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Welcome back, my wife Liz and I, really more her than me, are talking about the Holy Spirit

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channel and in the first episode we talked a lot about Logos and Rhema and the fact that

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there's a lot of different frequencies that we get ourselves listening to.

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It can be ourselves, it could be worry, it could be a lot of different things and we

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tend to get busy so we lose that Holy Spirit connection.

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So what we're going to talk about in this episode is who can be on the Holy Spirit channel

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and Liz has some jars up here to illustrate it so take it away Liz, who can be on the

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Holy Spirit channel?

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So the reason I have three jars up here is that one evening, a long time ago, I was sitting

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in my living room by myself just praying and the Holy Spirit said, he knows how to speak

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to each person.

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So for me, I love visuals and he said, you understand what the Spirit-filled life is

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like, what being filled with the Holy Spirit is like and I saw a jar on my refrigerator

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from my living room and he was starting to speak about the jar and he was saying like,

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this would be representative of the Holy Spirit, that it's pure, it's his Spirit.

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Water is a great symbol of the Holy Spirit and when he comes and he fills us with the

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Spirit, a lot of times actually we start right here where he comes and he fills us

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but we have a lot of self.

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The dirt equals sort of our flesh and our own interests and the things that we want

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to do, our ways, not his ways and we get a little bit of who he is but it's not that

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he didn't want to give us more but we don't know to have more.

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So we get this little bit at first of who the Holy Spirit is in our lives and it's valuable,

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it feels great and then we have choices to make about what we're going to do with our

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flesh and this one right here is more of a Spirit-filled Christian and we can see the

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Holy Spirit in this person.

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We can see God more in this person.

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Over here it's not that noticeable, it's just kind of murky and it's still murky actually

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because we're never going to be perfect, we're never going to be having no flesh, we'll always

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be dealing with our flesh.

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So I love this concept, you can look at this jar as your life or you can look at these

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two jars as what kind of day do I want?

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Do I want to be less about me and more about the Spirit or do I want to be a lot about

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me and not very much about the Spirit which is kind of quenching who he is and John the

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Baptist said he must increase but I must decrease.

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So we're not going to get to have a lot of us and a lot of the Spirit, it doesn't work

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like that.

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It's commensurate with if we decrease like John the Baptist said, he can increase.

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Isn't that cool?

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And the Holy Spirit gave me that and I think about it all the time.

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So I see this process of sort of justification when we first come to know the Lord, we don't

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know much, we haven't experienced much and because of that we are still full of self,

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we're still lacking faith, a lot of areas of our life.

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So we get all of the Holy Spirit, we don't get part of it, we get all of it but there's

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a lot of us.

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So now it's a process, we call it theologically sanctification where we're learning to surrender,

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we're surrendering more of this self and Spirit has more access as we surrender more.

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So our flesh should be dying more and the Spirit having more control over areas of our

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life.

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Right, and so what I like about these jars is it shows a finite right here at the top.

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I left a cap off of this one because the Holy Spirit is infinite but we have choices all

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day long.

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Are we going to walk with God or are we going to walk in the flesh?

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Are we going to let God speak to us about what we need to do or are we going to?

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say, I've got this. And over here, this can be a new Christian, but it can be an older Christian

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that doesn't know or doesn't want to surrender yet.

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Yeah. So I think you could almost work it this way, like in the beginning,

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but if we're not careful, we can actually go back to where we were.

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And I've seen so many believers that they're doing great, they're walking with the Lord,

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they're fired up, and then just little things. It's not like one day they were here and the

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next day were that way, but it's like a little bit of dirt, and then a little bit of dirt,

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a little bit of looking online at stuff you shouldn't look at, a little bit of lying,

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a little bit of not telling the truth, jealousy, gossip. Before you know it,

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you've got kind of a dirty water system, and you've lost the purity of God's Word.

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Well, I would say I have experiences like that, where I could say I was here,

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and then I had seasons of here, and the Holy Spirit is going to tell us. It says that

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He'll convict us of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and so He's going to tell us.

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We have to listen, though. He doesn't barge in. This is all about us choosing,

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just like in the garden with Adam and Eve. They chose to not listen to God,

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and we have that same free will, which is wonderful and hard, and I'll just say this.

