How To Experience The Holy Spirit (343)

0:01 Once again, I want to welcome you to the Quality Christian Living podcast. I am your host David Friend. We're continuing our series of studies on the Holy Spirit. Today's topic is how to experience the Holy Spirit. We've got a lot to cover today, so let's just move in right with it. We will show the steps that we must take in order to experience the Holy Spirit and to learn how to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and learn how to receive everything that the Holy Spirit has for us. We're going to expect to receive a greater portion of a Holy Spirit -led life, so there's so much to cover, but let's pray first. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thank you for who you are. I pray you would bless now this podcast, and I invite the Holy Spirit now to take control, to move in, and guide and direct everything that's said today. And for those who are listening in, for those who have a desire to have a greater experience with the Holy Spirit or to understand how the Holy Spirit wants to operate in their lives, I pray that you would open their hearts and open their minds, that they would receive the fullness of your love the fullness of your blessings, the fullness of your promises. And I just pray, Lord, that you would send the Holy Spirit now to fall down upon all of us and guide us and direct us, because it's such an important part of a Christian's life. I pray that you would bless us now. And I'll be careful now, always, to give you praise and glory for what's about to take place. For ask these things now, in Jesus' name I pray.

1:21 Amen. Well, to understand the purpose of this podcast, let me start with reading from John chapter 16 and verses 12 through 15 in the New Living Translation. Jesus is speaking here. He says these words in verse 12. There is so much more I want to tell you, but you can't bear it now. He was telling them, you can't handle everything that I've got to tell you. In verse 13, it says, when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own, but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future. Verse 14. He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me. Verse 15. Now the reason I read that scripture is because we're talking about how to experience the Holy Spirit, how to be able to walk and live and experience every day the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life and that's such an important part of it because Jesus was making this promise and he's telling us that when the Spirit comes he's going to guide us into all truth. You see the Bible tells us that when we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us. Now there is something about the Holy Spirit we call the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

2:36 There are things we talk about about the Holy Spirit called the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit and the nine power gifts of the Spirit. I've covered all of these in prior podcasts. Matter of fact, I did a whole series of teaching on the gifts of the Spirit and the power gifts of the Holy Spirit, so you can go back and refer to those if you'd like to in prior podcasts. But I would like to focus kind of a general statement today about how to experience the Holy Spirit and we need to continue to have that experience in our life. Some people say that well that ended when the Apostles were around and when the disciples were there and it kind of came and then it went and it just hasn't happened since. Well that's just not true because the Word of God is the same yesterday, today and forever and the operation of the Holy Spirit is the same today as it was back then. It's whether we yield to Him and we allow Him to take over and take charge of our lives. You know we read about more of the experience experiences of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. I'm going to read a couple of sections that I think will be helpful to you in Acts chapter 1 and verse number 4. And I think we'll also read verse 5. I think they are so important together. Once again, this is the book of Acts chapter 1 verse 4 and 5 in the New Living Translation. Once he was eating with them, he commanded them. This is either saying Jesus sent them to do this. Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised as I told you. before John baptized with water but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit now what's so interesting about that is that these people were already followers of the Lord Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit

4:08 had come to dwell and live inside of them their bodies became the temple of the Holy Spirit just like ours do and so it's important we understand that because then he says in a few days he says you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit so that means there's another step there's another experience that we can have and I'll cover that in just a little bit but first let's look at another scripture here in Acts chapter 2 and verses 1 through 4 in the New Living Translation listen very carefully to this we're laying the foundation the groundwork for what we're talking about today on the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place suddenly there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm and it filled the house where they were sitting then what looked like flames our tongues of fire appeared and settled on each one of them and everyone Present was filled.

4:55 Here it said everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability. So here we're seeing another experience with the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit now is moving into them and causing them to experience a greater relationship with the Holy Spirit. And then as we read along in Acts chapter 2, let's go down to verse 17. Peter is preaching to the crowd and here's what Peter said. It's found in Acts chapter 2. Now there's a lot more scriptures to read about and I would encourage you to read the book of Acts chapter 1 and chapter 2. They're so important to understand the very beginning of the of the Holy Spirit or the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We see this in operation in the scriptures that I just read you and also the gifts of the Spirit are in operation. This is experiencing the Holy Spirit. This is the type of things I want to talk about that we can have in our life operating in our lives today. Now there are many ways we can experience the Holy Spirit. That means know that he's alive and well in us and helping us and guiding us and directing us. He is interested in every area of our life.

