Living Life In The Holy Spirit (Part 1)- Nancy Wheatley

What does it mean to be people of the Spirit? As people with the Spirit of God indwelling in our human body, we are representatives of the age to come, ambassadors of the Kingdom of God, living in the midst of a corrupt world. When we become people of the Spirit, we began an adventure of discovery of what happens when people are as God originally intended, united with the Holy Spirit of God.
In this episode we talk about:
What it means to be people of the spirit.
The baptizer in the holy spirit.
Being the temple of the holy spirit.
Being people of the spirit.
Praying with the spirit.
How to choose to be in the spirit.
The company of the dove.
Fasting and prayer go together.

Full transcript generated by ai (please excuse errors):






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​Okay, well, for for those of you who are listening to this by recording, I'm sorry that you missed everything that just happened because it was such an incredibly beautiful, perfect introduction to what the Lord has given me to talk about today. And it's just funny to me when he does that it makes, it makes me smile. And I won't remember everything that we that was said, but I'm going to try to weave that in a little bit as we go. Because it's just evidence of how he's at work. And I think it's a little bit funny, what the Lord has given me to talk to you all about today. Because so much of what I've learned about this, I have learned from all of you. And so as I as I was praying and asking the Lord what I was to speak on today, and he began to unfold that to me, I was like, Really, Lord, you want me to teach on that. And I sensed his affirmation on that. And I think, I think that the reason for that is that sometimes someone who's had a steep learning curve, and someone is the best one to help someone else who's in a learning curve, not someone for whom it comes very naturally. And so that I think that's where I am. So that's that. That's my my caveat as we start. So what the Lord has led me to talk about today is the idea of being people of the Spirit. And what it means for us to be the people of the Spirit. We just celebrated Pentecost last week, which was the promised outpouring of the Spirit of God. And I wish that we could get a glimpse of what was happening in the spirit realm. When this clash of kingdoms happened, and the way that you know, Jesus rent the veil of the temple, and he also rent the fabric of the spirit realm. And all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit of God is being poured out on the people have God, this clash of kingdoms that was going on that day, and how excited the third heaven was about that happening, how exciting that must have been to see the spirit being poured out, as had been prophesied for centuries. The people who were gathered in the upper room that day, most of them, if not all of them, had known Jesus, they had walked with Him. And Jesus lived as the tip of the spear of this invasion of the Holy Spirit. He was living, you know, he, the Scripture says that he emptied himself of his god nature, he lived as a man anointed without measure by the Holy Spirit. And so he was living in front of them, as the tip of the spear, the spirit anointed life, this is what it looks like to be someone who's anointed by the Spirit. And then He promised His followers that the Holy Spirit was going to come upon them. And he promised that to all who would believe on Him. And so I want to start, you know, just from that place of this is for all of us, No, nobody's left out, nobody's exempted. This is not for Super saints. This is for every person who believes on Jesus, I find that really freeing to just go okay, well, then that's for me. I don't know what it looks like that it's for me. But that means it's for me. Listen to some of the things because this, as I was focusing in on this this week, the Holy Spirit coming and the Holy Spirit coming upon believers, was a super big deal to Jesus. Right? In that last night that he had with his disciples before his passion before his crucifixion. Look at how much of John chapters 13 through 17 is focused on the ministry of the Holy Spirit on Jesus going, guys, this is going to be big, this is really important. Listen to this. I need you to focus in on this. We're about to go through something really bad, but something massively good is coming after that. In John 14 1618, Jesus says, and I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever. The Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him in other He's gonna feel familiar to you. feet because he lives with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. Now there is this crazy Godhead thing going on this Trinitarian thing going on, as he's saying this, he's like, I'm leaving, but I'm still going to be here. I'm going away, and I'm sending another advocate. But that advocate is somehow me, I will come to you, this is the very spirit of Jesus. This is that mystery of the Trinity where they are three, and they are one. And so he's saying, I am not going to leave you as orphans. I'm coming back, but I'm coming back in a different form. And then in John 1426, he says, but the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and will remind you of everything I have said to you. So there's this ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit to the people of God, drawing them along, and helping them to be up to speed with the things that Jesus is teaching them. There is a ministry of the Holy Spirit in us teaching us