(Spirit-Filled Life) Part 6: Concerned for Others — Zac Poonen

The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ

If we can keep this understanding before us all the time that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. In the midst of all the confusing teaching concerning the Holy Spirit today in so many groups in Christendom, keep one thing before you.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. That's why we don't have to be afraid of Him. You don't have to be afraid of the Holy Spirit any more than you have to be afraid of Jesus. It's the Spirit of Christ.

Jesus said to His disciples, I will send you another Comforter, another Helper. He didn't say a Comforter or a Helper. I'll send you another. Who was the first one? Jesus. When He was going away, He said, I'll send you another.

I'll send you a Helper. He'll be with you forever. And He will be in you. Jesus could say, I can only be with you. And if I stay here and never go to heaven, I'll just be with you and all those other people in India and China and Africa and America will never have me.

It'll just be you and me in Palestine. But if I go, I will send the Holy Spirit and He'll be in you and He'll be with you forever. It's like having Jesus in us and with us forever. It's the Spirit of Christ.

So whenever I see something which doesn't tally with the Spirit of Christ, I pull back. I say, I'm sorry, I can't go along with that. And I see many, many areas in Christendom where I don't see the Spirit of Christ.

I pull back from that. I don't judge them. I say, God is their judge. I'm not here to condemn them or judge them. I've got to just leave them alone and mind my own business. I find a spirit of worldliness in a lot of people who call themselves Christians.

The pursuit of money, immodesty in women and the way they dress. I say, that's not the Spirit of Christ. I pull back from it. I pull back from people who watch movies that pollute their mind. It's not the Spirit of Christ.

I can't imagine Jesus sitting there and watching that type of rotten stuff, watching television programs which a lot of Christians watch. I say, I don't want it. I'm not here to judge them. If they want to watch it and destroy themselves, it's up to them.

As I said, God allows people to go to hell. If they want to go to hell, they will go to hell. And if God sees some of his children watching all these dirty things and all that, God says, okay, do it. He's not going to stop anybody.

Discernment Concerning Healing Ministries and Money

I want to pull back. I see people claiming to be filled with the Holy Spirit and the whole demonstration of public healing and miracles and all this reminds me more of a magic show than about the Spirit of Christ, how he had compassion on people and he would go and pray for a sick person and heal him and tell him, don't tell anybody.

I'm so happy that you're healed. I don't see that spirit in a lot of what's called healing ministry today. I see them collecting money. Jesus never did that once. That's one reason why we decided when we started our churches in India that we'd never take an offering.

Why? All of Christendom takes offerings. Some people pass buckets around, not just plates. And when there's not enough the first round, they pass it around a second time. Is this Christianity? Some preachers will get up and say, God's told me that a thousand people here are going to give $1 ,000 each.

Can you imagine Jesus saying that? What surprises me is not those preachers saying it. What surprises me is those tens of thousands Christians who sit with their mouths open and accepting this rubbish as Christianity.

That's what surprises me. And then I see some people, they're not worldly. They're not into miracles. They're into legalism. Rules. You don't follow every little rule, you can't be a part of us. Is that the spirit of Christ?

And each of these groups thinks the others are wrong. I don't want to be a part of worldliness. I don't want to be a part of all this false signs and wonders. And I don't want to be a part of legalistic Christianity, which binds people with rules.

To me, all of them are unchrist-like. Some look holier than the others. The Pharisees looked much holier than the Herodians. The Pharisees looked holier than Salome dancing. But God rejected both of them.

In fact, it wasn't Jesus never went to the prostitutes and said, How will you escape the damnation of hell? He went and said that to the most religious people of his time. Because they made rules. Whereas the Holy Spirit has come to bring us into an inner life.

The Sermon on the Mount and Inner Purity

Read Matthew 5, 6 and 7. And see how many rules Jesus made there. He spoke about an inner life there. He spoke about an inner purity. He spoke about poverty of spirit. He spoke about hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

He spoke about an inner freedom from the love of money. He spoke about inwardly loving one's enemies. Blessing those who curse us. He spoke about praying in secret where nobody knew you were praying. He spoke about fasting in secret.

He spoke about giving in secret. He spoke about doing to others, planning. Thinking of how to do some good to others. The good you want others to do to you. He taught us to think about how you want others to treat you.

