From Visitation To Habitation

Pick up your Bibles.

I want to get right into the Word.

Tonight Got something for you.

I believe it fits in with what has happened so far.

It's amazing how God arranges things.

Let's say this together as a heavenly Father, I'm here by divine appointment tonight.

I have ears to hear what the Spirit is telling me.

I'm hearing for myself and not for someone else.

I'm making this personal tonight because you're my personal Lord and Savior and I thank you for all you've done in 2020 and what you're about to do in 2021.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Let's turn in our Bibles to 2 Kings, chapter four, and we'll start reading with verse eight.

2 Kings chapter four, verse eight.

And it fell on a day that Elisha passed to shoot him.

Where was a great woman.

Notice what the Holy Ghost says about this woman.

He called her a great woman and she constrained him.

My margin says she laid hold on him.

She constrained him to eat bread, and so it was that often, as he passed by, he turned in fither to eat bread.

That's the reason I like the King James, because I like the hithers and the thithers.

I've always been fond of those.

And she said unto her husband behold, now I perceive that this is a holy man of God which passes by us continually.

Let us make a little chamber.

That's a little funny to me when I see let us, because she really meant let you make a chamber.

I mean how many of you know the woman didn't go out there and build the room right.

I mean the man went and built the room and furnished the room right and she said let us.

I've taken it pretty funny, that's the way it is around my house.

Let us make a little chamber.

I pray the on the wall and let us set for him there a bed and a table and a stool and a candlestick.

And it shall be when he cometh to us that he shall turn in fither.

And it fell on a day that he came fither and he turned into the chamber and lay there and he said to Gahazah, his servant call this Shunamite.

And when he had called her, she stood before him and he said unto him say unto her.

And I say, notice, he didn't talk to her directly.

I mean, here she is standing there.

And he tells Gahazah I tell her something.

And so it says say now unto her, behold, thou has been careful for us with all this care.

What is to be done for thee?

Would thou be spoken of for the king or to the captain of the host?

In other words, you want us to use our influence to bless you with the political leaders?

And she answered I dwell among my own people, so, no, no, I don't need any influence.

And he said what, then, is to be done for her?

And Gahazah answered you know, you can kind of see that he's not saying it in front of her, just hey, she's married to an old man and she doesn't have a child.

And so he said call her, verse 15.

And when he had called her, she stood in the door and he said now, this time he's talking directly to her About this season, according to the time of life, thou shalt embrace a son.

Now, he struck a nerve for this woman.

I mean, this is something she'd believed for for a long time and probably had kind of given up on the idea.

The older that her husband, god.

And she said don't you lie to me, preacher, don't you mess with me, you messing with me, you messing with me.

Don't you mess with me.

Don't you be talking about no baby?

See, I'm putting it in modern parlance.

I get so tickled when I read this story, I mean, you know she did not want to be trifled with you, don't?

You?

Don't?

You don't be talking about me having no baby, unless you really mean it.

See, she knew he was a man of God.

She wanted to separate the man from the anointing.

She wanted to separate the man from and make sure it was a God kind of message to her.

And so she said and they, my Lord, thou, men of God, do not lie under thine handmaid.

And the woman conceived and bear a son at that season that Elisha had set under her according to the time of life.

Praise God.

And so the message tonight is entitled from visitation to habitation.

Now, let's just kind of dissect this, just take some time and let's study the word of God and get out of it what we need to get out of it for right now, because I believe this is really powerful for where we are.

And God called this woman a great woman and I always, when I see that, I want to know old woman, great is thy faith, you know.

I want to see what does that mean.

And I want to see what does that mean.

Great is thy faith, you know.

I want to see what does God call great?

A greater than John the Baptist has not been born.

Well, I want to find out what was great about John the Baptist.

What was, what was, what was about this woman that God called her great?

And so she was faithful to feed into lodge and as often as he passed by, so she had visitation.

And she wasn't.

She wasn't satisfied with visitation, she wanted more.

She wanted habitation.

She wanted to cut down this passing by business and give him a place to abide, to turn in and to be there, and she wanted to furnish that room with what necessities was needed for him to be comfortable while he stayed there.

She wanted habitation.

Everybody shout habitation.

So she made room.

She made room for more of God.