things that we can't know, naturally. And then in John 16, seven, he says, very, Truly I tell you, this is you know, had to have been mind blowing, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go the Holy Spirit, the advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you know, in this focus of Jesus on the Holy Spirit, the one result of his ministry, like, you know, he'd spent three years he'd healed he taught, he'd raised the dead, he'd called disciples, he's done all these things. The one result of his ministry that Jesus pointed to, upon which everything else hinged, was that he was the baptizer in the Holy Spirit. He never said, and you'll be able to do what I have demonstrated for you and what I'm commanded you to do. Because you paid good attention, good for you, you've been good students now go and do likewise. No, as a matter of fact, he told them very clearly, you won't be able to do that. You cannot, in your natural strength, do the things that I've done, or do the things that I'm commanding you to do, do the things that are required for you to do to bring the kingdom of God to Earth. Everything hinged on the fact that Jesus was had lived, he was going to die for their sins, he was going to rise from the dead, he was going to ascend to heaven. And when he did, the Holy Spirit was going to be poured out. And that was the way that they were going to be able to carry forward the work that he had started. And in no other way, everything he started everything he taught this was no human movement. It wasn't going to be carried forward by charismatic personalities. It was not going to be carried forward by winsome traditions. It was not going to be carried forth by strong administrative gifts. Those things are lovely, they were not going to cut it. It was going to go forward with people inhabited by the very spirit of God, or not at all. As Jesus predicted, he does leave them after spending that 40 days with them after his resurrection, and he tells his followers to wait in Jerusalem for the gift the father promised the one he'd spoken to them about that same thing that he was just talking about. He said, No, this is the time for that. Go, wait. You cannot go be My witnesses until this happens to you. You've been with me. You've watched everything I've done. You've heard everything I've said, you could probably repeat a lot of it verbatim, but you cannot go be My witnesses until this happens to you. So wait for it as the original wait for it, I love it. So he told them that they were going to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. And that event, as every important event in Scripture does coincided with something in the Jewish calendar. It was It coincided with the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, which is the Greek name for it, or Chavo, oat, the Feast of Weeks. And that festival was the official beginning of the summer harvest season, the wheat harvest. It was a prophetic picture of the harvest of souls that was beginning. As the Holy Spirit of God was poured out as both Jew and Gentile were made into one new man. That's the waving of the two loaves of bread in Christ Jesus by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Okay. So this happens on the day of Pentecost. Peter then preaches at SU and if you want to look at that in x two, he quotes Joel. And he says,


starting at verse 17, in the last days, God said As I will pour out my spirit on all people, your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams, even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. He goes on from there. But essentially, this is Peter, reaching into an Old Testament prophecy, pulling it forward onto that day and saying, y'all this is that, what we're seeing what we're experiencing right now, this is the fulfillment of that prophecy. And those that day who were baptized for the forgiveness of their sins, received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and became people of the Spirit, they became people of the age to come, which is now overlapping with the current evil age. They were people of a different spirit. People who had the spirit of God indwelling them, but they're still in a human body, and they're still living in the midst of corruption. But the role that they have now is to be these people of the age to come, who are representatives of that age, representatives of that kingdom, to the people around them, who are still the people of the current age. Now, I love this, this is so fun for me to just think for a minute about this is the like, we get to read the account of it. And so it can become kind of familiar to us. Oh, yeah, tons of fire, the wind, you know, the, the room shaking, yay, that must have been cool. And then they prophesied that's terrific. But imagine what it would have been like, because there was no manual. There was no module of instruction of not now this is what it's going to be like, This is what will happen. They have the Old Testament examples of when the Holy Spirit of God had rested upon a person for for a particular season for a reason, you know, bezel creating the implements for the tabernacle, all of that, they saw some of that when the Holy Spirit of God rested upon a person short term or for a specific purpose for rulership, you know, whatever. But now, this is a new era. And every single person who believes in Jesus has this electrifying, actual presence of a divine being residing in them. And it's explosive. And they don't know what's going to happen. They're getting together going, I don't know what he's