An Overflowing Faith

Let us turn to the Word of the Lord, Ephesians 5:17 through 19. And brothers and sisters, I want to speak about a life, an overflowing, superabundant faith. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 17 says: “Therefore do not be foolish.” The word foolish has a very negative connotation in Spanish. In the original Greek, the word is “asofoi,” which means “not wise”; in other words, do not be ignorant. This is something the Word of God is always calling us to do: not to be ignorant of the things of the Spirit.

So let us not be ignorant—don't be clueless about spiritual things, in other words. Therefore do not be foolish, but understanding. Do not be asofoi, but sofoi; be understanding, be learned, learned and wise concerning what the will of the Lord is, what the will of the Lord is. In other words, the Word says that the Lord does not want us to be children, carried back and forth by doctrines of error because we do not know the Word of the Lord. Let us know what God’s will is for our lives, for our churches, for our ministry.

So it says that we should understand what the will of the Lord is. Look here: he issues a general call. So he says, do not be ignorant; be understanding. Then people say, “Okay, thank you, but how, then, can we be understanding?” And he gives an example here, and this is what we want to focus on, right? He says: “Do not get drunk with wine,” because wine leads to disorder, to dissipation; instead, what? “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

I always say: in the Word there is a connection between being filled with the Holy Spirit and a state that sometimes resembles drunkenness. That is why, in the mind of the apostle Paul, he brings up that illustration: instead of getting drunk on wine and alcohol, look, get drunk on the Holy Spirit—that is what he is saying, right? Be filled with the Holy Spirit. There is truly something there: the abundant spirituality God desires for His people is a spirituality, a state of intoxication, one might almost say. You feel so filled with the presence of God that you feel overwhelmed.

That is why the Bible speaks of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Baptism comes from the word baptismo, which means to immerse. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is like total immersion in a medium, and that medium is the Holy Spirit. That is why Paul says: look, instead of filling yourselves with things that bring incoherence into your lives, such as wine and alcohol, be filled with the Holy Spirit instead. That is what I want us to remain focused on this afternoon: that God is calling every one of us—as a Church, as ministers, as laypeople—to live a life filled with the Holy Spirit.

And that is what I want to impress upon my brothers and sisters. Those of you who are new to the faith, who are even only visiting: many of you, for example, have listened to the radio program and come because you have felt a healthy curiosity and a desire to learn more about the Word of God; you have come forward when we have given an altar call. And I want to invite you to enter into a Christian life that is not halfhearted, not merely a religious life. It is a life of immersion, of an overflowing, full-bodied, exuberant, effervescent spirituality. I do not know how else to say it.

There are many images we could bring to mind, but it is a life of abundance, enthusiasm, passion, and fervor in the things of the Lord, and that is why Paul compares it in this way to intoxication. And then, in verse 19, he goes on to be even more specific about how we can reach that level of being filled with the Holy Spirit. It says: “Speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and praising the Lord in your hearts, always giving thanks for everything to God the Father in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That life of being filled with the Holy Spirit is a life in which you are always conversing. It says, speaking to one another. I was telling the brothers and sisters this morning that, generally, to a certain extent, you can discern indications—I will not say that you can know, because we leave that to the Lord—but you know when a person is filled with the Holy Spirit. Because one of the things about people who are filled with the Holy Spirit is that they always like to talk about the things of the Lord. Their conversation is a conversation that is always revolving around the things of the Kingdom of God.

We, the children of God, can talk about many things. I tell you, I love the entire spectrum of knowledge. I read everything, and I like to talk about politics, art, music, whatever it may be; I like reading about those things. But my favorite subject is the things of the Lord, and I love being with people whose favorite subject is also that. They like to talk about the mysteries of God, personal growth, the betterment God makes possible, the things of the Church, the growth of the Church, the nations, and what God is doing in the world. That is the subject; frankly, we do not have time to waste time on other things.

And anything you read, discuss, or talk about should, in one way or another, be directed toward strengthening you in your faith and blessing someone else. And of course, we can also talk about other things; we are not one-track people, going in only one direction—no. We have many things. But I believe in that idea of speaking to one another: be filled with the Holy Spirit. That is one of the things, right? In a Church, the Word of God is shared through different conversations: the conversations that take place in discipleship groups, the conversations that take place in cell groups. The conversations that take place, as right now—this is a conversation in a sense; in your mind, you are conversing with me there, engaging in dialogue on one level—and those that take place in your home with your Christian friends when you gather together.

