What The Holy Spirit Teaches us (339)

0:01 Welcome to the Quality Christian Living Podcast. I am your host, David Friend. Today's podcast is entitled, We Can Learn from the Holy Spirit. Today we're going to cover what does the Holy Spirit teach us and why does he want to help us? What do we need to be taught? You ever thought about that? I wonder what I need to be taught. Where do we read about the Holy Spirit's purpose for us? And how can we grow spiritually? So we've got a lot to cover, but we've got a wonderful laid out plan the Lord's given me. And I pray the Holy Spirit would direct it. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you once again. for your goodness, your blessings, your promises, your faithfulness. And Holy Spirit, I ask that you would come in now and take control, take charge of this podcast. I put it together under your direction and I want you to guide me through it. I yield to you. I surrender to you. I pray, Father, for those who are listening in today that they would learn from the Holy Spirit. That's something that we all need to do. Father, I pray that you'd help me to be able to submit more and surrender more to the Holy Spirit so I can learn from him and know what he wants to teach me. So, Father, bless everyone who's listening in. And I know great things are going to take place when we learn from the Holy Spirit of the living God. So we're asking these things now in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

1:13 Amen. Well, following is a list of what we can learn from the Holy Spirit. And I've got, I don't know how long the list is going to go. We'll see how the Holy Spirit leads us. The Holy Spirit teaches us how we can increase our faith. He wants us to truly believe for miracles, for healings, for greater faith, and live an overcoming life, an abundant life, more than a conqueror life. Now, let's think about that for a second. The Holy Spirit teaches us... How we can receive faith is what I said. But listen to this, the Holy Spirit, now he wants us to truly believe in our heart, in our mind, in our soul for miracles, for the miracle of healings, for having greater faith and to live a life that's an overcoming life, not a just get by life, but an overcoming life, a life that's filled with abundant living more than... even a conqueror's life. I tell you, that's the kind of Holy Spirit that we enjoy and who lives and dwells inside of each and every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, John writes about the Holy Spirit. He writes these words of Jesus found in John chapter 16, verse 13 in the New Living Translation. And we'll go through this kind of slowly because I really want to take my time on this particular scripture.

2:26 I think it kind of builds a foundation for this particular podcast. These are the words of Jesus. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. Now he's talking to his disciples and he's telling them that the Holy Spirit is coming. Remember, shortly he's going to tell them that when he leaves, it's best that he leaves because when he leaves, the Holy Spirit is coming to help them and to be the comforter and their advocate and one that will carry them through life. But Jesus is saying here, when the Spirit of truth comes, that's the Holy Spirit, he will guide you into all truth. Now that's one of the most beautiful things about the Holy Spirit is that he always delivers the truth. Sometimes it may be something we're not comfortable with or something that maybe we think we'd rather not go that direction. But when it's the leading of the Holy Spirit, it is always pure truth from our God. Jesus goes on to say, he will not speak on his own, but will tell you what he has heard.

3:18 Isn't that interesting? Jesus said he's not going to be talking on his own. He's going to be sharing you what he's heard from God the Father. He says he will tell you about your future. No wonder we need to communicate with the Holy Spirit, huh? I think a lot of people would like to know their future. They like to know what's going to happen. Maybe they're dating someone, wondering if it's going to turn into a marriage. Some are maybe just starting a church and wondering how this church is going to go. Some have just got a new job. Some have just recently gotten married. Some have just started dating. And all the things that we're taking into our life, they all have a future. The Holy Spirit, though, will tell us about our future. Now, that doesn't mean he's a fortune teller. Not at all. That is satanic. Spirit has is he has the same wisdom that God the Father has because he receives all of his wisdom from God the Father. And remember what it says is he will tell you what he has heard and he will tell you about your future. So therefore, God has a plan for all of us in our future and the Holy Spirit will reveal that truth as we live our life. He will bring me, Jesus is talking, so he's saying he's talking about himself, he will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me. So therefore, the Holy Spirit it's getting instructions from Jesus from God the Father and it's just amazing to think that when the Holy Spirit who lives and dwells inside of us is receiving all of his words that he's going to give us and all the thoughts that he gives us and all the that still quiet voice that he gives us when he's telling the direction that we should go or the direction that we should not go all that is coming from God the Father