going to do today. I don't know. I don't know what might happen among us. But but we we are getting to find that out. So they got to actually experiment and discover what it meant to be the people of the spirit, like what can we expect him to do? When we get together? What can we expect him to do when we're walking through the temple? And there's a lame guy there? What can we expect him to do? When somebody lies to him? That was scary. What can we expect him to do? Like we they're, they're having this encounter, just like they got to know Jesus. Now they're having to get to know the Holy Spirit and His presence with them. And so they had Jesus example of a spirit endowed life. So they had, you know, at least that, well, we can expect him to do certain things, because we saw that in Jesus. But when they became the people of the Spirit, they began an adventure of discovery of what happens when people are as God originally intended, united with the Holy Spirit of God. So a read through the book of Acts gives kind of a play by play account of what they discovered. They discovered that they had fresh anointing for evangelism. They had earth shaking prayer. They had boldness to stand in opposition to the kingdoms of this world. They had supernatural love, and generosity. They had holy unity that didn't come from them. They had gifts that tapped into a beyond human ability power. Their spirits were reignited for fuller communion and communication with God. Their gatherings together became a corporate yielding to the movements of the Holy Spirit. They practiced together in their gatherings, what it would mean to be the people of the Spirit. And so they'd gather together for worship and for fellowship, and the Holy Spirit would give one, a song and he would give one a word of knowledge and he would give another one a word of prophecy. And they would just, they would just experience that as the Holy Spirit played them like a symphony, as they were gathered together in his name and in His presence. So as they practice this and began to learn how to cooperate with that, they became members of the invasion force, the kingdom of God, bursting upon the scene of this world, the gates of Hell not prevailing against them, just like Jesus said. So what does it mean for us to be people of the Spirit today? Well, by all right, everything I just talked about, and more. And I think in some ways, maybe we've become and I don't mean, we just, you know, this little group in this room, I think we, the church, the ecclesia, maybe have become over familiar with the thought that the Holy Spirit of God dwells in us. And, you know, I, because of the ministry that I do, I have a lot of intersection with people who are in different streams and different parts of the body of Christ than this one. And what I've discovered is that a lot of the Body of Christ has pretty low expectations of what it should look like for us to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. And so I'm just suggesting that maybe it's time for us to get curious about what happens in life, when the Holy Spirit comes, and in dwells that life in power, when the Holy Spirit comes, and indwells a gathering in power. So there are three times in his writings that Paul says, You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. One time he is saying to an individual believer, you your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. The other second time he says it, he says you as in a local gathering, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And then the third time he says it, those two are in First Corinthians, the third time he says it's in Ephesians. And in that one, he's talking about the universal church, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so we can experience it on all three of those levels. And we're supposed to. So here's what got me started on all this. It was one simple phrase from the book of Revelation. In Revelation one, verse 10, John says, on the Lord's day, I was in the spirit. And I just got so stuck on that. Now, in some cases, like Izzy Gil's first vision, Ezekiel was just minding his business with the exiles next to the river key bar, and all of a sudden, the heavens are parted, and he sees an open vision. Now, I don't want to press this point too much, because the text in Revelation is not explicit. But most of the translations that I looked at seem to indicate that John was in the spirit. And then the vision started. Do you see the difference there? Like, it's one thing for God to sovereignly, as you're going about your your business, just go hang on an open the spirit realm to you, for you to see something, it's another thing entirely, for you to be choosing to be in the Spirit, to be making that a priority to be interacting with the Holy Spirit of God. And in that place, have the Holy Spirit of God say, Man, do I have something to show you. And that's exactly what rod talked about earlier, during our introductory time, is that place of being available to the Holy Spirit available to Jesus aware of his presence, yielding to that, that's, to me what this is what's been, you know, kind of percolating for me all week on being in the Spirit. So I've been chewing on that phrase, I was in the spirit all week, just turning it around and kind of looking at all its angles. John was certainly baptized with the Spirit, because He was there that day on Pentecost, he had certainly been filled and refilled with the Spirit, we see that in Acts 431, and other places that the believers were filled again, with the Spirit of God.