Speaking to one another, and also the life of worship, of surrendering to the Lord. When we gather as we have today, for example, to exalt the name of Christ, to worship Him, to declare His lordship over the nations, to invoke the Presence of God, that is a kind of worship and also a conversation. So in that way, one becomes filled with the Holy Spirit.

Because there are two things, right, that we need to understand. There is an impartation of the Holy Spirit that comes directly from God. And we like to seek that moment when God Himself sends down from heaven an energy that gives us power, gives us authority, gives us spiritual energy. And we must ask the Lord again and again to give us that power. There is something God has that only He can convey to us, and we must seek it.

And in the Word, that is often called being filled or being baptized with the Holy Spirit. And there is an impartation of power and authority that comes into our lives as a result of asking the Lord to give to us; the Lord then descends upon us and equips us, strengthens us. That is why you will remember that last Sunday we spoke about how, when the Lord sent His disciples on that first missionary journey, it says that He gathered them together—if you look for it in Luke or Matthew chapter 6, it is in three different Books of the Gospel—it says that He gathered them and gave them power and authority, dunamis—exousia.

He gave them power and authority; He imparted them. It was as though an impartation of power and authority went forth from Him, because those two things are important. People who are filled with the Holy Spirit have an authority that is like a weight, a poise they possess when they testify about the Lord, when they move through the Christian life, when they minister, when they do anything. That is what is called authority. You know there are people who may not have much education, but when they speak about Christ, they speak with authority.

Someone was telling me, “My mother is one of those people.” Sister Maribel’s mother is not a highly educated woman, but she is one of those little old Pentecostal ladies who lops demons’ heads off. She has never attended a seminary, never preached a sermon, but she has a conviction that makes you want to sit at her feet and hear about her experiences in the Gospel. No teacher—and sometimes a great many pastors, not even teachers of theology—can compare with a person who has had experiences with Christ Jesus and His power.

There is nothing like speaking about what you know—what you have experienced, what you have lived in the Power of God. And that is what gives us that authority, so that when we speak to people about Christ, they listen because they know we are speaking from personal experience, and there is a voice within us that manifests itself through us, which is the Holy Spirit. And we must seek that. We must seek that authority, that watermark, that mark upon our lives so that when we speak, there is an invisible presence of the Holy Spirit; that is what is called exousia, authority.

And it is also like credentials. It is the backing you have to open and close here on Earth and for God to open and close up there in heaven. It is like national currencies. Every currency—nowadays the United States no longer follows this, and I believe that is one of its problems—but there was a time when money had to be backed by gold, and the amount of money being printed had to be tied to the amount of gold on hand.

The United States abandoned that long ago, but I like the idea of a currency being backed by concrete, material, physical assets instead of merely printing paper, paper, paper and going on a nationwide collective credit-card spree, which is what sometimes leads to the destruction of nations. A time comes when there is an inflation of money; it is like living in a very large house, having two cars in the garage, traveling all over the world on the basis of credit and credit-card splurges, and refinancing the house. And a time comes when you are up to your elbows, up to your neck in debt, and you realize that your wealth is artificial: there is no salary backing it up, there is no savings account; everything is artificial.

And that is often what happens in the Gospel. It is an artificial life. Many declarations of victory, going to Church, a great deal of religious display, but there is no authority that comes from God—do you understand? And that can truly be found only by having face-to-face encounters with the Holy Spirit. That is what the Bible calls being filled with the Holy Spirit, and it means having authority before God and before men, and before the devil too, you know? Because when the devil comes to confront your life and intrude into your home, you know how to stop him, how to halt him, how to tell him, “You will not pass this way; you will not get to my children; you will not get to my marriage; what is more, you will not get to my neighborhood.”

