The Life of the Spirit Is a Life That Flows

I now want to invite you to turn to the Word of the Lord. I don’t think I’m forgetting anything at the moment. We are going to continue. I had already decided to finish this series within a larger series—perhaps you have already forgotten what the larger series was—on fundamental truths of the Christian life; then we got into this matter of the Holy Spirit, and that is where we remained.

I was looking at my notes, and we began in September to speak about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and life in the Holy Spirit, the infilling, and all of this. Then I was invited to Puerto Rico, where I preached at the Barbara Anne Rossler Church, and they invited me to speak about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit-filled life, because they had seen some of the programs from León de Judá and liked that subject for their congregation. And actually, since I had to squeeze everything into five sessions, I created new and different material, packaging some of the things I had already addressed, but in a different way, and I feel led by the Lord to share this with you, which will be new material in any case.

And I believe that God is using this season in the life of León de Judá to seal this doctrine of the Holy Spirit within us and strengthen it, so that the importance of being a people filled with the Holy Spirit and with the power of God—a people with a supernatural vision, which is so important—may be very, very deeply engraved upon the hearts of our entire congregation. And I know there will be no redundancy in what I am going to share with you this morning. I encourage you to prepare your heart for what God has for us.

Remember, I am going to read a couple of verses to frame what I am saying. That well-known verse from Ephesians 5:18, where we are reminded that instead of getting drunk on wine, it says:

“...do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery; rather, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and praising the Lord in your hearts; be filled with the Holy Spirit....”

But the passage that interests me most is found in John, chapter 4, the well-known passage about the Samaritan woman. John, chapter 4, beginning with verse 7. I am going to skip around and read a few verses. You remember the story. A woman from Samaria comes. Samaria was a city at enmity with the Jews, and the Jews were enemies of the Samaritans. They were distant racial cousins, but they had different religions—religions that resembled one another and shared certain elements—but because of a long history, the Samaritans did not belong to the Hebrew Jewish religion; they had followed other doctrines and other things. And the Jews considered them unclean people, and the Samaritans evidently did not return the favor; quite the opposite, they also detested them. There was hostility between Samaritans and Jews. But the Lord is in Samaria, and a woman from that community comes to draw water. In verse 7, Jesus says to her:

“...give me a drink, for his disciples had gone into the city to buy food. And the Samaritan woman says to him, ‘How is it that you, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?’—for Jews and Samaritans do not associate with one another. Then Jesus answers her and says: ‘...if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, “Give me a drink,” you would ask him, and he would give you living water....’”

Here the Lord is getting to the heart of the matter, intriguing her and speaking in spiritual language.

“...and the woman answers him, ‘Sir, you have nothing with which to draw...’—she is thinking that he is literally talking to her about physical water—‘...you have nothing with which to draw it, and the well is deep. Where, then, do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, from which he, his sons, and his livestock drank?’ Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst; rather, the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ And the woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me that water so that I will no longer be thirsty or have to come here to draw it.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back here.’ The woman answered and said, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You have spoken well when you say, “I have no husband,” because you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband; what you have said is true.’ And then the woman says to him, ‘Sir, it seems to me that you are a prophet’....”—he is telling her something she knows is true and that perhaps is not so widely known—“...our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we Jews worship what we know, because salvation comes from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, because the Father also seeks such worshipers to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that the Messiah, called the Christ, is to come; when he comes, he will explain all things to us.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak with you am he....’”

May the Lord bless his holy Word. Brothers and sisters, I want to speak once again, emphasizing it from a slightly different perspective, about the Spirit-filled life, which is the life that each one of us, if we are in the Kingdom of God, is supposed to live. And I want to draw a distinction between the Spirit-filled life and the Christian life lived outside the Spirit—a life that is religious and institutional rather than a vibrant life of the kind God wants us to live.

And in order to understand life in the Spirit, we have been approaching it from different perspectives. To understand life in the Spirit, we must first understand the opposite of that life in the Spirit; that is, that merely formal, religious life.

And I could summarize the difference—and I am going to do so today from this perspective. I could summarize the contrast between the two lives as the difference between an outwardly oriented life and an inwardly oriented life. I believe that the Spirit-filled life is a life whose seat, whose point of departure, is internal; thinking in terms of the inner life helps me see it as the foundation of a Spirit-filled life.

By contrast, the religious life, the life that does not know the power of the Spirit, is a life oriented toward the exterior, toward outward things. We could also approach it in this way: life in the Spirit is an organic life; it is a life that flows; it is a life made up of parts that are perfectly joined together, and one cannot tell where one ends and another begins—like the human body, completely fluid. There is a wholeness, even though it has a structure; that is simply what life is like. Life is organic; it moves with ease.