See this in the Old Testament, the, the prophets, stood for God.

So we could say, without doing despite to the word of God, that she wanted to make room for more of God.

I believe that's exactly where we are.

We need to make more room, more room for more of God.

Amen, I mean, no matter what we've got, there's always more.

I said there's always more.

And so she made a special chamber, had a bed, had a table, had a chair.

I mean, you know, he had to have a place to eat.

He didn't come, he didn't come down there and eat with her.

He had his own place to eat, private, had a candle stick for light, a bed for rest.

She constrained Elisha.

The Hebrew word cause act, which means to fasten upon, to seize, to bind, to restrain, and I don't mean physically, I mean she.

She had a desire that she communicated to him.

I know it says that she laid hands on him, but this was more involved in the spirit she had.

She had an attitude that arrested him.

Are you with me?

Now?

There is an attitude that can arrest God from just passing by.

You know, there's a lot, of, a lot of people are just satisfied with passing by.

Oh, won't you pass by here, lord, pass by Jesus.

Won't you come by here?

Oh, lord, just come by, touch me Jesus.

Well, why do we want to touch when he wants to come and live inside?

He wants to fill us, to overflow, and we don't need a touch, we don't need a visit, we don't need a touch, we need habitation, don't we?

Amen, god desires habitation.

So she, she had no ulterior motive when he started asking.

In fact, she didn't bring the thing up about the child.

She didn't say well, I'll tell you what if you just answer my prayer about my child.

No, she didn't bring it up.

In fact she was emphatic.

Don't you lie to me about that, then that's too touchy with me, even though she had a little thing with God about it.

Are y'all with me now?

You gotta read between the lines in the Bible.

She was disappointed that she was childless.

In that culture, to be childless assumed that somehow you had failed God.

That's what they believed.

It was wrong, but that's what they believed.

That's what Sarah believed, that when you didn't have a child, there was something that you had fallen short and you had displeased God.

And it gave a kind of a pecking order with the other women especially, you know, if they had 10 kids and you had no kids, well, you were kind of way down the list, might not even be invited to the party.

So she had no ulterior motive, except that she just wanted more of God's presence.

So things are going on in this world.

I think everybody can see the plumb line being dropped.

I think everybody can see the different kinds of churches.

I mean a church that would close for extended periods of time, months and months and months and not even try to open up is obviously they don't even want to visitation, much less a habitation.

I think you almost have to question whether they're a church or whether they really believe.

What do they believe?

I wouldn't be part of a church like that.

I wouldn't pull.

I wouldn't send my tithe to a ministry that would just be absent from a building for six months.

Are you kidding me?

Sorry to be so blunt, but it's true.

And then there's churches like that, like us, that we will do anything for more of God.

I tell you I want more of God, like we had flowing in here tonight, and I don't want it just every now and then, I want it all the time.

I want it when we walk in the building that God is dripping off the walls.

I mean, we dismissed service this morning at the height of the anointing.

If I had known that Chittam was gonna be here and was gonna sing, I would have had her singing a little earlier in the service, but as it was.

I mean, how many of you will hear this morning?

And she's a dear child that grew up in this church and she's very successful now and I hadn't been around her in years, I didn't know the anointing.

I knew the talent, but this morning we heard the anointing.

The anointing was just falling in here and then we went home and I felt kind of disappointed that we couldn't have worked her in a little earlier.

Well, we just didn't know.

It's just one of those things that happened.

But the anointing is designed to be enjoyed, it's designed to be partaken of, and so it came back tonight.

He came back tonight.

I should say not it he Come on, let's just lift our hands, lord, we want more of you, more of you, more of you.

There's people.

They don't want you.

We want what their share was.

Well, give us their share that they're passing up.

We'll take their share.

Praise God We'll.

We can strain him.

Well, we provide an atmosphere that says don't go another step, stay right here, bed down here, live here, eat here, stay here.

I know God doesn't live in buildings, but God's presence is in this building when you're not here.

And I don't mean to say that the Bible is wrong, I mean God left the building made by hands and yet, but in this dispensation, god, the spirit of God, is everywhere present.

He's in the bar, he's at Swanies, he's at you, know he's, you know, is it every night club?

