Him, recognizing what He's doing, recognizing what the Holy Spirit is saying. Now remember, the Holy Spirit is not glorifying Himself, the Holy Spirit brings glory to Jesus Christ. See the– there's an order, there's a chain of command here. Jesus said “All things that the Father has are Mine. He will take of Mine and show it to you.” So I call this, it's the, it's the chain of command. In other words in simple terms, God downloads what he has to Jesus, Jesus downloads to the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit gives it to us. So if we're not discerning the Holy Spirit, we're missing a critical download from God. As a matter of fact, I really don't think you can intimately know Jesus without being led by the Holy Spirit and paying attention to the Holy Spirit because His job– Jesus said “He will glorify Me in the gospels.” The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus. So the spirit of God is so critical to discern. He teaches us to pray. We can pray through the Spirit of God. He gives us understanding of the word of God, He gives us power for preaching and teaching. And it's just so, so, so critical. 

You know, the Apostle Paul said some pretty uh, pretty amazing things and I wanted to share this with you. I want to share this with you real quick. So… and the Apostle Paul, you know, he teaches us to pray and um, but he said in First Corinthians 2:4 “And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but a demonstration of the Spirit and of power,” So Paul's message was not just him speaking and telling people about the gospel of Jesus. He was demonstrating the gospel of Jesus because he could discern the Holy Spirit and he allowed the Holy Spirit to move through him and, and… so signs and wonders were taking place. A demonstration of the Holy Spirit and the power. Paul could discern the Holy Spirit. So the Spirit of God… you know, in Acts 1:8, “...you shall receive power when the Holy [Spirit's] come upon you; and then you shall be My witness…” Jesus told His disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they receive the promise of the Father, which is the Holy Spirit.

So it is critical. He'll give you understanding. What the Holy Spirit will do is He'll, He'll help you understand the bible. You know, I can read the bible and I get a lot of the bible but it's really interesting, when the Author of the bible is allowed to speak, He'll give you understanding that you don't get naturally. There's a supernatural revelation of the word of God that the Holy Spirit wants to give to you which will change your life. And this all comes from discerning the Holy Spirit. So my plea in this podcast is to recognize His voice, recognize, be sensitive, and let the Lord help you. Be sensitive to the movement and the direction of what the Holy Spirit is trying to say, what the Holy Spirit wants to do. You know, years ago Henry Blackaby wrote that book, Experiencing God, and basically his– the whole premise of this book, I think actually a workbook, was to determine what God is doing and join Him instead of us doing what we want to do and ask God to bless us. Let's see what the Lord is doing and join in Him. And to me, that's discerning of the Holy Spirit. I don't want to go through another dead church service– now forgive me, I'm not trying to be critical of the church, I just believe that church is where the presence of God should always be. Church is a place where the Holy Spirit should be Lord and leading the service. Not man created stuff but God created life. And that's what I want. And you need to be able to discern the Holy Spirit to do this, okay? 

So you might say “Well, how do I do that? I mean, I really do want to discern the Holy Spirit. I want to know what's of Him and what is not of Him.” And the first thing you do is to pray and ask. Now, in Corinthians, the bible says in Corinthians 12, around verse 7, “...the manifestation of the Spirit is for the common good.” Now, the word manifest means the evidence of the Holy Spirit, so the Lord wants there to be evidence of the Holy Spirit in you, moving through you. I've often said this: the Holy Spirit comes to you and then moves in you to move through you, but He's not going to move through you if you cannot discern Him. You will not do the correct thing. You'll say the wrong thing, you'll go to the wrong place, you'll say the wrong words, you'll just, you'll miss Him. So it's critical in our life not only that we hear God's voice and sense the direction of the Holy Spirit but then we also move with that. 

The Spirit of God is like a river. He flows and you have to be in the flow of the river. When you um– if you've ever been around a flowing river, I used to do some canoeing up in the Ozark Mountains and sometimes in Missouri. And if you're around a rapidly flowing mountain stream or river you know, you wade out about ankle deep, you can feel the current you know, pushing against you but you're still standing still. You go out about waist deep and you can really feel that current you know, pushing your body. But at some point, you go deep enough and you get in over your head and all you can do is just go with the current. And that's what the Lord is asking us to do, just get over our head with Him. Get completely in the stream and go the direction the stream is going, don't fight Him. See, when you're fighting the Holy Spirit, you're not discerning the Holy Spirit. It gets very difficult. 