The religious life, by contrast, is a mechanical life, one of angular movements. It is the difference between a well-coordinated human body and a Toyota robot trying to make the movements of a human being. Have you seen those robots they are trying to invent nowadays to do different things, to move the way a human being moves? They are still very far from being able to capture the fluidity of the human body, of a living being.

So, on the one hand, there is the outward and mechanical—the formal, religious life that does not know the Spirit—and, on the other hand, an inward life and something that is organic and fluid. The religious is generally oriented outward; the spiritual generally has to do with the interior, with what is inside.

So I could mention certain words: robotic, rigid, square, religious life, versus organic, fluid, round, life in the Spirit.

These are images that help us understand something that is extremely complex.

When the New Testament speaks of life in the Spirit, of the Spirit-filled life, remember something: it helps me to consider the context in which the New Testament speaks to people about the Spirit-filled life. It is a context in which it is speaking to Jews who, until then, knew only the external, Pharisaic Jewish religion, and the Word of God wants to establish for those people and for us that what Christ represents, and what the new economy of the Gospel brings, is something totally different from the life those Jews knew.

Consider a few things. In Judaism, for example, one had to go to the temple to meet with God. The Most Holy Place was there, supposedly, where the Shekinah glory of God dwelt. Only the high priest could enter there once a year, under penalty of death if he was in sin. And the glory of God, the concentrated presence of God, was supposed to be there in that Most Holy Place, in a physical temple.

Second, in Judaism, external rituals had to be performed for everything: washing one’s hands, killing animals, performing different kinds of rituals, searching the entire house for leaven—external rites that pointed toward a spiritual reality, but that spiritual reality was based on external things, on mechanical acts.

Third, Judaism depended on human intermediaries. Now notice that all these things also apply to a formal, religious Christianity that does not know the vitality of God and of the Holy Spirit. It is also possible within Christianity—both evangelical and Catholic, incidentally—for people to think that they must go to the temple to meet with God, that everything depends on external rituals and outward things, on mechanical acts, and that they must depend on human intermediaries to take them into the presence of God. You are sitting back there, while up here the pastor or priest is performing things that connect with the realm of the Spirit; but you are over there, the priest is here, and God is over there. And the priest or pastor is the intermediary. And that is not necessarily what Scripture presents as the ideal state of affairs.

And fourth, God is outside the individual rather than within. In Judaism, God was out there, and at best a priest, a prophet, or a king, through a special anointing, could enjoy intimacy with the Spirit, but it was for the purpose of carrying out a highly exceptional and superhuman task. Most human beings could not have intimacy with that wholly other God who was outside them. It was an outward religion. And that is why one depends upon human intermediaries to connect us with that God who is outside us.

And lastly, the law was external and based on commandments; moral life was based on commandments, on declarations that had to be adhered to in a very, very rigid manner in order to have contact with that supernatural being.

You see, then, that it is a religion based on outward things, and that is not—well, that was good for a time, but God has desired to go beyond that, and God wants to go beyond that in our lives. God does not want us to feel that we have to go to church because that is where God is, and that is where I have to meet him and get my injection of religion this Sunday. And that I must depend on the pastor to usher me into the presence of God, and that if there is no pastor, deacon, elder, or anointed person, I have no contact with God.

God does not want you to depend on rituals, on singing or jumping, although those things are good; but that is not necessarily where the presence of God is found. And it is easy to fall into those things. Even, I would say, in Christian sectors that call themselves Pentecostal and charismatic, one can fall into the same kind of routine, because the outward side of religion is always there, ready to ensnare you if you are not careful and do not use the discernment of the Holy Spirit.

Now, everything I am saying here is illustrated by this account of the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. In a sense, we implicitly see in that conversation the contrast between the Old Testament, represented by this woman, who still looks to the prophets—even though her religion is a mixed religion, she is still thinking in Old Testament terms—and Jesus, who represents the new thing God brings to humanity, a new and different revelation.

And it is like seeing the Old Testament and the New Testament speaking face-to-face through these two people. And we must ask ourselves which of those two dimensions I represent, and where I am in my faith. Do I truly have a life in the Spirit?

The Apostle Paul is always emphasizing life in the Spirit. For example, he says, “...there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit....”

He says, “...walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh....”

Paul is continually drawing that contrast between those two lifestyles. Let us look, for example—there are about eight effects that I am going to go through quickly, because what I want is for you to understand this dimension: when we speak of the spirit as something internal, something individual, intimate, personal. That is the spiritual life God wants for you. It is good to come and rejoice together; it is very important, but the primary need is for you to live a life of intimacy with God, for you to know where to go and find water for yourself. More than that, for you to know that you already have the water with you. And that is important; we must change our mindset, we must change our focus. Much of life in the Spirit has to do with a change of mindset.