4:48 and the Lord Jesus Christ in verse 15 it says all that belongs to the Father is mine this is why I said, listen to this now. The Spirit will tell you whatever He receives from me. Once again, Jesus is trying to remind them the Spirit of God is being left to them to come and live and dwell inside of each and every believer. And therefore, we have a direct connection with Almighty God. We have a direct connection through the Holy Spirit to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And if we yield to Him and surrender to Him and ask for His guidance and direction in our life, He will be more than happy to reveal that to us. Now, sometimes He reveals that to us by telling us no. or telling us not now, or telling us maybe there's something else you should do. You know, I've made a lot of decisions in my life that I wished I'd have spent more time waiting on the Holy Spirit. And I've made a lot of decisions in my life where I waited upon the Holy Spirit and those decisions always turned out to be right.

5:45 In business, when we had our home building business, we would go out to build properties and buy a lot of property to build a house on. And we would spend a lot of time in research and all that good stuff to know exactly what to do. And when I followed the directions that I felt, in my heart and my mind, which those feelings and those thoughts come from the Holy Spirit. I knew that we were on track to do the right thing. But when I did things on my own and said things like, oh, this is just, we don't need to worry about this one or we don't need to be concerned about that. This is what we call a no brainer. We just do this when it'll all work out okay. When I thought that way, it usually turned out to be a problem. But when I waited on the Holy Spirit and waited to hear his peace. People say, how do you know that you're hearing from the Holy Spirit? Well, I believe you're hearing from the Holy Spirit when you have peace about something.

6:30 Because, you know, Paul talked about that, that we can receive the peace of God that passes all understanding, that'll guard our heart and mind in Christ Jesus. That's how we know that we're on the right track with the Holy Spirit, is that we have peace. Now, if we don't have peace about something, we should run from it. We should get away from it. We should not try and force it, not manipulate it, try and make it happen. We should hold off, back off, and wait upon the Lord. tell us the right time. It's like when we pastor the church for... Seven years, we held a piece of land that the Lord allowed us to buy. We were able to pay for it. It was completely paid off. Our new church was only a couple years old. We had this beautiful piece of land and I wanted so bad to build a church on it. And I kept thinking, Lord, tell me when, let me know when. The church was growing and prospering.

7:13 The income was really increasing. The attendance was going up hundreds of people every month. It was amazing. We went from 30 or 40 people in a year to about 1 ,000. And then in two years, we had 2 ,000. And it's just amazing. to think how God was moving. But I was holding off on building that building until I felt peace in my heart that the Holy Spirit said, now's the time. It's interesting. It took seven years after we bought the land where finally the Holy Spirit gave me that peace one morning at church. And I told the board and I told the congregation, I believe the Holy Spirit spoke to me this morning. Now is the time for us to move forward and build. And you know, when we started building, everything went together just perfectly. It was the right timing. It was God's timing. It was God's plan.

7:57 The finances came in. The bank that we needed to borrow some money from gave us everything that we needed. The construction went extremely well. The budget came in. We came in under budget and even a shorter period of time than what we thought it would do to take the building. You see, that's how God works. And that's how the Holy Spirit wants to talk to us. And we learn all those things from the Holy Spirit. it now there's another scripture i'm going to share that deals with this in first corinthians chapter 12 verse 9 the apostle paul wrote these words the same spirit gives great faith. Now, I jumped from one topic to another very quickly, but I did that intentionally because I want you to realize that that's how we know we have faith to move forward in something. We can have great faith because that's where it comes from. That's a gift from the Holy Spirit. It's one of the nine power gifts of the Holy Spirit. And when we think about that kind of great faith, that great faith gives us peace. That great faith is something we learn from the Holy Spirit. And in order to know what to do and when to do and where to do something, we need to listen to that quite still quiet voice of the holy spirit let him lead us and guide us and direct us and wait upon him because he's hearing from god he's hearing from jesus christ as to what we should do and then he wants to share it with us in the ways that he does sometimes he shares it to us through someone else through maybe scriptures that we read through a time in prayer or just simply a time of meditation and thinking about god and wondering no where do we go and what should we do from this point on god knows the future he knows the plan he has for us and we need to surrender

