Following the Holy Ghost

Lift your Bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Let's say this together say heavenly Father, I thank you for this wonderful atmosphere.

The Spirit of God is here tonight.

He's my helper, he's our helper.

Holy Ghost, illuminate the Word to me tonight so that I can employ your principles, so that I can be more closely aligned with the perfect will of God, not going here and there, but going straight down the pathway that you have ordained for my life.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you, worship team, beautiful job, appreciate you.

Let's look at Romans, chapter eight.

And while you're turning, when you get first John, chapter five, we'll go with Romans eight, first, verse 14.

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

For you've not received the Spirit of bondage again to fear, but you've received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry all by Father.

The Spirit itself and the King James, really, more accurately, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God.

And then, in first John, chapter five, chapter five, verse 10, he that believeth on the Son of God, everybody shout.

That's me.

He that believeth on the Son of God, half the witness has the witness present tense.

You have the witness in yourself.

You have the witness, the same witness that Romans is talking about, the witness of the Spirit.

If you're saved, you have the witness of the Spirit.

And so tonight I wanted to share a message entitled following the Holy Ghost.

Following the Holy Ghost and you know, a number of years ago I said that this morning.

But God just encouraged me teach what you take for granted.

They don't know what you know and we have new people come in and we all need to be refreshed in the things that we think we know.

Sometimes we quote scripture.

You know, sometimes you can quote a scripture wrong and really you miss it, because you'd be reading along and you really had it in your.

You got it in your head wrong and it's not quite what it says.

You know, it's easy to kind of get you know, so it's good to hear something over and over.

Faith cometh by hearing and hearing following the Holy Ghost.

And so I'm teaching what I take for granted and I have to practice it all the time and I've developed in that I was earlier in my life I mean I preach out of the times when I missed the Holy Ghost, when I didn't follow the Holy Ghost, and it's pretty disastrous in some cases.

Here God has blessing for you, and then you miss the leading of the Spirit.

And so, following the Holy Ghost, every believer has the right to be led by the Holy Ghost.

In fact, really, what this says in Romans is if you're a believer, you are led, because let's read it again, verse 14, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

So if you turn that around and how many of you believe that's true?

Well then you turn it around as many as their sons of God, then they are led by the Spirit of God.

So it's not a question of whether you're being led.

It's not a question of whether you're being led.

You are being led, you're being led all the time.

The question is are you following the leading?

That's the question.

Took me about 15 years to get ahold of that.

I don't know why I didn't connect the dots earlier.

No, he's leading you.

He's never gonna leave.

He's never gonna leave you an alert, he's never gonna leave you.

For Lord, he's the pericleet, he's the helper, amen.

So the question is not whether he's leading you.

The question is whether you've identified his leading and that you're following it.

So, and that's one of his primary duties, really, I mean one of his primary duties.

He just never shirks his duties.

I mean he has a duty to lead you.

He has a duty to lead you.

I mean that's his function inside of you.

Greater is he that's in me, the greater one lives in me.

If you're saved, you have the witness of the spirit, the same witness that told you you were saved to begin with.

I mean, how many of you?

Jesus appeared to you, knocked you off your horse and said Loretta, loretta, why persecute a style man?

It is hard for thee to kick against the bridge.

Did it happen to you?

No, it hadn't happened to her.

She didn't.

No, she had the witness that she got.

The witness, the witness of the spirit, is supernatural.

Everybody say that it's a witness of the spirit is supernatural.

And I just have to say that most Christians are looking for a word.

They're looking for a prophet to give them a word about what they ought to do.

They're looking for a vision or a dream, or looking for a spectacular, what I call spectacular guidance.

And I'll tell you, I've had my share of spectacular guidance.

I've had visions, I've had dreams.

I've had the Holy Ghost speak to me and it's.

I have to say that I'm sitting here thinking real hard.

If there was ever an occasion when I received spectacular guidance that it was easy after that.

Most of the time it means that you are about to go through a real rough patch and if God and His mercy hadn't chosen to manifest Himself in such a strong and dramatic way, you might have a chance maybe to not really stay with it.

I look back on that original vision of the regional center and Marshall Dillon's badge.

I like to say it just.

I mean, that's exactly what I thought about.

I'm just telling you I thought about Marshall Dillon, gunsmoak I know y'all are too spiritual to ever watch gunsmoak and kitty Kitty's, the bar girl you know works in the saloon.

I think they had a little thing going but they never did do anything about it.

But I saw that circle with a store and it came down, lit on the property, and he said regional center.

I mean, let me tell you something, I could have thrown that away a thousand times, 10,000 times, if it hadn't been so dramatic and by the witness of the spirit.

So our responsibility, if His primary duty is to lead us.

Our primary responsibility is to follow the Holy Ghost, follow the leading of the spirit.

Now, you can't follow your feelings.

Your feelings are the voice of your body, your emotions.

A lot of people just go by their emotions and say feel good, then they feel like they're in the will of God.

When they feel bad, they feel like they miss God and when they, you know, are mad, or when you know all these emotions, you have them.

You know God created us the way we are.

We have emotions.

God has emotions.

Thank God he doesn't act on His emotions and we shouldn't either.

We should.

We're made in the image and likeness of God and we're designed to operate on a higher plane than our body.