That is why the Apostle Paul says, in Romans chapter 12, verses 1 through 3, among other things, “...do not conform to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your understanding.....” because that is where everything begins: with the renewing of the understanding.

Now, look, for example: the Samaritan woman represents external water. She is drawing water from an external well. The Lord says to her, ‘Hey, if you knew who is asking you for a drink, you would ask him, and he would give you water springing up into eternal life.’ The Lord is referring to the water of the Spirit, that water which he says he will give to everyone who follows him.

The Lord said, “Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from within him.” The Lord is often associated with water; that is very interesting. Incidentally, in many religions, life in the spirit is associated with water. The Ganges River in India, other people’s Scriptures—man instinctively knows that there is something in water associated with the presence of God, with the divine. And here the Lord associates himself with water.

This woman represents that religion which continually requires you, through a great deal of work, to go. How many of us have seen—or perhaps we ourselves carried—a can of water? Those women in our countries, with a can of water and a rolled-up cloth on their heads, walking home with a can of water. Admit it. Perhaps some of you here had the blessing of carrying a can of water at some point. There is nothing shameful about that. Quite the opposite.

But she represents external water versus the internal water that the Lord..... We are supposed to have the life of God within us, brothers and sisters, refreshing us, instead of continually having to go outside. On the other hand, she also embodies this matter of religion’s temporary effect.

The Lord tells her, you are going to drink this water, but you will become thirsty again. But if I give you some of the water that I know how to give, you will never be thirsty again; what the Lord is telling her here is a metaphor. But brothers and sisters, that is how it is: those who practice external religion, who do not have a true life in the Spirit, who do not have an intimate, personal connection with God, go to church, and while the show lasts they feel close to God; but when the music ends and everyone goes home and they get back into their cars, the decline begins again. Everyday life, time, and space fall once more like a curtain over the individual’s consciousness, and that person is no longer a vibrant Christian until returning to the service again.

Water. People draw water, have it for a while, and then it is gone. It is like going to a nightclub: for a while everything is great and everyone is very happy; or like the person who gets drunk and whose problems go away, only to wake up in the morning with a headache and the harsh awareness that your problems are still right there, as fresh as they were before you got drunk.

Because that is how man is: man can even drink briefly from religion, but unless he has a personal relationship, he does not know how to nourish himself when problems come, when difficulties come, when he is alone, when he feels depressed, when there is sickness, when there are financial problems. That water is not there, because the effect of religion is only temporary. As long as you can intoxicate yourself with the ritual, the symbol, the stained-glass windows, the incense, the dark color of the wood, the vestments of the priest or the pastor, for a moment you can inhabit the sacred; but when all of that disappears, you are back in the everyday reality of time and space.

And that is not what God wants. God wants you to carry the sacred within you. Amen. God wants you to carry eternity within you. God wants you to be able to draw upon the Holy Spirit at any moment to revitalize you when you need it. This difference between temporary effects and lasting effects is very important; the Lord tells her, ‘You will not be thirsty.’ When you have Christ in your heart, when you have a vital relationship with Jesus, you can continually resurrect Christ, so to speak, every day, 24 hours a day; whenever you need him, he is there, ready to rise up again and heal your wound, bring an awareness of God’s living presence within you, renew your vision—whatever it may be. You do not need a pastor or another person to remind you that God exists. No, you know because he is within you; he is with you. It is not a fictitious, temporary effect dependent upon symbols; rather, it depends upon the uninterrupted presence of God within you.

Another thing I see here in this woman is this matter of effort. Formal religion is associated with work. To me, the religion of the Spirit is associated with rest: “Be still and know that I am God.” “...In rest and repose you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength...” says the Lord. “...You will keep in perfect peace the one whose mind remains fixed on you...”

Rest. “...Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest...” says the Lord. “...Take my yokes upon one another, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light; you will find rest for your souls....”

Life in the Spirit is associated with rest, even though there are difficulties too. Incidentally, there is also an agonizing dimension to the Christian life, but it is because there is being, because there is conquest, because there is gain, because we are moving forward, because God is working on us and polishing us and disciplining us; and in that there is a certain level of work, but it is work that does not kill, but instead revives and strengthens.

The Word of God says that when God’s discipline has accomplished its purpose in us, it leaves within us a lasting, sweet, and gentle fruit of peace and life.

So this woman is there with her can, lowering it into the well and drawing water. She has to put it on her shoulder or on her head and return to her village to use that water. And Christ says to her, do you know what, woman? I have water for which you do not have to lower that can in there to draw it out. That water is within you and springs up into eternal life; it will continually refresh you.