But now he's just in the Spirit. And because he's in the spirit, he's available for this massive revelation to be released to him. Now, I'm not raising this because it's a new concept. Like I said, I have learned so much from all of you about what it means what it looks like to be in the spirit. I think as a spiritual family, we're pretty good at this. But I also think that it's important for us to name it. And to begin to take a look at, first of all, what does it mean to be in the Spirit? And then how can we help other people to get there? How can we explore that more ourselves? It's this being in the spirit is part of the spiritual DNA we carry as a family, which is why you know, some of you, I'm sure are just thinking, why is she even talking about this? We do this all the time. Right? I know, but not everybody does. There are so many people who don't know how to do this. They don't know how to walk with the Lord in this way. I run into it every single week. Just a simple thing of you know, let's ask God a question and listen to his answer and people will like you Why'd you want to do what they have no idea, even how to hear the voice of God, let alone be in the spirit in the way that we're talking about. So I want to name it, I want to say we need to learn how to be what it looks like, all the different manifestations of what it means to be the people of the Spirit, so that it's part of what we can teach, and impart very intentionally to others, because they're not going to be able to be witnesses to Jesus unless they have this either. Right cessationism and ignorance have done horrific damage to the church in this way. So many people live as though Christianity were a set of beliefs to give mental assent to, or a set of rules to follow, instead of a partnership with the indwelling Spirit of God. That partnership with the indwelling Spirit of God is the distinctive of the people of God. Right. It's not just that we wear a cross necklace once in a while, it's that we are indwelt yielded to lead by walking with the Spirit of God, that is our distinctive, and that's it. Right. So I think it's important for us to be able to name that bring others into this partnership, but it's also a frontier. And then it is a frontier for us to explore and discover together for something for us to be intentional about, about encouraging and developing both among ourselves. And in those we're in relationship with. Because there is always more. One of the things that I have just been so impressed by as I've been meditating on this this week, is just the the I do don't add. To me, it feels like an urgency. To me, it feels like a yearning, of the Spirit of God going. You'll try to keep up. Come on, there is so much more. And so many of you, I'm in the spirits like, I love you hear me, I love you, man. But so many of you are Dorking around with useless things with frivolous things, when you could be partnering with me to bring this immensity of the kingdom that my heart is yearning with everything in me to bring, and I'm just looking for some yielded vessels. Will you keep up with you, you know, come to me and say, Okay, what are you want to do today, because there's no limit to what we can do. If you'll do that, you know, get your eyes up off your phone, get your eyes tear torn away from the TV, get your head out of the to do list for a little while and ask me what we're doing today. That's the sense that I'm getting is that the Spirit is going home with me, come with me, come with me. Okay, now, we could go a lot of directions with this. And and what I am sensing from the Lord is that maybe that just needs to be a series down the line, I want to just very briefly considered two aspects of what it means to be people of the Spirit. And I think these are two things that we as a spiritual family are pretty strong in. And so I just want to name those so that we can continue continue to push the boundaries of these things. So the first aspect of being people with a spirit that stands out to me is this idea of being in the Spirit, so that we are available for whatever the Holy Spirit wants to reveal to us. And one example and this is something that we do a lot of here. It's not limited to this, but one example of this is prayer. Now we could probably all give examples of times we have prayed from our own natural minds. We come to God, we have our list of needs. We don't feel anything in particular, we trust by faith that he's hearing us. And so we're just faithful, you know, we just pray faithfully out of our own mind and understanding. And conversely, times that we have prayed in the Spirit. And we have yielded to the Holy Spirit, and he's taken our prayers to a different place. Those prayers are qualitatively different than the ones we come up with on our own. John's experience on Patmos is one example if he had just been praying out of his own understanding, he probably would have even if he had picture Jesus, he probably would have picked with the Jesus he knew. Right? He was very familiar with Jesus. He knew exactly what Jesus looked like. And he probably would have pictured that Jesus his friend, instead because he was in the Spirit. The Spirit revealed to him a