The Word And The Spirit Together
But he seems to be looking in wrong places!
There is a very correct balance between the teaching of the Word of God and the moving of the Holy Spirit in a healthy Church environment.
Jesus Christ was known as a "prophet, powerful in Word and deed before God and all the people"
Luke 24:19
Jesus said,"The Words I have spoken to you are Spirit and they are life."
John 6:63
God works through His Word and His Spirit in perfectly precise balance.
Any church that only teaches the Word and any church that only operates in signs and wonders is an "Ishmael," a half son.
Abraham acted in the flesh in an attempt to fulfill a promise of God for a son and only produced a half son of the promise.
A son today that conflicts with the true son of the promise, "Isaac" who was the full son of Abraham.
Today we see some members of the family line of Ishmael troubling the entire earth with terror!
Isaac is the fulfillment of Gods promise to Abraham.
Word only churches conflict with Spirit only churches and vise versa.
This is an obstacle to a healthy New Testament Church.
It is a soulish act of the flesh to only teach the Word and doctrines.
It is an act of the flesh to attempt to only operate in signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit with out the Word.
It is an act of true spirituality to operate in both signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit and the teaching of the Word of God and doctrines together in a delicate balance with the flowing living Word of God producing results.
What will it be Church?
Ishmael, the flesh?
Or Isaac, the promise of God fulfilled?
If the Church heeds this message it will operate in true power and purity, teaching the Word and moving in the Spirit.
Jesus said to the Sadducees, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God."
Matthew 22:29
Paul the apostle said:
"Our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction."
1 Thessalonians 1:5
Paul also said:
"My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power."
1 Corinthians 2:4
Paul combined the Scriptures with a demonstration of the power of God in perfect delicate balance!
The two together, the Bible, God's inerrant and infallible Word, the Scriptures, and the supernatural, powerful signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit.
Total Balance.
Jesus said that the Sadducees were ignorant of both of these.
In most of our modern day churches it has been one or the other and not both together.
Recently a couple of great men of God passed away who missed this completely in their churches.
God took these men home early because I believe the time of imbalance is over.
To only emphasize one aspect of the correct balance, like these men of God did in their churches was very wrong.
God had to remove these influential men from the scene in order to start to correct a great wrong in the Church of today.
It is wrong to emphasize only one side of the equation but it is right to have a balance of both in equality.
Do you want to see God moving in your midst in power and mighty majesty?
Do you want to see the Holy Spirit rain down in your midst in magnificent revival?
The Scriptures and the Power of Almighty God together will accomplish this.
Has the modern day church been deceived into thinking that it could operate in a lopsided fashion and accomplish anything?
A true New Testament Church will operate in a balance of the Word and in Power of the Holy Spirit if it wants to impact this our world in this day and age.
Some Christians have been taught for years that their knowledge of the Scriptures was enough, that their emphasis of correct doctrines was enough.
They believed sincerely that it was enough and the only way to conduct "church."
Anything else was totally irrelevant and unnecessary to them.
The Power of God moving in signs and wonders was only something that happens on the pages of their Bibles and not really a reality for today.
To think like that is to be imbalanced.
The Word and the Spirit, balance.
The New Testament Church is not complete without signs and wonders!
Jesus said to our early Church founders, "Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high...You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you."
Luke 24:49; Acts 1:8.
The apostle Paul warned us against "having a form of godliness but denying its power."
2 Tim 3:5
Balance is the basis upon which God will grant spiritual power to His New Testament Church.
The emergent church of today will be a church of balance, a true restoration of a New Testament Church in the Land.
Not a powerless, boring church but a Church in revival where souls are being saved on a daily basis in Almighty God power of the Holy Spirit and in the doctrines and teaching of the Word of God!
BALANCE!
I have fought to bring this message to others my entire walk with God.
Fighting to bring about balance.
I have been asked to go away because of my message at times.
But my prophetic calling in the Lord requires me to bring this message to others in the Body of Christ.
You can plainly see why.
We will see the restoration of the New Testament Church!
And then, and only then will there be the greatest out pouring of God's Holy Spirit in the land like never before in the Church.
Church are you listening?
Are you beginning to get it?
Do you want to walk in perfect balance?