You see, the religious person has to... it is a life of anxious striving. Martha was close to Jesus, but she was anxious, and the Lord told her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious about many things, and that is not....’

You see, a person can have Christ very near and yet be anxious, living by his own strength, his own energy, continually burning himself out and becoming frustrated. It is a tremendous effort.

You have to make vows, and that was what wore Martin Luther out: the terrible striving of the formal religion of the Middle Ages and the whole dreadful economy that had been created around saints and vows and supposedly sacred articles which had the power to do who knows what—the indulgences, walking all the way to Rome on one’s knees, and that whole apparatus of works which had to be kept continually turning so that people would remain hypnotized by religion, because religion could not sustain itself.

When men do not have the Holy Spirit, they must continually sweep things around to keep people entertained and give them a sense of the sacred. Religion without Christ within is a religion of work, brothers and sisters, rather than rest. I believe that, at times, I have refused to keep my church entertained. Some churches depend on 27 campaigns a year, 40 healers, 17 sessions rebuking demons, eight concerts, and this and that... and the point is to keep people constantly active, entertained, with something new, something different. And I say, what happens when we cannot have that? Everything collapses, because people have grown accustomed to the apparatus. Religion without Christ, without the Holy Spirit, is a religion of external things, objects, actions, and effort.

That is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, “...Brothers and sisters, when I went to you, I resolved to know nothing except Christ and him resurrected, and I went to you not with excellence of speech or human wisdom, but with the power of God, so that your faith might not be based on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God...”

Paul did not want to entertain people; he did not want to go there with a dramatic recitation, rhetoric, or orchestrated, rehearsed movements. He said, I went there like that—humble, simple, but with the power of God—because I do not want you to depend on lots of shouting, lots of apparatus, lots of commotion. That is not faith. The Christian life is a seat where the presence of the Holy Spirit dwells within a person.

You do not need to keep turning the crank continually in order to feel the Holy Spirit. Life without Christ is a religious, anxious, carnal life of constant doing, searching here and there, always trying to keep yourself stirred up and hypnotized by something new, something different, because you need that: a new preacher, a new program, a new book, a new place. I continually see people like that, anxiously striving over things. They are over here, they are over there—a new prophet, a new movement, a new church—and you see them running around, and I say, ‘Hey, the Spirit is within you.’

You cannot depend on me, on this church, on the deacons, or on anyone else. Christ must be in your life. And if he is not in your life, you have to seek him and keep seeking him until you feel that he has entered and taken possession of your life, that the Holy Spirit is within you. For the person who has a vital experience with Christ, the world can collapse, twenty thousand churches can fall, ministries can collapse, and that person will remain firm in the Lord because Christ is within them—not in the pastor, not in the church, not in the institution, not in the denomination. It is important to live focused on Christ, because otherwise you will be doing this continually: one will fall and you will have to raise up another, another saint over here; that one broke, so you have to find yet another one—anxious striving, constant work.

And you say, no, it is not anxious striving, it is not struggle; that carnal struggle, that anxious striving, is not what God wants for you. There are so many examples we could use. Think of the paralytic at Bethesda: the water has to be stirred, and when the water is stirred, the first one who jumps in is the only one who can be healed. And along comes Jesus Christ, whistling, very calmly, and he sees that man who has been there at the edge of the pool for years and years, and he says to him, ‘Hey, what is wrong with you? Why are you there?’ ‘Well, I have been here for years, and what happens is that every once in a while an angel comes and stirs the water, and the first one who jumps in is the one who gets healed; and I am a paralytic—just imagine—I cannot do anything.’ And Jesus says to him, ‘Would you like to be healed?’ The Lord gives him a word of healing, the man gets up, and he is healed immediately.

And an image was left there; something was engraved. Notice: water. But when you have the risen Christ within you, when you have a life filled with the Holy Spirit, your vitality, your blessing, does not depend on competition. There is water for everyone; there is healing for everyone. And healing finds you; you do not find it. You have access to the vitality of God; it is not a matter of being the first one to sprint away when the gun goes off. The life of God manifests itself spontaneously and fluidly within you. That is the difference. To me, it makes the difference between Pharisaism and evangelical religious life, on the one hand, and the flowing life of the Spirit, on the other, even clearer. The latter is organic; things happen in a magical, lovely, beautiful, spontaneous way.

Another thing: religious life is a life of enmity, controversy, and competition. It envisions a limited God who, if he gives to that person, cannot give to me, and vice versa; whereas life in the Spirit is a life of grace, a life of acceptance, a life of love, a life of tolerance, a life in which you see the life of God in others and rejoice—and that does not mean that you are more impoverished because God is blessing those other people. It is a life in which you respect diversity in the Kingdom of God. Not everyone has to believe exactly what you believe, provided that certain fundamental beliefs are held; but within that, there is also freedom to breathe.