9:28 to that yield to that and not try and run out and do things on our own because that usually causes some problems all right so move on now to the second thing that I think we can learn from the Holy Spirit is number two, the Holy Spirit wants us to seek his guidance. Now in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse six, it says, God rewards those who seek him. Now, you know, that applies to everything that we do in our life. I'm asking this question about how can we learn from the Holy Spirit? That's what we're trying to address today. Will we learn from the Holy Spirit by seeking his guidance? And we use the word of God, Hebrews 11, six, where it tells us God rewards those who seek him. We need to spend more time seeking God. We need to spend more time seeking his will, desiring his will, wanting to know what he wants for us. We can learn that as the Holy Spirit who dwells inside of us will share secret thoughts and private thoughts to us. and give us that feeling, that sense of power that we know that this is the right thing to do. In Jeremiah 29, verse 13, it says this, the New Living Translation, it tells us that if you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. So, number two in how we learn from the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit wants us to seek His guidance. We saw Hebrews 11, 6, so draw near to God, seek Him. And then in Jeremiah in the Old Testament, 29 .13, it tells us, if you look for me wholeheartedly, that means totally and completely with every single part of us, you will find me. Wholeheartedly is an interesting

11:00 word. Wholeheartedly means absolute 100 % commitment to listening. and waiting on that still, quiet voice from God. Having Him speak to us through a sermon or speak to us through a song or speak to us through reading His Word or speak to us during a time of prayer or just a conversation with someone else. He will speak to us, but we've got to seek Him. We've got to look for Him wholeheartedly with everything, our body, soul, and spirit. And don't allow our mind to wander and to lose focus when we're seeking God's will and guidance and direction from the Holy Spirit. You see, the Holy Spirit has all the wisdom and knowledge of God, every bit of it. I think a lot of times people don't understand that the Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is part of the triune God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. One God, three distinct characteristics or personalities, if you will. a specific person.

11:55 God created the heavens and the earth, but Jesus was there for that, and the Holy Spirit was there for that. And all the way through the Old Testament and through the New Testament, we hear about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit has that wisdom that God has given to men of God and women of God, pastors and preachers and married people, and just anybody who's seeking a Sunday school teacher, anyone who's doing something for God, He will give us that wisdom and give us His knowledge. The Holy Spirit wants us, to receive all the wisdom and all the knowledge that he has. But we must continue wholeheartedly to seek him. We must seek his course, not our course. Dr. Cho, who was a great pastor, he's since gone to be with the Lord. He pastored a church in South Korea, an Assembly of God church there.

12:40 And Dr. Cho, I was blessed to be able to meet him. My wife and I went there with a dear pastor friend of ours to see Pastor Cho to be at the conference. And our pastor, Pastor Tommy Barnett, was with us. And he was the keynote speaker at that big pastor's conference that they had. had. So we were blessed to be with these men. You imagine spending a week with Dr. Cho and Pastor Tommy Barnett and spending a whole week just in prayer and hearing what the Word of God has to say and what the Holy Spirit has to say. Well, Dr. Cho was an amazing man who was led by the Holy Spirit. He had a church that ran 750. I understand it may be 8 or 100 ,000 or more even now, but 750 ,000 people. We went there on a Sunday and they had like six or seven services and each service had 33 ,000 people in attendance.

