Holy Spirit And Our Will (352)

0:02 Welcome once again to the Quality Christian Living podcast. I am your host, David Friend. Our series on the Holy Spirit seems to be gaining momentum. People are enjoying it and encouraging me to continue to stay on this topic. So we're going to stay there for as long as the Holy Spirit leads us. You know, the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to help believers and help non -believers become believers. Now, what are some of the ministries of the Holy Spirit? We talk about that and how can the Holy Spirit minister to us and and the fact is he that he also helps us to do God's will he's got a great assignment an incredible job you imagine having his job having to do what he needs to do is to keep Christians on track with God's will so today we're going to talk about the Holy Spirit and our will so let's just pray and ask for God's direction Heavenly Father we love you we need you we desire your help I ask the Holy Spirit now to come in and direct this podcast it's a very important one Lord as you well know that the Holy Spirit is always dealing with the will of man. So I pray that you would help us to understand your will and your direction in all that we do. I pray you would bless those who are listening in today, that you would touch them and help them to understand that God's will is always best and that the Holy Spirit is there to help us, each and every one of us, to know God's will and to do his will and then reap the rewards of doing that will.

1:24 So Father, we ask your blessing now, your anointing. Holy Spirit, do what only you can do, I pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, as I've mentioned in previous podcasts, the Holy Spirit prays for us. He prays for us to do God's will. He prays exactly what we need and He's our intercessor. He is our connector with God the Father. The Holy Spirit has a purpose to help believers and to draw non -believers to Jesus. You know, that's really His primary focus is to minister to us and help us because Jesus said when He left this earth, He says, I'm going to be leaving I have to go and it's better that I go because then the Holy Spirit will come and He will comfort you and He'll be with you and He'll direct you.

2:05 The Holy Spirit tries to direct us to do God's will. I use the word tries because, you know, our will can overshadow the will of the Holy Spirit. And that means that we do what we want, when we want to do it and how we want to do it and why we want to do it and to whom ever we want to do it to. And that's not following God's will. And so the Holy Spirit can only attempt and try to direct us to do God's will. and that is his job, that's his assignment. And we then need to understand that our will has to be secondary to God's will, always in every situation. The Holy Spirit wants us to be delighted in doing God's will. I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in a moment, but think about that. Be delighted. Not, oh, God, I know your will, and oh, I don't know how that's going to happen, and oh, I don't think I can do that. And we do make all those statements when we know what God's will is. In my own life, I've had times when I was in ministry, and I wanted to get out of ministry. And I knew it was God's will that I stayed in ministry, but I went ahead and stepped out of it anyways. And I struggled. I mean, I had a very difficult couple of years until I jumped back into doing the will that God had placed for me in my life. And so we need to be directed and we need to be delighted. We need to receive it and take it into our heart and our mind, our soul, and make sure that our spirit is in total agreement with God's spirit. And so therefore, we need to be delighted I'll talk more about that in just a second. Now, the Holy Spirit does that. He wants us to be delighted because our will may be at odds with God's will.

3:37 Matter of fact, many times it is. Even Jesus had a brief moment of wanting to do his will. You remember back in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus did not want God's will for the crucifixion, but he quickly changed and said this in Luke chapter 22 verse 22 in the New International Version. Here's what Jesus said, Father, if you are willing, take this cup. Now, another translation says, Father, if you are willing, take this cup of suffering away from me. That's the cup he's talking about, and that suffering is the crucifixion that's coming up and the humiliation and God deserting Jesus here on earth. So, in Luke 22, 42 in the NIV, when Jesus said, Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, he says, yet, but here's a big word, the biggest word that we can have many times in our life, yet, not my will, yours be done and it must be done so it's important that we understand that yet that yet is our will wanting to fight God's will and that's a battle that takes place in most of our lives just about every day there's something that we are thinking about that God gets us off and tells us that's not right don't think that way go in a different direction that's following God's will just those little thoughts that we have in our mind when all of a sudden we get upset with someone someone says something to us that we don't appreciate and we want to say something back well it's God's will that We don't get even with people or judge people or get angry with people. We just simply should move forward and pray for that person who has given us a difficult