And if the sister wears makeup, glory to God; if you do not wear makeup, do not worry—let the Lord deal with her in his own time. If the sister’s hem is two centimeters shorter than you would like, leave her alone; the Lord will deal with it in his own time—do not send her an anonymous letter. And there are so many other things.

This woman tries to draw Christ into a controversy. Ah, we worship here, and you say it is over there. Look, woman, life in the Spirit has nothing to do with this question of whether it is over there in Jerusalem, here in Samaria, or in the temple, or whatever. That is not it. He says, the day is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

The realm of the spirit is where the Lord is worshiped. And there is freedom. Brothers and sisters, formal religious life is the mother of all the great religious wars that have taken place in the world. Look at Ireland, look at the sixteenth-century wars in Europe, look at the internal wars among the Arabs. Now, I believe that when there is a true life of the spirit, a relationship with the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, it is very difficult for those squabbles, those struggles among brothers and sisters, to arise, because what prevails is the Spirit of Christ.

When the apostles come to Jesus and say to him, “Look, there is someone out there preaching in your name, and he does not follow us; do you want us to order him to be quiet?” The Lord tells them, “Leave him alone, because no one who preaches in my name or heals someone in my name can be my enemy. Whoever is not against us is for us.”

He said something there that I believe needs to be greatly qualified, but he told them, “Do not worry so much about that.” Another time: “There is someone over there to whom we preached, and he did not want to accept you. Do you want us to make fire fall upon them?” The Lord told them, “You do not know what spirit you are of”—the spirit moving them at that very moment was the spirit of the devil, he meant to tell them. Because they did not have a vital experience with the risen Christ.

That came to them, by the way—that truth came to them when they encountered the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. I believe they understood many things then. But the formal, religious, robotic person is always trying to draw very clearly defined lines, in high definition, between us and them, those who believe and those who do not. Whereas I believe that the life of the spirit is a life of unity; where Christ is, there is unity.

That attitude of “I am, I have, and they do not” is of the devil; it is of the flesh; it is not of the Holy Spirit, the true Holy Spirit. There are people who believe they have the Holy Spirit, but they do not have the Holy Spirit. But where the Spirit of Christ is, with all his love, his goodness, his unifying, harmonious vision, there is unity, there is peace, there is joy, there is blessing, there is kindness, there is the Lord’s grace.

Whereas where there is religiosity, there is competition, there is controversy, there is disunity, there is conflict; there is the ego that is still not redeemed, trying to occupy its own space and feeling sorry for itself because someone else is being blessed, as though God had a limited supply. God can bless you a thousand percent and the other person a thousand percent as well, and not a single drop of his glory in his blessing will run out.

The Christian life is a life of love; it is the fruit of the Holy Spirit; it is the blessing of God. It is not a life of controversies, hostilities, difficulties, conflicts, accusations, divisions, or favoritism; all of that is of the flesh and the devil. Let us ask the Lord to make us a church truly characterized by unity, love, harmony, tolerance, and grace, so that we may bless one another. Because where the life of the spirit is, there is a beautifully unifying and harmonious life.

Another thing I also see here is that formal religious life is a life of buildings and sacred places. Everything is here—this temple, this place. Religious people are bound to an architecture, to a physical configuration, while the child of God carries the temple with him 24 hours a day; he is the temple of the Holy Spirit. You carry the temple with you 24 hours a day, my brother. And what you come to do here in this place now is simply this: right now there are two, 300, 400 temples here, united into a single temple worshiping the Lord. A mystical temple rises when all God’s temples unite at the moment of worship. And that is what we are doing now. Here are temples, all inhabited by the Holy Spirit, inside a physical temple, in contact with the supreme temple, which is God’s eternal, infinite temple up above—something mystical, something completely without form. And we come to church, but not to be injected with religion and faith and spirituality; it is simply to make a great concert of worship to our Father, each of us taking our little ember and joining them together to make a great fire that reaches the throne of God. That is the difference.

The experience of worship within a particular place is qualified and made relative, and you know that you can worship God anywhere. In your bathroom at home, you can worship the Lord there, because the temple is with you, in you, and around you. You walk down the street, and you are in the temple. You work at the sewing machine, and you are in the temple. You prepare food, and you are in the temple. Glory to the Lord. There is no distinction. As you work and worship the Lord, you are in the temple.

And you are in church, and you are in the temple too. And you are praising, and you are in the temple. And you are writing a letter on the computer or by hand, and you are in the temple too. There is no distinction; in a sense, it is all sacred. When we understand that, it is revolutionary.