Um, true story, true story. Um, on my… I took my wife up to Mountain View, Arkansas. Some of you listening may know where that beautiful town is. There's a river up there called the White River so we decided to take a canoe trip down the White River. You know, God speaks to me out in nature and I see symbolism in nature. And so the river is moving along a fairly good pace I mean, my wife, my beautiful wife Christie said, “Hey, let's, let's turn around and see if we can paddle upstream.” I said, “Well, that shouldn't be too much trouble.” So we thought it would just be a challenge to see if we could paddle upstream. We turned our canoe around and we began to paddle and paddle and paddle and I mean, we were heaving, we were stroking and stroking and stroking and paddling as hard as we can and after about three or four minutes, we had gone about 10 feet. That's as far as we moved and we decided you know what, this river is a lot stronger than we think it is, let's go the direction of the river and we'll get to our destination a lot faster. You know what, that's life in the Spirit. The bible says “Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water,” and when you go against the Holy Spirit, it's difficult, it is frustrating, it is dead, it is dry and there's not much going on. But when you– if you're in a church service or in your life, in your job, whatever you're doing, your marriage. When you're going the direction of the Holy Spirit, you have discerned the Holy Spirit and you're going the direction of the Holy Spirit, it flows, it goes, and you get there. And you get there a lot easier. It's a lot simpler journey. It's a lot rapid, it's more rapid, just like going down that river. So that's what we have to learn to do

So this is what– the manifestation of the Spirit is for the common good. The bible says, and I'll give you some just practical tips here. In First Corinthians 14 is a scripture, I quote a lot but you can never get into the word enough, “Pursue love yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially to the prophesy.” So this scripture tells us to do three things: pursue love and desire spiritual gifts. Now God is not going to ask you to desire a spiritual gift and not give it to you, that, that'd be crazy. He wouldn't do that, would you do that to your children? Ask your daughter or your son “Hey, you know, Christmas is coming up–” and I think this podcast is coming out sometime around Christmas or just after Christmas; would you ask your children to desire a particular gift for Christmas, say “Hey, um, Johnny, would you like a bicycle for Christmas?” “Oh yeah!” “Well, I want you to desire a bicycle for Christmas, how about that, Johnny? Desire a bicycle for Christmas.” “Oh, thank you, Mommy! Thank you! Oh yes, I do I want a bicycle! I want a bicycle!” “Well, I'm not going to give it to you.” You would never do that. If you ask Johnny to desire something, you give it to him. If it was in your power to give this gift to your child, you would do it. 

And I'm telling you right now, if you desire spiritual gifts with all your heart and you ask God for it, He will do it. And one of the gifts in First Corinthians 12 is discerning the spirits. We need to be able to discern the Holy Spirit. In other words, discerning is to know in your heart, it's not in your mind. I mean, you don't want to be walking around mindless but you need to pay attention to your heart because that's where the Holy Spirit resides. The Holy Spirit in you will help you discern the Holy Spirit without you. There's the Holy Spirit all around you, He's the spirit of God, He's the Holy Spirit inside of you. He's around you, He's in you. But when you're in flow, the Spirit of God in you is in agreement with the Holy Spirit that's without you and then you can get your flesh and your natural being to come into obedience with the spirit of God, what the Spirit of God is telling you inside. And then you move the direction the Holy Spirit's telling you to go and what you're going to see is incredible peace, productivity, abundance, healing… I mean, He's going to lead you into great things. He's God and not only that, in First Corinthians 12 it says the manifestation’s for the common good. If you will discern the Holy Spirit in your church, in your life, in your marriage, everyone around you is going to benefit. Everyone around you will benefit.

So, Lord, we– You've told us to desire the gifts. So the prayer would be something like this, it needs to be from your heart, “Father, forgive me for not discerning the direction of the Holy Spirit in my life. Lord, I want to discern You. I want to discern Your Spirit, I want to discern what Your Holy Spirit is saying. I want to discern what your Holy Spirit is doing. Lord, help me. I receive this gift now.” And God will give it to you because He says He will, it's in His word. Now, you've got a responsibility. If you're a leader, if you're a pastor, you have a responsibility to discern what the Holy Spirit wants to do during service. What's the anointing there for? What anointing is there? Is it healing? Salvation? What is it? Is the– the Holy Spirit may say you need to sing some more, we haven't praised enough. Maybe it's time for prayer, maybe it's time for a short sermon, maybe a long sermon, I don't know. But if you allow the Holy Spirit to move, it will be the most powerful church service you ever had. 