6:19 Now it doesn't matter what you Take to the Lord, if it's important to you, it's important to God. It doesn't matter how simple you might think it is. Once again, if it's something that's in your mind you were thinking about, something you need to talk about, we need to take it to the Lord and ask the Holy Spirit to help us and guide us and direct us. Because I believe, like I said before, he is, the Holy Spirit is interested in every area of our life, whether it be finances, whether it be health, whether it be marriage, whether it be careers, whether it be going to school, whether it be dating, whether it be raising children, whatever it may be. might be the Holy Spirit is interested in every single area of our life and He wants us to experience Him to handle all these issues and all these various levels of experiences that we'll have in our life. The Holy Spirit is the Comforter, our Advocate.

7:04 That means He's got our back, He's got us covered. He does not want us to try to handle things on our own or our way. It's so important we understand that, that God has a way that's greater and bigger than ours. Isaiah 55 says that, that His thoughts are higher than And God has released the power of the Holy Spirit here on earth in order to help us with all of his ways and his thoughts and his ideas and the way he wants us to go. The Holy Spirit wants us to seek him. He wants us to pursue him. Some people say, well, how do you pursue the Holy Spirit? Well, I'll give you a list of things to do shortly. But bottom line, we just need to submit ourselves to the Lord, go to church and start worshiping. Once you go through the doors, we enter into his core.

7:49 with Thanksgiving and praise. We need to give praise to the Lord. Today I'm finding that a lot of people come to church late because they're missing out on the worship time. That's a very important time to prepare us to get ready for what the Word of God is going to be preached in our church. So if worship is songs or being sung and we're worshiping together as a church in unity, we need to be a part of that because that is so crucial to experience the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He wants us to pursue Him. We pursue Him through attendance at church, through reading the Word of God, through prayer, through giving worship and praise, and in worship services. Our attitude must be filled with an anticipation and expectation of greater things. You know, when we go to church, we should go with anticipation. We should go expecting God to do something special. You know, every single time my wife and I get in the car to drive to church, as we back out of the driveway, we're praying. Now I have my eyes open, because I'm not going to run into someone, but we're praying, and we're saying, Heavenly Father, I pray that you would... bless and protect us as we go to church today. I pray that you would anoint the service, that you would anoint the worship time, that you would anoint the message to come forth, and I pray the Holy Spirit would even now start working in the place, in the church, and that you would move in a very special way and anoint everything that's said, and that the Holy Spirit would draw people into a relationship with Jesus, and that people would come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. You know, after we prayed that, in various times it's shorter, sometimes it's longer, but we basically pray that general prayer before we go to church because we're anticipating

9:19 and expecting something special to happen because we know when we get there, the Holy Spirit is already there when two or more are gathered there. God says He's there when we lift Him up. And when we get there and join that, then we're part of the move of God that's taking place in our church. We need to delight in Him in the Holy Spirit and He will give us the desires of our heart. We delight not in our desires, we delight in Him and then He'll give us the desires of heart and the desires of our heart will be God's will according to what he desires for us. If you have not received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of your heavenly prayer language, I want you to receive it today and at the end I'm gonna pray and I'm gonna have a prayer for those people who've never received the infilling of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in another language in your heavenly language and it's your prayer language. You're you're praying the divine will of God when you pray like that and that's what was taking place in the upper room when people started praying in the Spirit and praising in the Spirit. And it's a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing. It's alive and well today. Now, this is one of the many experiences that we can have in the Holy Spirit. Experiencing the Holy Spirit is the way of life that God wants us to have. We can experience the works of the Spirit, the voice of the Spirit, the love of the Spirit, the hope of the Spirit, the comfort of the Spirit. And those are all things that we need and desire in our walk with God. We need to experience the power of the Holy

10:50 Spirit in our life. Experiencing the Holy Spirit is the spiritual gifts of the fruit of the Spirit. And once again, I will digress a little bit on prior podcasts. I've talked extensively about the gifts of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, the nine power gifts, and all that is listened. If you want to listen to my podcast, I'll talk about that at the end on how to go back and listen to my podcast because this is the 400 I'm sorry, the 343rd podcast. So obviously we've done a lot of podcasts over several years and there's a very long series dealing with the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. Now I have prayed with many individuals to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now before I pray for you, I would like to kind of discuss how we prepare ourselves to receive. It's the same way when someone comes up front in church and I had someone the other day come up to me and say I want to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. I want that in my prayer language. And I first talked to them and I said some of these things to them to prepare them to be sure that they were ready, prepared to receive. They're not coming up saying, well, I hope this happens or maybe it'll happen or possibly it might happen. No, they're coming forward to have someone agree with them in prayer so that the baptism of the Holy Spirit will come into their life and they'll have this beautiful, powerful prayer language that is just between them and God. And that when you pray in that wonderful language, you'll be praying the divine will of God. I know I said that before, but it's so important to understand that. You're not praying your will, and we're praying the divine will of God. Now following, here's a list of things that we can do or should do in order to prepare

