Experience The Holy Spirit (361)

0:01 Once again, I want to welcome you to the quality Christian living podcast. I am your host David friend today We're going to continue our series on the Holy Spirit and today's title is Experience the Holy Spirit now before I get into that we better pray because I think we need the The Lord to direct us and we do invite the Holy Spirit in to guide and direct everything we do heavenly father I thank you for your goodness. I pray you would bless this podcast and Holy Spirit I pray you would come in and take control for those who are listening in father I pray they would Experience what you want them to experience father and they will hear what you want them to hear I pray you would bless it now and anointed I ask for these things I ask in Jesus name. Amen Well, today we're going to talk about the experience in the Holy Spirit. So what do I mean by that?

0:46 What am I trying to tell you when I'm telling you how to experience the Holy Spirit? Well, the Holy Spirit dwells in us. In 1 Corinthians 6 19, it says, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. So therefore, He's there. Now, most of you who've heard me speak on this, you already know that, but there are always new listeners. So from time to time, we need to get down to some of the real basics to be sure everyone understands that we're all on the same page. the Holy Spirit, we need to be careful in our thought life by speaking the truth, by living in peace. by being joyful. You know, the Holy Spirit is here to bring us love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self -control.

1:27 That's the fruit of the Spirit. He's here to help us and be our comforter and our advocate and the one that's on our side and the one who's got our back. So if we are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore we then automatically have the Holy Spirit living and dwelling inside of us. So in order to experience the Holy Spirit, though, we need to have the right attitude. We need to have the right mindset. We need to think about those things that are good and true. Philippians chapter 4 and verse 8 talks about thinking on truth and honesty and pure thoughts and just thoughts. These are the things I believe that trigger the Holy Spirit to move in our lives and to have a greater experience with Him each and every day. Now what is the spiritual condition of our thoughts? We might want to examine that for a second. Just just take a second here and think maybe you might put this on pause or something and just think about what is your thought life like? What do you think about it? Is it wrapped up with only things that are dealing with you and maybe not with other people? Is it something that you think about all the time? Is it how to be entertained? Or do you think a lot about how to help other people? Whatever your thought life is, it's going to have a great impact on the relationship that we have with the Holy Spirit and how we can learn to experience the Holy Spirit in a greater way than we can even imagine, even think. You see, we experience the Holy Spirit by making Him comfortable with our thoughts.

2:56 One thing we certainly don't want to do is to grieve the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 30, it says, don't grieve the Holy Spirit. So that means He must have feelings. He must have emotions. He must have those things that mean a lot to us as human beings. It means a lot to Him. Whatever concerns us, we need to understand it concerns God. Whatever we're happy about, it impacts our relationship with the Lord. Whatever we're sad about, it impacts our relationship. So therefore, if we have the Holy Spirit living and dwelling in us, which we do, then we need to understand that our thoughts, our actions, our reactions to things, whether we're at peace with other people, whether we can make up, you know, with people and apologize and ask for forgiveness and move on with our life, these are all things that help us experience the Holy Spirit the way God intended us to experience Him. So... I guess maybe I should just take a second and say, how do we grieve him? You know, that's a pretty heavy statement in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 30.

3:56 How do we grieve him? And we grieve him by being unpleasant, to be unkind, to be sarcastic with people, to have pride in our life, to have those things that are opposite of what the Holy Spirit brings. So we want to get that stuff out and move it out, and we can, but we can only do it through the strength and the power of the Holy Spirit. Bible says, greater is he that is in us than he who is in the world. He who is in us is the Holy Spirit. He who is in the world is the devil himself. And so we want to... please the Holy Spirit. We want to make him happy and comfortable being in our side of us and dwelling in us and therefore we will have a greater experience than what we might thought was possible. Now there are many ways to experience the Holy Spirit.

4:39 He is interested in every area of our life. He's interested in our health, our physical health, our emotional health. He's interested in our finances, in our family relationships, in our marriage. Every part of our life the Holy Spirit is interested in and wants to have some action with us in every single part of everything that we do. He is the Comforter. That means He's there to bring that comfort when we need it. If you have someone pass in your life, the Holy Spirit then can bring comfort to you. When you're going through a challenge or a difficult time, a difficult circumstance, He can bring comfort to you. He's our advocate. That means He's on our side. He defends us. He's the one... Now obviously, if we do something wrong or we say something wrong, then He's going to chastise us, which is what He's supposed to do, because He's God. And God doesn't just constantly dwell in... happiness and joy and peace for people who then are frustrated and angry and upset and bitter and unforgiving people God can't deal with those people and his spirit can't deal with those people so the Advocate the Holy Spirit the Comforter the Holy Spirit is there to comfort us but also then to be on our side if we are lining up according to the will of God if we're following the Word of God the instructions, if you will, the manual that God made for us to live our life. If we follow that, that's the Word of God, then we can have the right relationship with the Holy Spirit.