necessary spirituality, spiritual reality of Jesus. With eyes like fire, the Alpha and Omega, holding the keys of death and Hades. You in Acts 10. Peter's praying on a rooftop in Joppa, when he has the vision of heaven opened and the sheet with all the animals on it. That vision led to Gentiles receiving salvation. And the kingdom of God busting wide open to the Gentile world. I promise you that Peter did not come up with that on his own because he argued with it. Right? No, Peter was in the spirit, as he was praying on the roof that day. And because he was in the Spirit, he was available for the Holy Spirit to show him something that he needed to see, because there were some guys about to come knock on his door. And that was a divine appointment. The believers at Antioch in Acts 13 were ministering to the Lord and fasting, when they heard the Holy Spirit, tell them to set apart Barnabas and Saul for missionary work. In other words, they were in the Spirit, they were ministering to the Lord, they were available to the Holy Spirit to show them what he wanted to show them. And the result of that was a divine human partnership in which the invasion force of Heaven began to take new territory in the earth. In Ephesians, six, that same one who was set apart, that same Saul tells the believers at Ephesus, to pray in the Spirit at all times. Now I've heard that described as praying in tongues. And that's great. And I'm sure that that's a part of what Paul was talking about when he wrote those words. But I think of equal importance with the gift of tongues is the concept of being in the spirit. Setting aside our natural understanding, connecting with the Holy Spirit of God, and receiving revelation and guidance, in how and what to pray. He leads us to pray, things we wouldn't think of on our own. He reveals to us things that we couldn't know. Romans 826, to 27, pictures, the spirit making intercession, and we just become the instruments he's using. In first Corinthians two, verse 10, Paul tells us that God reveals things to us by His Spirit, for the search, the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God, hold that for a minute. It's familiar, but hold it for a minute, the spirit releases to the people of God, the inner thoughts of God. What's God thinking? I don't know. But the Spirit does. And he's willing to tell us. He wants us to know them, so that we can partner with them in boldness and in maturity. This is something for us to make ourselves available for, to prioritize, to practice to cultivate, the spirit is releasing to us the thoughts and mysteries of God. And then we open our mouths, and we speak them into the second heaven and into the earth realm. And they have creative power, because that's what God designed us to be. It's an astonishing partnership, instead of praying to God, we're actually praying with him. And that deserves some attention. I had an experience just week before last, and I've already talked about this in a generation's prayer council. So I'm not going to give it a lot of time right now. But I had an experience, I think it was just week before last, where I came to my time of prayer, in the morning.


And I was, I felt weary, I felt discouraged, and I felt defeated. And I did not have much of anything to offer, but I was just going to come and put my butt in the chair and be faithful, and pray the prayers, because that's what you do. And and as I did that, I just, I thought, you know, Lord, I just want to make myself available to your spirit. Because you see me how I am this morning, I just have nothing. But But I do have a little faithfulness. And I'll bring that but is there anything you want to show me? And immediately, he took me into this astonishing picture of what was happening in the heavenly realms, when I pray, my simple, little discouraged. Are you even hearing me are these making any difference prayers. And as he unfolded to me this scene of what was happening in the heavenly realms, my faith just exploded. And I went, Oh, well, if that's what's happening, then let's pray. And I tell you what, my prayers that morning I, you know, I try to journal them and every time I look back at them, it takes me right back into that, that revelation of the power of God. He just showed me that the people I'm praying for God does not see them after the flesh. He sees see them as eternal beings, and he sees who they will be becoming a trillion trillion years from now in eternity. And when I pray, he's taking my little prayers, and he's weaving them into the prayers that he's praying over them. And they are having an effect that my natural mind would never ever be able to wrap around. It's worth it to take the time to pray in the Spirit. Very briefly, I want to say just the second aspect of this divine human partnership. That is worth considering because of the intersection that it has with the mantle of Elijah is in the way we see and interact with people. In Second Corinthians 514, to 17, Paul makes the bold statement. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. If and then a few verses later, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away behold, all things have become new. Now, Paul was certainly not unaware of the unfinished pneus of the people he was dealing with. Most of his letter to the Corinthian church involves that unfinished business, and the stuff that they were still walking with. So this is not magical thinking on his part, it's not in both of his letters to the Corinthian church, he spends a lot of time dealing with the old things do not the way, the old things do not appear to have passed away. Those old things seem to be pretty alive and well, and they're causing ruptures in the church. But he still makes this statement that we regard no one according to the flesh. In other words, we choose to see people through the cross, and according to the Spirit, we see them through the Spirit as what they're capable of becoming, and are becoming in Christ. We see them through the lens of a First Corinthians 13 love, that keeps no record of wrongs, that hopes all things and believes all things. And this way of seeing actually makes us agents of redemption in their lives. We partner with the Holy Spirit, and become instruments God can use to pray in and call out people's new creation identity. Now, obviously, we need wisdom in this, Paul, again, he did not ignore the workings of the flesh, he deals with them as a father. But those workings of the flesh did not stop him from seeing people through the lens of the Spirit. So I think that this aspect of being people of the Spirit is particularly vital. In the mantle of Elijah movement, that we've been soaking in seeing people after the Spirit, praying in and calling out their spirit, Bourne Identity. That's what spiritual mothers and fathers do. Dealing with people in process can be frustrating and disheartening. Just ask Paul, it's, it's seeing what the Spirit sees when he looks at them, asking the spirit to search the inner thoughts of God about them. And then speaking those things out. And it's operating in that humble hopeful First Corinthians 13, spirit born love toward them, that allows us to spiritually father and mother them as agents of redemption. And I am convinced that our participation in the harvest of our day is closely linked to our willingness and ability to see past a whole heap of flesh to see people through the cross and according to the Spirit, and then to partner with the Spirit of God and His fathering and mothering ministry to them. Just one simple example of that, I don't know it was not that long ago, I found myself pretty judgy pretty fleshy. I was interacting with some people and just finding my like these judgmental thoughts, critical thoughts coming up. And, you know, it wasn't even the people I'm closest to I've got plenty of stuff to deal with there too. But this was just like walking through the strip mall. No, I'm not talking about me. Not you. Me, me, not you. But this was just like, what? Walking through the store, walking through the grocery store and finding a critical thought about someone I saw that I didn't even know coming, you know, coming up and I was like, This is gross. This feels defiling. What is happening with that? I don't want that. And so in that moment, I just chose to be in the Spirit. And I turned to the Holy Spirit of God and said, What do I do to nip this? But I don't like this at all. And he gave me a strategy just for that moment that was so simple and so beautiful. He said, every person you look at, I want your first thought about them to be, you are so loved. I went, Okay, that's simple enough, I can do that. And so as I'm walking through the store, and my eyes would light upon somebody, I just would, you know, make it a discipline of saying, in my head, you are so loved. And I began to see the cross of Christ imposed over them, and realize that God so loved that person that he sent his only begotten son, and I just walked through the store that day you are so loved, you are so loved, you are so and before I know it, like I'm weeping in the store. As I'm sensing the love of God. For these people who don't have most of them kind of looked like maybe they don't have a clue the fact that God loves them. But the having that experience of being in the Spirit, and just being able to see them through the eyes of the spirit, changed everything in my inner world. The people of Jesus or the people of the Spirit were born of water and spirit. Our personal spirits have been regenerated by the Spirit of God. In first Corinthians 617, Paul's that says that we are now one spirit with the Lord, that one spirit union with Jesus through the Holy Spirit is supposed to govern our lives. As just as the New Covenant community explored and discovered what it meant to be people of the Spirit, they recorded what they experience and they left it for us as a promise. And as a guide, the Spirit spoke to them. If you want to do something fun, do a concordance search on spirit, don't do Holy Spirit, because lots of times they just call him the spirit. But do a concordance search on the spirit. And then just like start from apps, and look through the rest of the Scriptures and see all the ways that they interacted with an experience the Spirit, the Spirit spoke to them, I love that, you know, you see the spirits, the spirits, spoke to Philip and said, go to this place.