He's there, but he's more here than he is almost anywhere else, I believe, cause angels are here and they carry his presence too, but it during the week we'll walk in here, I know.

I know his presence is here Different than it is at Papadote.

Amy, are y'all looking at me kind of funny now?

So what, we thoroughly furnish this place with what satisfies them, and I don't mean just physically, but I mean the attitude.

That's up to us.

She had that attitude.

You know, we've got to, we've got to make things easy for him.

He's just visiting.

I want him to, I want him to live here when he's in town.

I want, I want this house to be the center of his operations.

Praise God, habitation is God's desire.

You go back.

Let's look at Isaiah 66.

From visitation to habitation, verse one.

Thus saith the Lord the heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool.

Where is the house that you show, that you build unto me, and where is the place of my rest?

One version says where can I fix my presence?

Where can I fix my presence?

Jesus is known as the nail.

You know.

You nail him in the wall and he's there.

He's not coming and going.

Where can I fix my presence?

In verse five, hear the word of the Lord.

Ye that tremble at his word.

God is looking for people that will tremble at his word.

That's what we had up front tonight.

We had people that came who tremble at his word.

That will not make a decision until they have that word that they need to make the decision.

They will not go on their own, they will not just just okay.

Well, I'm just making a decision I've just got to make.

You know, the time is up.

I've just got to make this decision.

I hadn't heard from God, but I'm just no, they tremble at his word.

See, that's what we got.

That's what God's looking for.

He's looking for people that exalt him, that acknowledge him, that care for what.

What's your side?

What's your side on this Lord?

What is your thinking on this?

I mean, these are his thoughts, but there are plenty of things that are not written in the Bible where he's got a side and we need to find out what his side is and get on it.

Every time you vote for somebody he's got a side.

I won't vote for somebody that he's not.

You know there's unopposed judges.

I didn't vote for the some people.

They vote for the unopposed.

They'll vote for a Democrat.

If he's unopposed, I would never vote for a Democrat.

I don't care what.

Well, you just voted.

No, I didn't vote.

I did not cast my vote for that slam ball.

Sorry, excuse me, children, I called them names, okay.

So God is looking for those who tremble at His Word.

You know these buildings.

When we built them we were in the seventh day.

We started hearing from God about this building Before we moved.

I told you the testimony of leaving the Baptist church and moving to that other church.

There was three months.

I got the word that we were leaving.

We got the letter in the mail.

It's what I got.

I got a letter in the mail.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it, not a phone call, a letter.

You're out of here in 90 days.

We sold the building.

So I started trying to figure out a way, because we had bought the property down the street where His Champion's Crossing subdivision is.

That was ours 92.7 acres.

That was our land down there, and so I started trying to investigate.

How can we just get on our property?

We can pitch a tent on it.

We can haul bathrooms.

They have air conditioned bathrooms.

That's got three or four stalls for the women and a couple of stalls for the men, two separate buildings, air conditioned.

You can rent them, have them hauled out there on the deal, you know, and they've holding tanks.

You have them just like a construction, only nicer, nice, and you build an air conditioned.

You know I was thinking about a nice air conditioned tent, something temporary.

Well, you can't do that in Harris County.

It took me six weeks to find out.

We couldn't do anything on that property without Harris County's full approval and they wouldn't approve anything.

We had to dig detention pond, just a park in the mud, just to have a building that sheds water means we've got to have a place for the water to drain in.

It was a stupidest thing.

We can't use our own property thanks to unelected government officials.

That's when we became, you know, nose to nose with all this abuse of power.

I mean, I understand, but I mean it's just ridiculous.

Do you really think digging a hole is going to keep us from flooding?

Give me a break.

We're going to flood.

It's not.

If it's when we live in Harris County, there's nowhere for the water to go but up.

Anyway.

I digress, but I looked and, and so in doing that I found this kind of building.

I wanted to build this building.

You can build this building with no slab.

You can anchor it in the ground and have a wooden pallets for a floor.

I mean, I had it.

I had it kind of figured out what we were going to do, but we couldn't do it.

Six weeks burned up when I finally, oh my goodness, we got to find someplace else.

We can't even use our own land, and so then, after that length of time going by, you can see kind of.

But so we found this building and at that point in time, but after we moved and we were there for a while, about a year we started getting serious about building on our property.