5:07 time. See, the key word in that scripture in Luke 22 is yet. We need to say, however, our yet, not my will be done, but your will be done in every single area of our life. And I'm not saying that's easy. I'm not saying that's easy at all. It can become very difficult, especially when someone that you care for, that you love, hurts you. They do something against you. And our natural response is, in our own flesh, is to want to get even, or want to say something back, or want to make a quick statement. But I've discovered over the years of being a follower of Jesus Christ, and especially as a pastor for over 20 years, that I've got to understand that people don't always say what they mean. People don't say things that really is a good description of who they are. They might say that in anger, or in frustration, or wherever it might be. And they're outside of God's will, and we just to pray for them and love on them and care for them and help them get them back in. You know getting into an argument with someone is really most the time just kind of a waste of time. We just simply when someone disagrees with us we need to pray for them. Bible says pray for those who persecute you, who come up against you, who charge many things against you. That's just a powerful statement that we need to learn in order to do that we've got to submit to the Holy Spirit, yield to Him and ask Him to know exactly what we should do and what God's will is in each situation that we have. Now, I love to use the word delight when thinking about doing God's will. I mentioned this earlier just a little bit, but let's go a little bit more into this. I think it's so

6:38 important to understand that word delight. We must delight ourselves in God's will. Delight ourselves in what He wants us to do. Delight ourselves in His goal for us. Delight ourselves in what the Holy Spirit tells us to do. the unctioning, if you will, the moving of the Holy Spirit, that still quiet voice inside of us that tells us what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and be delighted in that, and be happy to do it, even though it may be something we don't quite understand. Now in Psalm, chapter 40, verse 8, in the New American Standard Version, the psalmist said this, I delight to do your will, oh my God. Now that's simply as direct as you possibly can be. I delight to do your will. And that's where we need to get in order to understand how to be led by the Holy Spirit to know God's will in our life and to run from our will or our thoughts.

7:27 Now that doesn't mean that we don't have good ideas and good thoughts, but anything I believe that's good, any good thought or idea or plan that comes into our mind, we need to give God credit for that. We need to thank the Holy Spirit for that. I don't like to take credit for anything anymore. If I preach a sermon and someone says, oh, that was a great message. I don't want to say, yeah, well, I put 20 hours in putting it together, worked hard on it. No, that's not giving God the glory. But when someone says, that was a great message or I enjoyed that podcast, I've got to immediately tell them the Holy Spirit is doing something wonderful and I thank Him for giving me what He gave me. for this particular podcast or that particular message that I may have spoken. Here's another wonderful scripture found in the book of Psalms in Psalm 37 verse 4 in the New Living Translation. Take delight in the Lord and he will give you your heart's desires. Well, look at that. What a wonderful scripture that is. Take delight in him. Once again, that word delight jumps into us. The sad thing is that we sometimes want to delight in ourselves or delight in our desires and not delight ourselves in the Lord. Let me make that a little clearer. Psalm 37 -4 says this. take delight in the Lord and he will give you your heart's desires. He is not saying take delight in our desires, but many times, I know we're human and we have fleshly thoughts and ideas, many times we delight in our thoughts. We delight in what we want to do. We delight in that new car. We delight in that new house. We delight in maybe having new friendships. We need to delight ourselves in the Lord and then he will give us our heart's

8:59 desire. We can't delight in our desires. We've got to delight ourselves. in God and following his will in our life. To delight in God, really, and to delight in his will is having trust in God. We need to trust the Lord with all of our heart. We need to not lean on our own understanding. We need to acknowledge him in all ways and he will direct our path. That's Proverb 3 .5, one of my absolute favorites and I know that's a very important scripture for all of us to truly understand to do God's will and not our will. The Apostle Paul wrote an amazing scripture dealing with seeking God's will. Really a very powerful scripture. When I first read it, you might think, well, that doesn't really apply to this podcast, but think about it. The podcast is dealing with the Holy Spirit and our will, knowing that the Holy Spirit is helping us with our will to make it become God's will. And the transition, Paul talks about that and he doesn't use exact words but listen to what he says in in Philippians chapter 3 verse 7 and 8 in the new international version I'm gonna read it a little bit slower because I want you to savor it as I'm reading it to you but whatever were gains to me. That's what he's saying. Anything that was good in my life, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

10:10 What he's saying is, anything that I did before coming to know Christ wasn't all that important. He says in verse 8, what is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. That basically he's saying anything that I want to do, desire to do, my will, if it was contrary to God's will. I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ." So here he's saying that if things are not God's will, then it's garbage. It literally is something that we should not allow to happen in our life. Now that's strong, but it's really wonderful. So I would encourage you maybe to go back and listen to this portion of the podcast again.

