The Holy Spirit Living In Us — Sandeep Poonen

The Holy Spirit as the Gift of the New Covenant

I've been speaking about the ministry of the New Covenant and what we heard today about the Holy Spirit is an essential part of the New Covenant and that the New Covenant is not a character modification or a moral improvement program, but the Holy Spirit has been given to us from the start to the end.

Diminishing the Holy Spirit Through Unbelief

One of the great insults that many Christians give to God is to diminish the Holy Spirit. And let me explain one of the ways, one of the evil, wicked ways in which many Christians diminish the Holy Spirit.

I'm talking about Christians. I would talk about born-again Christians. Demean and blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Born-again Christians will say, will teach and will accept for themselves and will also teach their children, you can receive God into your heart.

How in God's name can we receive God into our heart? Only if the Holy Spirit comes into our heart. What right do we have to receive the Holy Spirit to come into our heart? No right. But for people who are born again, we say we can receive the Holy Spirit into our heart by faith and you can be born again.

All of us will put the badge on that we say we're baptized, we've been born again. Well, how did that happen? How did you get born again? Well, I asked God to come into my heart. And just like that, he came in.

Yeah, he just, when I repented, he came in. It's that simple. And the Holy Spirit comes into our heart and we're born again. But here's the blasphemy. The blasphemy happens that after that, we make it such a big deal for the Holy Spirit to come into our lives, to get victory over sin or for anything else.

We suddenly make a disconnect as if we're waiting for the Holy Spirit because Christendom has done that to us. Because the disciples waited for 10 days to receive the Holy Spirit, there's a whole movement and a lot of us can buy into this lie that we have to wait for the Holy Spirit to come.

And we must see it as a wickedness and an evil in our lives if any of us don't have the assurance that the Holy Spirit is in us. There's only one reason why the Holy Spirit is in us. It's because of our unbelief and our lack of faith.

What's stopping us from being filled with the Holy Spirit? What's stopping your 10-year-old child from being born again? What's stopping your 25-year-old child from being born again? Your 28-year-old co-worker from being born again?

All the same thing. Because we don't want Him. Or because we are not surrendering to Him. He comes in like sunlight comes into a room and the blinds are open. He comes and fills a bucket like a tap, like a bucket is put under a waterfall.

There's no blame on the Holy Spirit in whether our children are born again. There's no blaming on the Holy Spirit if we're not filled in the Holy Spirit right now. And this is where a lot of Christians, mostly because of the charismatic movement, has blasphemed the Holy Spirit, even though they're the ones who talk about the Holy Spirit the most.

They blaspheme the Holy Spirit because they make it as if it's a special thing. As if we have to keep waiting for Him and we've got hoping that He comes, we keep begging Him and praying and praying and hoping and running after Him.

And making it sound like it's on Him. It's never on Him. It's never on the Holy Spirit that our children are now saved. It's on us as parents, it's on me that the Holy Spirit is not filling me with right now.

I don't have to wait for victory tomorrow. There is no tomorrow except that I'm going to be with the Lord. There is only today. If there is only today, well, you really need the Holy Spirit today. You need the Holy Spirit right now.

Well, I'm going to have to wait for Him to come. And that's a mixed up, distorted gospel. This is not the first time we've talked about this, but this is a repeated reminder because religiosity sits deep within all of us.

Whether it has been through things you've heard in this pulpit or other pulpit, it doesn't matter. We have to fight a wrong concept about God and the Holy Spirit. And we who are born again, I'm not speaking to non-Christians, it may be a different message.

But for those of us who sit here being born again, we blaspheme the Holy Spirit by not, by making Him something other than sunlight that fills the room. Why is sunlight not in my room right now? It is because I have the blinds on.

And God is saying, move the blinds and the Holy Spirit will come in like the sunlight comes into the room. It is my fault and I can fix it in five seconds. I can fix the problem in five seconds by opening the blinds.