So God gave us some words in prayer.

We had Thursday night prayer how many of you used to come to that Thursday night prayer in that seventh day of Venice Church?

And we would get these words and we would pray them out.

And the first thing I started thinking about was this building.

It fit a lot of what God was telling us.

He said I want it non institutional, in other words, I don't want it with spires and with with big old stained glass.

I don't want it traditional.

You know it's been a lot of people heard in church.

They have a kind of a negative.

You know, if I was an altar boy that got mistreated by the priest, I wouldn't really feel very comfortable with stained glass again.

I'd probably want to go someplace else.

I mean that kind of church doesn't engender good.

I hate to go that way, but I mean the people have been hurt in church.

He said non institutional, center, friendly, first class, high tech.

And what was the other one, karen, state of the art, first class.

Well, this, this building, a satisfied with some of them.

It didn't satisfy.

People said first class.

How could this building be first class?

Well, when we finished this building and moved in, this thing was first class and it was high tech, it was all those things.

We trembled at his word and we, we made room for growth.

We had about maybe 180, 200 people coming on Sunday morning and we built a sanctuary that seats a thousand.

I know churches that have 30,000 members and they spent.

They built a 5000 seat sanctuary.

Well, which church has got faith?

And which church is just having a business plan?

Which church is just just turning the crank and moving people in and out like cattle, you know, having seven, eight services a Sunday.

Yeah, they've got a big building but they're not even accommodating the need.

I mean, people are coming in and out, in and out, so that means they've got a, they've got a short and they don't.

They can't afford habitation.

What would happen if habitation showed up?

The Holy Ghost fell and people were on their face when the 11 o'clock service comes.

That's what happened at Lakewood.

I've already lived through that.

At Lakewood they started having two services on Sunday morning 830 and 11.

The 830 service.

There were times when the spirit of God would fall and people would just be on the floor or they would be wiped out.

I mean, the spirit of God was moving and the service kept going and people were piling up in the parking lot, people were piling up in the in the vestibule and it got to be a problem because I mean 11 o'clock crowd.

I mean what are you going to do with the 11 o'clock crowd?

Well, you have to start curtailing.

You start, you have to start aiming, you've got to have a, you've got to have things happen at a certain time.

And what happens to the Holy Ghost?

Well, he doesn't normally go along with your schedule.

I hate to say that, but I mean it's the presence of God suffered.

At Lakewood we started seeing they're, y'all were there.

I'm not criticizing them, just it's a kind of a tough situation.

You see 5,000 people, but there's another, you know.

So say, 3,000 show up at the first service.

Well, then there's 5,000 coming in the door.

You got to, you got to move them out.

The ushers have got to pick them up and get them out the door and get their cars off of the out of the park.

Are y'all with me now?

We wanted habitation, we wanted plenty of room.

One of these days there won't be enough room.

When the harvest comes in, we're going to need a bigger barn.

Everybody say habitation.

So in Israel, in Exodus 25, the first thing after giving Moses the law, remember the shaking?

Mount Sinai shook and yet once more.

There's another shaking.

We're in the shaking right now.

The yet once more shaking is going on right now.

So during, right after that shaking, what did God say?

God said I want you to go receive an offering, because I want you to build me a place for habitation.

I want a shekena among my people.

I want my glory among my people.

You need to build me and receive an offering to build me a sanctuary.

That was the first thing.

First offering after they, after they've received the law, was to build God a sanctuary that he could be in their presence.

Let's look at Ephesians, chapter two.

Are you getting anything out of this?

How many of you want habitation?

You're in the right place.

Praise God.

Ephesians two, verse nineteen.

Now, therefore, you're no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are building together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

So collectively, individually, we're God's temple.

1 Corinthians, chapter 7 or 6,.

1 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

Don't you know?

You're the temple of the Holy Ghost.

Did you have a God?

You're not your own.

But then, collectively, we're also a habitation of God.

We're the temple of God.

But this temple of people meet in a place.

You've got to have a place to meet and this place ought to be a place that reflects God's honor.

I know that people meet.

I was in Mexico one time in one of those cities where people in Squatters Village outside of what town was that?

Outside of Mack Allen?

So that would be what is Matamoros?