Our body cannot, we cannot please God acting on the flesh or acting according to the flesh, and you will not identify, because God's not a flesh, god's not a body.

God's what A spirit and we are spirit.

You guys good, it'll do your faith good to look in the mirror and realize I'm not looking at me.

You're looking at your flesh.

You're looking at the temple of the Holy Ghost.

You're looking at the body that God gave you.

That houses the Holy Ghost and houses your spirit.

That's the real you.

So if you can crawl into your eyeballs and look down in your spirit, well I guess you can see your spirit.

But you can't, because spirit, you can't see the spirit.

So you do you some good to always remember that you are a spirit, being that, yes, you do have a body and it has feelings, it has emotions and you have a soul.

For decades I thought a soul and a spirit were the same.

That's what the nuns taught me.

They didn't talk about my spirit.

They talked about body and soul, body and soul, body and soul.

Well, they're wrong.

Thank God I got born again and I got under some teaching that taught me better than baloney.

They were just teaching what they heard.

They didn't know any better either.

No, where my soul, is our mind, our will, our intellect.

And you can't follow your soul.

Reason is the soul.

Follow your soul.

Reason is the voice of the mind, and God is not a mind.

Hindus think that God is this universal mind.

No, he's not.

He's a spirit.

And so, since God's a spirit, he's gonna lead you spirit to spirit.

And there's one other part of your being, your spirit has a voice.

You know, the voice of the flesh is feelings.

The voice of the mind is reason, the voice of your spirit.

If you ever hear that voice, it's just what we call the still small voice.

It's the voice of your conscience, and your conscience is a reliable guide.

But when I say, follow the leading, I just wanna made your own following the witness, because the witness of the spirit is bulletproof.

The devil cannot really counterfeit the leading of the witness of the spirit.

You know, paul said there are many voices in the world, none without significance.

If you're strained into hear a voice, like a lot of Christians are, they feel like they've gotta have.

God's gotta tell them something.

He told you something right here.

This is everything he told you.

He told it to you already.

So when you read it, you're reading everything he told, especially in the epistles.

That's to you.

I mean, you know it's not to you and it's not to you in the Old Testament.

Why?

It's for you but it's not to you.

Why?

Because he's not talking to you and Jesus was not talking to you.

Oh, I know that's a news flash for some of you.

That's why people get so tangled up.

They try to use what Jesus said about the rapture.

Jesus never talked about the rapture.

He's talked to the house, lost sheep of the house of Israel.

He talked to them about the resurrection.

He's talking about the end of everything when he deals with the Jews at the end he's not talking to the church.

He talked to his disciples and they were lost.

They were not born again until after the resurrection.

Only the part after the resurrection that he talks to them.

Only that part that's in the last part of Matthew and Luke and John and all that that's legitimate.

He's talking to born again Christians right there, but there's still babies.

He said I've got so many things to share with you, but you can't bear them now.

So let's not be straining to hear voices.

Let's concentrate on building our spirit up to where the witness of the spirit is stronger.

Everybody say a strong witness.

It's the number one way.

And what is a witness?

Well, it's a knowing, it's a perception, an intuition, it's peace and ease, or else it's hesitation.

It's a hesitation.

A lot of times the witness will keep you.

You have a hesitation, you have a lack of peace about a situation.

Sometimes I have to make a decision and I head toward that decision and along the way I lose my peace and I say nope, I'm not doing that after all?

Give me an example, brother, those things.

We get up on a Sunday morning, we're gonna build a big building.

This was when we were in the old building and I mean everybody hooting, holler, hooting, holler, you know, stand on their feet and cheer 5,000 people.

Next Sunday he'd get up there.

No, we're not.

See, he was trying to do it because, you know, he felt pressure from all the younger preachers across the country Back in the 80s, right there in the early 80s, late 70s, they were these mega churches being built all over the country.

You'd hear about this sanctuary.

It'd be 5,000, 6,000 seats and this sanctuary would be 8,000 seats, 10,000 seats.

And you know, brother Osteen, he had the property for it, he had the money.

Really, I mean, he didn't, he wasn't planning on just emptying the bank account on it, because he raised all the money for the one that he did build.

But you know what, you know, when God spoke to him to build that building after he's recovering from open heart surgery and he's weaker than water I've been there.

I know exactly how that feels.

I mean, he could hardly walk, he could hardly speak and he was white and pale and something about that heart-lung machine when they suck all your blood out and put it through that machine.

When they put it back in you, I don't know of it.

You don't get any color back.

For a long time you look like a cadaver.

I tried to avoid mirrors as long as I could.

I think it took six months for me to get my color back.

So and then you know, right after that, you know he's recovering from open heart surgery.

Now you build that building because you don't know it's me and not you.

Now you're gonna build that building.

And when he built that building there was nothing going on in Houston.

That was the only game in town.

That's the only.

You go all the way you could go from one end of the town to the other north, south, east, west, go all the way to Galveston.

You're never gonna see a crane.

There's no crane anywhere because there's no building going on.

But at Lakewood there's a crane.

They're erecting that steel and they're putting that steel up and they're building that building.

The only thing was going.

He had to wait.

He had to wait.

So what was he?

He got a hesitation.

You see, god didn't tell him don't build it.

He lost his peace.

That's good.

You know.

We need to make our plans, but God orders our steps.

You need to make plans.

