Welcome back to Empower You. I have my wife Liz with me for the first time on Empower You today,
and she's been sharing with me this new concept that she's kind of given a name to,
even though she's been living this all of our married life, been married 37 years,
and it's called the Holy Spirit Channel.
We're going to talk about the Holy Spirit Channel today, and I want Liz to kind of explain that
to each of you, what she means by that, and how to live in that.
And I just want to give a preface, Liz, to the fact that, you know, Jesus came,
and his theme was the Kingdom of God, and Jesus was always talking about the Kingdom of God.
But there was a second theme in the last week of his ministry that John, the Apostle John,
really captured, and that was the Holy Spirit, the coming of the Holy Spirit,
that when he ascended, that the Holy Spirit was going to come.
John 14, 15, 16, 17, all about the Holy Spirit.
So we're calling this the Holy Spirit Channel, and what, Liz, do you mean by Holy Spirit Channel?
Well, you know, I love to have concepts that reflect natural things, like supernatural into the natural.
So if you were to pick a channel, say YouTube channel, you're not listening to any other channel.
You're listening to the YouTube channel.
And when we choose the Holy Spirit Channel, we are rejecting other channels.
And you could look at it as, you know, getting on your phone or turning on a radio station.
You have to turn it on the right station.
But there's a lot of, say if you're in your car, there's sound waves going on in your car.
But when you turn on the radio and you turn on a specific channel, you hear that channel's speaker.
So you're rejecting other channels and choosing this.
And so I like to look at it that way because there's a lot of voices out there.
There's our own voice. There's human voices. There's the devil's voice.
And we need to choose the Holy Spirit Channel. He's the highest channel.
And it's a challenge to do it, but it's so worth it.
And you've been talking about this. I mean, you've been living this for a long time.
We've been talking about it recently.
And so tell us more about what that means and the impact it's had in your life.
Yeah, well, the verses that come across to me as the Holy Spirit Channel
and how the voice of the Holy Spirit works in us is found in Isaiah 55, 6, 7, 8, and 9.
I'm just going to read that.
And it says, seek the Lord while he may be found.
Call upon him while he is near.
So that's seeking is when you're like, Lord, I need to hear your voice.
And you're asking, and it's specific.
And you're kind of done with all the other voices, and you want to hear his voice.
And then it says, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts.
Let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him.
And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
And when we're seeking the Holy Spirit, we're kind of done with ourselves.
And let the unrighteous man forsake his way.
And if we're not listening to the Holy Spirit, I'm going to say something hard.
We're unrighteous because we were built.
He lives inside us.
If we're his vessels, if we're his disciples, he lives inside us, and he wants to speak.
And so we can quench that, or we can listen to it.
So it's kind of...I think at first, we get kind of done with ourselves and
other voices, and we want to hear that voice.
And so this is what the voice is like.
It says, for my thoughts, this is God speaking in Isaiah 55, 8.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways, higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
And so you're availing yourself to this voice.
And actually, I'll just say, I looked up what voice is in the Greek as of...you find
it in John 10, when Jesus says that, my sheep will hear my voice.
And voice is something...
in the Greek that you see and you hear so it's seeing and
hearing.
So interestingly enough I kept seeing all these verses in the
Bible about how God's people have ears to hear but they don't
hear and eyes to see but they don't see.
So basically God says that over thousands of years through
different writers and it starts in I think the first one is in
Deuteronomy and then the last one is maybe I don't know maybe
in Revelation but I'm not sure getting close to that the end of
the Bible and you just see that this is a problem for humans
that we don't easily hear what he's saying and we don't see
what he's doing and when we decide that we're done with
ourselves and we want to get on the Holy Spirit channel we start
seeing things in the spirit we start hearing things in the
spirit and it's super exciting because it's higher than our
ways higher than our thoughts.
So it sounds to me like when I think of sound ways and I think
about the voice of the Lord as seeing and hearing that there's
just a lot of competition.
Yeah right.
Even for the Christian who is a believer who has the Holy Spirit
to really tap in to that voice.
Yeah.
What are the what do you think are the major difficulties to
hearing God's voice in our lives today and this kind of modern
21st century busy fast paced life.
I know for me it's hard for me to slow down enough to listen.
What are some of the ways some of the things that are
impediments to hearing God's voice.
Well I think you just said the word busy.
Yeah especially for Americans we're busy and we can be busy too
busy for human relationships but missing the relationship that we
have with God is impactful in every part of our lives.
So you know kind of I would just say that busy is a problem but
there's also the spirit of pride and wanting to do it ourselves.
I mean the Holy Spirit's called a helper but if you don't want
his help you've just turned off the channel.
Good point.
Yeah.
So what would you say to those who would would propose that.
Well you know I don't know if I believe in all this voice of God
stuff that seems a little too mystical for me.
I'm really into the Bible so I I dig the Bible and I know you
just read from the Bible but like that's how I hear God's
voice and I don't only the Bible only the Bible.
Okay.
Well that's fine.
So what would you say.