There is coming a birthing of the promises of God, the Isaac of God.
The Ishmael church is falling apart with out their leadership that God has now removed.
We will begin to see in the land a restoration of the New Testament Church of balance.
This is the promised Bride of Christ, the Body of Christ represented in the land that will shine brightly before all the eyes of the earth in this our time...
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Are we ready for the revival just around the corner that is soon coming?
The people that I see God using the most in this revival will be those who have allowed a Biblical foundation to be constructed under them, knowing the Word of God.
The Spirit of God will have that which He needs to use in you by bringing to your recollection passages of the Scriptures at pertinent moments.
I see people who have learned to be sensitive to the Holy Spirits leading and guidance being used in this upcoming revival.
People who know how to trust in the Holy Spirit to move through their yielded lives.
A people who know of the power of the Word and of the Spirit.
They move in the knowledge of the Word and of the Spirit.
For the Word of God is living and active.
Sharper than any two edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Hebrews 4:12
Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
A perfect blend of the knowledge of Gods Word and able to follow the Holy Spirit's leading.
This is the Christian that God will be using in greater anointing to bring about the coming revival.
We all are blending together in perfect unity.
By this all men will know you are My disciples, if you love one another.
Why?
To tell others about Jesus Christ and the gospel message.
The Spirit also bears testimony; He witnesses to Jesus and empowers us to do the same.
The Holy Spirit "will testify about Me."
John 15:26
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Acts 1:8
After they prayed, the place they were meeting was shaken.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God boldly.
Acts 4:31
We must not forget that the kingdom of God consists in power, not in words, as Paul reminds us in
1 Corinthians 4:20:
"For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power."
DO NOT EXCLUDE THE HOLY SPIRIT.
My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
1 Corinthians 2:4-5
Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
1 Corinthians 1:22-24
Only in the preaching of the cross of Christ will we find the perfect balance of the Word and the Spirit.
There are some places that are telling young people to not worry about the Word of God.
In fact they are being told that sometimes the Spirit of God will go outside of the Word of God.
They seek novelty.
They are being told that people who abide by the Word are "fearful."
An impossibility because the Spirit of God and the Word of God are One.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1
The Holy Spirit is the Author of the Bible.
"No prophecy of scripture (whether found in the Old or New Testament.) is of private interpretation.
For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit."
2 Pet. 1:21.
Men did not conjure from their own minds the prophecies.
They were moved, carried, or borne along as the wind carries a sailing vessel, by the Holy Spirit, the breath of God.
The Bible, then, is from the Holy Spirit and not from man and is, therefore, to be revered as God.
It was the work of the Spirit to reveal the mind of God to the apostles, who both spake and wrote these things.
The written word, the Bible, is authored in this manner by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit provided Christ with unlimited power during his personal ministry.
The Holy Spirit said through Isaiah (11:2) that "the Spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon" Jesus.
In a synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1,2 which says, in part, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor" (Lk. 4:18).
Jesus thus affirmed that he preached by the power of the Spirit. Peter said that God anointed Jesus "with the Holy Spirit and with power" (Acts 10:38).
According to Romans 8, the Holy Spirit does three things: a. Leads or guides God's children.
"For as many as are lead by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God" (v. 14).
Those who are, "after the Spirit, mind the things of the Spirit" (v. 5).
We mind our parents by obeying them and we mind the things of the Spirit by obeying the words of the Spirit, which are found in the Bible.
The Spirit Does not go outside of the Word or beyond the Word.
The Spirit speaks to us through his Word, the New Testament.
The Holy Spirit once spoke through inspired men. Now he speaks to us in the inspired book, the New Testament.
We "hear what the Spirit saith to the churches" (Rev. 2:7), by reading his words. The Holy Spirit works through the word, the New Testament. "Blessed is he that readeth" (Rev. 1:3).
The Spirit and the Word are Inseparable.
Both together bring balance and power.
The Holy Spirit convicts the world (Jn. 16:8-11) concerning sin.
The Holy Spirit exposes, brings to light, or proves to be wrong those who do not believe Christ to be the Son of God.
Through the preaching of the gospel, sin is exposed.
For example, Peter, through inspiration of the Spirit, exposed the sins of his hearers in Jerusalem (Acts 2).