12:22 ourselves to be able to receive this wonderful gift. We want to read in the book of Acts chapters one and two, how it happened in the early church on the day of Pentecost, and what Jesus has promised before he left. that in a few days the Holy Spirit will come and he will baptize you. Well, then all the, and it happened and we need to understand that. So we need to read chapters one and chapter two in the book of Acts to build our faith and get ourselves prepared to receive. Number two, we need to understand the Holy Spirit lives in us. The word of God tells us that the Holy Spirit lives and abides in us and we've got to believe that and accept that. I know there's some days I don't feel too much like the Holy Spirit's living in me because I get a little wrapped up in the flesh or get a little upset. or a little bit anxious about something, but then the Holy Spirit tells me I'm not to be anxious about anything.

13:09 I'm not supposed to get upset about anything. I'm supposed to be at peace, and I can only be that way through Him. And so we need to understand that the Holy Spirit lives in us, and when I focus on the Holy Spirit, all the other stuff goes away. Anxiety leaves, any concerns about things may happen or may not happen, health issues, whatever they might be, they're removed because the Holy Spirit comes to comfort. You see, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. are scriptural, and I don't have time in a 30 -minute podcast to tell you all of these things, but I'm going to give you an outline of what we all need to do. The third thing that we need to do is to pray to our Heavenly Father to fill us with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And because that shows that we have a desire for that, we want it, we need it, we desire it. Number four, it says we need to spend time with our pastor or our spiritual mentor about how to receive.

14:00 this beautiful gift. Now obviously this depends if our individual friends or our pastor believes that the Holy Spirit is still baptizing today. But it didn't say in the Word of God that he'll only baptize until after Jesus, until shortly after Jesus leaves and then it'll all stop. No, he said that this will be a gift that we will have, that Christians will have, and it's the gift that he still has for all of us. So you've got to find counsel and time with a pastor or a spiritual mentor who understands the baptism of the Holy Spirit they've received it themselves. and they certainly understand it's alive and well today. Here's a fifth thing I believe that we should do to prepare ourselves to receive anything from God to not only the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but to experience the Holy Spirit in just about any way. Begin all prayers with praise and worship. I mentioned earlier that when we go to church, the first thing we should do is have praise and worship and submit our prayers to God. And we need to do that before we ask the Holy Spirit to help us in any area of our life. Number five, begin our quest. for experiencing more of the Holy Spirit with praise and with worship. Number six, be still and wait on the Holy Spirit. Now, the Bible says to be still and know that I am God. Well, it applies to the Holy Spirit because God the Holy Spirit here lives on earth in us, in our bodies. God the Father not only lives here in us, but he's also in the heavenlies and Jesus is with him and we don't have three gods. We have one God in three parts, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit make up one. God but we need to be still and wait on the Holy Spirit. Don't

15:33 get anxiety and get anxious. I've had people I've prayed with in the past. I've had them up front maybe or maybe in a in a classroom somewhere and praying with them and they just want it right now this very very second and some do receive immediately and others it takes them a while. Some people it takes sometimes days or weeks or even months for people to receive but we've got to have patience and wait upon the Lord and be still and wait upon the Holy Spirit to baptize us. If we do that, it renders us available to God. We're surrendered. It's important that when we're seeking the Holy Spirit that we reduce our words that we speak in our primary language like English or Spanish or whatever French or whatever it is that you speak. I have to speak of talk about the various languages around the world because we've been blessed to have over 140 countries countries around the world have downloaded these podcasts and so whatever your language is you got to be able to stop speaking in that direction and surrender to the language that the whole Spirit will bring. Into you and look what they did in the upper room They were all together gathered in one one accord in one purpose in unity and they were seeking the Holy Spirit they were seeking the gifts that Jesus said that he was going to send because they knew they'd heard about the Holy Spirit coming and they had the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of them because they were born -again believers But now they had another gift that was coming and they were ready They were prepared and it didn't say that they were all talking to each other in their own dialects or languages It said they all all of a sudden the power of God came and they were