I believe this is what happened with our traditional churches. I think at one moment in time, maybe a hundred years ago, a church had a move of God and in that move of God, this is how they did their service. So what they do is they hold the same service next week because last week that's how the Spirit moved so they hold the same service the next week and the next week and the next week; and for years to come, they do service the exact same way because 150 years ago, God moved. But you see, they're missing it because the Holy Spirit is continually on the move. And God's ways are not our ways and He will mess up our rituals, He'll make us uncomfortable because our flesh likes things that are predictable. One of the reasons we have traditions is, is they're predictable and we like them. We like to know what's going to happen. I know that at 11:23, that's when the sermon starts and I know at 11:55 the sermon is over and I know at 11:56 there's an altar call, and I know at 12:05 we're out of here; that's flesh. Now I'm not saying it could not be– maybe it is God's will. But if you discern the Holy Spirit, it's going to be powerful and lives are going to be touched. So we pray, “Lord, give us the discerning of the Holy Spirit.” 

You know, how do you know? To me, there's a feeling inside of my heart when the Spirit of the Lord is moving or at church or my life or wherever I'm at. When I'm in sync with the Holy Spirit, there is a peace in my heart. It feels good, it feels right. When things are out of sync with the Holy Spirit or its flesh, I get a little uneasy. It's an uneasy feeling in my spirit, in my heart. It's just a, a little bit of a, I call it kind of a frustrating, uneasy uh, restless feeling. And then when there's the anointing in the service or maybe at work or wherever, I have peace. There's peace in my heart. The bible says we shall be led forth by peace, so you discern the Holy Spirit by the peace, what you feel in your heart. Now, sometimes He's talking and you can hear words and you can get pictures and He's talking to you prophetically but you can sense Him in your heart. The bible says grieve not the Holy Spirit. When things are out of order, God's not a God of disorder or things are not of him. There is a grieving in your spirit, there is a, there's a, there's just a grieving. It's uh, you can sense it. And I'll tell you what, I've seen churches, I've been in services where the anointing is so strong, and all of a sudden, somebody gets up, takes the mic, and they're just strictly in their flesh. And you can literally feel the anointing going away. It's like there's a hole in the bottom of the church. The anointing just drained away.

And finally, the church gets back into what God wanted to do and you'll feel the presence of God come back. It's up to the leaders to direct the church in the direction of the Holy Spirit. Now I'm talking about church, but this on– the same principle works in your everyday life. Now I'm not saying you have to have the Spirit of God direct you to take out the trash or mow the grass, but I am saying in general the Holy Spirit does want to lead you. You know, those that are sons of God are led by the Holy Spirit. And again, in Paul– Paul in Romans 8 says the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. The Holy Spirit will lead you into life and life more abundantly and will lead you into peace. But he, Paul, said you must set your mind on the Holy Spirit. Don't set your mind on the things of the flesh. Seek the Holy Spirit. Discern the Holy Spirit. Set your mind on the Holy Spirit. The result is life and peace. Don't you want that? Setting your mind on the natural things, your flesh, is going to lead to lifeless dead things and we can do this. It takes practice, it takes trial and error, it takes prayer., it takes getting still. But you can get more sensitive to the Holy Spirit. We can all do this because I believe this is God's will and I just wanted to talk to you about the– in these couple of podcasts– I may do another one about this because this is a type subject that you could just go on you know, forever about. But I don't want to go on forever, um…

I do thank you for listening. Please check out my free offers. I've got a, a course you can download for 35 bucks, it’s a counseling course, I think it's called Setting the Captives Free, or Dealing With the Dysfunctional Family. And I, if you, you make a donation for 35 bucks, follow the link, make a donation for 35 bucks, put in the comments “free course,” I will email you the course. You'll get six, one-hour lessons with notes. I think you'll like it. Merry Christmas, I appreciate you. Check out my website, icmcollege.org. Be sure and rate and subscribe. Uh, give me a rating, subscribe, download, do all that good stuff. Share this podcast with others, tell people. I appreciate it, I love you. This is Dr. Ray Self, Merry Christmas. If it's after Christmas, Happy New Year and God bless you.

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