Welcome back, my wife Liz and I, really more her than me, are talking about the Holy Spirit
channel and in the first episode we talked a lot about Logos and Rhema and the fact that
there's a lot of different frequencies that we get ourselves listening to.
It can be ourselves, it could be worry, it could be a lot of different things and we
tend to get busy so we lose that Holy Spirit connection.
So what we're going to talk about in this episode is who can be on the Holy Spirit channel
and Liz has some jars up here to illustrate it so take it away Liz, who can be on the
Holy Spirit channel?
So the reason I have three jars up here is that one evening, a long time ago, I was sitting
in my living room by myself just praying and the Holy Spirit said, he knows how to speak
to each person.
So for me, I love visuals and he said, you understand what the Spirit-filled life is
like, what being filled with the Holy Spirit is like and I saw a jar on my refrigerator
from my living room and he was starting to speak about the jar and he was saying like,
this would be representative of the Holy Spirit, that it's pure, it's his Spirit.
Water is a great symbol of the Holy Spirit and when he comes and he fills us with the
Spirit, a lot of times actually we start right here where he comes and he fills us
but we have a lot of self.
The dirt equals sort of our flesh and our own interests and the things that we want
to do, our ways, not his ways and we get a little bit of who he is but it's not that
he didn't want to give us more but we don't know to have more.
So we get this little bit at first of who the Holy Spirit is in our lives and it's valuable,
it feels great and then we have choices to make about what we're going to do with our
flesh and this one right here is more of a Spirit-filled Christian and we can see the
Holy Spirit in this person.
We can see God more in this person.
Over here it's not that noticeable, it's just kind of murky and it's still murky actually
because we're never going to be perfect, we're never going to be having no flesh, we'll always
be dealing with our flesh.
So I love this concept, you can look at this jar as your life or you can look at these
two jars as what kind of day do I want?
Do I want to be less about me and more about the Spirit or do I want to be a lot about
me and not very much about the Spirit which is kind of quenching who he is and John the
Baptist said he must increase but I must decrease.
So we're not going to get to have a lot of us and a lot of the Spirit, it doesn't work
like that.
It's commensurate with if we decrease like John the Baptist said, he can increase.
Isn't that cool?
And the Holy Spirit gave me that and I think about it all the time.
So I see this process of sort of justification when we first come to know the Lord, we don't
know much, we haven't experienced much and because of that we are still full of self,
we're still lacking faith, a lot of areas of our life.
So we get all of the Holy Spirit, we don't get part of it, we get all of it but there's
a lot of us.
So now it's a process, we call it theologically sanctification where we're learning to surrender,
we're surrendering more of this self and Spirit has more access as we surrender more.
So our flesh should be dying more and the Spirit having more control over areas of our
life.
Right, and so what I like about these jars is it shows a finite right here at the top.
I left a cap off of this one because the Holy Spirit is infinite but we have choices all
day long.
Are we going to walk with God or are we going to walk in the flesh?
Are we going to let God speak to us about what we need to do or are we going to?
say, I've got this. And over here, this can be a new Christian, but it can be an older Christian
that doesn't know or doesn't want to surrender yet.
Yeah. So I think you could almost work it this way, like in the beginning,
but if we're not careful, we can actually go back to where we were.
And I've seen so many believers that they're doing great, they're walking with the Lord,
they're fired up, and then just little things. It's not like one day they were here and the
next day were that way, but it's like a little bit of dirt, and then a little bit of dirt,
a little bit of looking online at stuff you shouldn't look at, a little bit of lying,
a little bit of not telling the truth, jealousy, gossip. Before you know it,
you've got kind of a dirty water system, and you've lost the purity of God's Word.
Well, I would say I have experiences like that, where I could say I was here,
and then I had seasons of here, and the Holy Spirit is going to tell us. It says that
He'll convict us of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and so He's going to tell us.
We have to listen, though. He doesn't barge in. This is all about us choosing,
just like in the garden with Adam and Eve. They chose to not listen to God,
and we have that same free will, which is wonderful and hard, and I'll just say this.