You can't just stand around and just don't do anything.

You have to make some.

You know you have to make some financial plans.

You have to make some plans, you have to make some ministry plans.

But in making those plans you pursue them with an eye toward your spirit and when you have that ease and you have that peace, then you keep moving that direction.

But if you have an interruption you shut it down, you stop.

Right now he says, oh, I lost my peace.

That must not be God.

I'm talking about following the Holy Ghost.

The number one way is the witness of the spirit.

It's a knowing, a perception, an intuition, a peace, an ease, or else a hesitation, a lack of peace.

And how do you make that witness stronger?

Feeding continually on the Word of God and pray in much in the Holy Ghost.

I mean, there's just no shortcuts.

There are no shortcuts.

And of course you're gonna learn.

I like what Brother Osteen used to say all the time God doesn't see failures, he only sees learners.

I'm so glad that applied to me.

I could have called myself a failure quite a few times, especially when you're broke and you miss God on a business deal, which I did numbers of times.

I preach about those things not from a standpoint of condemnation of myself, but I mean you might as well learn from my mistakes.

Why not learn from mine?

Try to glean some kind of good out of it.

God has a way of redeeming things.

And so John, chapter 14, let's turn there, follow when the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, is in here tonight and I believe that this message is going to lead to a breakthrough in your life.

John 14 · chapter mention

Hallelujah.

John, chapter 14, verse 16, this is the night before the crucifixion.

John 14:16

He's spending his final hours at the Last Supper with his disciples and they're sad, they don't understand what's going on.

And he said, verse 16, and I will pray the Father and he will give you another comforter Another means identical another comforter.

Jesus was a comforter when he was here on the earth.

He served as a comforter, as a helper to His disciples.

He washed their feet.

They didn't understand.

No, no, you can't wash my feet.

I have to wash your feet, otherwise you're excluded.

And he was teaching them this lesson.

You know, you that shall be greatest shall be the servant of all.

You've got to learn how to serve people.

If you want to minister to people, you've got to be their servant.

I don't mean that in the negative sense, I just mean that it takes effort, it takes sacrifice.

And so he said I'm gonna send you another comforter that he may abide with you forever.

The word comforter there is a poor translation of the Greek.

It's the Greek word paraclete, and the amplified talks about all these words helper, intercessor, strengthener, standby, one called alongside to help.

But really the best description of the Holy Ghost is helper.

Really, that's really the best one.

He's your helper.

My dad's brother was a construction manager for a large insulation outfit here in Houston he worked for, I think, trying to remember the precursor to all the you know started out with asbestos and then he got away from asbestos and started using fiberglass.

In the 50s and 60s they found out asbestos was bad.

They didn't know that it was gonna kill you decades later.

That's what killed my father was asbestosis and just working around it in the shipyards Todd's shipyards, making the Liberty ships, and but anyway, he was a business manager for this big outfit and he would bid jobs and get them and then he had a relationship with the unions.

And so you know, when I was 16, my dad's brother, uncle Eddie, got me a job as a helper.

I was a flunky insulators helper $1.25 an hour I thought I had.

I thought I was in the chips man.

I mean I was making so much money $1.25 an hour I was and my first job was an astronaut.

Worked on the astronaut, crawled all over the astronaut.

One of the highlights of my summer was going to the rail yard and unloading a box car full of big boxes of fiberglass pipe insulation.

These were pieces of about four foot long and then you opened them up.

They were paper on the outside.

You opened them up and put them around a piece of pipe and then put a mastic down that and sealed it up and that insulated a pipe.

So they had some for heat, they had some for cold, but it was all fiberglass and when you lifted that box, all the fiberglass would run out of the box.

Go down my shirt.

It was a highlight of my summer.

But I was a helper.

Just think about God Almighty assigning you a triune being to be your helper.

See, when I think of helper, I think of what I did.

I'm just a helper.

I didn't do it, I just helped.

I hauled the material over to where the guys were putting it up.

I mean, you know, every now and then if I acted right, I got my hands dirty and got a little training along the way, but most of the time it's just, you know, piling this dolly up, you know, over my head, with a couple of hundred pounds of insulation.

And remember those in the Astrodome?

Remember those way you went up the Astrodome.

You had those big old, wide, not stairways, they were ramps.

Remember the ramps on the outside of the Astrodome where you'd go at the bottom floor and go all the way up to the top.

That's what I got to do with a couple hundred pounds of insulation on a dolly, pushing one end of it and other guys pulling his end with the guide in it.

Yeah, I just had such a.

I had a fun time being a helper, a helper's work.

He's your helper, but you've got to do something for him to help you.

He is not gonna, he is not the doer, he's the helper.

If you'll get something, if you'll do something, if you'll take action, he will help you.

Even if you're going in the wrong direction, he will guide you away from that direction you're headed.

Quit being so afraid of doing anything.

You've got to do something.

Unless you do nothing.

I don't know who that's for, but it's for somebody.

You're halting.

You're waiting.

You're waiting for what?

Do you want God to ride it across the sky?

Some people are just waiting for God to speak to them, appear to them.

No, you have the witness and you will get the witness if you'll start moving.

You ever try guiding a ship at the dock?

It won't.

I mean, you can turn a wheel all day long, it won't do anything.

You've got to be moving through the water, and when you're moving, then now God can guide you.