And you pray for your neighborhood; you pray for your street. And you say: “Lord, there is an outpost of Yours on this street; therefore, let this street be blessed. Let there be no shootings or crimes on this street, no disorder or shouting, because there is a man, a woman, a family here that loves You and declares Your Lordship.” Wherever the people of God are, there are outposts of the Kingdom of God. And we must learn to pray for our cities, pray for our streets, pray for our neighborhoods, so that God’s order may be established in those places and we may pray with authority, because we have been at the feet of the Lord. And when we rise from His feet, our faces reflect that we have been in the Presence of God.

Do you remember the story of Moses? The Bible says that when he was there for forty days before the Presence of the Lord, his face shone, because when you are before the Presence of the Lord, something good rubs off on you, and you can reflect, in some small measure, the Glory of the Lord. The apostle Paul said that we are being renewed day by day, reflecting the Glory of God more and more. That is called authority. The Lord imparted authority to the disciples.

And from that authority comes power. Because authority then gives you power over sickness, power over demons, power over poverty, power over the bondages of your mind and the habits that destroy your life, power to bless others, power to evangelize and testify. But it must be born from that visitation, from that impartation of the power of the Holy Spirit. And in the Bible, in the New Testament, especially in the Book of Acts, we at least have examples showing what the Church’s specific priorities were.

Whenever the Church was looking for people to do something, it sought people who possessed that quality. Look, for example, Acts chapter 6 comes to mind now, concerning that state of fullness. Acts chapter 6, verse 3, when they were going to choose the deacons. This was supposedly just to distribute food at the tables—imagine that. This was for times when there are meals here, to serve the people; look at what they had to possess. Verse 3 says: “Therefore, brothers, choose from among you seven men of good reputation”—filled with what?—“filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom.” Because even to distribute food, they needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

If you look in chapter 11—well, right there, before we move on from there—look farther ahead at verse 8. Stephen, the great Stephen who died as a martyr, it says here: “Stephen, full of grace and power.” That is a filling of the Holy Spirit; it does not say it in those words, but he was a man who was full of grace and power and performed great wonders and signs among the people. Let us also go to Acts chapter 11:24, Acts 11:24. Speaking of Barnabas, it says: “For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.”

When they wanted to appoint someone to go to a place where revival was taking place, they looked for a man full of the Holy Spirit. Before assigning people to serve in different positions in the Church, from the smallest tasks to the most complicated ones, our churches should, above all, always try to place people who are full of the Holy Spirit. And I am going to develop that a little further in a moment.

But what I want to tell you, brothers and sisters, is that the Lord is calling us to that. A week ago I chose this subject because I wanted to conclude the week of fasting and prayer that we have had. A few weeks ago, during a staff meeting with the Church’s pastoral staff, we said to the Lord: We are going to declare this week a week for seeking the face of God in a deeper way, because we felt that there was a need within us as a Church. Where there are great demands, there must be a great seeking of the Lord, and our Church is in a beautiful season in which God is doing beautiful things among us, but we are also carrying out a demanding construction project, and the people are being asked to give, to believe and have faith, and to exercise faith in the Lord.

And that is why we want to renew you and ourselves as well. We also grow tired; we become exhausted by the journey and the activity of the Christian life. And there have to be times when we plug ourselves back into the source of power and energy, which is God, when our vision is renewed, when we fall in love with the Lord all over again, and when we always remember that exploits in the Kingdom of God are not accomplished through programs, titles, or administration, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

And this week we have seen—we have seen the blessing of God moving among us, and we feel that freshness, that fresh breeze blowing over us. I believe that such exalted moments of praise as the one we had a moment ago come as a result of that. You have to pay the price, you know; you have to pay the price to receive that anointing. And you too have to be continually seeking that filling of the Spirit, at home and when you go to work. You are an Olympic athlete of the Spirit.

You cannot live merely by coming to a service. You have to pay the price. The Bible calls us to an intense faith—not merely an institutional, religious faith, but a heartfelt, passionate life that governs every aspect of our lives. The spirituality God wants from you is an overflowing spirituality that spills over. When I speak of such fervent spirituality, I picture a liquid being poured out, effervescent, with foam overflowing and running down the sides. It is like what Psalm 127 or 125 says: Behold, how good and how delightful it is to see brothers dwelling together. It says that it is like the oil running down Aaron’s beard and descending to the hem of his garments.