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I think this is very key. A lot of us know a lot of language that has religiosity in it,

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and I'm just going to share my experience, that if you're not battling to stay here,

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but you're talking about being filled with the Spirit, but you don't sense any battle,

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you don't recognize any battle, you're probably just speaking words, because it's very difficult,

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actually, because you're saying, God, you're king, and I'm not, and that is a huge statement,

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and one of my favorite mentors in the Holy Spirit living is Dallas Willard,

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and he says he doesn't get out of bed until he determines who is king, because a lot of times,

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we wake up, and the battle is already waging. Who's king today? Is it going to be Liz,

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or is it going to be King Jesus? And my kingdom has a small K, and his has a capital K,

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and sometimes we get very confused about that, and I believe we waste our time when we are not

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surrendering to the king and his kingdom, and let me just say one of my favorite verses, and I know

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it's one of yours, Matthew 6 33. Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and then all these

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things will be added to us, but I would say seek first your own kingdom and your unrighteousness,

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and all these things will be subtracted from you. Wow, that's good. From you. That's good. Yeah,

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that's what I've experienced. How about you? Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I think that

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who's on the throne of my life every day determines how my day is going to go,

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and so if I'm seeking Steve's kingdom, then it's usually a day of selfishness,

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self-centeredness, and frustration. Seeking the kingdom of God first, seeking intimacy with the

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king leads to righteousness, peace, and joy, you know, so absolutely, and how do we, in your

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opinion, how do you increase that journey of being spirit-filled with the Lord, you know, moving back

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into this area? What would you say to someone who's, maybe they've had times in the past where

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they were really doing well, they were, to use your term, they were on the Holy Spirit channel,

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but now they're more into their vocational channel, or maybe they're more into the gossip

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channel, or they're more into the lust channel. How do we get back? How do we start getting back

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to the Holy Spirit channel? Well, I love the fact that we can pray for people. I'm sure people have

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prayed for me when they've seen, like, oh, she needs prayer, so, you know, we need blood-stained

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allies, and we need the right ones, and if we're hanging around people that aren't walking with God,

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big chance we will become like them. We really need to pick our friends wisely. We need to step

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back from...

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people who are bad influences on us, and find those people who love God.

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And not that we don't love those other people,

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but if they're influencing us and we're not influencing them,

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then it's useless to have these friendships and these relationships.

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Though that's one thing, is making sure you're connected to people.

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And humble yourself. I would just say, I'm really struggling.

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I need your prayers. We need people who we can say,

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I need prayer for certain things. Secondly, or thirdly, I would say

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that we can confess our sin. And confess means,

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it's so simple, it means to agree with God.

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So if I'm finding that I am, say, gossiping, which is,

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you know, something that can happen, or I'm jealous,

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or I feel fear, sort of, maybe that I'm not gonna,

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like, usually the fear that is detrimental has to do with

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fearing that my importance is going to be threatened.

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Which is always a tip-off that you've got a lot of flesh

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happening, stirred up, that maybe we're competing

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with someone for certain things in our hearts.

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And that's so wrong, you know, because

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if it's a God person, we should be on the same team.

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But we can confess that, and confess means just tell God,

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Lord, I just agree with you. I know this is wrong,

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and I want to surrender again to you. And it's simple prayers all day

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long of, I'm just here to do the next thing

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for you. That's great, that's great. Well, I'm thinking in our next

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episode, I want you to talk about experiences of being on the Holy

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Spirit channel. Okay. And there's been a lot of cool stuff

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throughout our career. For you that don't know,

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Liz and I met on the mission field. We were smuggling Bibles in China,

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and Liz was still a student at UCLA. I was a graduate of University of

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Georgia, so we tell people the only place we

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could meet was China. But we met smuggling Bibles in China, we

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had our first date in Hong Kong, we fell in love in LA, and we got married in

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Tokyo. And so in that journey of both being

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missionaries for almost a decade, then church planting two churches, two

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very successful churches, we were led and guided

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in pretty amazing ways. First of all, in the beginnings of our relationship, which

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we're probably not going to get so much into that here, we can do that another

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time, but the ministry

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that we had in Japan was really challenging,

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culturally, linguistically, as well as spiritually.

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And so God did a lot there. We cast out a lot of demons, we've healed a

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lot of sick people, we've led a lot of people into the kingdom, but

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we had to be on the Holy Spirit channel to do that.

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And then here, planting a church the last eight years, the road at Chapel Hills and

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Colorado Springs. But let's cover that in the

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next one, because there's so many, and we'll see

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how many we can get in. So join us for the next episode. We're

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going to talk about more like the experiences, real testimonies

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of being on the Holy Spirit channel, so join us for that.