10:51 Read that scripture again, because Paul is basically giving us an understanding of the difference between knowing his will and knowing God's will. Before he came to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, everything he did was his will, and it didn't turn out very well for him. And after he came to know Jesus Christ, so he says everything that was done before this, it really wasn't worth anything. He even likes to use the word, well the translation uses the word garbage, and the bottom line of it is that it was worthless. Everything that he did before following the divine will of God was worthless. Now that doesn't mean that we didn't do something good in our life, that we didn't have times in our life where things were decent and peaceful, but if we truly want to have the surpassing worth of Knowledge that Paul talks about it the amazing unlimited power of God in our life and the anointing of the Holy Spirit in our life We've got to shun our will and receive God's will and we find that will through the leading and guidance in the direction of the Holy Spirit I believe all that Paul was talking about there was that God's will is what Paul wanted He didn't want his own will in his life from that day forward now in order to know and do God's will we must deny self obviously Self is an enemy of God flesh is an enemy of God in order to know God's will we must Submit ourselves and surrender ourselves and surrender our will to the Holy Spirit in 1st Peter chapter 1 verses 14 through 16 I'm gonna read this out of the Bible in a new living translation. Let's listen to these words very carefully So you must live as God's obedient children Don't slip back

12:24 into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn't know any better than But you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the scripture says this in verse 16, you must be holy because I am holy. So what God is telling us through his word, what the Holy Spirit is giving Peter to write, is give us instructions about don't go back and slip back into our old ways of living to satisfy the desires of our flesh. That is not God's will for our life. Peter delighted in God's will. Once he understood the difference between his will and God's will. He delighted in it. Peter desired God's will and he wanted the Holy Spirit to direct him. See, all believers are called to live a godly life and to follow God's will, but there's a battle. It goes on constantly. It is impossible to know God's will without following the Holy Spirit's direction in our life. Let me repeat that. That is so important for each and every one of us. It is absolutely impossible to know God's will without following the Holy Spirit's direction. Now, how does the Holy Spirit talk to us? That's still a quiet voice I've talked about many, many times. The Bible talks about it. That's still a quiet voice that tells us the direction we're on isn't correct, or we're making the wrong decision or saying the wrong words, and that the Holy Spirit is speaking to our spirit and telling us how to take the right steps and go in the right direction.

13:50 The Holy Spirit can speak to us through the Word of God, through a sermon, through a friend speaking to us about something, but the Holy Spirit has many ways that He can instruct us in God's will and keep us focused on God's will and desiring His will in our life. We can live a holy life if we walk in the Spirit. That doesn't mean that we are super righteous people. No, there's none righteous. No, not one. And the only righteousness that we would ever have is the righteousness of Christ that lives and dwells inside of each and every one of us. We can live, though, a good life, a holy life, a godly life, a righteous life, if we walk in the Spirit. Following the Spirit is the only way to know God's will. I think I've said that a couple times now, but that's so important that the only way to know God's will is to follow the Holy Spirit. It is only possible to live a holy life life if we do not try to be holy. You see, our efforts many times are pretty weak, pretty pitiful. Our ways are below what God's ways are. The Bible tells us that God's ways are greater than ours, his thoughts are greater than ours, so we want to have his thoughts, and we want to know his ways, and we want to know his plans. But we've got to try and stop trying to be holy. We can't do that because that's self. trying to become spiritual, and that doesn't work. And so therefore we give up, we surrender, we deny ourself. Trying is our flesh, and our flesh is an enemy of God.

15:07 So therefore, stop trying and start believing. Start trusting by faith, claiming God's word, claiming the promises of God, and ask the Holy Spirit to guide and direct us in each and everything we do in our life. Now following. are a few scriptures I believe that should help followers of God's will. Those who really want God's will, who delight in God's will, they have a desire, they want to do everything God wants them to do. And I was talking to somebody the other day, we were chatting about knowing God's will and not knowing God's will, and this person said, you know, all I really want in life, for the rest of my life, is to follow God's will, to do what he wants me to do. He said, because when I follow God's will, then I'm at peace and I have a joyful life. But when I get back into my own will, and start doing what I want to do and don't listen to the Holy Spirit, then I become miserable, become sad, I became frustrated, even get discouraged and even depressed. And he said, but when I get out of that and I walk in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit and have a desire to delight myself in God's will, regardless of what it is, if I keep my delight on Him, He'll give me the desires of my heart. It was a really wonderful conversation that I had and the timing was very appropriate for this week. on this particular series on in this podcast so let me just give you a couple scriptures I think that'll help us to follow God's will in Matthew chapter 6 verse 33 it's one of the oldest scriptures I remember in the very early part of becoming a Christian somebody taught on this one in Matthew 6 33 I'm reading it out of the New International Version but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness

16:39 and all these things will be given to you as well you see Jesus wants us to understand that's what we have to do first is seek God's will and then He'll bless us. The scripture that I just read is found in the book of Matthew chapter 6, like I mentioned, and Jesus is giving instructions on teaching about money and possessions and what we need and how he's there to take care of us. He says in verse 31, so don't worry about these things, the things being how you dress and your finances and all that good stuff. Don't worry about them, saying what we eat and what will we drink and what will we wear. He says, these things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly father already knows all your needs. And then he said the powerful words I read earlier in... Matthew chapter 6 verse 33 Jesus said this seek the kingdom of God above all else there you go that's key above all else and live righteously and he will give you everything that you need now that is one of the most powerful scriptures that will probably ever try to live up to and that is to seek first God in all things seek ye first the kingdom of God and when we do that then whatever we need God's going to supply it according to his riches not ours or not the riches of some relative, but the riches that God has for each and every one of us. And I'm not talking just finances, I'm talking about the richness of knowing His will and living the life He wants us to live. things that Jesus is talking about here are material things, possessions and food and shelter and clothes and it's even following God's will. He says in all things we're

18:10 to seek God first and seek his kingdom first. All right, let's move on. Another scripture I think that helps us with understanding how to get out of our will and follow the will of the Holy Spirit is found in Psalm 37 -4 in the New International Version. Listen to this, take delight in the Lord and he will give you desires of your heart. Now I threw that in a second time. because I think that is a big issue with a lot of people and struggling to know God's will. They want to delight in what they think they should delight in rather than delighting in the Lord and then trusting God that then he will give us the desires that we have. All right, I'll move on. Psalm 37 .5 in New International Version. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him and he will do this. Okay, that was remember 37 .4 said, take delight in the Lord and he'll give you the desires of your heart. Then 37 verse five says, commit, follow up, you gotta commit. That means absolute commitment, total sold out to God. Commit your way, whatever you do, whatever we think, whichever direction we wanna go. Commit your way, your job, your marriage, your finances, your parenting, the things that are in your life. We've gotta commit them and commit our ways to the Lord.

19:24 Trust in him, all right? And he will do this. He will give us the desires of our heart. As a matter of fact, our desires will become the desires that God places in our heart. I can remember as a young man, I always wanted to have fancy cars and when I first got married, I had a little problem with buying a car and I'd like it for a year and then I'd sell it and get another car and drive it for a year and get another car. And that's really foolish. Financially, I've talked about it in my books on finance, that you should never buy a new car every year and replace it because you take a beating financially on it. It's best to buy a three -year -old car every three years and you'll wind up doing much better as far as far better than throwing away a lot of money and I had a real problem with that because I was seeking the desires of my heart according to my will according to how I want to do it then I became a Christian some five years later and all of a sudden cars were nice and all that stuff I thought still thought they were fun but they became far less important in my life and all of a sudden I started making better decisions on automobiles I would buy old cars used cars and wear them out until they literally about tires about ready to fall off of them and then get rid of that one and get another one and I was able to then with those funds I wasn't spending or wasn't losing I was able to do have a nicer home for our family to live in able to give more finances to the Lord able to start tithing all those things changed because the desires of my heart changed and it was because the Holy Spirit taught me to delight myself in him and he'll even change my desires so that's a little bonus something that I thought I would throw in there because some people struggle understanding

20:55 the difference between God's will and our desires. All right, let's move on again here. This is Romans number 8 verse 6 in the New Living Translation. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. That means spiritual death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and power. So therefore, once again, we go back to the Holy Spirit. He's the one that has to lead us. He's the one that has to direct us. He's the one that has to guide our thoughts, our plans, and he will help us to follow God's will for us in our life. The Holy Spirit brings a Greater life. Life. That life brings peace and joy and trust in God. It's so important that we take this teaching and understand that all that we've done in our life, it's not all garbage.

21:38 You just don't throw everything away. Paul, when he meant garbage, he was saying things that I was doing on my own didn't turn out very well. But it's important for us to understand that we can do nice things and good things, but we can go better than that as a Christian. As a follower of Jesus Christ, we can do great things. Jesus said when he left, he says, greater things will you do than I've done. And the only reason he said that to them was because they were followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if they were all ungodly people and doing their will and their desires, he would tell them, you're going to fail. You're not going to prosper. But he knew because they were followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, they would surrender their lives to him and seek God's will and not their will. And that's my prayer for each and every one of us today. So let's start closing this podcast out by giving you a prayer and just believing that God will help each and every one of us to follow the will of the Holy Spirit, which is God's will. Heavenly Father, thank you, Lord. Once again, for another podcast where you've guided our thoughts, directed us, helped us with the scriptures to explain what they mean in relationship to this topic, I pray blessing on all those who are listening in, who are struggling with understanding God's will or knowing God's will. Father, I pray that you would comfort them, Lord, that they would not beat themselves up from the mistakes that they've made in the past because you've forgiven them those. All of us, each and every one of us who have made mistakes when we repent of our sins and ask Jesus Christ to become our Lord and Savior and turn from those Ways and turn our lives to God and receive him as our Lord and Savior, then he forgives us and gives us a new life, a new path, a new plan, and a new purpose in our life. So I pray blessing upon