It is that image of anointing, of overflowing oil. It runs so abundantly that it goes from the head to the beard and down to the feet, because there is an abundance of anointing. For there the Lord bestows blessing and eternal life—where there is the filling of the Holy Spirit, where there is a Church that is militantly and fervently asking for the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

Do you know that you have to fight for the anointing of the Holy Spirit? It does not come just like that, by osmosis. It does not come by inertia; it is something you have to cry out for, seek, and live out, understanding that you need to have it. Look at another passage, Romans chapter 12, verse 11, which I like in that regard. Here it says—this chapter 12 of Romans is a chapter devoted to illustrating an abundant life, a healthy life in the Spirit.

And among the things the apostle Paul points out here, he says: “In what requires diligence: not slothful, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” The word fervent, translated from Greek into Spanish, is the word feontes, which means fervent, militant. It is the word boiling in the spirit, from which comes the word fever, feverish; it is as though we have a fever of the Spirit. It is not the normal temperature of 98.6, but a temperature of 102 or 104; we are burning in the Spirit. “Burning in the Spirit” would be the translation: ablaze in spirit, fervent in the Spirit.

And I am intrigued by what it says: “In what requires diligence: not slothful.” You know, there are things in the Christian life that require diligence in order to happen, and one of them is a life filled with the Holy Spirit. That does not happen simply by coming to Church in a careless way. So many people think: Well, if I just go, punch my card, and they stamp it to show that I went to Church on Sunday, then the devil will leave me alone for at least a week.

You know what? It is not like that. To live a truly impactful and healthy life in the Spirit, you have to be diligent; you have to pay the price. You have to pray; you have to cry out. Many times I have to drag myself to pray because I do not want to do it; my flesh has no desire to, I am tired, or there are other things I would like to do, or there are ten other pressing things I have to do in the Church. But I have to do it because I know that is where the power is forged. I cannot give if I have nothing. I cannot share unless I have first paid the price. You cannot bless your family if you do not have a spiritual life. You cannot impart the life of the Lord to your children unless there is an overflow within you.

I always say that we minister out of the overflow, out of the excess of power within us. Because we first need power for ourselves, and then, out of the excess, we can give to others. And many people do not have enough power for themselves, much less to give to others. That is why we have to remain diligent, continually seeking the face of the Lord. A Church does not remain powerful or do great things and exploits unless it seeks the face of the Lord through gatherings like the ones we have had this week. There are times when we have to get ourselves in gear again, get on the treadmill, and work up a sweat once more; then, filled with the Spirit, we return to the charge. We have to do that continually.

That is why Paul says that in what requires diligence, we must not be slothful. Live fervently in the Spirit. So we see this in the lives of the disciples: the Lord told them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until you have been endued with power from on high.” Do not go out to perform the tasks and work of the Gospel until you have received an impartation of power and authority, and then you will serve as My witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, and throughout the earth. Until that power is present, we cannot have the kind of abundant and powerful spirituality that God wants for us.

Now, what happened to those disciples? Once they received that endowment of power, they began to live a life filled with the Holy Spirit. There are two things that occur in the Christian life: one is when you seek that impartation of power that comes from the hands of Jesus, and you devote yourself to the disciplines of faith mentioned by the apostle Paul—praying, singing, and talking about faith in your life. And that endowment of power comes. Now that you have that endowment of power, you then live a life that reflects that filling of the Holy Spirit, as the disciples did.

Look here at verse 42 of chapter 3 of the Book of Acts. When the disciples received that filling of the Holy Spirit, when they received the Word of God and the impartation of power, it says that they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine, in fellowship with one another, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Verse 43 says: “Then fear came upon every person, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.”

Brother, when you receive the filling, the visitation of the Holy Spirit in your life, then you are supposed to live a life of continual surrender to the Lord, doing the things the disciples did: gathering with the brothers and sisters, reading the Word, and praying. Then God begins to do things in the life of your community. Today we are living in an age in which society is deteriorating more and more, in this country and in other parts of the world. Every day this nation is falling into greater and greater spiritual decline, and every institution in this nation is moving away from the things of God, beginning with the White House on down, and there is no fear of God because, I believe, there is a feeble Church.