6:01 We need to let the Holy Spirit comfort us. That means we got to yield to Him. We need to surrender to Him. We can't just say, well, I'll do it my way. My way is the best way and I'll just do it this way and whatever. If we do that, we are then robbing the Holy Spirit of the opportunity to give comfort and direction for our lives. And we need to let Him protect us. That means don't put ourselves in situations like for example a Christian you know shouldn't not necessarily run around constantly with people who are angry and upset and bitter and swearing and angry people that that hate God and all that if you're around those people it's gonna wear on you and the Holy Spirit then can he can help us in the middle of that Jesus obviously he interacted with good people and bad people but then that's Jesus now we as individuals need to guard ourselves around the company that we keep, the people that we spend time with can have a great impact on us.

6:52 Let me give you an example of that. For many years, my wife and I went to church together, and we still do, of course, but for many years we went together and we'd meet people and friends, and there was one particular fellow that I got to know, and he was kind of a negative guy, and kind of a guy that was always finding the negative side of things. He was a nice fellow in a lot of ways, but he just seemed to always drift towards what's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong, rather than what's right with things. My wife could always tell when I had been around him. I'd come home from work, and maybe I'd had lunch with him, and I might make some comment or say something. She'd say, oh, you've been around this gentleman. I won't say his name. I could tell you've been with, what's his name? And let's say his name is Mike. It's not, but let's say his name is Mike. She'd say, I see you've been around with Mike. Evidently, you know, I can tell that you're just a little short with things, maybe, and you seem to be bothered about some things, and you seem to be a little cantankerous. And I would tell her, really? Is that obvious? And she'd say, no question about it. Well, that's what I'm referring to. We've got to avoid being around people like that, who draw from us and draw us into their way of thinking. And the Holy Spirit will help us with that. We grieve the Holy Spirit when we put ourselves in the presence of negative, hateful people, and angry people. but we certainly don't grieve him. We make him pleased and happy with us when we're around people who are filled with joy and filled with the love of God in their life. So anyways, enough said about that, but I just think it's important we need to understand that we need to experience the Holy Spirit, but the people we spend time with will have a great

8:24 impact on that. To experience the Holy Spirit, we must expect and anticipate with expectations good things are going to happen. to experience the Holy Spirit, we need to believe in the scripture where Paul, the apostle Paul says that he calls forth those things that are not as though that they are. Instead of looking at the negative things, the things that are not, Paul looks upon those things that are. Paul likes to look at the answer to prayer rather than the challenge we're going through. Now Paul prayed for people, he anointed people, he had the gift of healing, and people were healed, and all these wonderful things, but he knew that he knew that he knew that we needed to expect, to anticipate that God's Word was true, it was real, and that Jesus the Healer would show up, and that the Holy Spirit would be there to help each and every one of us. So we must expect and anticipate. good things are going to happen to us. And I think that was an evangelist one time, that was his slogan on TV. As soon as he'd come on the TV, he'd say, something good is going to happen to you today.

9:23 And what a wonderful, positive way that is, and to influence and help the Holy Spirit, and to help us have a better experience with the Holy Spirit. Now, to experience the Holy Spirit, we must encourage Him. Now you say, how in the world do I encourage? The Holy Spirit. Well, we need to think good thoughts. We need to think about what he provides. Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness. When we... Demonstrate love and joy and peace and goodness and kindness and gentleness and faithfulness and self -control. When those things are operating in our life, then we are encouraging the Holy Spirit. And some people might say, well, you can't encourage the Holy Spirit. Oh, yes, you can. If you can grieve Him, you can also encourage Him. And I believe in that. I think we can do that. To experience the Holy Spirit, we must delight ourselves in Him. The Word of God tells us if we delight ourselves in the Lord, then He'll give us the desires of our heart. On the other hand, the Word of God is basically saying there that if you delight yourself in your desires, things aren't going to work out well. But Scripture says, delight yourself in the Lord, and then God, the Lord, will then give you those things. All these things will come to you. The Bible says to seek ye first the kingdom of God in his righteousness, and then all these things shall be added unto you.