I'm not speaking theory. I live by this. I have chosen to live by this truth over and over again because I see it in the scripture. Luke chapter 11. It's as simple as a child asking for food that God gives the Holy Spirit.

That is why I say over and over again in different ways that I have to tell myself that I blaspheme the Holy Spirit by not allowing the Holy Spirit to come into my heart. And thinking that it's something on Him and not on me is the reason why I don't have the Holy Spirit.

Faith Rather Than Feelings

So what should I say? Should I lie when somebody asks me, have you been filled with the Holy Spirit? I shouldn't lie. But what are we waiting for? I'll tell you what I'd be waiting for if I've never seen the Holy Spirit.

I'm waiting for myself to believe God's word. And what stands in opposition to faith is feeling. And because we have so many stories in the Bible in which the Holy Spirit is tied with some event, we make the Holy Spirit tied with something rather than simple belief in God's word.

How do you know you're born again? How do you know your sins have been forgiven? You're feeling something or that feeling could change you. How do I know I'm born again? Belief in God's word. Belief in God's word what?

That the Holy Spirit has come and cleansed me through the blood of Jesus. How do I know that the Holy Spirit can come and fill me, equip me for every single circumstance today? Same word of God. Same word of God with the same power.

I believe that I will handicap and hamstring my children. We will hamstring and handicap our children, the next generation, in their ability to be born again and to live strong Christian lives because we don't accept the Holy Spirit for victory over sins, to kill all the giants and to live with the Lord all day long.

If they don't see us living with a filling of the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Holy Spirit over and immersion of the Holy Spirit over and over again, every day, if they don't see it, they're going to have real trouble understanding what it means to be born again.

Holiness as Evidence of the Spirit's Work

The Holy Spirit has to become somebody who is so precious and accessible to us. And this is something that the people in the old covenant didn't have. All they could have was to chain, as we heard, chain demon-possessed people and restrain them.

But the Holy Spirit has come to free us. And we must stop, we must catch the lie that we allow ourselves because, mostly because of some thing, event that happened that we read in God's word or some other church that we've been to or some ministry we've heard of, some email we get, that we think the Holy Spirit is connected with music, that the Holy Spirit is connected with a feeling, that the Holy Spirit is connected with, I could just sense the Holy Spirit.

What does that mean that you could just sense the Holy Spirit? I'll tell you how I sense the Holy Spirit. He makes me holy. It's very simple. You want to know if you were filled with the Holy Spirit today?

Just look at your life and you were holy. That's how I should sense the Holy Spirit. And I have to train my mind not to sense the Holy Spirit by music, by tears, by tingles down my spine, or I don't know what else.

But very simply, Lord, are you making me holy? Are you giving me a greater desire to be holy? That is the proof that God has given me the Holy Spirit. And He gives the Holy Spirit to us. But because we want to do our own will, because we want to do whatever we want to do, because we want to feel whatever we want to feel, the Holy Spirit is limited.

We want to keep the blinds on. We want to have the pity party. We don't want to kick the bad feelings out and let the sunlight of the Holy Spirit come in. It's all on me, all the time. Now, I don't want us to now become a congregation or a group of people that now knows the better answer to give.

When somebody asks if you've been filled with the Holy Spirit, it's not the point. The point is not to give the right answer. The point is to have the right life. And I want to urge all of us, dear brothers and sisters, be filled with the Holy Spirit, continuously.

That's the command of Scripture. Don't be drunk with wine. You've got two choices. Go and enjoy the pleasures of this world. Drunk with wine is one option. Or be filled with the Holy Spirit, continually.

You choose. Don't hang out in the church. Don't hang out in the New Covenant church and not be filled with the Holy Spirit. You're worse. That's lukewarm. God says, I'll spit you out of my mouth. If not, let's just go back into the world.

Let's find out how horrible the pig farm is. Then come back and be filled with the Holy Spirit, continuously. And let's maybe need to be born again the same way we tell our children to be born again, which is receive the Holy Spirit.