The Spirit uses the Word to prosecute those in sin.
In every single revival the Spirit of God moved through His Word to convict people of sin.
The power of God moved and people were saved.
The Spirit works through his word to reason with us.
What Was The Much Overlooked Open Secret Of The Early Churches Success In Powerful Ministry That Many Are Seeking After Today?
The Anointing Of The Lord And The Fullness Of The Holy Spirit Releases The Word Of God!
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| Lonnie Frisbee Used The Living Word And Relied Upon The Holy Spirit | And Impacted An Entire Generation |
Some churches only teach the Bible, lifting it up as the primary thing we ought to do while eliminating prophecy as something that is unnecessary.
When in fact the two go hand in hand.
Prophecy flows from the seeds of the Bible, the Word of God.
We are not to just sit and learn the Bible year after year, taking it all in and not letting it flow prophetically out to others.
I had the honor of being around Greg Laurie when we were both first born again.
He would be constantly getting revelation from the Word of God by the Holy Spirit.
As we were the ones around him at the time we got front row seats to him flowing out to us the things that he was learning from the Holy Spirit.
He could not contain it all to himself, he just had to share it with others.
Any one who goes to hear this man of God gets the Word from him still to this day; only he has more to give than he did way back so long ago when we were all young men.
All of us are to be giving out, flowing out what God flows into us; expanding the Word of God through others around us.
Today's lesson addresses these things.
I have two good books that were recommended to a friend that I have purchased.
The first one is called "The Physics of heaven" by Judy Franklin and Ellyn Davis.
And the second one is called "The new mystics" by John Crowder.
While great reading for spiritually hungry people, both of these books side step this simple truth that we find in the Bible that we will study now.
The answer that many are seeking through the above two pay walled books is right there for free in the Bible as plain as day for all to openly access.
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In a recent discussion of the Scriptures, we were led to agree that the principle purpose for the book of Acts seems to be the description of the anointing of the Lord and the fullness of the Spirit that rested upon the early believers.
Why should such a discussion be important to any of us?
Many of us have been too narrow in our understanding of this dynamic book.
A Pentecostal influence has led us to see Acts as a book that records the fact that the Spirit of the Lord fell and the believers spoke in tongues.
We forget that this experience is not what the book of Acts is all about.
But as we go deeper into the book of Acts, we find stories such as the one recorded about the Church at Ephesus ( Acts 19).
Paul found some disciples there, and he laid his hands upon them.
They received the Holy Spirit, and they spake with tongues and prophesied; and almost immediately there was a release that came from Ephesus to speak the Word of the Lord.
These people, filled with the Holy Spirit, began to speak the Word of the Lord.
Within two years everyone in Asia ( that means Asia Minor or what we call Turkey ) had heard the Word of the Lord.
Every single person had heard the Word of God!
No modern day cell phones, no texting, no computers.
This phenomenal evangelistic campaign simply started with just twelve people being filled with the Holy Spirit, and from the humble beginning the Living Word began sounding out.
The day they received the Spirit they spoke with tongues and prophesied, and the prophetic flow began like a great magnificent tide of the Living Word of God that kept rising and overcoming everything else.
People with books of magic worth fortunes brought them to be burned.
The Living Word of God grew mightily and prevailed ( Acts 19:1-20 ).
All without cellphones or the Internet!
How many Christian people do we see today looking for a deeper experience or some secret to obtain power or personal increase in ministry, looking everywhere but in the Word of God?
The flesh guiding the flesh, leading to soulishness and foolishness in most cases.
The Book of Acts is about people being filled with the Spirit of the Lord.
But even beyond that, it is about the Living Word growing and prevailing over everything else.
Its pages are filled with accounts of men who were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Living Word of the Lord until that Word became like a rising tide.
Some have contended that we finally have come to the place where we do not need the Scriptures anymore.
They say we do not need the Scriptures because we have prophecy.
That is not true.
Some feel they could live on the word that a mature man of God brings, but such a word is only the fruit of the Scripture itself.
Some of these men started hiding the Word in their hearts when they were just learning to read.
They read and studied the Holy Scriptures.
The Scriptures were written upon their hearts, etched upon them with fire.
Later the Holy Spirit began to bring it to mind, and the prophetic flow began to come.