Now, if you're going the wrong direction, trust him to turn you back around and head you in the right direction.

Come on, lift your hands right now.

I'm speaking right to some folks tonight.

I feel it in my spirit.

I must be helping you connect the dots.

That took me decades to connect these.

So we're not orphans.

God is leading us.

All we have to do is start moving, and then the faith part is that you trust that he will and that you will follow his leading.

You're going to learn to trust, to get out there all the way out onto the trust, the faith in God, and put the pressure on his word.

Well, god, I don't know about all this.

My head's telling me all kinds of things, I've got all these feelings, but I just I'm going to go in this direction and I'm going to trust the witness of the spirit.

I'm prepared to go all the way.

As long as I have peace down in my heart, I'm going to go all the way.

I'm not turning back.

But, Lord, if I'm telling you, if I'm going the wrong direction, I do trust that you're showing me.

I'll get in, I'll know, I'll know I'll have an interruption down in my spirit and I'll obey that.

Just talk to him.

That's faith.

That's why I'm preaching this.

So your faith will get built up to follow the witness of the spirit, because it does take faith.

Everything you get from God takes faith, and faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.

Everybody say my faith in His guidance.

So, uh, hallelujah.

I was telling part of the story this morning about the banks back in the depression of the 80s and I was talking this morning about building your world with words and how you have to be a person of your word.

My dad used to say my word is my bond.

You shake a hand.

Well, I'd signed contracts, I signed loan documents, bought boring $1.4 million to build some houses.

The houses were built, they weren't sold, and it wasn't my fault, they weren't sold.

We had one of these kind of crazy things that we're having right now.

Just this, you know, incompetence.

It's Marxism in our government and through across all these letter agencies and all these banking agencies and everything else.

I mean there's a lot of things that you're going through financially, that you've just got to get out of this world's economy and get focused on the kingdom, because you know God can.

God can sail you through these difficulties.

You don't.

You're not.

He's not bound by the Fed, he's not bound by the stock market.

He's got ways to meet your needs.

Apart from all those things, everything you need is already down here and if you'll learn to follow His leading, he can show you where it is and how to get it.

I mean, you can be a tither and still go broke.

I've always been a tither, since the day I, shortly after I, got saved, I got tired.

I heard about tithing.

I'm glad it's not.

We were tithers and givers and givers way above, and I still went broke.

So you see, it's not a, it's not a panacea.

It's just the first step.

You've got to learn to follow the Holy Ghost if you really want to be prosperous.

I mean you start tithing and you become a threat to the devil.

He's going to do everything he can to knock your financial world down.

What's the remedy?

Following the Holy Ghost.

So, anyway, I, you know I wanted to do right thing, but I mean I got to the place where I quit paying myself a salary.

Well, how does that work?

It doesn't work very well.

After a while, I mean I started liquidating all my assets.

I cashed in my life insurance.

I had some gold coins I cashed in, I gave some of them to brother Osteen and more than a tithe wrapped them up in a.

I wrapped some gold Krugerans up in a offering envelope, put heavy tape around it and put it in the offer.

I mean I, I thought about the, I thought about the count team the day that they did the count in there.

I bet that.

I bet that.

What is this?

Those Krugerans, you know they were beautiful coins, they were had copper in them, so they were kind of a rose gold.

They're about that big around, real heavy, and at that time those, those Krugerans, were worth, you know, about $350 a piece, I think.

I put half a dozen of them in the offering.

So I was, I was sowing my seed, the last big seed I was able to sow, and then I was liquidating all my assets, just selling what I could sell and just thinking, okay, one of these houses are going to sell.

They didn't sell, they didn't sell.

So finally I just couldn't pay any more interest.

So I thought, well, what do I do now?

And see, what I had already done is I'd already.

I'd already signed all the documents that needed to be signed.

I didn't owe them anything else.

Their job is the bar of the servant to the lender.

Their job is to realize I'm in a rears, call me and say, griner, you know you're behind on the interest here, and I can say, well, there's not going to be any interest money paid because I'm I don't have any more money.

Now you can do what you need to do.

They have the power then to foreclose on the properties, take them out of my name, and then they turn around and they sell them on the courthouse steps for whatever they can get to investors, usually to themselves.

They buy it in way low way, beneath the market.

They rig it.

No, I'm telling off on banks now.

If you're a banker, I'm sorry.

And then they filed a deficiency judgment against me because my real estate was not worth what I said it was.

Well, they made it.

They're the ones that set the worth.

They're the ones that decided to sell it under market.

They're the ones that are buying it.

Now they can turn around and sell it for a profit.

I mean it's evil.

And I saw all of my friends went broke in the same way, in about the same time.

All the guys that I knew that built most of 1960 up and down these roads, up and down 1960, all the way from 945, all the way to Luevaeta Road and beyond, all the guys that built all these neighborhoods.

They all went broke Same way.

So I mean I didn't owe the bank to go in and meet with them and give them a chance to do even more damage to me.

Well, why did you do that?

I didn't know how to pray enough to get the witness of the Spirit, and I went and sought counsel with a religious doofus that I respected before this, but he gave me bad advice.

He said go and throw yourself on the mercy of the bank.

I did not need to do that.

So years later, god began to put all this under a microscope and helped me realize where I really missed.