I would say always the Bible that God is it only the Bible that
God speaks through how important is the Bible.
What's God's word have to do with what you're saying.
Well God's word has a lot to do with what we're saying what I'm
saying and if we don't know the Bible then we're not going to be
able to tell if we're hearing God's voice outside of it.
So the Logos of the Bible is the written word the Rhema which is
actually all over the Bible.
We think of what is what is Rhema what is Logos.
I'm just getting.
Okay good.
By the way we've been married a long time and we always interrupt
each other.
Well we're first borns.
She's first born I'm first born so we're always kind of jockeying
for who can talk longest.
Got it.
She usually wins though.
I was the first or first born.
I had to tell her recently can you quit praying so much so I can
pray.
Well that's not the worst thing someone could do.
Remember that.
Oh yeah.
I am a prayer hog.
So.
Like I.
She'll start praying something's really annoying and everything
and I'm like OK I'm just waiting for her to just kind of take a
breath so I can dig in but then she just never takes a breath.
She's got.
She's got lung power man just keeps on going.
I said OK I've heard that prayer.
Can I pray.
Well.
Back to Raymond Logos.
OK.
So.
Logos is the written word, and the rhema is God's...
So when we think of logos, you're talking about the word that's on the page.
Genesis through Revelation. And just so you know, here's something cool.
So there's about over 31,000 verses. I believe we should be asking,
God, which ones do you want me to read for today?
Because we may need to read certain ones to prepare us.
For what we're going to experience. And if we don't hear anything,
then, you know, we don't want to make it up.
So you can just kind of, whatever your first thought is,
or maybe you have a Bible study program you're doing, do that.
But I think he might, sometimes I get up and I feel like I'm supposed to read a certain book,
or a certain passage, or a certain scripture. Have you ever had that?
Yeah.
Cool.
So what's rhema?
Well, rhema is when you have God's voice speak to you about a certain situation
you're praying about, or you're thinking about, or maybe you don't even know you need,
but he'll bring... Actually, it says in John 14 that he'll bring to remembrance
things you need to know.
But if you don't have this book in your head, he can't do that.
Right.
So it's really important to be spending that time every day, even if it's kind of boring.
Sometimes it's just not exciting, but God's going to use it.
And it's kind of like when you and I talk about boring stuff, we have to do that.
Right.
But, you know, sometimes, hopefully more than not, we're talking about exciting things.
Right.
But that's part of a relationship is that it's not always exciting.
It's day-to-day and sometimes kind of routine.
Right.
So I think of the logo says the written word, and I kind of think of rhema as the speaking word
or the writing word.
In other words, God's writing something in your heart for a particular situation, right?
Mm-hmm.
And I hear what you're saying that's so accurate that if you don't, if there's no
information to work with in your heart and in your head, as far as the written word, the logos,
it's hard to discern whether that's God's voice or Satan's voice or just your own
voice, the pizza you had last night, whatever, you know, in your spirit,
because you don't have enough information to know God's ways.
Right.
So you have to be in the written word, you have to be in the logos
to increase the possibilities of the rhema.
Mm-hmm.
So like when you think of Holy Spirit Channel, the way, and we'll cover this in the next episode
more probably, but you seem to know things, okay?
Mm-hmm.
You seem to know things about people that you shouldn't know.
Mm-hmm.
We classically would call that word of knowledge, kind of a word of prophecy, word of knowledge.
But for example, if you're talking to someone and you hear divorce in your spirit, like you hear a
voice, the voice is divorce, you're talking, you just met this person.
So there's something in their life about divorce that you're going to speak to.
And if you don't know the word, if you don't know the logos, you might say,
are you supposed to get a divorce?
Oh, that's true.
You know, versus are you struggling with a divorce?
And then that opens up kind of a spiritual can of worms.
Yeah.
And you can start to minister in that.
Mm-hmm.
And let's just, we'll cover that in the next one.
Right.
But any, as we close out this episode, any thoughts or comments?
Well, I would say that if you look at John 10, 17, it says,
so faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
And a lot of times our English Bible doesn't distinguish very well between words.
That would be Romans 10.
That would be Romans 10, 17.
Yeah.
And that's how we get our faith.
Yeah.
But interestingly enough, it's not the logos.
It's Rhema.
Okay.
So hearing God's voice is how we build our faith, and it comes to us.
Right.
Through hearing God's voice in particular situations.
I'm sure we get.
And so we're going to get empowered through hearing God's voice.
Mm-hmm.
And faith is so key.
Faith will enable us to overcome the world, 1 John 5, 4.
And if we don't have faith.
We're gonna get clobbered out there and so being in God's Word is so important
so that when the Spirit comes and He speaks we just know that we know and we
know what to do or we know what to say. That's really good. And it's it's so
empowering and so key for us to walk in this broken world. Yeah. Well good Liz
that's awesome. I'm learning a lot. Fantastic. So we're gonna we're gonna in
the next episode take this further in our understanding of the Holy Spirit
channel. So check out the next episode. It's gonna be really good. All right.