Take the initiative and do it for them. That is Christianity. Not the multitudes of rules and regulations that Christians have made today. I've often compared it to trying to keep a pig clean. If I had a room full of pigs.

And I wanted to keep them clean. And I'm going to take them through a very dirty part of town. Full of muck and rubbish which they're always tempted to jump into. I can keep them clean by tying them with chains.

Carry all those pigs on chains. And I take them through a two mile walk through the rubbish. And they come through clean. A lot of legalistic Christianity is like that. We're also holy. They sit like tin soldiers.

They and their children sit like tin soldiers in the meetings. Appearing to be so holy. It's garbage. It's Phariseeism to the core. I reject it just as much as Jesus rejected it. What is the solution?

It's not to put more and more chains on people to keep them holy. How do you find out whether your churches got people who are clean because of rules? That was under the law. That was the only way God could keep Israel clean.

Give them rules. There were 613 commandments in the Old Testament. Not just 10. Read Numbers. Read Leviticus. Read all those books of Moses. There were 613 commandments. 613 chains to keep people clean.

Jesus came and broke all those chains. And you know what he gave us? The Holy Spirit. But man has got a tendency to go and put people under chains again. That's the only way to keep people clean. If we don't do that, or we don't believe in the Holy Spirit and all this.

A lot of churches that, I've noticed this, that the churches that are legalistic never preach the baptism in the Holy Spirit. They're afraid to talk about the Holy Spirit. Isn't that significant? They'd rather have rules to keep their people clean and holy.

Well, you can go that way. You can live under Moses if you like. But I finished with Moses long ago. Moses and Elijah have been removed from my vision. I see Jesus only. That's how it is. The Holy Spirit shows us not Moses, but Jesus.

He doesn't bring us to the law. He brings us to grace. And grace is much more powerful than the law. And I compare that to God taking out this nature of a pig from inside us and putting the nature of a cat that keeps itself clean.

And if you take a cat through dirty lanes, you don't have to tie any chains on it. It'll come through clean. Without chains. How is that? You want to know whether your church is full of pigs or cats? I'll tell you what.

Just give them freedom. And you'll discover pretty soon who's a pig and who's a cat. And people get scared. Hey, they're getting dirty. They're getting dirty because they're pigs. The solution is not to make rules for them.

The solution is to get them to be filled with the Holy Spirit to change their nature. I don't mean to go to some charismatic Pentecostal church and get some counterfeit. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what Peter, James, and John got in the day of Pentecost.

The Spirit that taught John that you could walk as Jesus walked. What rules did Jesus live by? The Pharisees tried their best to bring Him into their rules. He refused to listen to them. He lived by the Spirit.

By the Holy Spirit. And He was purer than all those people with all their rules. And that's what happens. I'll tell you. 613 commandments will not make you holy. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. And He will do it.

And He'll do it in a much deeper way than this external holiness that brings the honor of men inward. The whole message of the New Covenant is this. That which was outward in the Old Covenant has now become inward.

You have heard that you should not commit murder. I say don't murder people in your heart. That means don't get angry with them. You have heard that it said don't commit adultery. Don't commit adultery in your heart.

You have heard that you must speak the truth when you're taking a vow. You know, put your hand on a Bible and say, I swear. No, speak the truth all the time. All the time. How many of you can honestly say that you live like that?

Keeping One's Word Before God

There is a verse in Psalm 15 which says, Who shall dwell in the holy hill of the Lord? I mean, I've experienced this and I can... This is what the Lord showed me from this Psalm. Have you read this verse?

Oh Lord, who can abide in your tent? Dwell in your holy hill? There are a number of things written there. One who doesn't slander with his tongue, verse 3. But I'm thinking of this verse 4, the last part.

He swears to his own hurt and does not change. And the living Bible paraphrases it. We can understand it better. He keeps a promise even if it ruins him. Got it? Supposing you've given... Now let me make it practical.

Supposing you've given your word to somebody. Okay, I'll do this. Or I'll sell this to you for so much. Or I'll buy this from you for so much. But you haven't yet given him a signed statement. And a few days later when he comes to make good on that, maybe the price has gone up or down.

You say, hey, I can't go by what I said the other day. I didn't sign it. Well, you're not a Christian. That's all. You know, I've been through situations like that where I never gave a signed statement but I gave my word.