No, matamoros is Brownsville, renosa.

Just outside of Renosa there was this huge Squatters Village.

So the people they was government owned land they didn't have.

They're homeless, so they're squatting on this piece of property and most of the houses were cardboard and tin scraps that people throw away.

They'd put together for a shelter.

But there was one building that was cinderblock dirt floor was the church.

The church was about the size of this right here, little tiny, and you had a row of seats here and a row of seats here and just a little pathway and the pastor was a woman.

She had this dirty dress on, she was dirty.

There's no place to wash.

There's no place to wash clothes.

They've got 55 gallon drums of water for drinking water and you know, every so often a bulldozer comes out there and scrapes the streets of all the yuck.

I mean there's no place for bathrooms, there's no sanitation.

It's horrible, it's horrible.

People out there and this woman come into this room.

We were there and she started speaking and of course she didn't speak English.

She started preaching in Spanish and we had interpretation.

I mean the glory of God hit that little old place and the glory of God lit her face up.

I mean she had I mean you know there's a little mud on this side and dirty dress and her hair was not fixed and the glory of God came on her.

And that's when I was broke and if I'd have had $10,000 I'd have given it to her.

If I could have emptied my bank account, I would have emptied my bank account because the anointing was there and she's reaching those people, she's getting them out of Catholicism, getting them out of dead religion and preaching the Word.

And so, yeah, I know, but the glory will do that, but we have the ability to have something better than a mud hut.

Are you with me now?

So last year, well, the beginning of this year, when I went to pray, god gave me two more words update and upgrade, because the five or six words that we had when we built this building were no longer applicable.

It's no longer first class, it's no longer high tech.

In fact, these lights we had a young man come out and says, oh, I've never seen these kind of lights before.

Man, these are antiques.

Everybody has LEDs now.

If they looked at our sound board, which was $100,000 when we bought it about 10 years ago.

We upgraded when we bought that and it's out of date.

Can you imagine a computer?

Do you have a computer this 10 years old?

I bet you, if you at your job, your computer's not even more than two years old.

Right, because everything goes absolutely.

We're absolutely.

We're no longer high tech, we're no longer first class, we're no longer.

Are you with me?

We tremble at His Word.

We have to get back in obedience to His Word.

His Word wasn't just for 2003,.

His Word was for 2020.

Amen, so we're doing this as part of a holy habitation of God.

Well, but, pastor, that's not.

I mean, that's just bricks and sticks and sheet rock.

I know, but it's all part of honoring Him.

Are you with me now?

Amen, we're being built together as a habitation of God through the Spirit.

Let's look at John seven.

Give you some things here.

You get anything out of this tonight.

I just thought it was time for us to study the Bible together and kind of late in the year, early next year, start kind of setting the tone for where we're headed.

And we're headed for habitation, we're headed for more.

I don't know about you, but I want more.

I want all our people to have more.

I want every new member to have more Amen and every member that's been here a long time to have more.

Everybody will have more amen.

John, chapter seven, in verse 37.

John seven 37.

In the last day, that great day of the feast which, that feast that he's talking about there was the Feast of Tabernacles.

The Feast of Tabernacles was a time when God commanded Israel to rejoice.

They had under pain of being disobedient.

They had to dance, they had to sing, they had to rejoice.

They ate their apples and honey.

They moved out of their homes and moved up to the roof or outdoors and they built these little, flimsy little booths where they could see the sky.

It reminded them of when they lived in the wilderness.

This was a tradition that reenacted their deliverance from Egypt and that God was their covering, that God was there, all in all, that they could look through the flimsy ceiling of their little booths and God was there, and they would dance and dance and they would sing and over a period of time, israel at the time of Jesus, they were backslid and they fulfilled the feast, but they did it because it was just humdrum.

It was expected.

They didn't have a spirit of wanting more.

They didn't do it with a spirit of wanting habitation.

It's just another religious exercise.

So in the last day, that great day of the feast, jesus stood and cried, saying if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.

And that had to start a stir right there.

Let him come unto me and drink.

He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Parenthesis, verse 39,.

But this spake he of the spirit which they that believeth on him should receive.

For the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.

So here he is.

He's basically addressing the bankruptcy of bed religion.