But you cannot divide that word and say, "Here is prophecy, and here is the Word."
The prophecy in a man is a result of the Word; it is a result of the Scriptures.
You can read the Scriptures and you can hear the Word with your spiritual ear, or you can hear the Word in its fruitfulness coming forth from another vessel; nevertheless, it is all the same Word.
Some say that they want to just hold to the Scriptures.
What will it grow?
What will seeds grow in a package?
Not one thing.
That is what the Bible is: a package of seeds.
You must take it, and you must plant it in your heart, and you must water it!
Let the Holy Spirit breathe on it; and after awhile, it begins to grow; it begins to spring forth.
You may say, "I'll stick to the Bible, and you can have the prophecy."
However, the prophecy is nothing more than the germinated Word.
It is germinated; it is growing; it is coming to fulfillment.
When we talk about the Word, when we talk about how the Scriptures came forth, and when we talk about how the disciples began to speak the Word of the Lord in the New Testament, we realize that God wants to do the same thing today.
He would like to set this whole move of His Spirit on fire.
But most of God's people are not deep enough into what God does in His Word to produce that fire.
Since the beginning of the restoration of the New Testament Church until this time, I do not believe that the people of God have had experiences as rich as they are now receiving.
Frankly, I believe that the experiences began at a shallow level.
God intended for them, as the restoration moved along, to become deeper and deeper.
I remember when people would say, "Praise God, we now are filled with the Holy Ghost and fire."
There was no fire, and there was not much of the Holy Ghost, either.
But they did have an experience about which they said, "We talk in tongues as the Christians did in the book of Acts."
Yet they did not move in what those early disciples moved in as recorded in the book of Acts.
What they should have said was that their experience was the beginning of a restoration of the Acts experience.
That would have been humility which God would have honored.
Now people receive a Word from God and immediately begin to move in it.
The effectiveness of impartation has improved vastly from the early days.
People can begin a walk with God now and have a clearer vision of what restoration is all about then many people had after ten years of walking in the early days of this restoration.
Why?
Because there is depth that has been established.
This leads us to certain conclusion.
Even with the most ardent determination of prophesying, even with the most intense proclaiming of the Word of the Lord, I fear that some have not had the depth of experience that brings forth the creative, forceful Word we are expecting and must have.
There is a way by which the present level of experiences can become deeper, and it is that depth that actually will give reality to our walk with God.
If experiences tend to become deeper as time goes on, then I suggest that you go back and
I suggest that you seek God and get a little deeper experience of deliverance in your life.
I suggest that you get a little more release from the flesh.
To put it bluntly, it is one thing to be saved; and it is another thing to be saved to the uttermost
( Hebrews 7:25 ).
Would you like to be saved to the uttermost?
That is a lot of saving.
If I asked you if you were saved, you would say, "Yes."
But are you saved to the uttermost?
Have you received the Holy Spirit?
Are you really filled with the Holy Spirit?
Do you have a double portion of the Holy Spirit?
How deep an experience are you going to have?
There is nothing that you receive from God that is not expandable.
God does not give you anything that will not grow with your life.
Your dedication must grow.
Your revelations must grow.
You must grow!
Grow.
God intends for the revelations and the experiences to expand and grow deeper as time goes on.
Whenever there is a waning of your experiences, a diminishing, it is a very unhealthy sign.
It is a sign that death is working in you- the wrong kind of death.
Away with the human arrogance that says, "Praise the Lord, five years ago the Lord met me," or "Two years ago He met me.
I had a real experience.
Someone laid hands on me and prophesied over me."
Perhaps he has a little more to give now than he did then.
Suppose the government decides to help everyone who is out of work by giving each a hundred dollars.
Everyone who is unemployed goes out and gets a hundred dollars.
Later, a new law is passed: the government decides to give five hundred dollars to everyone who is unemployed.
Will a man say, "I don't qualify, I already have my hundred dollars"?
No, he will yell, "I want four hundred more dollars.
If you're going to give five hundred dollars away, I only have received a hundred; and I want four hundred more."
In the same way, if God restored to you something that was one fifth of what it could be now, you should come back and say, "I want a new deal on this.
I want You to give me something more.
