Holy Ghost Communion

Let's all stand together, pick your bibles up, please wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Let's say this together say heavenly Father, I'm glad to be here tonight.

I came with a hungry heart.

I'm hungry and thirsty for more of you, more of your word, more of your spirit, and tonight I have an open heart and mind to receive exactly what I need to advance in the kingdom of God.

In Jesus' name, amen, you can be seated.

Let's turn in our bibles to 2 Corinthians, chapter 13.

2 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

So he's wrapping up the second epistle and he says in verse 11, finally, brethren, farewell, be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of love and peace shall be with you.

Greet one another with a holy kiss.

All the saints salute you.

The grace of the Lord, jesus Christ, and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all, amen.

And that word communion there, the communion of the Holy Ghost, is the Greek word cornedia, and it means partnership, communication, participation, fellowship and intimacy.

So here Paul is.

He's just, he tempted.

Oh, he's just winding up.

This is the end of the letter.

But you know, it's a pretty important word, cornedia, and it's something, that we have an invitation to have, cornedia with the third person of the Godhead, and so that's what I wanna talk tonight about Holy Ghost communion.

Holy Ghost communion, paul is writing to the Corinthians and they, you know, they were a carnal church.

The word carnal means body ruled.

They came out of the occult, they still had a lot of that influence around them and you know, whenever you come out of something like that, you have residues, you have stuff that you have to get.

You know God, thank God he saves you, but then there are things in your mind that don't always leave right away.

You know, you get.

You know.

I'm amazed at how people sometimes when they get saved, especially when they get baptized, the Holy Ghost, sometimes I've seen people who were, who were alcoholics just instantly delivered, drug addicts instantly delivered, and I've seen others struggle with addictions for a long time until they can find out who they are in Christ and they have to use their faith and they have to use their own.

You know they have to believe God to help them to overcome some of these carnal inclinations.

So here in the second epistle there's still a whole lot of things for this church to correct.

But he says in another place.

He said you come behind in no good gift.

I mean, they had the gifts of the spirit, but they were a little shard on the fruit of the spirit.

But here he's inviting them.

He said look, just, you know, let yourself have communion with the Holy Ghost.

Let yourself have communion, partnership, communication, participation, fellowship and intimacy with the Holy Ghost.

He exhorts them to grow up, get into unity, love one another and develop Holy Ghost communion and it's a key to growing and maturing.

You know we talk a lot about praying.

We talk about a lot about praising.

We pray to the Father in the name of Jesus.

We know how to pray.

We pray to the Father in the name of Jesus and you know you might talk to Jesus every now and then.

Jesus, I love you.

You might praise Jesus, but as far as like praying, we pray what.

We pray to the Father in the name of Jesus.

But then, you know, years ago I heard David Yonge Cho, the pastor of that huge church.

I don't know how many members in Seoul, korea they have, but even 40 years ago, when I heard him speak at a world convention the full gospel businessmen in Anaheim, california, you know what his subject was all those years ago, fellowship with the Holy Ghost.

You know Chinese guy, korean really, but he sounded Chinese, but he spoke on fellowship with the Holy Ghost, which it really helped me to realize that there's.

There's that the Holy Spirit doesn't talk a lot about.

Hey, talk to me.

But you know, we ought to talk to Him, we ought to thank Him, we ought to let Him know that we're so glad that he lives on the inside of us.

We ought to, especially when we're going through things.

We ought to remind Him.

You know, holy Spirit, I'm so glad you're in there to put me over.

We're going through this together.

They were partners, we're partners, we have a partnership, and the more we fellowship with the Holy Ghost, the more unity we have with others in the body of Christ.

This is what he's saying to them.

He's saying this very thing to them.

He said you know, the more you fellowship with the Holy Ghost, the more unity you will have, the more agape love you're gonna have for one another, the more the supernatural becomes natural.

See, this is what boy the church has just gotta get in, that mode of quit approaching everything from the natural.

Quit, approaching everything from the natural.

No, we've got the supernatural inside of us, the Holy Ghost.