17:03 baptized with various languages and it's just beautiful. It's just beautiful. Verse, not verse, but number seven I've written down here for ways to be prepared to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit or any way to prepare ourselves to experience more of the Holy Spirit in our life. When the Holy Spirit works in our life, the following things enter into our life. Think of this, peace, love. Now if you're struggling with peace or love, you need to stop. get that into your life. We need to bring peace into our life before we can receive and experience more of the Holy Spirit. We've got to have love in our life. We can have hatred and anger towards other people and expect the Holy Spirit to come in and work in us and operate on us and help us to experience more of Him. But when He is surrendered to, then He brings with Him peace. He brings love. He brings hope. He brings joy. And He brings an expectation, an expectation that something great is about to happen. He brings the comfort of knowing that we can be set free. He brings safety. He brings protection. The Holy Spirit is a refuge. He's our strength. He's our energy. He has wisdom for us. He has knowledge for us on how to act and how to react. He helps us to live closer to God. I know a long list of things that he can do, but quite frankly it's only a part. It's not a complete list of all the things that the Holy Spirit can do. I know when I've been diagnosed with illnesses and incurable cancers and things

18:34 and I'm by myself in the hospital or here at home or something and my wife is busy and I may be taking a rest or a nap or something or just lying down. If I just rest in the Lord, he brings these things to me. He brings love. He brings joy. He brings hope. He brings expectation. He sets me free from the diagnosis from the doctor and he brings safety and comfort and strength and all those things he brings to me. That is experiencing the Holy Spirit. and I want all of us to experience the Holy Spirit in a greater way than we have been and than we are experiencing because there's always more that we can experience and be blessed with. There's so many promises of God that we haven't received yet in our life and yet the Bible has thousands of promises that God wants to give to his people and the Holy Spirit brings those to us. Now to experience all the Holy Spirit has available to us we must allow him to have access to our heart and to our mind. We've got to clear our thought life out. We've got to stop thinking about past problems or challenges or things that we struggle with in sin or whatever it might be and dismiss those things and don't think on those things and move into the realm of cleansing our hearts and mind.

19:45 So the Holy Spirit will have access to our heart and to our minds. We need to submit our conscience to Him. Everything that we think about we need to surrender to Him. We must get ready to receive from him. You must never question whether he will show up or not. We can't be in the middle of surrendering and praising and worshiping and wondering, well, God, are you hearing this? If we do that, we've lost the whole purpose of trying to enter into his presence. God says, if you draw near to me, then I'll draw near to you. His word tells us that. And so therefore, we know what the word of God says. So therefore, we don't have to question whether the Holy Spirit will show up or not or whether he's listening. I've had people tell me, you know, I pray. and I pray and I don't know if God's listening. Well, God is always listening. He's able to do that because he's everywhere. He has all knowledge.

20:33 He's everywhere at all times of the day. He can handle the seven and a half or eight billion people on this planet if they all wanted to seek him at once. All of them, all of us here on earth, he can sort it all out. There's not a computer that man has even begun to think about preparing that could ever do anything like that, but God is able to sort them all out and through the spirit of God, who dwells in us, we're able to communicate with God. Now, if you're not a Christian, if you've not given your life to Christ, then you have not received the Holy Spirit in you. That's the first step in understanding what it is to experience the Holy Spirit. So let me just take a moment for those of you who maybe are not sure if you're right with God or not, just to pray this prayer. Heavenly Father, I need a Savior. I need you in my life. I need the Holy Spirit. I surrender to you. I'm sorry for the sins that I've committed. I ask you to forgive me and cleanse me of these sins. And I promise to serve you. I give my life to you. I give my heart to you. And I want everything that you have for me. So I receive you now in Jesus' name.

21:31 I know that was kind of quick, but that can be how simple it can be is to clear your mind of sin and things that are bothering you. And then take that first step to receive Jesus Christ. Because when you do, the Holy Spirit comes to live and dwell in you. And then we, you, can receive. the experience of the Holy Spirit I'm talking about. Let me ask for those who are Christians and though the new Christians, maybe he just prayed that, are we ready to receive him? Are we saying to ourselves, okay I'm ready, I'm willing? Are we willing to surrender our thoughts, our mind to him and allow him to come in and fill us? Are we ready to totally surrender to His will? It's one thing to say that, it's another thing to actually do it. You know, we can talk about it, but we've got to learn how to do that in order to receive the fullness of God's blessings.