10:37 This is the way we experience the Holy Spirit, seeking God, delighting ourselves in God, and the Holy Spirit will operate with that, work with that, and it will increase our relationship with the Holy Spirit and we'll experience Him in a greater way than we thought was even possible. Matter of fact, let me read that scripture to you that I just quoted. It's in Psalms. chapter 37 verse 4. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. So maybe somebody needs to know where that particular scripture is, so I figured I'd better just go ahead and read that to you. Let's continue on now. To experience the Holy Spirit, we need to ask Him for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Yes, you can. You can ask Him for the gifts of the Spirit. You can ask the Holy Spirit for the fruit of the Spirit. You can ask the Holy Spirit to baptize you with the Holy Spirit to receive your heavenly language that you can pray in the Spirit.

11:28 And when you're praying in the Spirit, you're praying the divine will of God. Now the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of your prayer language is opposite of the gift of tongues with interpretation. The gift of tongues and interpretation is a gift from the Holy Spirit to help us with a group. But the baptism of the Holy Spirit where we have our prayer language where we have this time where we don't know how to pray and don't know what to pray about and we can get along with the Lord and be meditating on the things of God and reading the Word of God and the Spirit of God can come out upon us and then we start praying this heavenly language. You don't need to know what the words are because those words are the divine will of God. So I believe we experience the Holy Spirit if we ask Him for and receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

12:09 Now, let me give you the story. I probably have given it to you in the past on a prior podcast, but it's always a good story about my experience being baptized in the Holy Spirit. My wife and I got saved. We both were found in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. I was a few months after her. I was a little slower than she was in turning her life over to the Lord. But after she got saved, then she desired to have the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So she received her prayer language. And I would hear from time to time, she'd be praying and I'd hear her praying in this language, just foreign language. And I would talk to her and say, well, what's that? And are you going to do that a lot? And she would show me in the Bible where it was. And I thought, well, that's real then. I said well that's good for you, but I think maybe I'll hold off so she started praying and she said I prayed and I prayed that God would fill you with the Holy Spirit in a big way and that you then would understand and then we would be in agreement on this so she would pray about it and pray about it and had other people praying about it and then one night in the middle of night I woke up and I felt the power of the Holy Spirit all over the house and so I walked down to the living room and I got on my knees and say God I want whatever you want for me. Whatever you have for me, whatever you desire for me to have in my life, I want it. I want to get closer to you. I need the Holy Spirit. As soon as I said I need the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit just fell all over me. And I was what they call slain in the Spirit. I literally fell down by myself in a very gentle way on the carpeting in our family room. And I laid there and I started praying in my heavenly language. And I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. It was not screaming

13:41 or loud or whatever. It was just simply a wonderful time where the Holy Spirit was filling me with the baptism and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and it went on and on and on and I think it went on for quite a while maybe an hour or so because all of a sudden I it was like I woke up from this dream it wasn't a dream it was reality and I walked back into bed and went back to sleep and thought that was wonderful and the next morning I didn't say anything to my wife and I didn't say anything for a week or so went by and but I would be by myself and I would be praying and then one time in church we're in church and we're worshipping the Lord and all of a sudden I started praying quiet to myself but to where my wife could hear it and I was praying in the spirit and after church she said you didn't tell me and I said tell you what well that you got filled with the Holy Spirit that you received your prayer language the baptism of the Holy Spirit and I said no I just didn't think that I should." And she said, well, she said, tell me the story.

14:31 So I told it to her and she said, you know, thank you, Lord, that you answered her prayer. But that was my experience in it. And some people have various other ways. My wife was filled with the Holy Spirit with her heavenly prayer language while she was driving down the freeway, just listening to Christian music. And as she's driving down the freeway, our little four -year -old son was sitting beside her and she started praying in the Spirit. And she said, when she started praying the Spirit, all of a sudden she thought her son, our son is sitting beside her and he's looking at her and his His eyes are wide open, his mouth's kind of open, and she said, Ed, are you okay? And he says, oh yes, Mommy. He says, I know it's the Holy Spirit. He's all over you. It's Jesus. It was so wonderful to see he, the Holy Spirit, gave him comfort. Now he's four years old. and he knew this was a good thing and he knew that mama was being blessed. So those are two of our experiences. And matter of fact, some of you who've been baptized in the Holy Spirit and you have this beautiful prayer language, you should let someone else know how it happened and why you desired it and why and what it has done for your relationship with the Holy Spirit and experiencing the Holy Spirit in a greater way. Now experience the Holy Spirit, experiencing Him is God's will for us. Amen? It is. It's God's will for us. Jesus said in Acts chapter 1 verse 5, be baptized in the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 5 16 in the New Living Translation. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. So the Apostle Paul talked