And you know, the more you fellowship with Him, the more you partner with Him, the more you have intimacy with Him, more of communication you have with Him, the more He'll show you things to come.

Actually, the more you'll recognize when he's showing you things to come.

Isn't that what Jesus said he was gonna do?

He said He'll show you things to come.

You don't have to be a prophet to know what's ahead of you.

Sometimes we think we just gotta fly deaf, dumb and blind all the time.

Oh yeah, the God expects me to just walk into a wall.

You know what the Holy Ghost is then, there to help you see ahead of time.

But if we don't fellowship with Him, if we don't develop our communication or our communion with Him, then when he's wanting to show us things, we miss it.

It doesn't always talk to us in words and pictures and sometimes it's just a knowing down on the inside.

Amen, you know, my favorite example I use all the time is Paul he.

I perceive that this voyage is gonna be with great hurt, both of the leading of the ship and of our lives.

We ought to not sail right now, boys.

Let's not sail right now I perceive you know he didn't have a vision.

He didn't have an angel appear to him, not then later on he did.

But no, the Holy Ghost let him know why you supposed he did.

Because he had a lot of communion with the Holy Ghost.

He leaned, he knew how to lean on the Spirit of God.

So just a simple exhortation slash teaching tonight on Holy Ghost communion and we got one, two, three, four keys to developing Holy Ghost communion.

How many of you wanna know how you can develop?

See, I wanna improve, I wanna improve, I wanna develop my communion with the Holy Ghost.

So the first one I've got two dos and two don'ts.

Do something and don't do something, amen.

So two of them has do something and two of them don't do these other things.

So first one is number one do keep the flesh under subjection to your spirit into the Holy Ghost.

You know one of my favorite verses of 1 Corinthians 9, 27,.

Paul says but I keep under my body lest, while having preached to others, I myself, by any means, I myself, should become a castaway.

Just think about that statement.

The man that wrote two thirds of the New Testament.

He kept under his body.

He kept under his body under what?

Under subjection to his spirit.

His spirit ruled his flesh, in other words.

And how did it happen?

He had to do it.

He had to become spirit dominant.

Your spirit has to gain the ascendancy.

I read this.

Brother Hagin wrote this many years ago.

He said you know, I feel sorry for Christians that never develop spiritually.

Their spirits are locked away, as it were, in prison, and they become victims of carnal men that wanna make merchandise out of them.

A lot of things that we suffer in life is because we're not spirit dominant and we're gullible.

We just believe everything somebody tells us.

We just believe what the CDC says.

We believe what some government official says.

We believe what some politician says.

Listen what James said.

We've got to have the witness.

We've got to have close communion with the Holy Ghost.

He'll let you know everything.

We can't possibly know what's in the hearts of people and I'm not saying we're going to know what's in their heart but I can tell you, god can show us who's legitimate and who isn't.

Are you with me now?

So keep the flesh under subjection to your spirit, into the Holy Ghost.

He said by some means, by any means, I myself should become.

While having preached to others.

I myself should become a castaway.

A castaway was a coin that didn't measure up.

It did not have the proper gold or silver or whatever worth, and so it was thrown aside.

It wasn't legal tender.

It's cast aside, man, I don't want to be cast aside just because I let my flesh rule me.

See, we've been talking about the anointing upon and the anointing within, and there's preachers that have a mighty anointing upon but their anointing within is lacking.

Their fellowship with the Holy Ghost is lack.

How do you know that?

Well, I've read about them and I know about them too, on a personal basis, and some of their lives are just a shame.

What they allow to go on in their personal lives is just horrendous.

That's why you got to be careful on the internet.

You got to be careful who you listen to and what you read, what books you pick up at the bookstore.

Don't just be a, don't be gullible.

The Holy Ghost, amen.

Let the Holy Ghost guide you.

And so you keep the flesh under subjection to your spirit and to the Holy Ghost.

And you know, in another place Paul says I die daily.

That interesting I get that I die daily.

What does that mean?

He dies to his personal ambition.

He dies to his own personal desire.

He wants what God wants.