I think this is very key. A lot of us know a lot of language that has religiosity in it,
and I'm just going to share my experience, that if you're not battling to stay here,
but you're talking about being filled with the Spirit, but you don't sense any battle,
you don't recognize any battle, you're probably just speaking words, because it's very difficult,
actually, because you're saying, God, you're king, and I'm not, and that is a huge statement,
and one of my favorite mentors in the Holy Spirit living is Dallas Willard,
and he says he doesn't get out of bed until he determines who is king, because a lot of times,
we wake up, and the battle is already waging. Who's king today? Is it going to be Liz,
or is it going to be King Jesus? And my kingdom has a small K, and his has a capital K,
and sometimes we get very confused about that, and I believe we waste our time when we are not
surrendering to the king and his kingdom, and let me just say one of my favorite verses, and I know
it's one of yours, Matthew 6 33. Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and then all these
things will be added to us, but I would say seek first your own kingdom and your unrighteousness,
and all these things will be subtracted from you. Wow, that's good. From you. That's good. Yeah,
that's what I've experienced. How about you? Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I think that
who's on the throne of my life every day determines how my day is going to go,
and so if I'm seeking Steve's kingdom, then it's usually a day of selfishness,
self-centeredness, and frustration. Seeking the kingdom of God first, seeking intimacy with the
king leads to righteousness, peace, and joy, you know, so absolutely, and how do we, in your
opinion, how do you increase that journey of being spirit-filled with the Lord, you know, moving back
into this area? What would you say to someone who's, maybe they've had times in the past where
they were really doing well, they were, to use your term, they were on the Holy Spirit channel,
but now they're more into their vocational channel, or maybe they're more into the gossip
channel, or they're more into the lust channel. How do we get back? How do we start getting back
to the Holy Spirit channel? Well, I love the fact that we can pray for people. I'm sure people have
prayed for me when they've seen, like, oh, she needs prayer, so, you know, we need blood-stained
allies, and we need the right ones, and if we're hanging around people that aren't walking with God,
big chance we will become like them. We really need to pick our friends wisely. We need to step
back from...
people who are bad influences on us, and find those people who love God.
And not that we don't love those other people,
but if they're influencing us and we're not influencing them,
then it's useless to have these friendships and these relationships.
Though that's one thing, is making sure you're connected to people.
And humble yourself. I would just say, I'm really struggling.
I need your prayers. We need people who we can say,
I need prayer for certain things. Secondly, or thirdly, I would say
that we can confess our sin. And confess means,
it's so simple, it means to agree with God.
So if I'm finding that I am, say, gossiping, which is,
you know, something that can happen, or I'm jealous,
or I feel fear, sort of, maybe that I'm not gonna,
like, usually the fear that is detrimental has to do with
fearing that my importance is going to be threatened.
Which is always a tip-off that you've got a lot of flesh
happening, stirred up, that maybe we're competing
with someone for certain things in our hearts.
And that's so wrong, you know, because
if it's a God person, we should be on the same team.
But we can confess that, and confess means just tell God,
Lord, I just agree with you. I know this is wrong,
and I want to surrender again to you. And it's simple prayers all day
long of, I'm just here to do the next thing
for you. That's great, that's great. Well, I'm thinking in our next
episode, I want you to talk about experiences of being on the Holy
Spirit channel. Okay. And there's been a lot of cool stuff
throughout our career. For you that don't know,
Liz and I met on the mission field. We were smuggling Bibles in China,
and Liz was still a student at UCLA. I was a graduate of University of
Georgia, so we tell people the only place we
could meet was China. But we met smuggling Bibles in China, we
had our first date in Hong Kong, we fell in love in LA, and we got married in
Tokyo. And so in that journey of both being
missionaries for almost a decade, then church planting two churches, two
very successful churches, we were led and guided
in pretty amazing ways. First of all, in the beginnings of our relationship, which
we're probably not going to get so much into that here, we can do that another
time, but the ministry
that we had in Japan was really challenging,
culturally, linguistically, as well as spiritually.
And so God did a lot there. We cast out a lot of demons, we've healed a
lot of sick people, we've led a lot of people into the kingdom, but
we had to be on the Holy Spirit channel to do that.
And then here, planting a church the last eight years, the road at Chapel Hills and
Colorado Springs. But let's cover that in the
next one, because there's so many, and we'll see
how many we can get in. So join us for the next episode. We're
going to talk about more like the experiences, real testimonies
of being on the Holy Spirit channel, so join us for that.