And I found later on that I had not considered certain factors before giving that word. And I was going to lose a lot more financially. And the Lord reminded me of this verse. Your yes must be yes. Your no must be no.

If you're a disciple of Moses, go to all those rules. I didn't sign it. If you're a Christian, you keep your word. And I'll tell you this, I've kept my word. I've lost a lot of money. But God's replaced it a hundred times.

You think God will be in debt to you because you honored his word? You've got to be crazy to think that the creator of this universe is going to put you in debt because you honored him. I've never had a lack.

Learn to follow what Jesus taught. He taught us the way of life. When you put the kingdom of God first, all your earthly needs will be met. He swears to his own hurt and he doesn't change. It's an inner life.

It's an inner walk with God. Everything you do is in God's presence. In the presence of Jesus Christ, who is greater than any magistrate or supreme court judge, I gave my word to somebody. I'm going to keep it.

These are the things Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. It's an inner life. It's not got to do with removing jewelry or veiling the head or any such thing. It's got to do with an inner life. Now I believe in all that.

My wife and I don't wear jewelry. In our church, everybody veils their head when they pray and prophesy. But that's not the main thing. If it doesn't come out of inner life, it's legalism to the core.

It must come out of an inner life. That's what I'm saying. Modesty in dress. I believe it with all my heart. If a girl comes to my church immodestly dressed, I'll pull her up the very first day. Gently, graciously tell her a better way.

But I'll tell her to change her heart. Have you noticed in the construction of the tabernacle, when the Lord gave instructions. Now if you were to construct a building, and an architect were to draw up a plan, how would he draw it?

He'd first draw the size of the compound, and then the outer size of the building, and then the rooms, etc., etc. Can you imagine an architect who is trying to design a house, and he starts with a sofa that he puts in the middle of the sitting room?

That's crazy, isn't it? Do you know that's how the design of the tabernacle started? God doesn't tell Moses about the size of the outer core, or the size of the holy place. He says, let's start with the ark.

Why? Because the ark was in the innermost place. It was there where God would dwell. And the Lord said, you want to build a house for me? Start with the innermost place. We got to learn some things. These are not things you learn in Bible school.

These are things the Holy Spirit will teach you if you read Scripture. And humble yourself and say, Lord, I'm stupid as a donkey when it comes to spiritual things. Please teach me. I go to Scripture like that.

The Bible says, He has hidden these things from the clever and the intelligent. He's revealed them to babes. Go like a babe to Scripture, and say, open my blind eyes, Lord. The Holy Spirit will show you that God, right in the Old Testament, even through those signs, He was saying, I'm interested in your inner life.

The curtains, the rods, the pillars, and the poles, and all that of the tabernacle come later, but start with the ark. I believe in all the external things of Christianity, but it must start from within.

And if it doesn't start from within, we're just going to raise a bunch of pigs, with 613 rules, chains to keep them holy. I don't want to build a church like that. I don't want to build an Old Testament church.

I'd rather build no church, than an Old Testament church. That's why I need the Holy Spirit. That's why we need to urge people to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Inside, it's the most important thing.

Love as the Mark of Christ's Disciples

What is the most important thing you look for when you go to a church? You know, people ask me, when I meet God in different places, about my church. And if they ask me, do you break bread every Sunday?

I know, these are from the Plymouth Brethren. I don't need to ask anymore. Do you speak in tongues? I know, these are Pentecostals. From different questions, I can make out what is primary in their life.

Do your sisters wail their heads? Do they wail it all the time? These are the primary questions. I've never heard anybody ask me till today, do you love one another? That's what Jesus said. All men will know you are my disciples.

When you do what? When you speak in tongues? When your sisters wail their heads? When you sing certain hymns? When you sing these new charismatic choruses? It's when you love one another. And I'll tell you this, it's the Holy Spirit who sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts.

Romans 5 says that. There is no way that you can love an unlovely person unless the Holy Spirit fills your heart. It's easy to love those who are kind and nice to you. But some of God's people are, like the Bible says, peculiar people.

And to love them is not easy. But when the Holy Spirit fills you, you can. You can. Because God loves them. Because Jesus loved them enough to die for them. I remember once when I felt I should rebuke someone very strongly about something which is needed.