Surrender fully and receive Him. He'll come in. What am I telling my children? Surrender and then you just have to wait for God to come in? That's not what I'm telling my children. But somehow we believe that if we ask God to fill us with the Holy Spirit, to live a holy life today, it's not possible.

We have to wait. We have to continue to fall into sin today. Maybe three months from now I'll get victory. No, not at all. God gives you this full measure of the Holy Spirit for today. Not for tomorrow.

For today. So we live in victory today. The full measure of the Holy Spirit that God gave Jesus, He's willing to give to us today. If we don't radically and ruthlessly live with this reality of the Holy Spirit, we're living under maybe no covenant.

Maybe better for us to live under the whole covenant where we chain the demon-possessed spirits within us. Not as Christians, but that attitude of the flesh that hates God. Maybe it's better to chain that.

But that's not the solution that God offers. The solution offered is to live by the Spirit. The law of the Spirit sets us free from the law of sin and death, and frees us from the life of the flesh. And so we must radically ask ourselves, dear brothers and sisters, ask yourself, what is the active role of the Holy Spirit in your life today?

Or are you just character modification? Have we restrained our eyes and our mouse-click movements such that we don't click on those links? Have we modified our behavior well enough that we stay away from these things?

Or is there still a dependence on the Holy Spirit? We have to keep fighting for it, because we so often lose it. So we can get scared by our flesh and just think it's going to take lots of time, or we can just comfort ourselves with our self-denial programs.

The Holy Spirit has come to give us a dramatically different life. Dramatically different life today. So we don't need to have a long prayer meeting. We don't have to spend hours, we don't have to play soft music.

We just have to believe in God's Word. Did you play soft music? You want to play soft music to get your children born again? Any of us think that that's going to get our children born again? Let's play soft music right now.

Let's turn on some candles and then our children will be born again. But we make the filling of the Holy Spirit after that somehow related to something. Long times of singing, praying, it's not complicated.

It's not complicated things. And our children need to see a consistency in our lives. That we as adults don't mystify the Holy Spirit. He's a very real person, just like God the Father is a real person.

And Jesus is a real person. He can be our friend. So is the Holy Spirit. He's a person. And He must be with me today. I've created a few slides. The point of it is not to go through them. You can have a sermon on each one of them.

Skip. The next slide is... We talked about the Holy Spirit making us children of God. We already talked about that. Here are some of the ministries of the Holy Spirit. There's a book that I wrote on this that goes through each of these points in more detail.

The Holy Spirit Comes as Fire

So I'm just going to give you a quick overview of it. The next slide please. The Holy Spirit must come as a fire. We all want to receive the Holy Spirit. We'll open up our arms and we'll open up and say, Lord fill us with the Holy Spirit.

And He comes knocking on the door. Jesus says, I stand at the door and I knock. Will anyone open to me and come in? I'll sit and dine with them. But when we creak the door open, we see Jesus holding a fire.

And that's the Holy Spirit. And He says, if you're going to make me come in, I'm going to baptize you. I'm going to immerse you. I'm going to dunk you head to toe in the fire. Holy Spirit in the fire.

I'm going to burn up all that is not of me. So every last ambition, preference, bias, interest burnt up. And so we say, no God, we don't want you. We don't want the Holy Spirit. And we blame God for the Holy Spirit saying, God please come, please fill me with the Holy Spirit.

And God says, I'm always ready for you. But I come as a fire. It's because I don't want to receive you Lord as a fire that burns me up completely. That's why I don't receive the Holy Spirit like I should.

This is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It's the very first mention of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, after Matthew chapter 1, Jesus, God told Mary that she was birthed. Jesus was going to be birthed to the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit as the Dove of Rest

But the first ministry of the Holy Spirit here as a fire. The next one is as a dove. This must coexist with the fire. God must burn us up. But we have rest. There's no controversy. There's no tension between God and me as he brings the fire.

We surrender. And we say, God, you can have your way. And some things are harder than others. To let God have our way. And you put a religious thing on it. Lord, I really want to do this for you. And then it becomes really hard sometimes for the Lord to burn that up.