It was going and seeking unwise counsel from someone that never had any problem because he still got the first nickel he ever made.

He's got a safe full of money.

I won't say who it was.

I mean he had to walk in.

I mean he had a safe about this.

I don't know.

It was about 15 by 20 filled with gold coins and gold.

You know, silver coins, securities.

I mean he's liquid.

You talk about somebody that didn't have his money at the bank.

He had his money in his house with a bank vault in it, and he's telling me go throw yourself on the mercy of the bank and tell them you can't pay and just whatever they say will go ahead.

I didn't need to do that.

They would have foreclosed on my houses.

I could have walked away with my cars with my house intact.

They can't put a lien on my house.

But when I went in there and did that, they leaned everything up.

They put a lien on my cars.

They put a lien on my house.

They made it impossible for me to even declare bankruptcy.

There was nothing left to save.

Are y'all with me now?

Why did that happen?

Because I didn't follow the witness of the spirit.

You know, get religious about stuff.

I don't know who this is for, but let me tell you something.

You know, look, you follow the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost knows everything.

He knows protocol.

He knows how to maneuver through these wicked banks and credit card companies that charge you 25% interest.

There are ways to just let you know.

They need to put their big boy pants on.

They loaned me the money.

Now they've.

I paid them for years and now I can't pay them.

Well, that's just too bad.

All right, so faith to follow the Holy Ghost.

I don't know why I wanted to go that way, but let's not get religious about this stuff.

I know I'm a man of my word.

I signed my name.

I'm going to make every effort to pay you back, but it's a business.

It's not me personally.

It's my business.

You only have the right to come back on me where I signed individually and personally, which I did.

But then I gave them another shot at me and that's where I got into 10 years of you know, a real long hole to dig my way out of.

You know, we dug our way out of it.

Holy Ghost did it.

The day we started this church, everything changed, glory to God, and I learned a lot about lenders and banks and we put it to good use in this church and the way we financed it.

We paid all of our loans off, glory to God.

We don't have any.

We owe no one.

We don't have a mortgage on this.

Praise the Lord.

We paid it off, all right.

So there's a one, two, three, one of four things I want to leave you with tonight, and I just believe tonight is going to be a changing time for some of you, maybe all of you.

Faith to follow the Holy Ghost.

Number one, john 14, 16,.

I'll pray the Father.

He will give you another comfort, another helper.

He's your helper to abide with you forever.

God is your helper.

Jesus, the Holy Ghost, is your helper.

He's interested in whatever you're interested in, whether it's big or small.

There's nothing too small, nothing too big for him not to help you.

He will help you.

It's the little foxes that spoil the vine.

The Bible says Sometimes little things that you think, well, I'll just, that's okay.

No, the Holy Ghost wants to help you with that little thing.

He'll give you guidance about it.

You just ask him Follow the witness to quit looking for dreams and visions, quit looking for voices.

He will let you.

He will guide you right down in here in the witness of the Spirit, about anything big or small.

He's your assistant.

Acts 26, 22,.

Paul is preaching Tophestus.

He said I've obtained help.

The Amplified says I've obtained help from God as my ally.

He is your ally, he's on your side.

He's your ally.

See, another reason why we need to have a prayer life because when you've got a prayer life, you're close to him, you're lined up with him.

A lot of the desires that you have are implanted by him into you and that's why you want to do those things.

There are nothing wrong with your desires when you're close to God in prayer, when you read your Bible, when you pray much in other tongues, your desires most likely are implanted in you by God himself and he wants that for you.

He's your ally.

He's not working against you.

He's working with you and for you.

Oh, my glory to God.

As if what you want is some crazy thing.

Oh well, that's just crazy.

No, it's not.

We don't dream enough.

We don't think enough about the future.

We don't think enough about what God really wants to do.

We get hung up on right now, right in front of our nose.

There's trouble here.

Let's look beyond that, because God has got a great and glorious plan.

He allowed you to live in the last of the last days.

Jesus is coming soon, sooner than we all know.

This thing's about to wrap up.

We're about to be part of the greatest awakening that the world's ever seen.

Everybody say God's my ally, all right.

Number two guidance comes from the Holy Ghost.

It often comes in waves.

You know weather's like that Weather.

You don't have a hot, dry day one day in a wet day, the next day in a hot, dry day.

Now it comes in waves.

There are fronts that move through that change.

Weather patterns come in.

It's the same with the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost many times will have an atmosphere that will come.

Well, I call it like if you were.

I'm not a surfer, but I've watched it.

I've watched surfers, in fact.

I've been to the North Shore of Oahu, which is one of the premier surfing places in the world.

They had these competitions out there where those waves are 30, 40 foot tall.

They're breathtaking and if I was out there, I would be breathtakingly afraid, because I don't even know how you have enough guts to get on one of those waves and ride it, because it's not very far to a big old bunch of rocks right over there.

You know what happens if you slip off that wave and it kind of you hit the rocks.

You're dead is what happens.

But tons and tons and tons of water when you wipe out, when they, when you get at the bottom of that trough and you don't get out from under it, I mean that thing breaks over you.

I'm going to tell you it could break every bone in your body.

You drown, people die out there.

But a surfer has to.

They have to read the wave and they have to guess which wave is going to be a medal winner.

They have to.

Which wave is it going to be to give me the medal in this competition?