22:17 Are we ready to receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit? So now is the time to receive everything that He desires for us. Not only the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but to also receive all the blessings of God. Are we ready to possess the baptism of the Holy Spirit? If we are, we must allow the Holy Spirit to take possession of our life to come into us right now. So I want to lead you in prayer for those who have never received this wonderful, wonderful gift from God, and that is the infilling of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of praying in your heavenly prayer language. I pray, Father, that you would open up their hearts, and Lord, that we would stop speaking our own languages and surrender to you, and let the words that come forth be Holy Spirit -led words. We desire you, and we can say praise you, and we thank you, and we glorify you, but we need surrender our will our thoughts what's what we're thinking and we're are being concerned about what it's going to sound like and just simply start praying in the Holy Spirit you can just start saying the words Jesus and Jesus and Jesus I need you I desire the gift that you promised that we could have so I receive now that gift so receive it now and begin to speak it can't hear you I can't tell what's happening but I do know that the power of the Holy Spirit is going through this podcast right now and reaching people's lives and touching them and helping them so they'd be able to receive that gift that God restored and has planned for them. And I ask for this now in Jesus' name. Amen. My goodness, time went fast on this podcast. Just so much to cover. And we'll continue talking about the Holy Spirit in upcoming podcasts. We're going

23:49 to be talking, continuing to talk in this area of relationship with the Holy Spirit and experience the Holy Spirit and what it means to have that kind of a relationship and to how to have greater prayers and prayer life, I should say, led by the Holy Spirit. I'm really kind of tossed in the next podcast to whether I'm going to talk about the Holy Spirit in prayer, or the Holy Spirit in the gifts, or the Holy Spirit in relationship, but I'll just sort that out before I get to the next podcast. But we'll continue in this vein, and I believe God has something really powerful lined up as we continue this study, this series on the Holy Spirit. Well, I do thank you for tuning in. I've got more to say. I hope you don't check out right now. but I want you to listen to these last few words that I have to say. If you'd like to know more about Quality Christian Living, that's the name of our podcast, and Quality Christian Living was designed so that we could help Christians understand what it was to live a quality Christian life, not just get by, but to live a wonderful life, an abundant life. Jesus said he wants us to have life and have it more abundantly. You can read that in John chapter 10 and verse 10. So I have a podcast, that's what we call this podcast, this particular series in the podcast of quality Christian living is on the Holy Spirit. And if you'd like to know more about our podcast, you can go to my webpage at davidcfriendauthor .com. And when you get there, the very front page has a link to the podcast. Now earlier, I mentioned that I did a series on the Holy Spirit, a series on the gifts of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, and all you have to do is go back and scroll

25:20 through those podcasts and you will see about 20 or more messages dealing with the gifts of the Spirit. And I would love you to go back and listen to those and tell your friends about that. In addition to that, we have a series of messages on having faith for miracles, what it is to have greater faith, what it means to be able to receive God's plan and purpose for our life. Just a plethora of topics. I even talk about finances and how to be out of debt because of my background as a banker for many years. So I hope that you would do that and scroll down the list of podcasts and let other people know that they're available if they're needing help in certain areas of their life. If you'd like to subscribe to my podcast, you can do that. that by going to cpnshows .com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Before I close this podcast, I felt the Holy Spirit leading me to go look at the titles of the topics that he's given me for future podcasts. We're going to have a podcast on the Holy Spirit -led prayers, the Holy Spirit defeats anxiety, fear and oppression, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit blesses us and on and on and on are topics that the Lord has given me to bring in this series of podcasts. So I thank the Lord for that. Well, I want to thank you for listening and I hope you've been blessed by it. As a matter of fact, if you enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment and rate and review the podcast.

26:38 It really helps us to reach out to more people. You can leave a review on Apple podcasts, on Amazon Music and Charisma Podcast Network, any one of them, or give us a star rating on Spotify. However you choose to support us, we certainly appreciate that. So once again, I want to thank you for listening in and I'm looking forward to the next podcast. coming up, whatever the Holy Spirit leads us to focus on. So I'd like to close with a blessing for you. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you. May he be gracious to you. and give you peace. May you prosper and be in good health, even as your soul prospers. So until next time, I pray that God will richly bless you, that you will experience, that all of us will experience in a greater way the Holy Spirit in our life.

27:22 That we'll learn how to experience the Holy Spirit each and every day, regardless of what we're going through, the good, the bad, whatever it might be, and to God be the glory, and to God be all the honor and praise. I want to thank you all for listening into Quality Christian Living. I have been your host David Friend. I thank you so much for being a part of this. I look forward to seeing you next time we discover another topic on the Holy Spirit. Thank you again. God bless you.