And we say, well, I think God gave that to me. Well, then God will have no problem resurrecting it. God gave Isaac to Abraham. And God said, kill him. Kill him. So we must always, no matter what religious language we put on it or what impression we had on it, we have to be willing to say, God, you and I will never fight.

When you come with the fire, I also see that there will be a dove resting on me. Enlightened on him. It rested on Jesus. Doves don't fight. So when the dove comes with the fire and we fight, the dove says, okay, I'll go.

I'll come back tomorrow. You clearly want to pick a fight. Doves don't fight. So when the Holy Spirit comes with a dove, as a dove and a fire, he says, the fire is for you. But there's not going to be any fight here.

If you're going to fight me, let's come back another day. And he waits. Because he's waiting for me to start fighting. Not because he's not ready to work with me. But he comes to pour his fire on me to burn me up.

But I'm so interested in holding on to my feelings of unforgiveness. I'm so interested in holding on to my feelings of worry. I'm so interested in holding on to my feelings of what money could do or help me.

The Spirit's Conviction of Sin and Love

So he says, let's come back another day. Just tell me when you're ready. I'm coming to you as a dove. And I want to pour fire on you and burn you up. Next one. This is one of my favorites. Where does the Holy Spirit come from?

He comes to make you answer the question, who killed Jesus? He comes to convict us of that. This is a question that we must sit long at heart about. Who killed Jesus? History tells me one answer. But the Holy Spirit comes to tell me a different answer.

Dear brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit comes to tell me that I killed Jesus. And he comes to break my heart over that. And the promise that I haven't even tasted, I can't even fathom but I long for, is that one day that God will break my heart that I killed Jesus, like my heart would be broken if one of my children died.

I know how my heart would be broken if one of my children died. And God's promise to me here is that he wants to fill me with the Holy Spirit. I can't manufacture this. Ten times watching the Passion of Christ won't do this to me.

The Holy Spirit will give this to me. Where he will break my heart that I'm the one who killed Jesus. We all can maybe answer the question on a quiz. Yes, I'm the one who killed Jesus. But, Lord, breaking my heart over it?

Like my heart is broken when I lose my child? I haven't even scratched the surface of that.

The Holy Spirit comes to convict. You, you are the one who killed. I want to break your heart over that.

The next one. And he wants to pour God's love into us like a waterfall to overflowing. There's not a good enough picture I can find to show what God wants to do with this Holy Spirit. As he pours to overflowing rivers of living water, gushing into us, gushing out.

The Holy Spirit as Helper and Advocate

This is the love of God that he wants to fill us with. We've talked a lot about this. The next one. Do you think it's interesting that the Holy Spirit, when he came to live with me, God said, I'll make you the main character and I'll make the Holy Spirit the helper.

What a beautiful picture of God's respect for our choice, for our free will. And God says, I'm not going to give you the Holy Spirit to possess you. I'm going to give you the Holy Spirit to help you. Come like a dove.

Anytime you need help, come around. I'm not going to barge my way and stand at the door and knock. I who created this world, I hold the whole world in my fingers, but I stand at the door and knock on your heart.

Because that's the spirit of the Holy Spirit. Comes like a dove and he says, I'm ready to help you. Anytime you want to grab my hand, my hand is there. But many times, if you push me away, keep doing it.

I'll always be there to pick you up, to help you. As we seek to be like Jesus, as we seek to be like God, we have to have that relentless hand out for people. Let me help you. Let me lift you up. This is the spirit of God that God gives us.

How can we have a spirit of judgment if the Holy Spirit is in us? How can we be judgmental to others when the Holy Spirit is a helper? He comes to help you. He comes to convict me that I'm the one. He comes to fill me with love and lift me up.

This is how I ought to be to other people. The Lord has filled me with the Holy Spirit. It's the ministry of the Holy Spirit to come and help you. He's there as a helper today. I'll tell you something, I think about cooking.