There's a lot of money involved and so they have to go out there and they, they, they ride the wave up and then drop down the other side.

They just don't like the looks of that wave, but when they see one, they like, they paddle out there and they get in position and that, and they catch that wave just at the right moment and they get on their surfboard and they ride that thing all the way to the shore or for a long distance.

And so guidance often comes in waves.

It comes in series of revelations, because what we need to excuse me, what we need to hear many times are more complex things or stages of guidance that we need because of the circumstances we're in.

There's no quick fix.

There's no one thing.

There's a series of decisions that we need to make about this thing.

It's time sensitive.

Don't you think God knows that?

Don't, doesn't he doesn't.

I mean, your mortgage is due.

There's something you've got to do now.

You can't put it off because the, the mortgage company, is not going to put.

See, there was pressure on me.

I had I mean, I had interest I had to pay and I couldn't pay it.

I had taxes that were due.

I remember one time I bought a bunch of lots, went a lot loan and that's what we had to do to do business.

It's the same guy that gave me the bad advice.

I bought lots from him and I went down to the bank and they loaned me the money to buy all these lots.

I bought 10 vacant lots and well, that was just fine.

I mean, you know, I could pay the interest on the loan and all that until I could get the house.

And then, when I'd build a house, well then I would take one of those lot loans and pay it down plus part of the rest of the loan.

So by the time I got to pay nine, when I had nine houses, the 10th lot was already paid for.

So that's how the bank got me to liquidate that loan, get it, to get the loan paid down.

But what I wasn't thinking about, is it?

You know, I bought those lots and then the business started slowing down, interest rates went up and I was slower at building the houses on the lots.

And so, guess what?

Klein Independent School District wanted their tax money.

Do y'all know where the Klein tax office is?

On Dory Road.

Y'all know where Dory Road is?

That was a.

I still have a monument out front.

It's just where I almost died paying my taxes on those lots.

I had to go in person and you know they were about to start charging me a double digit interest rate for being late, and I don't even know where I got the money.

I think it was like 11,000, 13,000 dollars I had to bring them, had to sit there and wait, you know, for somebody to finally wake up behind the thing.

And oh, you're here.

I was still drinking coffee.

Okay, what are you here for, sir?

Well, I'm here to pay my taxes all these 13,000.

Man, it was just horrible.

Anyway, all right comes in waves.

So, john 16, let's look at John 16, 13.

Are you getting anything out of this?

You're hearing all about the home building business.

How be it when he, the Spirit of verse 13, 16, 13,.

How be it when he, the Spirit of truth, has come?

How many of you know he's come.

We have him.

He's inside us.

He will guide you.

He's another.

That's another thing.

He is, he's a guide.

He's a guide.

He will guide you into all truth.

He's not speaking of himself, but whatsoever, he shall hear that shall he speak?

There's that word again speak.

We're thinking for a voice, but it's really not talking about the voice, it's not talking about words, it's talking about guidance.

Think, witness, when you see, speak.

You're quit expecting a voice.

Just know the guy.

The guidance is in there, the guide is in there.

And how does he guide you with his spirit, in your witness of the Spirit?

Yes, he can speak to you.

I know he does from time to time.

Your own spirit can speak to you, but it's rare.

The most common way his guidance operates is the witness.

Get used to operating and expecting the witness of the Spirit.

It's bulletproof.

The devil can't counterfeit it.

He can counterfeit a voice he can.

The devil has a voice.

Demons have voices.

People have that bad advice.

That was a voice.

It was religious and I didn't feel good about his advice.

In fact I was kind of surprised he told me to do that.

See, I should have run the other way.

I should have waited for the bank to get ahold of me.

I should have held my ground.

But shame say, shame got involved.

Listen, when you get built up in the Holy Ghost, there is no shame.

Should you pay your debts?

Yeah, you should, but you don't have to just go to the cross.

Jesus already went there.

You don't have to plead.

You know like you're a criminal.

You know at the end of that whole thing, you know what the banker told me one time when he finally, at the end of all of that thing that I went down that trail it was three or four years later he was trying to get fit the 50,000 that he loaned me to pay the interest.

They loaned me more money to pay interest.

They got all the money.

I didn't get any of the money 50,000 didn't go in my pocket.

It went right out of my bank account back and it went into the houses that were to doll them up to make them more saleable.

I put grass, sodded the grass, put in, put in all of the landscaping.

You know, I just dolled them up, made them more saleable and they sold all the houses.

I didn't get to decide how much they sold for they sold, they did a fire sale and sold them for less than what they needed to.

They didn't pay that 50,000.

And the deal was I said now, look, you're going to sell these.

There were six houses total together.

I said you're going to sell these six houses for enough to knock this 50,000.

Yeah, we're going to do the best we can.

Well, they didn't do that and they came at me and they wanted that 50,000 at the end it's all interest and they got it.

They're making money upon money, a top on the money on money on money.

So I said you know, john, you're not going to pay.

I said I'm not going to pay it.

I'm absolutely not going to pay it.

You're just going to have to.

You're going to have to take your collateral as far as I'm going.

I finally wised up, but by then it was too late.

See, I should have done that way back before the 50.

Are y'all following this?

I'm talking about following the Holy Ghost.

I mean, he'll lead you in real things.

Well, john, it's just like you came in this back and held us up.