There is a Church that is not seeking the filling of the Holy Spirit. There is a Church made up of conventional people who allow themselves to be influenced by every wind of doctrine and by the intimidation of the devil, who inspires fear in us. There are people who are afraid to testify about Christ; there are many people who do not want to testify about Christ—they are afraid to testify. When I visit—sometimes I go to hospitals or schools, or even to the statehouse—there are many people there who consider themselves Christians. And when they can say it quietly, “Yes, I am a Christian,” they say it.

There are Christians in immigration. There are Christians in the statehouse. If you asked the governor, he would tell you, “I am a Christian.” The president of the United States would tell you, “I am a Christian.” But I wonder: Where is the Christian influence? Where are these undercover Christians? You ask me, “Hey, but why don’t you testify about your faith?” My wife recently found out that a coworker she has known for years is a believer, a Christian. Amen, I know she must be a woman who loves God, but wow, where are we?

The devil has intimidated us. If you ask those people, “Well, why don’t you allow your faith to be manifested in your practice, in your profession?” they will tell you: “I have been taught that there must be a separation of church and state. I cannot allow my faith to be manifested in my profession.” There are politicians who tell you, “No, I am a Christian, but in my role as a senator or congressman, I have to be something else. At that moment I set my faith aside and am simply a public official.” It is a lie from the devil. That lie we have been sold intimidates us, brothers and sisters.

There are many people who do not have that overflowing spirituality. Look, the person who is there in the Holy Spirit cannot remain silent even if he wants to; he cannot remain silent. He will always find ways to testify about Christ. Even if it is while giving a patient an injection in the name of Jesus Christ, he does something; somehow, he gives himself away. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

When you love the Lord and are filled with the Holy Spirit, you want others to have what you have and to know the One you know as well. I believe that more Christians filled with the Holy Spirit would translate into more Christians bearing witness in the community. There would be more of God’s presence, and then more fear among the people. As we see here, because those Christians were filled with the Holy Spirit, there was fear among the people, because they were seeing signs, wonders, and great things; there was a sense that, wow, God is visiting the earth.

When a Church is filled with the Holy Spirit, the people out there will hear about the Gospel. The problem of the nations is that there are Christians who are intimidated, frightened, and indoctrinated by the world instead of instructed by the Word of the Lord. When believers know that in Christ there is power, militancy, and influence, Christians do not remain silent; they do not allow themselves to be muzzled. They testify about Christ Jesus even if they are crucified for it. And then the devil begins to retreat.

The devil fills the spaces the Church allows him to fill. The voids opened by the Church are the ones the devil fills. When the Church is present in something, the devil cannot fill that space because the presence of God is there. We have to fill our cities and our workplaces. Now, we must do it appropriately. Some people leave their work to testify, and then they are stealing from their employer; they are robbing one saint to clothe another. No. You have to do it in an appropriate way as well; there are opportunities and ways to do it properly and suitably. Understand what I am telling you.

But we can testify about Christ, and we can establish the name of God. We have to be praying for our societies, our cities, our schools, the hospitals, and the statehouse. We have to be imparting the presence of God in those places. The Lord’s Prayer says: “Your Kingdom come, and Your Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That should continually be the prayer of the Church. Lord, may Your Kingdom come to Boston in the twenty-first century; may Your Kingdom come to New England. May Your Kingdom come to the United States; may Your Kingdom come to the White House.

And we have to cry out, brothers and sisters. God wants to visit the earth again, but a people is needed who will give the Father permission, so to speak, to come and intervene in history once again. And that will be done by men and women filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Acts chapter 2 says again that fear came upon every person. Those people gathered together, had fellowship with one another, prayed together, and broke bread together, and it says that many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

All who had believed were together and had all things in common. They sold their properties and possessions and distributed them to everyone according to each one’s need, and they continued daily with one accord in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, eating together with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. It says that each day the Lord added to the Church those who were to be saved. The Lord added them. There was no need to go around running multimillion-dollar campaigns to get people to come; there was no need to beg people to accept Christ. The Lord added them daily.