Whereas this woman inhabits the physical realm; religion inhabits her in the physical realm. She is still bound to Samaria, to her controversy with the Jews, and to the temple, and the Lord tells her, “Woman, I am speaking to you about something qualitatively very different.”

Another thing I also see here is that spiritual Christian religion, the true religion of the spirit, is a life of grace and not of condemnation. Formal religious life is a life of condemnation and not of grace. And that is why the apostle Paul says, “...There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus...”

Why? Look, this woman is still in that place. Some ask why she chose that hour at midday. She is a sinful woman, and she is under God’s condemnation. Her sin is inside her. She carries it every day: her sensuality, her morally disordered life. And she is isolated from the other women; she cannot feel the grace of God. She is bound, isolated, and alone, because that is what religious life is.

Religious life cannot give you a sense of reconciliation with the eternal. You always have to live on substitutes and symbols that give you a momentary sense of connection with the eternal. But when you have Christ in your heart, you know that you have been forgiven. You have freedom.

In the chapter in Hebrews—I do not have time to read it—it speaks about this: that we should confidently approach the throne of grace opened by Christ through his cross. The Christian life is a life of blessing and peace with God, of reconciliation with the Father. Religious life, on the other hand, is a life of condemnation: do not do this, do not touch, do not drink, do not do that, do not go, do not eat, do not dress that way, do not do this, do not do the other. It is a life of expecting a lightning bolt to fall on you from above at any moment because God woke up in a bad mood today and you offended him.

The Christian life, the spiritual life, on the other hand, is a life of joy. Christ was called a glutton and a drunkard because he liked being in places where there was celebration, where there was peace. And they accused him because his disciples ate and did not fast, and because they picked heads of grain on the Sabbath, and they accused him because he healed on the Sabbath and because of all these things, for formal religion is a religion of condemnation. It cannot give you true rest, true peace with God. That can happen only when Christ enters your heart and you know that you are a daughter, a son of God, and that your life does not depend on what you do—although what you do is important—but that God loves you because Christ died for you on the cross. He relates to you through Christ Jesus, and you have access to the Father; you have the freedom of a child who can enter his father’s office even if his father is a great statesman, and your father receives you because you are a child of God.

Two more things: formal religious life is a life of bondage. It cannot give you freedom because the devil will always have ways of keeping you bound. There is no hope of your being set free. This woman is bound to a sensual life; she is bound to a lifestyle that keeps her in chains, and Christ says, “Look, I can set you free from that; I can give you rest from your bondage.”

And that is why he confronts her, to perform an exorcism. He says, “You have had five husbands,” because before we can be free, we must be cleansed; we must be confronted; we must bring things into the light through an encounter with Christ. And when you have Christ in your heart, that is where I believe the time of true liberation in your life can begin. Never be ashamed to bring the Lord everything that is inside you. Never be ashamed to tell him your most intimate, profound, and terrifying sins. He already knows them anyway, and nothing shocks him. What he wants is to take that, lift it up, set it flying, and transform it into a white dove that blesses your life, so that you can then find rest.

And if you are struggling, the Lord says, “I am going to give you the victory; keep fighting, because the victory will be yours.” Never live in slavery. A child of God cannot live in slavery. Whatever mental or emotional bondage you may have, whatever it may be, bring it to the Father again and again until the Father answers with total deliverance. It does not matter what your bondage may be: depression, fear, inner conflicts, inferiority complexes, wounds from the past—whatever it may be, the Lord is powerful enough to set you free.

This woman could not be set free by religion. She was living a schizophrenic, divided, compartmentalized life, and Christ unifies her and then sets her free to go and serve the Lord and bring others to the knowledge of Christ.

And finally, religious life is a dead religion, as opposed to a living person. Religious life is made up of a system of beliefs, an external apparatus, a theology, a theological apparatus, a host of teachings, rituals, men, buildings, constitutions, and declarations, as Judaism was, with all its decrees and things meticulously observed.

Christ tells her, “Look, you have to know me.” Notice that the climactic moment of this encounter is when Christ says, “I am he, the one speaking with you.” He has been leading this woman to that point of revealing himself to her as the Son of God. When she has an encounter with him, she is then set free to go and find her companions and bring them to meet Jesus, because when you encounter a living being, as Christ is, then you truly have spiritual life.

Then you are free for a life of service, a life of blessing, a fruitful life—not an anonymous life of fighting your demons inside with your bare fists. You will always lose. But when Christ enters your life, then you have an advocate, a helper within you—the Paraclete—who helps you in all your struggles and sets you free to be a blessing to others.