23:08 each and every person listening here today that the will of God through the Holy Spirit would reign supreme in all of our lives. Help each one of us, Father, to do your will, to seek your will, to delight ourselves in your will. Thank you for that, Father. Thank you for guiding us through this podcast, and I'll be careful to give you praise and glory for it. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. Well, I hope this has been interesting to you. I hope it's been a blessing to you. I thoroughly enjoy this entire series on the Holy Spirit. It's just been wonderful. I can tell that people are loving it because the number of people listening in is increasing consistently. And you've inspired me, Lord, to help me to put a book together dealing with understanding our relationship and listening to the Holy Spirit.

23:51 So something very special has taken place. So I pray that you would continue to bless it. Our next podcast that we're going to move into is simply entitled More of the Holy Spirit. Now some people might say, well haven't we already covered it all? No, not by a long shot. We could do podcasts on the Holy Spirit for the next 50 years of my life and I can tell you that we would never be able to complete. all that the Holy Spirit has for each and every one of us. Now I'm not saying we're going to be doing this for the next 10 years, but I do want you to understand that I want to be led by the Holy Spirit as to know how long we continue and when we should move on to a different topic. Quality Christian Living is a podcast designed to help Christians live a quality life, quality Christian life. If you'd like to know more about Quality Christian Living, you can go to my webpage at davidcfriendauthor .com. And when you go to my webpage and pull it up, the front page right there will have a link. that says. podcasts and it tells you just click that link and you'll open up to some 350 today I think is the 350 first podcast in about four and a half years and so the Lord has blessed it every week we bring a new message and sometimes two or three messages in a week but it's important that we understand that the Holy Spirit needs to guide us and direct us in every area of our life and so that's what quality Christian living is about when you click that link on you'll look at the be able to see the podcast and then choose what areas you'd like to have maybe a little bit of with, areas on finance, areas on veterans and how they deal with life because I've served in the military. There's podcast series on there on the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit,

25:21 the power gifts of the Holy Spirit, walking in the Spirit. There's series on having faith and understanding what miracles are and how to have faith for miracles. Just a plethora of topics. I hope that'll be a blessing to you. In addition to that, if you'd like to subscribe to my podcast, you can do that by going to cpnshows .com or wherever you listen to your podcast. So I just want to ask you a little favor if I can right now. If you've enjoyed this I want to thank you for listening and if you've enjoyed this podcast I'd like you to take a moment to rate and review the podcast. It really helps us reach out to more people. You can leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Charisma Podcast Network or just give us a star rating on Spotify. Now however you choose to support us we certainly appreciate it and thank the Lord for that. Well I pray that you'll continue to stay with us as we continue this series on the Holy Spirit but before we close I just want to give you a blessing and just say another little prayer for you. Heavenly Father I pray Lord that you would bless those who are listening in that you would keep them and that your face would shine upon them and that you would be gracious to them Father and that you would give them peace and Father I pray that you would prosper them in all things and that they would be in good health and that their soul would prosper I believe for that for them and I pray for those who are seeking more of the Holy Spirit that they would Tune in next week for that podcast to help each and every one of us desire more and delight ourselves in knowing more about the Holy Spirit and operating our life being led by the Spirit of the Living God. I thank you for it now and I'll give you

26:53 praise for it. Bless those who are listening and those who prayed that prayer in the middle towards the end where I told them to give their life to Jesus Christ. If they repented their sins and invited Jesus into their life, I pray they'd find a good church, Lord. Get the word of God out and read it and find a church that will preach the gospel message. and let the new pastor there know that they just became followers of Jesus Christ and they want to know how to serve him in a greater way. Bless and keep them, I pray now, in Jesus' name. Well, once again, I hope that you enjoyed this podcast. I pray that God would richly bless you. I pray that you would receive a great anointing from the Holy Spirit to move stronger and closer to the walk of God that you desire. I pray that you would delight yourself in the Lord and then he would give you the desires of your heart. Bless and keep everyone, I pray. Thank you once again for listening to Quality Christian Living. I am your host, David Friend. Thank you for being a part of this podcast. May God richly bless you.