The Lord said to me, I saw the example of how Jesus rebuked people. And the Lord showed me something many years ago which I've never forgotten. He said, remember that the people I rebuked, I died and shed my blood for them.

Are you willing to do that? Or you just rebuke and go away? Boy, I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it all my life. That the more we are willing to lay down our life for people, the more authority we have to rebuke them.

Otherwise, we don't have that authority. How could Jesus call Peter, Get behind me, Satan! Because he loved him enough to die for him. How could he turn around to the Pharisees and say, You generation of vipers!

He loved them enough to die for them. I have rebuked people, but I've never called anybody Satan because I haven't loved people enough. I've never called anybody a generation of viper. I don't have that authority because I haven't been willing to lay down my life for them.

Why is it we can rebuke our own children more strongly than we can rebuke other people's children? Because we do so much for our children. We are willing to sacrifice everything for our children. If there's one loaf of bread in the house, we'd rather have our children eat it than we eat it ourselves.

Such people we can rebuke. I've rebuked my own children more strongly than any other children in the world. Because I was willing to do so much for them. It's love. That's what we see in Jesus. And that's what the Holy Spirit gives us.

Today there are so many people who preach fire in Brimstone and they look like prophets and revivalists. I'm not impressed. I'd like to see whether they're willing to lay down their lives for them. It's easy to preach fire in Brimstone and get a reputation as some type of prophet.

There are certain people in Christianity who will appreciate that. But when I see the Spirit of Christ, He spoke strong words. He took a whip once to chase people out of the temple who tried to make money in the name of religion.

But He loved them enough to die for them. And if this is the Spirit, that is the Spirit of Christ, do you want it? Do you really want the Spirit of Christ? Do you really want to lay down your lives for people who hate God and hate you?

Is that the Spirit you want or you want some experience? The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. And I see, you know, before He ever came to, was born in Bethlehem, it started in Heaven. I'm trying to understand the Spirit of Christ.

The Self-Sacrificial Nature of the Spirit of Christ

I'm trying to understand this Holy Spirit that I'm asking God to fill me with. You know, sometimes we are asking for something we don't realize what we're asking for. Let me explain to you what the Spirit of Christ is.

Many of you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I'm just trying to explain what that Spirit is and then think again before you ask God for the Spirit. When Jesus was in Heaven, He looked down on this earth and He saw people messing up their lives, destroying themselves, serving the devil, all types of evil.

And He sat there in the glory of Heaven, enjoying all that wonderful peace and presence of God there. And He said, I want them to have this, what I have. I don't want to enjoy this myself. I want them also to enjoy it.

How to do it? Okay. I have to go down, suffer, give up all these, all this enjoyment I have here, be rejected, spat upon. And if I can bring even some of them up here to enjoy this, I'll do it. Do you want that Spirit?

Do you want that? This is the Spirit that drove missionaries to go to difficult parts of the world. It's the Spirit of Christ. They heard about these people who are living in sin, serving the devil. They could have lived in comfort, making a lot of money in their own country.

But the Spirit of Christ filled them. He said, I got to go and bring them to where I am. I can't enjoy this. I remember when I began to first experience the glory of life in Christ. Many, 20 years after I was converted.

This glory of the life free from depression and discouragement and anger and lust and telling lies and love of money and all the wretched things I had as a born again Christian. And I said, Lord, if you give me life, I'm going to spread this as much as one human being can ever spread it.

This truth. I will do it. Because I saw so many Christians around me defeated. Their home lives in a mess. Christians who were living in sin, just getting the blood of Jesus. Blood of Jesus cleanses me.

Blood of Jesus cleanses me. And I could see the devil had trapped them, blinded their eyes, made them miss what God had for them. And I said, Lord, I've got to get them to hear it. Do you have a burden like that?

That's why I asked God to fill me with the Holy Spirit. I said, Lord, I can't do it. How can I do it alone? How can one man do this? Fill me with the Holy Spirit, then rivers of living water will go out from me.

It was not for myself. I already had that life. I want to ask you, my brother, sister. Do you have a passion to have this spirit of Christ? He never lived for himself. There was a poem, there was a hymn I heard those days, which I wrote in the front of my Bible.

Lord, help me to live from day to day in such a self-forgetful way. Lord, help me live from day to day in such a self-forgetful way that even when I kneel to pray, my prayer shall be for others. Others, Lord.