He doesn't allow his ego to get in the way, he doesn't allow his mental and he certainly doesn't allow his fleshly, carnal desires to get in the way of what God wants.

I die daily.

Romans 12, one.

You know we ought to present our bodies a living sacrifice wholly acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable service.

And another place says our spiritual worship Present you, present your body.

In other words, you're saying God, here I am, I'm reporting for duty, I'm reporting for duty, I'm ready.

My body is going to do what I tell it to do, amen.

Sometimes your body goes kicking and screaming, sometimes your body doesn't want to get up real early, but it's just, it's good to once.

You keep your flesh under subjection to your spirit.

That is a step toward Holy Ghost communion.

Aren't the second two that I've got?

Two and three?

Or don't do Quench, you know, don't quench the spirit.

First, thessalonians 519, don't quench, quench, not the spirit.

What does that mean?

Quench?

It means to extinguish or suppress the divine influence.

The Holy Spirit has a divine influence on your life and when you extinguish it or suppress it, then you're quenching.

Well, what does that exactly mean Disobeying what you know the spirit of God is wanting you to do?

In my case, one time I was just young in the Lord and had just been baptized in Holy Ghost a short time, and I was standing in a circle at the disco dance floor, the Holiday Inn.

That's where the full gospel business been met.

We always met in the disco of the Holiday Inn on Fraser Street.

Remember that sister, loretta.

She would sing for us on a regular basis.

Where I met Loretta and JD's at that full gospel business.

Man, they weren't going to Lakewood in those years, they were going someplace else.

And we met at full gospel and, man, I mean, when she sang, the Holy Ghost fell.

I'm telling you that.

But anyway, we were having a men's meeting a Saturday morning breakfast meeting and we were standing in a circle.

Right right here's the disco, the parquet wood floor.

This is the disco dance floor.

We got the disco ball up there.

Anybody remember that.

I know y'all are so sanctified that you've never, you've never gone out to the disco Like no, you never did that, I didn't either.

Two stepping instead, okay.

So not much of a disco person, more of a Merle Haggard person.

I don't think anybody ever accused him of being a disco queen or anything like that, all right.

So we were standing in a circle and I'm telling you, the Lord, somebody gave a message in tongues and I knew the interpretation and I didn't give it and I just quenched.

I quenched the spirit.

Oh, I felt so bad, I felt so guilty and I just, oh, I just didn't have the guts.

You know, I just didn't have the courage to give the interpretation of that message in tongues.

I knew it was, and so everybody waited, everybody waited.

Finally, somebody else gave the interpretation.

It was similar to what I had started.

I didn't have the whole thing.

I was waiting for the entire thing to be dumped out and I didn't realize that it rarely goes that way.

It's usually all you have is one phrase or one, sometimes just a couple of words.

But you know, I told the Lord, lord, I'm so sorry I didn't have the courage to obey the spirit.

Give me another chance.

I won't stop next time.

And you know what?

The next month we had another breakfast meeting and something else happened.

This time I had a prophecy and I gave it.

He gave me another chance.

I tell you, he's so wonderful.

Hallelujah, quench.

Not the spirit say don't listen, don't just when you know down in your knower, god wants you to do.

If he's telling you to call so and so call so and so don't put it off.

Hug so and so encourage so and so, whatever it is that the spirit of God has for you to do, do it, otherwise you're quenching.

You're quenching and then the other don't do.

That's first lesson on this 519,.

And Ephesians 430 says grieve not the spirit, grieve not, quench not, grieve not.

They're similar but they're not the same.

Grieve not means to make sorrowful.

What would make the Holy Ghost sorrowful?

Well, foolish talk, gossip, lying, bragging, those things will grieve the spirit, absolutely, will grieve the spirit.

Grieve the spirit.

Being critical, being critical, grieve not the spirit.

I remember one time years ago we were it was a Sunday morning service and we were having a missions report on a trip that I had taken to Asia.

And you know, when I took a trip to Asia, it was a lot of.

You know I had to overcome a whole lot of things to do that.