13:28 And each service had a completely new worship team that was there. It was the biggest mass of people I've ever seen in my life. And they told people, you can't always come every week because we can't get you all in. So, you know, you might want to skip a week and let other people come. Be sure they come so that everybody in the church would have an opportunity to sit under the teachings of Dr. Cho and the other teachers who were there. Dr. Cho wrote a book entitled, The Holy Spirit, My Senior. partner. I'd like to encourage you right now to invite the Holy Spirit to be your senior partner. My wife and I had a wonderful real estate development business for nearly 20 years. We built custom homes. Prior to that, I did some office buildings. We did land syndications. That's putting land together. And it's just kind of complicated investment stuff. But all of that, we asked the Holy Spirit to help us. And after I saw Dr. Cho's book, The Holy Spirit, My Senior Partner, and I read it, I told my wife, I said, we've got to ask the Holy Spirit to be our senior partner. in our marriage, in our parenting, in being husband and wife, and being a home developer. We wanted the Holy Spirit to be in our senior partner.

14:31 All right, here's the third area I want to cover. The Holy Spirit teaches us God's plan and purpose for us. Now, He teaches us how to witness. He teaches us how to pray. He teaches us how to read the Word of God and meditate upon the Word of God. You say, well, how does He teach us? Well, He teaches it Through His Word. For example, if we need to make a decision, we need to go to the Holy Spirit -inspired words that were written in Proverbs 3, verse 5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own ways or your own understanding. And turn your focus on God is what it's saying. And then He will guide your path. He'll help you with your purpose for life and help you plan everything that you do. You see, that's how we know the Holy Spirit is leading us. It's through God's Word. Here's another area, number four. The Holy Spirit teaches us how to deal with anxiety and fear and worry. You see, the Bible has dozens of scriptures on anxiety, fear, worry, dozens and dozens of scriptures. And all these scriptures were instructed by the Holy Spirit. My favorite scripture on not worrying is written by the Apostle Paul. In Philippians chapter four, verses six and seven, he says, don't be anxious, he says about anything, but everything through prayer, petitions with thanksgiving. make your request be made known to God. And the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your heart and guard your mind in Christ Jesus. That's my absolute favorite scripture on that. If you listen to my podcast at all, probably at least once every 10th podcast, you'll hear a reference to anxiety and how Philippians chapter four is the

16:04 answer to it. Here's another area about how we can learn from the Holy Spirit. Number five, the Holy Spirit teaches us to trust God. The apostle Paul wrote guidance and direction for the Holy Spirit so many times. places. Here's another one of my favorites. I have a lot of favorites when it comes to scriptures, and I'm sure that if you've listened to me enough, you'll understand that I do say, here's another favorite, here's another favorite. But this particular one, helping us to trust God, is being taught to us by the Holy Spirit through the words that the Holy Spirit gave the Apostle Paul, written in Romans chapter 4 and verse 17 in the New Living Translation. Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing. Another way of saying is that we can learn to trust in God if we believe that God will bring forth something from nothing.

16:49 And he is the one who can help us to understand and trust that if we have something that's died in our life, like maybe an idea or a business that we had or plans to go to college or a marriage fell apart, God can bring it back to life. This whole scripture in Romans chapter four has to do with Abraham. When Abraham and Sarah wanted to have children, when God told Abraham, you're going to be the father of many nations. And Abraham basically was thinking, hmm, I don't have any children. And so God said, I told you that you're going to be the father of many nations. And so then Abraham and Sarah had a child when Abraham was nearly 100 years old and she was 90 years old. Different translations vary the years by a couple, but bottom line, they're in their 90s and God allows them to get pregnant and they have this child. And Isaac came forward and Isaac was such a great, blessing and he is the one was the promise of god and abraham became through his offspring the father of many nations. And that's because the Holy Spirit back then helped Abraham to have patience and to have peace and wait on God and not have fear or anxiety or worrying and not be frustrated about things. He waited upon God to hear from God. And the Holy Spirit was really, I know he wasn't living on the earth at that time, but the Holy Spirit was alive and well. And Abraham was hearing from the Spirit of God and hearing about what he should do and how he should wait and how he should depend upon God. And when he did that, they had a child.