Others, let this my motto be. Help me to live for others that I might live like Thee. This is what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It's not rivers flowing in. It's rivers flowing out. It flows in from heaven, but it flows out.

The Cost of Spirit-Filled Service

And I'll tell you this. Believe me. If you get filled with the Holy Spirit, your life will be inconvenienced tremendously. Do you want it? I remember hearing a story of a brother who had a genuine gift of healing.

Not one of these fake healers who stand up on great platforms today. One who was quietly going around, never on a platform, praying for people individually here and there, and people were being healed because he had the gift of healing.

It's a gift. God hasn't given it to me. God gave me the gift of preaching His Word. But I believe that any gift God gives, it'll draw people who want it. And you know what happened when he had the gift of healing?

Sick people would come and he would be invited to go here and there. He would be woken up at 3 o 'clock at night in the middle of the night because somebody was seriously sick. His life was inconvenienced tremendously because he had a gift.

And he wouldn't collect money from people. He wasn't doing it for money. One day, when he got a call at about 2 o 'clock in the morning to come somewhere, he said, Lord, will you please stop these people from disturbing me in the middle of the night like this?

And the Lord said, Sure. And he took away his gift. He would still go around praying for people. Nothing happened. The gift was gone. And gradually the word spread. It's no use calling him. He's lost the gift.

He never got disturbed anymore at 2 o 'clock in the morning. He wept. Went back to God and said, God, let them disturb me. Give me back the gift. You think it's exciting to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

You'll be inconvenienced. Jesus was inconvenienced. Do you know there's a time it says that he didn't have time to eat food. Have you read this verse? It says he was so busy that they... In Mark chapter 3 it says the multitude gathered so much.

Mark 3, 20. So to such an extent that he could not even eat a meal. It wasn't like that before when he was a carpenter. He was... He could go for his meals on time. But once he came into the ministry anointed by the Holy Spirit, he...

And it was not just one meal because it was just one meal. It was not a serious thing. Many of us miss a meal. But this was so serious. There were so many meals he was missing that it says his relatives heard about it, verse 21, and said, he's lost his senses.

Nobody will say you've lost your senses if you miss a meal. But this... Jesus, he was missing so many meals. This man's crazy. Serving people, serving people, going here, going there. It says they took custody of him.

They thought he had gone mad. So many people, when they ask God to fill them with the Holy Spirit, they don't realize what they're asking for. What they're asking for is some tickling sensation, experience, some electric shock that they get that they heard somebody testified about.

No, that's not what the Bible speaks about. Think of the Apostle Paul. If he hadn't been filled with the Holy Spirit, he'd have just been a religious legalist following 613 rules and saying, I kept my conscience clear from my childhood.

But when he got filled with the Spirit, things changed. He got beaten. He got hammered. He got shipwrecked. All types of things. Why? Is this what happens to Spirit-filled people? Yeah. A lot of them get imprisoned.

They get martyred. They get killed. They don't... They didn't have to be killed if they were not going to be witnesses for Jesus. So... But Jesus is our example. There in heaven he felt, I... They must have what I have.

That is the Spirit of Christ. It's no longer selfish. You know how children are? They want everything for themselves. All the toys are mine. I'm not going to give it to you. We're like that. When we grow up, we're still like that.

The only thing we do it in more refined ways because otherwise it will look ugly. You know children will grab the biggest piece of the cake from the plate. We don't do that. We like to have it, but we lose our testimony.

We're not... We haven't changed really. But when the Holy Spirit fills us, it changes us inside. We really consider the good of the other person above our own. That's how it was with Jesus. He lived his whole life thinking of how he could bless others.

If it inconvenience me, let it be so. How do you think Christians who think 3 meetings a week is too much? Where in the world will such Christians be filled with the Holy Spirit? You might get filled with the Holy Spirit and end up having 7 meetings a week.

You think it's too much. You could have... You're filled with the Holy Spirit may send you to prayer meetings where you spend 4, 5, 6 hours in prayer. And fast. You want that? Or you want this nice 1 hour meeting on Sunday morning and go home.

Say, Lord, I'd like to be a spirit-filled Christian. Well, there are enough denominations in Christianity to give you some cheap counterfeit to tell you that you're filled. But if you want the genuine thing, look at Jesus.