Religious life, spiritual life. All of that is illustrated by Jesus’ encounter with this Samaritan woman. Which life are you truly living? If you focus on your life right now, on what we might call your spiritual life, where do you fit best? In these two systems, let us say, which I am trying clumsily to explain, where is your life, more or less? Where would you place yourself? I cannot state everything in the finest detail because this does not lend itself to that. Rather, I am trying to outline a realm; and in which of those two realms do you believe you fit right now? In which of those two descriptions do you find yourself?

We sometimes throw many stones at Catholics, but we evangelicals can be more religious than Catholics themselves, let me tell you. And evangelical religiosity is more treacherous than Catholic religiosity because we think we have already transcended it, but we fall right back into it again. So we can turn Pentecostal spirituality into that as well; we can fall into the same religious robotic behavior and believe we are even farther removed from it when we are still immersed in the very same thing. It is something very treacherous. But within this description, which path are you on? Toward what religiosity, toward what spirituality are you heading in your life?

The Lord wants water springing up into eternal life; relationship; temples that we inhabit and that inhabit us; a personal relationship with a living being; a loving, harmonious, reconciling outlook; power to break bonds and chains; effectiveness in bringing others to the knowledge of Jesus; comfort, healing, and refreshment in the desert. You do not have to go to intermediaries—although that is good from time to time—but you have your own water, and you carry it with you. And although you are in the desert, you open your little canteen, refresh yourself, and can keep going because the water is inside you. You do not have to go to church so that they can pump up your tire again—the tire that begins to deflate the moment you pass through the door of the church courtyard—until you return there once more, like one of those cars with a flat tire circling the church so that they can fill you up again with one more sermon during the time of praise.

That is not the life God wants for you. God wants an inward, fluid, organic, continuous life; that is the life God wants. If you are not living that life, the Lord says to you today, “Ask me to give you water, and I will give it to you,” brothers and sisters. God is saying to the people of God, “I want water for you—the water of my Son, living water.”

How many of you would like to have that water this morning? Amen. Glory to the Lord. Forgive me if I have gone on too long, but this is the Word of God, and it must be completed. And there is still much more for us in that text.

Brother, I invite you to an inner life, a life of inner freshness, a life in which the Holy Spirit dwells within you. Right now, there in your heart, say: I renounce the religious life, I renounce a merely external life, and I embrace the life of the Spirit. God, teach me how to live that life of the Spirit, in the name of Jesus. I invite you to open your eyes to a life that God wants you to live. Perhaps you have already accepted the Lord, but that is simply a beginning; it established a starting point, but there are areas upon areas upon areas in which God wants you to keep opening doors, deeper chambers of fullness, anointing, vision, and understanding. The Christian life is a life of continual growth. We have impoverished it so much by making people believe that sitting on an evangelical church pew will bring them into contact with God. It is a terrible, terrible robbery, and people allow themselves to be deceived because they want to be deceived, because they do not want to recognize their poverty and let God break and humble them. They are afraid.

I was speaking with someone recently about precisely this. This person needs God, is in the church, and has accepted Christ, but is afraid to plunge into the waters because of what might happen, and it is difficult: you have to die; you have to break. God wants us to break through the outer crust of religion, to be passionate, for there to be laughter, weeping, sweat, and tears, for the inner to communicate with the outer, for the sacred and the everyday, time and eternity, the divine and the human, the banal and the sublime, to become deeply intertwined. All these things united into a single substance—that is the life of the Spirit. There are no differences. Everything is one. Everything in Him is yes and amen, says the Lord.

Brother, I invite you in the name of Jesus. Embrace the life of the Spirit this afternoon. Say to the Lord: Come in, Holy Spirit; come in and send Your anointing into every pore of my skin, every part of my being. Send Your ointment, take the hardened hide, and make it breathe again and become flexible, Holy Spirit. We need You, Lord. We want that life of the Spirit for ourselves, a life that refreshes, a life that springs up into eternal life.

I want to extend an invitation if there is anyone here this afternoon who has not come to know that Jesus. Think of yourself as the Samaritan woman, and perhaps you have not even come to know Christ yet. You have not surrendered your life to Him. The Lord would like you to say this afternoon, “You know what? Today I found the Messiah,” and then go to your friends and relatives and say, “You know what? I found the Messiah. Come, let’s go see Him.” Amen.

I want to invite anyone who has not yet received Christ into their heart to raise their hand, because I want to pray—I would like to pray for you this afternoon and place you in the hands of the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. Is there anyone who has not yet surrendered their life to Jesus Christ and would like to do so this afternoon? We will take a moment to pray for you. Is there anyone who would like to raise their hand and say to the Lord, “Lord, I want to enter that dimension”?