18:20 And that child was the beginning of Abraham being the father of many nations. And that's where Paul wrote that God creates things, new things, out of nothing. All right, here's area number six on our discussion on how the Holy Spirit teaches us and how we learn from him. The Holy Spirit gives us gifts. to all believers, gifts that bless us, and those we will have an opportunity to share those gifts with. The gifts that God gives to us are for us and for us to also share and give to someone else. In 1 Corinthians 12, verse 7, New Living Translation, a spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. So the way we learn from the Holy Spirit is that we seek Him, we seek His guidance and direction, we pray and ask Him to give us wisdom and guidance and direction. We ask Jesus to help us. We pray to the Father in the name of Jesus.

19:12 And while we're doing that, we can say, Holy Spirit, I need you. I want you. I need you to guide me. I need you to direct me. And some people say, well, you can't pray to the Holy Spirit. I'm not saying you pray to the Holy Spirit. I'm saying you're speaking to the Holy Spirit and you're communicating with him. After all, he lives and dwells inside of us. It should be such an easy thing, such a comfortable thing to do is to speak to the Holy Spirit and open up our hearts to receive what he has. And remember, He's the one that distributes the gifts. It's Him solely that decides who gets the various gifts that are found in the Word of God. I did a wonderful, very long teaching in 1 Corinthians 12 about the gifts of the Spirit, the nine power gifts. You may want to look that up, and I'll talk about that at the end of the podcast as to how you can find those. But there's a series of messages about the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit of God. Now, moving on to number seven. Our time is really blowing by here fast.

20:02 Number seven in this... in this topic on how we learn from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, He brings the Scriptures to life for us. In 2 Peter 1, verse 20 and 21, New Living Translation, it says this, Above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet's own understanding. Verse 21, or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Spirit and they spoke from God. So remember now, we've got to understand that when we hear about people prophesying and you hear the gifts of the Spirit, they're always led by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit brings scriptures to us like this one to help us. understand the relationship that he wants us to have with him. Let me give you another one that might even be a little bit more direct. 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, New Living Translation.

20:50 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true, listen to this, and to make us realize, listen to that, make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we're wrong and teaches us what to do right. Verse 17, it says, God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. I would encourage you when this podcast is over to go back and listen, either listen again to 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, or read it, get it out. I would read that every day if you're trying to get a closer walk with God and a better understanding of why the Holy Spirit can speak to us and help us and what we can learn from him. Here's number eight in this. I guess I didn't realize we're going to have so many of them. The Holy Spirit teaches us the deep things of God. In 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 10, it talks about the Holy Spirit searches everything. Even the deep things of God is what it's talking about. The deep things, the things that God wants to share with those who are seeking Him and pushing in towards Him and desiring more of Him and drawing closer to Him. When we do that, God then just says, all right, I want to tell you more. It's like having a good friend. You get to have a good buddy or a... a lady if you have a girlfriend that's a good friend and you get to know each other and the more you get to know each other and the closer you get to each other the more things that you tell each other you tell even even secret things and maybe special things and private things and we speak about things to that person because we have that relationship with them we should have we need to have the same relationship with

22:22 the holy spirit and with god our father we need to have a relationship where god has a desire then he's like okay that person is looking for me he's seeking for me. She's wanting to hear from me. So I'm going to share the deep things with them. All right, let's move on. And I'm going to have to close with this last item, number nine, and it has to do with how we learn from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches us that faith has substance and is evidence. Boy, I did a whole podcast on that one, so I'm not going to spend much time on that. The Holy Spirit teaches us to have desires to live according to God's will. He helps us to know what to do and when to do it or not. to do it. He takes prayers to God and how to get great results out of our prayer life. The Holy Spirit tells us in Romans chapter 8 verse 1 and 2. Once again, another one of my absolute favorite scriptures. Listen to this.