You were passing out portions, but now You are giving out double portions, so I want a double portion.
I believe God is making available a deeper experience, a deeper appropriation than we have had thus far in the restoration of the New Testament Church.
We are entering into a new phase; and I am in favor of us all standing in line, saying, "Lord, we are ready for a double portion.
We are ready for a little deeper experience than we have had, a little deeper deliverance than we have had, a little better healing than we have had.
We are ready for an experience in the Holy Spirit where we will be overflowing constantly."
This desire for deeper experiences is leading us to a true restoration of the book of Acts' experience.
In the book of Acts it says that the disciples were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they all spake the Word of God with boldness ( Acts 4:31 ).
How would you like to have a new experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit until you begin speaking the Word of the Lord with boldness?
It is up to you.
You must turn that hunger loose.
The more you are filled with the Spirit, the deeper the Word will be that flows forth from you.
You cannot move in something that you do not have.
If you speak the Word with limited effectiveness ( it does not matter how much you stomp and yell ), you need to go a little further and cry out to God for a deeper faith and a greater anointing.
When there has been a meeting of God's people which has been given to exhortation and prophecy, I believe we should look for the Words that have been spoken to happen.
If prophecies come releasing the finances, we should have those finances.
If we prophesy a blessing on a missionary project, there should be a blessing on that project.
When God's people prophesy over some situation, they should expect that there will be a change.
There must be this ardent determined, forceful explosion of faith.
It is time for us to soberly analyze how much we have from God and get a little more.
We must constantly reach into a greater anointing of the Holy Spirit and say, "This is the way it's going to be; there is going to be more of God in my life."
If you go through the book of Acts, using Young's Concordance, and trace the two words, "rhema' and "Logos," which are Greek words translated into the English "word," you will discover that the two words are used interchangeably.
At the present time in a current religious movement, there is a teaching that "rhema" is the spoken word uttered by men of authority.
According to this teaching the "logos" is the written Word.
But if you check this very carefully, you will find that there were times when people spoke the "logos" and there were times when they spoke the "rehma."
In like manner there were times when they used the word "logos" when referring to Scripture. and there were times when they used "rhema."
In the New Testament, these two words were used interchangeably.
The truth of the matter is that we have a holy word, the "logos" from God, and we put in action constantly the "rhema."
It would be wrong to quibble about those words.
I believe, in fact, that the teaching that differentiates between the prophetic word and the written Word is not born out by careful research of the Scriptures.
That Word begins to grow and explode in your heart, and after a while what comes out is a real flow of the Word.
God never intended that anything He gives you be dead-ended within your nature.
He gives you the Holy Spirit; and as you come to Him and drink, as the Lord said,"Out of your belly will flow rivers of living water" ( John 7:38 ).
He never intended that it stop with you.
He never intended that He put a Word in you that stops with you.
God's intention was that when He gives you a word, that word should begin to grow until it possesses you; and after a while, you will be speaking the word of God, too.
You will be a source of that word.
After you drink of the Holy Spirit, you, too, will become a fountain of living water.
God has more for His people to move in than they are moving in right now; and the quickest way to move in what He wants is to go back to the Lord and say, "Lord, I want You to fill my vessel."
You may contend that you have been filled, but things have changed since you were filled.
In most houses there are all sizes of jars.
There are half-pints, pints, quarts, gallons, and hugh five-gallon water bottles.
If you get all those bottles together and fill them, you might question each one, saying, "Little jar, are you full?"
"I'm filled to running over."
"How about you, water bottle, are you full?"
"All five gallons. I'm filled to running over."
There is a great deal of difference between a half-pint and a five-gallon jug.
The difference is in the capacity.
As you walk on in the Lord, you are like a wineskin that stretches; sometimes you do not realize that it takes a little more to fill you after awhile.
If you have a half-pint, just keep on being full until your capacity is enlarged; and it will be enlarged.
God's people must keep seeking the Lord and keep being filled with the Lord, coming together again and again to be filled all over again.
They must let the Word of Christ dwell in them richly, and out of that word they can speak to
( Colossians 3:16 ).
They must be conditioned to the relationship of spiritual fullness that enables them to speak the word of the Lord effectively.
Speak the Living Word of God as Oracles of God.
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