I'm a mess in the kitchen. I need help. I can do it if I get help. If I have a helper, I feel that I can make some food for people who are coming over. If not, let's order in. I have to see that about my life as a Christian.

Living in Victory Through the Spirit Today

As a way to live this life, to live in victory, dear brothers, today. There's lots of moral development plans to get you nice and sober and well-equipped three months from now, six months from now. But what's the gospel that says you can be like Jesus today?

The Holy Spirit. We must. Let's not blaspheme him. Let's accept him. Let's embrace him and say, Lord, I want to... The good news is that I can be different today as I walk out this building. That I can talk to my spouse differently.

That I can live in forgiveness differently today. You mean not one day to work it all out and to process it out loud. And go to a therapist to let me figure out all that happened to my parents. No, today, right now, I need the Holy Spirit, Lord.

And he's given to us. Let's fight for this, dear Church of God, dear believers, dear saints, dear brothers and sisters, dear children of God. Let's fight for this that the world doesn't give us. And pop psychology will tell you all kinds of things that can help us be good two months from now, three months from now, one year from now.

That's what I said. There are many programs, including many religions, will tell you, I can help you make 2018 a good year. But we're fighting for, let's make today a good day. That's what we're fighting for.

That's why we need the Holy Spirit today, in your mess. In the midst of your mess, God can get you out of the kingdom of darkness and bring you into the kingdom of life. For children who have not received the Lord, God can do that today.

And for those of us who are still stuck in some sins, God can get us out today. He can help me. Let me just go to him and ask him for help. Lord, I'm as clueless about dealing with this sin as I am in the kitchen.

Help me, Lord. And He'll help us. The next one. He's an advocate. It's the same word that is used for help or an advocate, but I like that other meaning. He's an advocate. He's rooting for me. He's rooting for me.

He groans with me. You know, all of us, as we get older, we start to see the body starting to decay, break down, all kinds of troubles. And we're saying, God, you know what? I'm groaning. I can't wait until I get to be with you and I'm fully in the redemption of my body and I get a brand new body.

I don't have to hear all these creaks from the bones rubbing against each other. Those days are over. I groan for that. I can't wait for that day. And God says, in the same way, the Holy Spirit groans with our weakness.

He's not throwing stones at us. He's groaning with us. You've got to listen to hear the Holy Spirit groaning, advocating on our behalf to the Father, to God, saying, I'm not giving up on you, Israel. So wonderful, beautiful Holy Spirit is groaning with us.

The Spirit's Work of Drawing Us to Jesus

He's advocating for us. God's on our side. We really need to treasure and value the Holy Spirit. And the last one is another one that's absolutely special to me, too. He draws me to Jesus. The Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is such a wonderful person because he's trying to unite me with Jesus.

He's trying to make me one with Jesus. He's trying to make me one with Jesus like a bride and a bridegroom are one. He's not interested in our songs. He's not interested in our professions of great things.

He's not interested in our meditations while on bed. When God says, come cast the foxes with me. Arise, come with me to the mountains. The Holy Spirit's constantly trying to get us up to say, go be with Jesus.

Don't do Bible study. Go be with Jesus. Don't have long hours of prayer. Go be with Jesus. Don't go and solve world hunger. Go be with Jesus. Don't do whatever you want. Go be with Jesus. And the Holy Spirit is groaning within us, saying, go be with Jesus.

Go be with Jesus. Because Jesus is the most beautiful person that exists. John 16, 14. He will glorify me. He will make Jesus more and more special to me. How can we overcome sin, dear brothers and sisters?

All these sins that hold on to us. Character modification, a different approach Jesus, the Holy Spirit offers, which is, I'll make Jesus so beautiful you wouldn't even want to sin. And he wants to make the Holy Spirit so beautiful to us that that's the attraction.

The attraction of the world is gone because Jesus is genuinely more interesting to me. That Jesus is genuinely better than all the attractions of this world. Who can do, who can offer such a life? Who can do such a life in my filthy, wretched life that I have right now?