When there is a Church filled with the Holy Spirit, people come, brothers and sisters. People feel hungry. The power of God draws people. The people out there see the vitality of a community filled with faith and power, and they say, “I want that. I don’t know what those crazy people have, but I want it.” They feel a healthy envy. Evangelizing becomes easy. God Himself brings about the conditions. The problem is that we are living in a time when the Church has allowed the land to become overrun with vermin and weeds.

You know that the Church is called to be the gardener of the world. That image had never occurred to me, but we are the gardeners of the earth, and we have to remain vigilant. All it takes is one generation that does not receive the impartation of the doctrine and the Word of God for us to have to start all over again from scratch. And in this nation, for thirty or forty years, there has been a feeble Church that has fallen asleep, and so our young people have become filled with sensuality and false doctrines. The institutions have become filled with weeds and insects and vermin and pests of every kind.

The structures of the nation have gradually been infiltrated by a secular, rationalistic, humanistic attitude that is arrogant toward God, and we have lost our preeminence. And now the Church is on the defensive; now they have backed us into a corner, and if we want to testify about Christ at work, they say, “Keep your mouth shut; this is a secular workplace.” If we want to uphold the values of the Kingdom of God: “Oh, you are prejudiced, a fanatic, insensitive to the needs of minorities.” Because the world has become filled with doctrines of error, because the Church abandoned its calling and became a respectable, conventional Church. We come on Sundays and offer some watered-down worship service, and then we go home believing that we have already done what we were supposed to do—we clocked out.

But a militant spirituality is required, brothers and sisters. The Lord is calling our Church to be that way: to be a Church fervent in the Spirit. I only wanted to confirm what we have been doing this week. We have to make an effort. Look, on Friday I was telling the brothers and sisters at nine o’clock. On Friday we came to a service that I thought would end at ten, with everyone home by then at the latest. You know that at ten o’clock it was still blazing in here, and we kept going and going.

And at one point, around twelve or a little after twelve, I felt in my spirit that God was calling us to stay until two in the morning. I felt God saying to me, “Keep pressing on; keep prevailing.” An image from the Old Testament came to mind. I did not share it with the brothers and sisters who were here, but an image came to mind that has deeply marked me throughout the years of my ministry. It is when Elisha the prophet is on his deathbed, and it says that the king of Israel, a man with a mediocre spirituality, came to visit him as if to bid him farewell.

He believed in God and was not a wicked man like other kings of Israel, but he was not a man fervent in the Spirit. He was not a man like, say, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, or other kings who were filled with God’s favor and militantly committed to the Kingdom of God. And this king approaches the bed of the prophet Elisha, who still has fire in him even though he is lying there dying.

Because even on their deathbeds, God’s children still have some charge left in their batteries, and they bless others. By the way, it says that one day some men were fleeing from something, and they threw a dead man into the place where Elisha’s bones were, and the man came back to life—it says that he was raised from the dead. Imagine how much power there was. Wouldn’t you like to have that kind of power, so that one day someone might pass by your grave and receive healing, or begin speaking in tongues there because a deposit from God remains even in your bones? What a blessing, right?

The point is that this king approaches Elisha, and Elisha, in one final moment of prophetic energy, tells him, “Take your arrows and your bow.” He tells him to take the arrows in his hands and says, “Strike the ground.” And because this man was mediocre in his faith and did not understand spiritual things, he thought, “Well, perhaps the poor man is a little delirious here; I’ll humor him.” And he gives the ground about three little taps. And the prophet, filled with the Holy Spirit, sits up and says, “Fool! If you had struck four or five times, you would have destroyed the Syrians until you had wiped them out completely.”

The Syrians were the national scourge, the enemy army that kept Israel oppressed. They were the number-one national enemy. They were the superpower that kept Israel under its boot. Israel had always been at war with the Syrians and had been unable to destroy them. And Elisha says, “If you had taken advantage of God’s moment and persisted a little longer, and instead of striking three times, you had struck four or five times…” Because then this king understood that Elisha was calling him to perform a prophetic act: every time he struck, it would be a blow in the spiritual realm against that enemy army, and the number of times he struck was important.