23:14 Romans chapter 8 verse 1 in the New Living Translation. These are the words that the Holy Spirit gave to the Apostle Paul. So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. That's all of us. If you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, there is no condemnation anymore of your sin or your past. And also there's no condemnation on your health. I believe we can seek to live in health and to prosper in every area of our life. There's no condemnation for our marriage. There's no condemnation in our businesses or in our life, our parenting. There's just no condemnation. So I believe that. And that's because the Holy Spirit gave those words to the Apostle Paul to give to us. And then verse 2. it says and because you belong to him that's jesus christ the power of the life -giving spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death that's what the holy spirit brings us you know no one comes to know jesus christ unless the holy spirit draws them so in closing if you don't know jesus as your lord and savior maybe you're listening in and you just thought this might be kind of interesting to hear about about the holy spirit but you've never given your life to christ let me just take a moment for those of you who know jesus just be with me and be in agreement on this prayer. If you don't know Jesus, you're not sure if you're going to go to heaven, anybody out there, just pray this prayer. Say, Father, I need a Savior. I need you, but I've sinned. I've fallen short of your glory. So I ask you to forgive me from my sins and cast them away as far as the east is from the west, never to be remembered again. And I promise to serve you. And I believe that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and he suffered,

24:45 he was crucified, buried, but he was resurrected from the dead so that I could have life eternal with him. So on this day, I receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. If you prayed that prayer and you weren't sure before whether you were going to go to heaven or not, let me just tell you right now, if you've confessed your sins to Jesus, then Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to come and live and dwell inside of you. For those of you who are Christians, born -again believers, you know that's true. And you know that's one of the reasons you're listening to this podcast is because you're interested in what the Holy Spirit has to say. And I thank you for having the patience to let this podcaster who loves to lead people to Jesus take just a few moments and have people pray that prayer, the repentance prayer. I thank you for it. I hope that you received something from this. We're going to continue our series on the Holy Spirit.

25:30 Matter of fact, the next podcast is entitled... The Holy Spirit and greater works. And we're going to look at what did Jesus mean when he said that greater works you will do. That's a pretty powerful statement, but we're going to get into that. So I hope you'll let your friends, family members know about this next upcoming podcast. Well, if you'd like to know more about the Quality Christian Living podcast, because all of these topics we do are underneath that title, Quality Christian Living has to do with living a quality life, living a life filled... according to what Jesus said, living life and living it more abundantly and understanding what it is to be able to experience the joy of the Lord, really, quite frankly, every single day. So if you'd like to know more about quality Christian living, I'd encourage you to go to my webpage at davidcfriendauthor .com. And when you get there and pull it up right on the front page, there'll be a link to all the podcasts. This is podcast number 339. So obviously there's been a bunch of them done. There are many topics on the Holy Spirit, on faith, on miracles, the gifts of the Spirit. even topics talking about how to get out of debt and stay out of debt because of my years that I was involved in banking, and just a plethora of topics I hope that will be of interest to you. And if you'd like to know about many of the books that I've written, you can scroll down on that webpage to the next page there. You'll see, I think currently there are six books that are on Amazon right now that talk about faith, talk about generosity, talk about, quite frankly, help for veterans and things that I believe are generally good things that we need to know to live a quality Christian life. Well, I'd like to thank you so much for listening.

27:00 And if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment and rate and review the podcast. You know, it really does help us reach more people. You can leave a... Review on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music and Charisma Podcast Network or give us a star rating on Spotify. You know, however you choose to support us, we certainly appreciate it. If you'd like to subscribe to my podcast, you can do that by going to cpnshows .com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'd like to close with a blessing for you. I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you and may his face shine upon you and 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 God will richly bless you. Thank you once again for listening to Quality Christian Living. I'm your host, David Friend.

27:48 We'll continue our series on the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit tells us to continue. Thank you once again. God bless you all.