That's full of these lusts and desires for himself. God says the Holy Spirit can do it. And he's available for us today. We don't get transformed into his image today. But today the start begins and we fight for these.

We long for these and we seek for these with all of our heart to say, Lord, this is my heritage. I want you to draw me to Christ. I want you to convict me that I'm the one who crucified you. I want these things to be real in my life.

And you said the Holy Spirit will do that to me. Fill me Lord. I'm not going to debate whether you gave him to me. You gave him to me. But now make these things real to me. Help me not to live by feelings.

But help me to be constantly drawn to Jesus. Going back to him. Going back to the one, the one that I killed. The Holy Spirit is saying come. Be with him, be with him. The Bible ends with saying the Spirit and the Bride say come.

The Bride of Christ has that heart and the Holy Spirit is telling each one of us, groaning with us, come, come be with Jesus. There's so much we can meditate on the Holy Spirit. Let me end with what I started.

Repenting of Man-Made Approaches to the Spirit

Let us not blaspheme the Holy Spirit. And blaspheme God's word by making the Holy Spirit more inaccessible than he needs to be. And let us repent if we've made it easier for our children to receive the Holy Spirit than we're making it on ourselves to receive the Holy Spirit.

I'm not talking about gift of healing, I'm not talking about gift of teaching, I'm not talking about gift of tongues or any of that stuff. I'm talking about the Holy Spirit as a person to do all of these things.

To help me, to convict me that I'm the one who killed Jesus, to draw me to Jesus. Why wait? Don't wait dear brothers, don't wait till tomorrow. He wants us to live in holiness today. He says be holy as I am holy.

Lord I have no chance. Well I'll give you my Holy Spirit. He is holy. It's in his name. It's wrapped up in his name. I'll give you the Holy Spirit. Then Lord, yes, he'll help me to be holy today. May God help us.

Prayer for the Holy Spirit's Presence

Let's close in prayer. Father I pray Lord that the Holy Spirit may grow in significance in our lives. That the Holy Spirit will become such a precious part of the Trinity. Lord we baptize people, we believe that you are three in one.

You are the Father, you are the Son and you are the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the one who gets to live with us Lord. It's the same Spirit of Christ. That same Spirit that Jesus wielded faithfully every single temptation and lived the flawless perfect life.

That same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead has promised to give us resurrection life. Lord these things are not possible Lord. Without your Holy Spirit we want to repent Lord Jesus of all these man-made efforts we've made to try to live better lives.

Help us dear Lord Jesus to see our continuous need for the Holy Spirit. That we would pray always, that we will pray without ceasing knowing that we constantly need the Holy Spirit to help us. Help us dear Lord Jesus, in Jesus name, Amen.

Depending on Jesus in Every Decision

Let me end with one last thought. How many things can you do without Jesus? I mean you know the Bible answer. How many things are we doing today without Jesus? You know how many things Jesus did without the Father's help?

He says I do nothing. We need to be trending in that direction. We're doing less and less without checking in with the Father. Many things are lawful but not all things are profitable and then God will start showing you some things that are technically lawful and God says stay away from it.

There's nothing wrong with reading our Bible at night and saying Lord I want to stay on it, lie in bed at night and I can comfort myself that I read scripture. But God was saying you know I was knocking at your door telling you to come out with me.

Bearing Fruit With the Holy Spirit

Is there something, have we seen the evil of burying our talent in the ground? Did we lose the talent? No? Gone? You gave me one? Here you go. God says you're wicked. You're a wicked person. If you just give back what I gave you.

I want you to get a return on it. So when God gives us the Holy Spirit He wants a return in holiness. His Holy Spirit and my filthy body. What's the return? A holy temple? A holy body? No. Here God gives you the Holy Spirit back.

The end of my life, still filthy temple. God says you're a wicked person. I gave you the Holy Spirit. Didn't do anything with it. Just bury them. Then use them to transform your body. May this not be true in our lives.

Let us really receive the Holy Spirit today. To live holy lives today. Amen.