We will take a moment here. God bless you, sister; glory to the Lord. Anyone else? A hand is being raised over there too—that young lady. Glory to the Lord. Anyone else? Let’s see. There are others like the Samaritan woman. You are like the Samaritan woman; I am like the Samaritan woman. We need to have an encounter with the Messiah, and then we have to go and tell others.

Is there anyone else? Let’s see, anyone else who would like to surrender to Jesus Christ this afternoon, who would like to surrender their life to the Lord. Yes, we already acknowledged her. Come over here. Brother, I would like to pray; would someone come and accompany these people? Come with them here now, and we are going to pray for them. Come this way; we want to initiate you into an inner life, an organic life, a flowing life.

Young man, God has great things for you, and God is going to bless you, and God is going to give you what you need and are seeking. You can do it this afternoon; you are going to receive something. God is going to touch you. Thank You, Lord Jesus.

Is there anyone else still? If there is anyone else who would like to surrender their life to the Messiah, who is Christ Jesus, and live a—whew!—an explosive life in the Spirit, come over here. Do not worry if everything is not clear in your mind or if you have some doubts. What Christ wants is for you to come just as you are and have an initial encounter with Him. He will make the way clear to you afterward. He will tell you what lies ahead. Do not rush; right now it is simply a matter of taking that first step of faith, that first step of faith. Hallelujah!

Is there anyone else who would like to come up here so that we can pray for you? Come forward and surrender your life to the Lord. If there is still someone who is struggling, I sense that perhaps there are one or two more people who are still struggling and wondering, “I don’t know—should I do it or not?” This is the moment; you can still do it. Come over here, and let’s settle this once and for all.

Glory to God. Amen. Amen. Come over here, brothers and sisters; we bless you in the name of the Lord. The young lady—how good it is to see young people coming to the feet of the Lord. They have their whole lives ahead of them, and God is going to bless them greatly. Hallelujah! You are having a life-changing encounter with Christ Jesus this afternoon. Amen. Amen. Glory to the Lord. Glory to the Lord.

Brothers and sisters, say with me—you who are there and have received the Lord this afternoon, repeat after me: Lord Jesus Christ, ..... as my God and as my Savior. I acknowledge that in You I have forgiveness of my sins and eternal life. Enter my spirit, sit with me, and live life with me. Forgive my sins, wash me, and seal me.

And now say the following as well. I want you to... The Lord is telling me more and more each day that I should also invite people to receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is Christ, but, humanly speaking, He is also something distinct, even though they are the same. But the Holy Spirit also wants to enter so that He can be a source of power in your life and enable you to walk the Christian life with greater energy and effectiveness.

God wants you to walk the Christian life with power and effectiveness and with the capacity to deal with anything that might come your way, whether it is a crisis, difficulties, or attacks from the enemy of your life, so that you can fight back and live a victorious Christian life. And so you want to receive the Holy Spirit as well, and you want to ask the Holy Spirit to come into you and walk with you, because that is what the Christian life is all about: life in the Spirit, life with the Spirit of God running and jumping and moving inside you for victory and for life.

Therefore, I want you to invite the Holy Spirit to come in as well, and say with me: Holy Spirit, I invite You to come into my life. Fill me, baptize me, and immerse me in You. Say to the Lord: Immerse me in You, bring me into You, and enter me and fill me until my life overflows.

Imagine that the waters of God’s river are entering your heart right now and washing you on the inside, and invite the Holy Spirit. I invite you to open your mouth, and I know that what I am going to ask you to do is difficult, but invite the Holy Spirit to come in. Say, “Holy Spirit, come into my life,” and say, “I receive You,” and say, “Thank You for coming in.” Say it just like that, and praise the Lord.

Say to Him, “Thank You, Father.” Now praise the Lord. Praise Him; do not be ashamed. Say to Him, “Thank You, Lord; thank You for being with me.” Very quietly, very gently, because if you are now going to enter the life of the Spirit, you have to begin to speak, to move, to act, to take risks, to act in the Spirit. You already have Him; the Spirit has entered your life because Christ says, “If you invite Me, I will come in.” And if you ask the Father for the Holy Spirit, He will give Him to you, and if you have asked Him, He has given Him to you. The Holy Spirit is inside you.

The Holy Spirit is inside you, and He will walk with you every step of the way. Know that you have the Spirit of God in you.

The Holy Spirit is with your baby; the Spirit is with you and will walk with you throughout your life. Believe it and know that you have Him within you. You do not have to come to church, although it is good for you to come, but the Holy Spirit will be with you every day of your life from now on. Talk with Him and ask Him for whatever you need; speak to Him, and He will give it to you.

Thank You, Lord. We bless these lives and seal them with the Holy Spirit. Receive the Holy Spirit.