How cool is that? You know, he just spoke to him and said go there because I got something for you. The Spirit healed through them. He asserted the authority of Jesus over the demonic through them. He called people to salvation through them. He appointed and anointed them for service. They discovered that when they set their minds on the things of the Spirit that brought life and peace, they found that the presence of God's spirit within them brought Zoey life to their mortal bodies. They learned to be led by the Spirit, to be assured of their salvation by the testimony of the spirit within them crying out on the father. They found that they had righteousness, peace and joy in the Spirit. They experienced the Spirit working through them to bless others. They found that when they walked in conscious communion with the spirit, the flesh lost its hold on them and they did not fulfill the desires of the flesh. The spirit was their key to victory in walking as the people of Jesus. When they walked in conscious communion with this spirit, their lives were filled with the nature of God, love joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. As they prayed in the Spirit, they found principalities and powers bowing to the Lordship of Christ, the spirit strengthen them and their inner man brought them into supernatural unity with one another and told them things they needed to know about what was coming up in their world. They found that they could grieve Him and they could quench him and that that was bad. The hour that we're living in needs people of the Spirit It needs people of the Spirit who will get in the spirit and and download music like rod and Lucy were talking about earlier. Download the songs that are being sung in the heavenly realms so they can be released into this one. We need people who will get into the spirit and and receive scientific discoveries from heaven, the heavenly realms, It all exists there already. It just needs to be downloaded to people who are in the spirit and paying attention. We need people who will get in the spirit and seek answers for political problems, for geopolitical issues for ecological issues for all of the things that are threatening to destroy and rip our world apart. The answers for those things are in the Spirit. And this hour needs people who will get in the spirit and be available for those things to be released to them in Revelation. Those who have been crucified with Christ, who no longer live for themselves or judge according to the flesh. This hour needs people who will yield themselves to be instruments of the spirit of intercession, who will walk in the spirit be led by the spirit be clean vessels for the Spirits power to flow through. The phrase that was coming to me, as you can tell this week is people of the Spirit. But as I was researching for this, I read a blurb about a woman named Francis Metcalf, who was an American woman who did ministry in the Middle East in the early 1960s. She called it the company of the Dove. Don't you love that? The the dove rests upon us. And we are the company of the Dove. In James four, five, he there's a verse there that apparently is notoriously difficult to translate. But essentially it says that the spirit yearns jealously. And I think that's what I was talking about earlier, the spirit is jealous for our time, he's jealous for our attention, God, the Father is jealous for the Holy Spirit to have more of us, so that we can partner with him as the people of the spirit to accomplish his purposes in the earth. Now, because I know firsthand, that it's a learning curve, to learn how to get there, when that's not something that you've been familiar with. At some point, like I said, I'm sensing that there's a teaching a second teaching here, because what I would love to do sometime, is share with you all some of the spiritual disciplines that the people of God have used for centuries now, to cultivate their ability to be in the Spirit, to be more available to the spirit to recognize the voice of the Spirit to partner with the Spirit, there are wonderful practical down to earth, Rubber Meets Road, things that we can do to increase our ability to be in the Spirit. This is not beyond anyone, this is the birthright of all of us who are in Christ Jesus. So stay tuned, at some point when it will fit into the preaching rotation, I'm going to share a part two of this with some really practical pointers on just how we can cultivate that. But I love the fact that we as a spiritual family are doing this together, that this is our heartbeat is to be yielded to the spirit in this way. So Father, we just we lift all these things to you. And we ask Lord for a new place in our spiritual family, of what it means to be the people of the spirit, the company of the dove. And I pray Father, that we would be yielded and available for that. And that you would push the envelope among us. As we seek to walk with you in the way you always said was your intention. In Jesus name, amen.