See how he lived. See what happened when he was filled with the Holy Spirit. The devil hated him. And I tell you, the devil is against everyone who's filled with the Spirit. He targets them. But we're not afraid.

There was a time when I was afraid of the devil. I believe today the devil is afraid of me. Can you say that? When you're filled with the Spirit, you can say it. If you're not filled with the Spirit, Oh, I better not say that.

The devil will trouble me tomorrow if I ever say something like that. How many Christians there are who are scared of the devil? Who wouldn't know what to do if they meet a demon-possessed person? I didn't know what to do.

For 16 years after I was born again, before I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, I didn't know what to do if I confronted a demon-possessed person. I heard of one preacher who was in a meeting and a demon-possessed person began to manifest himself.

He says, I can't cast out a demon, but I can ask the ashes to cast you out. So that takes care of the demon as well. Is that the way Jesus did it? No. He cast the demon out of the person. We are surrounded by people who are oppressed by the devil in so many ways.

Jesus as the Pattern for Spirit-Filled Life

The greatest need today is for Christians who are, have a genuine baptism in fire, in immersion in the Holy Spirit. And I want to urge you, my brothers and sisters, the need of the hour is this. There's a lot of counterfeit around.

Look at Jesus and see what was the secret of his life. The Holy Spirit made him so secure in his father's love. He never wanted anybody's support. There was a time when, just before he went to the cross, where he knew all his disciples would leave him.

And he said, an hour is coming. This is John 16 and verse 32. An hour is coming, he said, and it's already come. You will all run away to your own home. All of you, you guys, you're the eleven who stood with me.

Even you will leave me. But I'm not alone. Look at the security. He didn't want even the support of the eleven. What a wonderful way to live. I don't want anybody's support. I found that happened to me when God really filled me with the Holy Spirit.

I said, it doesn't matter, Lord, if all of India turns against me anymore. Because I was sure, God was with me. And that's what Jesus said. You will all leave me. That's fine. I'm not alone. The Father is with me.

His life was so secure because of the Holy Spirit. Remember, Jesus lived on earth as a man. He was Almighty God. That's why he accepted worship. He never ceased to be God. God can never cease to be God.

Even if he takes human form. So, he never ceased to be God. But what I'm saying, he's never used any of the resources he had as God when he was on earth. He lived on earth as a man. Otherwise, he could not be an example for us.

An angel who flies across the swimming pool and says, follow me. I'll say, sorry, you can't be an example for me. Get rid of your wings first and take my body and then teach me how to cross this river.

So, Jesus came to earth and though he was God, he never used any of those resources. Otherwise, he could not be an example for us. And he lived on earth as a spirit-filled man. And that's what's helped me in the midst of the confusion in Christendom today to see that the perfect spirit-filled man is Jesus Christ.

And when I say I want to be filled with the Spirit, I want to be like Jesus. That's why I want to be filled with the Spirit. I want to live like he lived. I want to love like he loved. I want to have the same spirit he had.

I want to serve others like he served. I want to value other people like he valued. He didn't care whether a person was a leper or a king. They were all the same to him. I say, Lord, I wanted to be like that.

I want to look at all people exactly. That means, you know how as human beings, we have prejudices in our mind. We have prejudices against certain categories of humanity. You look into your own mind. Be honest with yourself.

And you'll see it's there. You have certain prejudices against certain people. You have certain prejudices against certain people in your own church, perhaps. Jesus didn't. He loved people too much to have a prejudice against them.

Because he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Don't say he was that because he was God. He emptied himself, it says, of all those resources he had. And he lived as a spirit-filled man. That's what challenges me that I can live as he lived.

Because he became like me. He was made in all things like his brothers. And the way he lived was because he was filled with the Holy Spirit. And as I studied the earthly life of Jesus, he had such a passion to help others that the Holy Spirit would lead him to people.

It's amazing. You know, he'd walk down a road. And the Holy Spirit would say, Now stop. Look up into the tree. There's a man sitting there. You got to bless him. That's how he lived on earth. Do you believe you can live like that?

Well, say, Oh, no. That's because he was God. That's exactly what the devil wants you to believe. That he lived on earth using resources that we can never have. So, of course, you can't walk like him.

I know he was God. But do you also know that he emptied himself this glorious truth in order to be an example for us. He emptied himself of all those resources so that he could live as a spirit-filled man.