16:02 about it. Jesus talked about living in the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, and experiencing a greater depth of our relationship with the Holy Spirit. To experience the Holy Spirit daily, we need to seek Him daily. If we want to sense that His power is operating in us, then we need to be aware of Him, and we need to invite Him into our discussions. Now, I've said this before several times, I don't even like to have a podcast that I do unless I invite the Holy Spirit to come in and take control. I like to surrender what I've done, my preparation, to Him, and I want Him to guide my life. I don't want to drive out of the driveway without saying, Holy Spirit, direct me and take me in the direction that I should go. Obviously, I know I'm going to drive somewhere, but sometimes I want the Holy to tell me if I'm supposed to drive a certain place or drive by a certain place or by driving down a certain street I might think of a person who's living there that needs a call that I should call them I believe the Holy Spirit is directing that so we need to ask him so experience the Holy Spirit is God's will for us but we have to experience him daily and seek him daily We experience the Holy Spirit through the gifts of the Spirit. I've talked a little bit about that today about the fruit of the Spirit, but all the gifts of the Spirit, the power gifts, the tongues and interpretation of tongues and prophecy and healings and miracles, all those powerful, wonderful gifts are available to us.

17:22 And we can experience the Holy Spirit through these gifts. If you have questions about them and you need to know where to read, I would encourage you to go to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. And if you read that and study it and read and study it and pray about it, then the Holy Spirit, then you'll be opening yourself up to receive what the Holy Spirit has for those. And the Holy Spirit is the one that gives the gifts out. He's the one that gives the power gifts according to whom He chooses and when He chooses. And so you'll find that in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. So with that, we need to experience the Holy Spirit by seeking Him. You know, in the world today, there's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of confusion, a lot of dissension, a lot of political parties fighting with each other. There's a lot of sickness and disease, just so much turmoil going on in the country today. And as Christians, as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to rely upon the comforting strength of the Holy Spirit. And we've got to find it somewhere. And the best way I know of finding it is through prayer and seeking the Lord and reading the Word of God.

18:21 Paul wrote about this in 2 Corinthians chapter... 1 verses 3 and 4 and when he wrote about this he's given us a definition an explanation of how to receive comfort in times of difficulties and trials listen to these words blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all listen that all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort which we ourselves are comforted by God. Listen to that. With the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. So God's Word offers comfort. The Holy Spirit is comfort. Yesterday, I went to visit someone in a hospital, a good friend, and he's really going through a lot of physical problems, an extremely challenging life he's having right now with physical issues. Prior to that, he wasn't unhealthy, he was doing really well, but he started having physical issues, and started having strokes, and started having seizures, and all types of things, and it just kind of continued on. And as I was with him, talking with him, he said, you know, this is difficult, I've never experienced anything like this. And I said, well, that's when we need to call upon the Lord, call upon the Holy Spirit to bring comfort. And I said, because Jesus said that he would send the Comforter.

19:36 And he's here. He's in this room right now. He's living inside of you, I was telling the fella. And when we prayed, I asked the Holy Spirit to come and give comfort and give peace and give him the peace of God that passes all understanding. And that peace would guard his heart and his mind in Christ Jesus. Anytime we're going through troubles and trials, there's a battle over our mind. There's a constant battle going on. The devil's trying to confuse us and put doubt in our mind and make us feel uncomfortable. We're gonna die, or we're gonna lose this situation, or we're gonna lose this battle, or whatever, we're gonna lose our finances, our marriage is gonna go under, or whatever it might be. The devil's always on that side, but the Holy Spirit's on the other side. He's saying, no, I'm a very present help in times of trouble. I'll never leave you, and I'll never forsake you. In the words of Paul that said, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all. Comfort. Those scriptures bring forth, I believe, an anointing from the Holy Spirit in us to deal with all the challenges we face. My friend and I was talking with him and we were praying together. I could just see a change in his face. You could just see that he was, that a lot of the trouble was being removed.