I said you, low down, dirty dog, you dare say that to me.

I didn't get any of the money, and you know it.

His name was on the front page of the Chronicle for weeks because he loaned a crook a bunch of money and God saw to it that he had to resign in disgrace from that bank.

I mean, they ran him out of town calling me a bankwamper.

Well, he's the one that's totally unscrupulous.

But he's a deacon, head of the deacon board.

Okay, all right, enough of that.

So he's a guide.

Everybody say the Holy Ghost is my guide.

He will show you, he will guide you into all truth and he will show you things to come.

Now, when he shows you the future, that doesn't mean you're a prophet, it just means that he will connect the dots for you.

See, if I could have knew about the witness like I know it now back then.

But you know, hey, god's redeeming it for you.

Your benefit, you get the benefit.

All this.

You know a tour guide if you've ever been on a tour.

What does a guide do?

He introduces a traveler to an unknown country, step by step, place by place.

I had Moshe Bronstein as my tour guide when I went to Israel and he introduced us, he showed us all about walled cities and what happened and why this is ruined.

You know, because they didn't have proper gates.

This gate was this way See how it looks and showed me another city where the walls were mostly intact.

Notice the gates.

They were, you know, 300, 500 years later, 700 years later, they learned how to build a proper gate that couldn't be breached and so the city was longer lasting and they had the walls mostly intact.

And you know, he showed us, you know, place by place, and took us in Jerusalem and showed us all the excavations and all the archaeology and the digs and everything.

It's just fascinating this guy was, he showed, he just unrolled Israel in such a way that you can't, you can't know it unless you're there and see that's the Holy Ghost will show you things like that he will.

He will guide you step by step.

He was available back there 30 years, 40 years ago, when I was making these decisions, but I didn't know how to tap into his guidance.

Thank God, I learned something God sees no failures, only learners.

Number three you getting anything out of this?

We're just about done here.

Number three many times the Holy Ghost will indicate what he does doesn't want before what he does want, what he indicates what he doesn't want before he indicates what he does want.

Think about Paul and Silas.

Paul and Barnabas had a split up.

They parted company over John Mark.

Of course, john Mark later on was profitable to Paul for ministry.

Some people think at St Mark of Mark's Gospel.

I don't know if it is or not.

It could be.

Some people think it is.

I don't have any proof, but he was young and the Lord and he left him in a lurch on the way.

He left him in a lurch on their first missionary journey.

When they went to the second missionary journey, paul didn't object to Barnabas taking his nephew Mark on that journey because he just wasn't ready.

We need seasoned people out here in this journey.

He's not seasoned enough.

They split up.

Barnabas took Mark and Paul chose Silas.

They assayed to go into Bythena.

In other words, they made plans to go into Bythena but the Spirit suffered them.

Not Acts, chapter 16.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

No, what was that?

They lost the witness, they lost their peace about going to Bythena.

They assayed to go into Bythena and the Spirit suffered them not, and then be forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia Minor.

Well, how do you suppose that came?

They lost the witness to go to Asia Minor.

So, thank God, you know they were making their plans.

They were putting this plan on.

They made this wrong to have a plan.

What's wrong is you just do the plan without checking your peace, thank you.

If they'd have gone to Bythena, paul might have been killed right.

Then All of this rest of the book of Acts might not have occurred.

He might not have had a witness to Caesar.

What if he'd have gone to Asia Minor?

We don't know the answers.

But you know God was.

He was forbidden to go.

Well, the Bible says going to all the world.

God, how come?

I can't see there's the general will of God is going to all the world.

But then there's a specific will, there's a specific thing that is our place.

And so they were patient and then finally had the dream.

He had spectacular guidance Macedonian men come over here and help us.

They went over there, they got the lady saved.

They stayed with the seller of purple and had favor with her.

But then, you know, they had a riot and they were beaten, with many stripes, thrown in the inner prison.

If they hadn't had that spectacular guidance, they might have lost their courage.

They might have thought, well, I guess we miss God.

No, they didn't miss God.

They stood and they, at midnight, paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them and there came an earthquake.

God invaded the earthquake and used the earthquake to open the prison doors and break all the chains off of the prisoners, including Paul and Silas, broke them out of stocks.

He got the jailer saved in his whole house, saved and filled with a holy ghost.

Praise God.

Sometimes God will show you things that he doesn't want.

You know this, and closed doors are guidance.

When you have a closed door, thank God, because you just heard from God.

He closed the door for you.

If you go through that closed door you're gonna get out of the will of God.

Everybody say closed doors are guidance.

Years ago when I was beginning this church, starting this church, praying about it, I had a couple that came across this teaching this cassette tape, a pastor, ricky Scarborough, and he's a graduate of Ramah and his wife and went through the plan at Ramah, you know, and he went through the pastoral training there and a lot of times, you know, when you're at Ramah you have the phone will ring and they're looking for a pastor to fill a position and a lot of their pastors.

They don't just start a church, they just wait, you know, for a church that's needing a pastor and they'll go and be an associate or they'll go and you know somewhere where they're needed and they start like that.

And he and his wife, you know the phone didn't ring for them and so they got to talking.

Well, you know phone doesn't ring between now and graduation.

You know they made a plan.

Let's go to your parents' house.

Honey and her parents lived in San Augustine up.