He's saying what you really need is you need the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

And of course they weren't eligible for that because they're not saved.

He hadn't died on the cross yet.

So was he really talking to them?

Or was he talking to us?

I mean, you know he's not talking to Israel then, because they weren't qualified to receive it, but we are.

So I think we can.

In fact, I know we can receive four things out of these verses how we can fully cooperate to become a habitation of God.

And he said it, number number one, in verse 37 thirst.

If any man thirst, just think about that.

Any man, any person, any believer, if any believer thirst.

So the first ingredient to becoming a habitation of God and not just visiting, not just passing by and getting an occasional blessing, but a habitation is thirst.

Thirst, do we desire more?

And I'm not talking about an emotion, I'm not talking about, I'm talking about a desire comes with what you pay attention to.

How much attention do you pay God?

How much attention do you pay the word?

I mean, if you give a lot of attention to the word and that means you read your Bible, you pray, you pay a lot of attention to God.

The more attention you pay somebody, then that determines your thirst.

Every preacher I knew in 1998 bought a Harley.

I got to start paying a lot of attention to Harley Davidson.

I'd go by the Harley shop and sit on the Harley, you know, and I wanted the heritage special.

That's the one that's kind of.

It had a fringe saddlebag on the back, you know, and all of that.

I knew a few guys that had a road king, one friend of mine, he, he showed up preaching at a meeting and he had fell off his Harley and in his own driveway.

He was going about 10, 15 miles an hour.

He wasn't going very fast but it it scraped all the hide off of his side of his body and he had to wear shorts to preach in a t-shirt, because this arm and that leg was just nasty looking.

It was hard to even watch it.

I thought, man, you should have stayed home.

It's a distraction.

And then another guy fell off his Harley and bruised his kidney, was in the hospital for weeks and had to give his church over to his kids for six months while they got over that.

So you know it didn't take a brilliant.

I quit paying attention to Harley's.

As soon as I quit paying attention, the desire left me.

I mean, you pay attention to God, you're, you're, you're, you're.

You're saying to him you're thirsting for him.

It's not about your emotion, it's not about you, it's about your attention.

Everybody say my attention.

See, when you give him attention, you're saying to him you're thirsting for him.

And Philippians three?

Let's look at this one real quick.

I always desire what you play, pay close attention to.

I tell you, I started playing, paying close attention to Gladys when you, when he was 13 and I mean, you know, wound up with her as my wife.

I paid close attention to Ephesians, chapter.

What did I say?

Philippians, sorry Philippians.

Chapter three, verse 10, paul is saying that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformal unto his death, if by any means I'm out of tain under the resurrection of the dead.

Not as though I had already attained, neither was already perfect, but I follow after, if I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended, of Christ Jesus.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do for getting the things which are behind and reaching forth under those things which are before I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God and Christ Jesus.

That is a picture of thirst.

He's thirsting.

He's not resting on his laurels, he's not resting on his accomplishments, he's not resting on what he had yesterday.

He is reaching forth to something he hadn't quite found yet and he does not count himself to have apprehended it.

So he's not going to give up until he does.

Are y'all with me?

So that's thirst.

Thirsty people are dangerous.

Look at the danger.

I mean he was dangerous to the devil, wrote.

Three quarters of the New Testament Thirst.

Everybody shout thirst.

Alright, the next thing, going back to John seven if any man thirsts, let him come unto me, let him come.

So the second ingredient of how to cooperate to become a habitation is come.

So you're either coming near to God or you're drawing away from it.

There's no status quo, there's no holding, holding pattern.

You're either increasing or decreasing.

Smith Smith Wigglesworth said that.

He said your faith is either growing or shrinking.

That's why he took a pocket New Testament with him everywhere he went and he was known as the apostle of faith.

19 people you know risen from the dead in his ministry.

One had already been embalmed Figure that one out and so he knew something about God's power and about habitation.

But he said I can't go anywhere without my pocket New Testament.

I would, I I, any more than I could go undressed, I feel.

I feel I feel naked without my Bible.

And he'd be eating with a group of people and he would.

He said, well, we fed the body, now let's feed the spirit.

And he'd rock back and do a little miniature teaching on faith or some subject.

I mean he was always coming to Jesus.

You come to him by faith and not by feelings.