I mean, you know not, the least of which is about $150,000 is what it costs to do it.

I mean, I won't go into all the details of where we spent the money.

But it took a lot of money to get 1,100, 1,200 ministers in the Philippines, which got six what'd you say, roy?

6,000 islands, 6,000 islands.

So you know, if you've got somebody that lives on the other side of the Philippines, they're gonna come down to say Davao to your meeting.

They've got to cross I don't know how many have to take how many boats to go from where they live, how many boats they've got to catch and how many buses they've got to catch, but they've got to go across all those islands to get to you.

They don't have the money to fly and so we would pay.

If they would get to the meeting.

We would pay their fare home.

We handed out money the last days.

We handed out cash money and plus it took money for me.

I had to fly and I always flew business class or preferably first class.

I had people leave the church when they found out that I flew first class.

Well, listen, I've got to come back.

I don't get to go on a vacation.

This isn't a vacation.

This is 30 hours of flying there and 30 hours home.

That's 60 hours of flying, and I'm preaching when I'm there and when I come home.

I'm right back in this pulpit preaching and singing.

Are you with me now?

So I found out that I could get there and back and not have jet lag if I could sleep on the plane, and that's what I did.

I slept on the plane.

I would take a sleeping pill when I took off and I'd have about 12 hours where I could just lay down and sleep.

You ever try sleeping straight up when you're sandwiched in there Like a sardine.

These are Asian flights, so the people that are on them are Asian.

They're little bitty people, but I'm not a little bitty person, so you're just like this.

So anyway, make a long story short, the person that was up there on the platform, up here on the platform helping me, said something about me and I didn't realize that it was a dig Pastor just needs to stay in a five star hotel.

It's pretty hard.

It's kind of hard to always travel in a pastor because he needs a five star hotel.

There's no such thing in the Philippines.

There's nothing.

Where I go, I don't think there's a five star hotel, and there might be one in Manila.

I don't know.

I've never stayed there.

I sell them stay in Manila.

I'm always on my way to some smaller city.

I'm doing good if they've got one crummy place to eat in the hotel, one place my brother and I ate there and we ate nothing but pad thai.

For four days that's the only dish that we could eat.

You know what pad thai is, Noodles and you know, hopefully, shrimp.

You're not so sure if it's monkey brains or it's shrimp.

You're believing it's shrimp anyway.

So I didn't.

I just laughed.

I said five star hotel.

I wish I knew where that was.

I wouldn't mind staying in a five star hotel.

Why don't you let me know about next time you find one?

And you know the rest of the service.

It was like pulling an anchor off the bottom of the ocean.

I preached, I was up here and I didn't have any help.

The Holy Ghost and I was so exhausted.

I got home I laid on my couch and I was exhausted and I laid there and I thought why am I so tired?

And the Holy Ghost said she grieved me.

What?

And just like a videotape of what she said and how she said it.

And I realized that she criticized me in front of my congregation and grieved the Spirit and she didn't accept my rebuke the next day.

I waited until the next day to get the mad off of me.

And then I called her the next day and I rebuked her.

I said don't you ever grieve the Spirit again.

You can talk about me all you want to, but you can't do it in front of my congregation.

And she was trying to argue with me.

I said well, you're wrong.

She didn't last make a long story short, she didn't last.

Hey, you get so glued down in your opinion of things that you grieve the Spirit, amen.

And so he just flew away.

You know, he came down like a dove.

He's not a dove, but he's like a dove.

The Holy Spirit is like a dove and I am a dove hunter.

I used to go dove hunting.

I grew up.

I grew up going dove hunting, my father, the first kind of hunting I went on when I was 10 years old.

I had a 410 single shot and that's a challenge to kill a dove on the wing with a single shot 410, I can tell you that I finally the first.

I went three or four times before I could ever shoot one out of the sky with a 410.

It shoots a pattern about that big around, you know, 12 gauge shoots, a pattern about like that and 410 shoots a pattern about like that, you know, and.

But a dove is very sensitive.

You know.