20:42 Oh, he still had his physical problems and he's still going through the challenges and he's probably going to be in the hospital for quite a while yet. But bottom line, he started to feel that comfort. It wasn't from me, it was from the Holy Spirit. It was from speaking the word of God in praying and calling upon the Holy Spirit to help and give that comfort. We need to know in our walk with God and trying to experience the Holy Spirit that we need to allow the Holy Spirit to cover us, to overtake us, to surround us, to encapsulate us if you will, to be every part of what we have in our life. He needs to be there and we've got to surrender to him and yield to him and ask for him to come in because we need to experience the Holy Spirit in a greater way than ever before. Allow me to start to close this podcast now by basically looking at just a few more suggestions to experience the Holy Spirit. Read about Him in the book of Acts and in chapters 1 and 2 and in 1st Corinthians chapter 12. We need to understand that He lives in us right now, right where He is. Think about that.

21:44 We need to be still and wait upon the Holy Spirit. We need to expect the gifts of the Spirit. the fruit of the Spirit to operate in our life. We need to acknowledge Him as our source for wisdom and for knowledge. When we speak on the Holy Spirit, you know, when I make a comment or I teach a class or I speak to a group, they want to hear about all the nine power gifts and they're wonderful. No wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, tongues, interpretation of tongues, all those gifts they want to hear about. And that's wonderful and that's good. The power gifts are amazing and I've been blessed with several of them in my life, how the Holy Spirit Spirit has given me those at moments at certain times. But experience the Holy Spirit daily should be our priority, daily through his peace, daily through his comfort, daily with our interactions with him. We need to seek the giver of the gifts, not the gifts, as much as the giver of the gifts. That's God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. With that, I know that we can experience a greater walk with God. We can experience a closer relationship to the Holy Spirit, and He will manifest in our lives and make a radical change in everything that we do. So with that, let me just close by praying. Heavenly Father, I pray, Lord, that you would bless those who listen to this podcast. A little unusual, a little different type of podcast than I normally do.

23:01 Lord, it's been kind of like just a fireside chat. But Lord, I hope that you will use this and that it has gone into the hearts of those people who have And I pray, Lord, that we will all grow in our walk with you. We'll grow in as we experience the Holy Spirit, as we build a relationship with the Holy Spirit, because only good things can happen from that. And I'll thank you for it, and I'll be careful, give you all the praise and glory for it now. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Well, I hope this has been a blessing to you. I've thoroughly enjoyed doing this today. And if you'd like to know a little bit more about the Quality Christian Living podcast, you can do that by going to my webpage at davidcfriend .org. when you get there you'll see the front page shows a link to all my podcasts so if you'd like to know more about what we do and what the podcasts are about there's a list of some 360 podcasts in there and lots of topics various topics that I hope be a blessing to you in addition to that if you'd like to know more about me as an individual you could just Scroll down on my web page to the next page and show a list of books that I have on Amazon that I've written on faith and on help for veterans and on Finances and just basically a plethora of topics that I think would be a blessing to you So I hope that you'll do that if you'd like to subscribe to my podcast you can do that by going to CPN shows comm or wherever you listen to your podcast so once again I hope that this has been a blessing for you, and I would appreciate it if you would take a moment and If you've enjoyed this, if you've been blessed by this, just take a moment and rate and give us a review of the podcast.

24:34 It really does help us to make connection with people. We can ask you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music or Charisma Podcast Network, or just give us a star rating on Spotify. So if you do that, whatever you choose to do, it'd certainly be appreciated and thank you once again for your support. You know, kind of look to the future. I've got a number of podcast topics that I've been thinking about. and so just to kind of plant a few seeds in your mind. We're going to talk about in future podcasts how the Holy Spirit brings strength and the Holy Spirit brings joy. He helps us leave a great legacy. He helps us in making the right decisions. He helps us in our finances and the Holy Spirit helps us to set goals in our life and then helps us to accomplish those goals that he's given us. And he also defeats fear and he brings the promises of God to us and all and on and on I could go on and on I'm just gonna stop right there so I hope that that will spark some interest in your in your thoughts and about the Holy Spirit and if you have some friends or family members that would like to maybe join us I'd like to have you invite them to be a part of the Quality Christian Living podcast and I pray that the Holy Spirit will direct you and bless you and help you in all that you do so with that I'm just gonna wrap this thing up and pray a blessing over you is what I do at the end of each podcast because I believe that's the Holy Spirit wanting us to lead people with a blessing and lead people with hope. So I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you and that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he'll be Generous

26:07 to you and prosper you and that you'd be in good health and that your soul would prosper and that he would give you peace That God's grace would be sufficient for everything that you need. I just pray that'll take place in your life So once again, I want to thank you for tuning in to the quality Christian living podcast I am your host David friend. I look forward to upcoming podcasts dealing with the Holy Spirit May God richly bless you in all that you do. Thank you again for listening in