See, again, it gets back to the attention.

The more you pay attention, the more you desire, the closer you draw near.

So they, these two things, thirsting and coming, feed each other.

The more you thirst, the more you'll come.

The more you come, the more you'll thirst, until you get to number three.

And they said those you know, if you come unto me and drink, so you need to drink, because if you don't drink, what happens?

Well, you haven't accomplished anything.

I mean, if you thirst and you never drink, what's going to happen to you?

You're going to die, right, what if you never drank water?

Well, you're going to die pretty quick.

And I mean, you can do without food for quite a while, but not water.

You got to have water, right?

Well, he's a living water If you don't drink, amen.

So he, he that thirst, let him come unto me and drink and drink.

Psalm 368 says drinking from the rivers of his pleasures.

Revelation 22, 17,.

He that drinketh of the water of life freely.

Ephesians 5, 18 through 20 talks about being filled with the Holy Ghost.

Be being filled.

The word be there means be being filled.

Be continually and habitually filled with the Holy Ghost speaking to yourself, and Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks unto the Lord in all things and submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

All three of those things happen when you are being filled.

Be continually and habitually filled, that's drinking.

What happens when you drink a lot?

Well, it's gotta come out some way, cause eventually you're gonna stop drinking.

Right, I mean you're gonna get filled and now you can't hold anymore, no more capacity to drink.

Because why?

Because you didn't, it didn't come out.

I mean, it's not so.

Then it says in he that believe in me and the scripture said out of his belly shall flow rivers of water, of living water flow.

So something's gotta flow out.

So when we drink, we have to flow out.

That's the whole point of thirsting and coming, and drinking is so that we can flow out to others, to flow out to others.

If we're flowing out to others, there's a flow in and a flow out, and God is able to multiply.

I mean, you know rivers of living.

See, you're not likely to be drinking rivers, right, because if I try to drink one river much less rivers, plural you don't have a mouth that big or a stomach that big.

But what happens is when you drink as much as you can, god multiplies it.

When it comes out and all of a sudden you become a source of the Holy Spirit, his signs and his wonders, just like that song we were singing this morning.

When we speak, I mean, miracles happen.

Walls fall down, amen.

That's what the world needs right now.

For the church to be, the church has got to be a flow of the Holy Ghost and that comes from habitation.

It doesn't come from visitation.

We're not gonna get any results from visitation, except a few of us will get a blessing every now and then.

Somebody's sore toe is healed, somebody's earache, somebody's nose bleed.

You know that's great.

But you know that's not what God's looking for.

God's looking for a radical transformation.

They keep talking about transforming this country.

What we need is a transformation of the church.

The church needs to get out and preach the gospel with demonstration.

That's what needs to happen, amen.

And so praying alone won't bring habitation.

We've got to be filled so that we can give out and be filled again, and give out and filled again, and give out and filled again and give out.

I've been all over the world, because I've seen preachers that gave out and gave out and didn't get filled back up.

They just give out, give out.

Well, you got to get filled up.

Because what are you giving out?

Because if you didn't drink it, what's coming out?

Brackish water, polluted water, stale bread.

Yeah, I mean you take a.

You know, we used to.

You know, on the property that we sold we had a little pond.

That thing was had about a half inch of green scum all over it.

I mean, the only thing that lived in that thing were some turtles.

There were no, there were no fish in there.

There was no oxygen in there.

That water was just dead.

It was dead water.

That's what a lot of preaching is right now.

It's just dead water.

There's no living water, there's.

Nobody has been, nobody has received, they've never.

They really haven't come to Jesus in so long.

They, they haven't.

They just haven't drank from his wells, his rivers.

Are you with me now?

There's got to be a constant filling flow.

And so what happened to that Shunamite woman?

She gave birth, she.

She brought forth fruit.

She sure did.

And that's what's going to take for the church.

The church has got to thirst and come and drink and flow to where we can really bear fruit.

In these last days, I believe we're going to bear fruit and the precious fruit of the earth is going to get saved, amen.

But it's going to come from being a habitation of God through the spirit.

Praise God, bringing forth fruit for the harvest.

Come on, lift your hands and receive, praise God, visitation to habitation.

You get anything out of this tonight, praise God, amen.