I think it's close to Jacksonville, I think I'm not real familiar with the geography of Florida, but I think that's right, it's up the northern part of Florida.

We'll just go, stay with your folks and we'll start a church right around that area in San Augustine.

We've been there before and they need a church.

Your parents don't have a good church there.

We'll just start a church there and your parents can be part of our church and we'll just do that.

They had a plan, thank God.

You can't just wait.

You got to have something to do and so you know.

It came time for graduation, so they loaded up all the furniture, sent her in a U-Haul trailer and she drove to her parents' house.

That night is in an empty apartment.

The next day is graduation ceremonies, you know, and you're going to get your you know your diploma and all of that the very next day and she's gone.

There's empty apartments.

He's leaning up against the wall praying in the Holy Ghost and he got tired and you know there's no furniture, no bed, no, nothing, just he's there by himself.

And the Holy Ghost spoke to him and says San Augustine is not it.

And he said what?

San Augustine is not it.

And he said that's just great God.

San Augustine is not it.

That just leaves about 10,000 other cities.

It could be it.

I mean, if that's not it, what is it?

I mean, you know he was irritated, you know, because they'd already made their plans.

He sent his wife, got the furniture going.

You know he picks up the phone.

He's.

By this time his wife has gotten to the house.

You know they're putting their furniture up in storage or in the garage, wherever they put it up.

And he said honey, the Holy Ghost is not it.

He said, honey, the Holy Ghost spoke to me, san Augustine, is not it?

Well, what is it?

You know she wasn't happy either, and they're both kind of bummed out.

So I don't know we'll.

I'm coming the other way.

You know, we'll just drive across Florida until we find it.

I'm pretty sure it's Florida, but wherever it is, we're going to find it.

See, that's good.

At least you got over his mad, because God's not Listen, he's just guiding you.

Sometimes he just guides you with what he doesn't want.

First, you made your plan and it's closed door, so you can rejoice.

You got a closed door.

What if you started the church in San Augustine and never see?

That's what a lot of churches were started outside of the leading of the Holy Ghost.

Somebody just went.

They weren't sent.

Unless the Lord builds a house, they do, they labor what in vain to build it.

So they get in the car and drive across you know Florida and they get just out of Lakeland, florida and they said you know, we feel better.

This feels, I mean our spirits are feeling kind of good about Lakeland.

Is there somebody?

And I've heard of Carl Straitor.

He's got a big old church in Lakeland, florida, pastor, carl Straitor, assembly of God, pastor Back in you know the 70s, 80s and I don't even know if he probably in heaven by now, but he had a huge church, 10,000 seats, gigantic church, lakeland.

And so they stopped and called the office and got ahold of him and he said, sure, come on in, you don't have an appointment, but come on in, I'd be glad to talk to you.

And he was so gracious and prayed with them and encouraged them and said, man, you know this is a great town, this is growing.

You know, if you feel led to be here, you know you can.

This big I mean he was just, you know, helped them, wasn't territorial, wasn't competitive, just encouraged and prayed with them.

And that's where they started their church.

That's been 30, 40 years ago.

It's just growing and they've been successful ever since.

I mean they found it, they found the place called there.

But they had to, you know, not get offended by a closed door.

And then the last one John 16, 13,.

Jesus, you know the Holy Ghost.

Jesus said the Holy Ghost will lead you into all truth.

So the last point I want to make is for guidance to occur.

You know, stay connected to the truth.

Stay connected to the truth.

Don't get offended, don't get drift away and try to.

You know, just because you're struggling with whatever decision you're making, I like it.

I like to follow in the Holy Ghost of following and traffic.

A few years ago, my brother-in-law, jim, and Nell, a Gladysus sister.

They're both in heaven now, but they were coming from East Texas to come in, to see us, coming to our house.

Well, they're coming down 59 from East Texas, and they don't know how to get to our house.

And this is before.

They didn't have GPS and we didn't, you know, didn't have a complicated cell phone like you have now.

You know you can just send somebody a pen, drop a pen, and they can find you.

You know, back then they didn't.

So we agreed to meet in Umbil.

I said I'll meet you at the IHOP or wherever it was.

I don't remember where it was.

We met them.

I said now, look, you're going to have to follow me down 59.

We're going to get to Beltway and you're going to follow me.

You know we're going to take a right and head, you know, west on the Beltway.

So follow close now, don't be way back behind me, because you know you get too many people between us and you, you're going to miss how to get there.

I mean, all it takes is missing one turn and you're going to be lost and then I'm not going to be able to get you, you know.

And so, sure enough, we get on the freeway and I mean, just like that, they were like 15 car links behind me.

I mean there was cars.

You know how traffic is here.

You know you try to try to follow somebody.

They weren't following close enough and they just kept sailing right by.

I was able to see they sailed right by the Beltway and kept going down 59.

And so, you know, by the time I got them on the phone and by the time I got them turned around, I mean it just took an extra hour, you know, but we finally got them.

See, let's follow the Holy Ghost, let's follow Him, connect to truth.

He will lead you into all truth.

No truth, no growth.

It's a good place to stay connected to the Holy Ghost.

Build your faith on the idea that the Holy Ghost does lead you and you, by faith, are going to follow His lead.

Come on, lift your hands and receive tonight.

Glory to God.

You get anything out of this tonight.