And earlier, before we turn the recording on, when I was sharing that word about, you know, the example of the man on the road to Emmaus with Jesus and, and how we, he, they walked right with Him, and that I had often found myself yeah, I'm walking with him, and I'm doing life with God and in all of that, but then I realized that he's on one side of the road, and I'm on the other side of the road. And this I believe what Nancy's teaching us, is about being with him, on the road, not in the Spirit literally, is being inside, in relational connection in the moment with the Holy Spirit, who is God's presence on the earth, tangible presence, not symbolic presence. And so I really, what you, what you just taught on was exactly what I feel like I was exhorting earlier before we started the recording. Guys, I cannot count because it's hundreds of times in my life, when I find myself walking with God, and there are challenges and problems in life. And I'm trying to solve them in the Lord's like, come on into the spirit. Let me solve them. And I go into the Spirit literally, what does that mean? I just do what you did I, I say, Lord, what are you doing? How do I participate in I just kind of connect with him and something happens. And God begins to solve those problems. And God begins to bring the breakthroughs that I was trying to do and get him to bless me to do and he's going no, I want to do this. And so I just If this word is so strong in my spirit you're sharing, I couldn't type fast enough. Because there's so many things like, there's so much around this, this is a whole. Honestly, this is a whole teaching series we could do on living in the Spirit. And I would love to get this in early July, or sometime in July, to go back to and talk about how the spiritual disciplines assist us in this. But I had a very similar experience that you had this this past week, when I was in prayer. And I was like, Lord, I'm I need to just connect with you kind of like that Emmaus road thing I was talking about. And literally, as soon as I did the Holy Spirit, he's like, he's there by bloom, like right there. Like we talked about, Jesus just appeared in the room there after the resurrection. I also wanted to share something, one of my early experiences, I remember being in the store, and you were talking about this, after you had kind of repented. And you were, you know, seeking the Lord and seeing people through God's eyes. I remember being in the store one day, this was 29 years ago. And I was checking out in the store. And suddenly, the woman who was checking me out at the cash register, she suddenly as she was just putting my groceries through the scanner, or whatever it was, it was at Walmart, I don't remember what I was buying. But suddenly, I just could feel the weight of what was in her life. Like just in a moment, like the in the Spirit, and the compassion of the Holy Spirit came over me. And then I looked at the person bagging my groceries. And the same thing happened. I mean, I started crying, I was like, they probably thought something wrong with me. And I just was overwhelmed. And I begin to realize, I had this awareness of all these people around me in the spirit because I was in the spirit. And then I thought, What is going on? Well, this is what was going on. I was in a three day fast, a complete fast, a complete, where all I do is drink a little bit of water, just to complete fast. And this was on the third day. And it was it was a complete fasting prayer. By the way. If you go fast, and then you just go about your busyness of life and stuff. I'm telling you that usually you end out fighting the flesh. And there's all kinds of spiritual battles and, and fasting and prayer go together. I'm just preaching on the side now. But if you've struggled too fast, it's probably because you're not praying, like fasting and prayer go together. So I was in the third day of this fasting and prayer. And all of a sudden, it dawned on me what was happening is that spiritual disciplines of fasting and prayer had pulled me into the spirit, even without me trying. And I was suddenly overwhelmed with in the spirit of filling the heart of God, for the people around me on a profound level. And I think many of the spirits not just fasting and prayer, many of the spiritual disciplines, if we enter into them as lifestyle practices, they will do this for us. And they, they have a way of keeping us right next to Jesus on the Emmaus road, not across the road, or God forbid, you know, we have those times in our lives when we've gotten way out ahead of God or way back behind him. And we're, we're not even you know, we're hopefully within yelling distance of Jesus, you know, we've all been there, right? We've all found ourselves in those places. And part of this walk of being in the Spirit, what you're teaching us about Nancy, is to learn to stay with Jesus, and His Holy Spirit on this earth is the way we do it. So I know I'm repeating what you said. But it just had so much impact in my heart that I'm literally just busting at the seams like I'm all these things, a whole bunch of things. I'm typing and seen in the spirit. Another thing that if you do this, this is a real eye opener, is with your Bible software, go type in the phrase in the Spirit. And see, you will be stunned what you see, the scriptures will just open to you. And we see what happens when people are in the Spirit. And so I'm saying amen to all of that. So, Nancy, thank you so much. We got to continue this. And not just Nancy, by the way. If you guys have something to share, I want you to share it after we turn the recording off. But also, we may need to get a time to record some of the things that you're seeing so that we have it in the continuing teachings. Amen.
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