If you, here you are, you're looking and the flight of doves is coming toward you, if you sit there and you look at them, they'll see your, your face shining with the sun and they will just veer right out of gun range and you will never shoot one.

They'll just see you and they'll just go like that and goodbye.

So we were in Mexico Sugar Lake one time and a group of builders had gone down there dove hunting and there was this character there and he had a big old white Stetson straw hat.

It was about 150 degrees out.

It was so hot September in Mexico.

It was so hot Right across from Roma.

Anybody know where Roma is?

Well, it's, it's hot in Roma and it's hot across the border from Roma anyway.

So he had his hat on sideways like this Stupid looking.

I mean, you know what in the world?

He bought a big hat so he could turn it sideways and he had his hat on sideways.

I said what in the world are you doing?

He said, oh, I gotta do that.

I never will kill a dove today if I, if I don't do this.

When I've got my hat on like this, they don't see me looking at them.

They think I'm looking this way and I'm looking this way right at them.

And I mean he killed a 55 gallon drum full of dove.

I mean I didn't shoot, but about a handful, and he was killing them out of the sky.

He was shooting them.

I mean, he proved it to me, he proved how sensitive doves are.

The Holy Ghost is very, very sensitive.

So you know, let's keep that in mind when we're developing our relationship with him and let's be sensitive toward him.

Amen, let's not grieve him.

And then, of course, the last one is be being filled with the Holy Ghost, ephesians 5, 18.

Be habitually and continually filled with the Holy Ghost.

If you wanna develop Holy Ghost communion, then stay full of him, stay full, stay full of the Holy Ghost.

You'll see after Acts where in Acts, chapter two, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost.

When you read after that, they had a prayer meeting.

In Acts, chapter four, and it says they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

So you see, in the early church they were constantly being refilled.

They just didn't get filled at the day of Pentecost.

They stayed full.

They prayed to get and to stay full.

And that way you stay close to him and you pay attention to his nudges.

He doesn't always speak in words.

Quit listening for voices, quit listening looking for goosebumps.

But he will nudge you and when, the closer you, the more full of the Holy Ghost you are.

The more you pray in other tongues, the more you sing in tongues, the more you speak to yourself in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

The more you do that then, the more you're gonna know what he wants and when he wants it.

He can just, he can give you nudges and you'll receive that.

And I was praying one morning early.

I had only been saved a few months, been baptized as a Holy Ghost a few months, and it was all new to me and I was just so taken by this new life that I had.

It was so different than what I had before when I was lost, and I was so surprised at what was available to me, so surprised at how God wanted to use me and how God was communicating with me.

And in those days, being kind of a baby Christian, he was still talking to me like with words of where I could understand.

Of course, that didn't last.

Eventually he expects me to walk in the witness, but this was before that.

So one early one morning I'd get off extra early and I was excited what's he gonna say to me today?

What's he gonna show me today?

That's the kind of stage I was in and I had my Bible open and I was read it and then I just kind of laid it on my lap and laid my head back in the chair and just closed my eyes, just pondered what I just read and the Spirit of God spoke so sweetly to me.

He said I am your intimate companion.

That's what he said.

The Holy Ghost said that to me I am your intimate companion.

Well, I just water started falling out of my eyes.

I mean, I just melted for the Spirit of God to tell me that, to say that I am his intimate companion.

I've never forgotten it.

Obviously, in 40 plus years I never will forget it because it touched me so much.

It transformed my life and made me realize what a friend we have in the Holy Ghost and how much he wants to have communication, partnership, relationship, cpr, cpr.

I mean he offers CPR, communication, partnership, relationship, intimacy, amen.

So as you do, as you develop in your coinonia, you'll find that your Holy Ghost communion will increase.

Amen.

Holy Ghost communion.

Get anything out of this tonight?

Did this help you Well, learn to fellowship with the Holy Ghost?

Come on, lift your hands and receive.

Praise God, thank you.

You've known some of this, but you're committed.

You know you're gonna just spend more time communing with the Holy Ghost.

Amen.

That's part of your prayer life getting to know all three parts of the Godhead.

Amen.