Do you know that in the things of the Spirit, the number of blows you strike is often important, my brother? God is a precise God. We are accustomed to thinking that God does everything. No, there are things God expects you to do, and if you do not do them, He is not going to do them. That is why the Bible says, regarding what requires diligence, not to be lazy. How many times have we stopped praying and crying out at the very moment before God was going to do what He wanted to do, and we missed the opportunity? Do you know that can happen?

Do you know that there are things God would like to do in your life, and perhaps because of negligence, because you have failed to seek the face of God, and because of a lack of prayer and fasting, you are not receiving what God wants you to receive? That is biblical. Biblical Pentecostal thinking shows me again and again—what I see in the Bible is this—that God is going to work with you and that there are things you have to do. You have to become a conduit of divine power, grace, and energy so that God can do things. You have to wage war for your salvation and the salvation of your loved ones. The Church has to wage war for its anointing and for the gifts God wants to pour out upon it.

So that Friday night, as I was praying there, it was as though God were telling me, “No, strike the ground a little longer; don’t leave yet.” And I feel that the Lord is going to honor what we did by staying until two in the morning. Those who stayed saw the glory of God manifested. There was a time of holy silence among us when there was no need for words or prayer; God simply wanted stillness and silence.

And I remembered that verse which says, “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.” Do you know that there are times when the power of God is manifested in silence instead of through much speaking or activity? There are times when stillness is the most powerful manifestation of God’s anointing. The gentle breeze Elijah experienced when he was in the presence of God. Not in the fire, not in the wind that shattered the rocks. There are times when the presence of God is so powerful that it is the opposite of action: it is stillness, resting in the Lord, and letting the Lord be who He is and do whatever He wants.

And I felt that during that time God did something special. God likes it when His people take time to be in His presence. So what if we felt a little tired over the weekend? Glory to God, here we are, filled with the grace of God, excited and knowing that we have done things, that we have performed mighty deeds, and that the time we invested in the Lord, God will repay many times over with blessing. That is what we need, brothers and sisters. We have to pay the price; we have to seek the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Be filled with the Holy Spirit.

You have to both receive power from on high and process power from on high in order to retain it. And when your batteries run down, come back again and seek more power, because this is a life that drains you, and you have to seek the fullness once again. And until you die, that cycle will have to continue like this. You ask for anointing, receive anointing, process anointing, expend anointing, and then you ask for anointing again, receive it again, process it, expend it, ask for it, receive it, process it, expend it, and receive it, until you die. When you get to heaven, you will no longer need that because the presence will be so strong with you that you will have it without having to ask for it. But in the meantime, Church of Christ, we have to wage war.

I want our Church to learn to live that Pentecostal life, to seek that fullness of the Holy Spirit. Every time you come here to a service, do not come merely as a passive observer. Your worship matters, your cry matters, your vitality matters, your absence matters, your presence matters. Understand that you are part of a move of God. God wants a Church fervent in the Spirit, men and women of God, each one of us committed to God, committed to God. How many say amen to that? Amen!

Let us stand for a moment. Be filled with the Spirit. Ask the Father right now to fill you, your home, and our Church with a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit. Lord, we want more of You. We want Your glory to fill us. Visit Your people. Begin with me, Lord; continue with the other pastors; continue with the worship ministry; continue with the Church’s deacons; continue with the leaders of the cell groups and discipleship groups.

Continue with the children’s teachers; continue with those who lead I Wanna and teach the children at different levels; with our young people filled with the Holy Spirit; with the women and men of the congregation; with the Church’s finances and physical facilities. May the very walls of these places, Lord, be saturated with the ointment of Your presence. Father, may oil overflow in this Church; may Your presence overflow. May we not settle for a mediocre, conventional spirituality, Father. We will not settle for a Sunday-only Gospel. We want to be martyrs; we want to be witnesses; we want to be Your servants; we want to be instruments in Your hands.

We want to be pillars in this community, in this city. So visit us, Lord; visit us and renew us, and set aside everything that is not from You, Lord. Every structure, every custom, every practice, every thought, every value, every conversation that is not Yours, Lord, we submit to You. This Church commits itself, Lord, to seeking more of You each day so that we may be the men and women You want us to be, Lord. We worship You and bless You. Thank You, thank You, Father. Amen and amen. Thank You, Lord. Amen.