Being Led By The Spirit

Let our Bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad, and let's say this together.

So, heavenly Father, I'm here on purpose this morning, divine appointment, and I have ears to hear what the Spirit is telling me today.

I'm teachable and I will be a doer of the Word, not just a hearer, and I'll employ the principles that I hear today in Jesus' name.

So let's look at two places in Romans 8 and also Proverbs, chapter 20.

Proverbs 20 · chapter mention

And we went home.

Now we'd be blessed.

Oh wow, what a service.

Already Romans 8, 14 says this.

It says for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

I like to turn it around as many as are led by the, as many as are the sons of God, they are led by the Spirit of God.

See, if the first is true, the second is true, all right.

And then Proverbs 20, 27,.

The Spirit of man is the candle or the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly or searching all the innermost being.

One verse says and so tonight or today, I wanna teach you on being led by the Spirit.

You know, remember, I asked you to give me a year of your life, told you that I would teach you a wide range of subjects.

I wanna teach you on faith, I wanna teach you on healing.

I wanna teach you on the gifts of the Spirit.

I wanna teach you on the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

And today I'm gonna start maybe this week and next week on being led by the Spirit, because in my 33 years of ministry, 26 years of pastoring, this is one of the biggest needs that people have.

Most Christians, unfortunately, keep their Spirit locked away and they really don't lean on their own Spirit and they don't lean on the Holy Spirit for guidance.

And in so doing, in locking their Spirit away, they become victims of scheming people.

I mean, you get ripped off.

You ever been ripped off.

You ever had somebody that you trusted and then you found out you couldn't trust them.

See, if you were properly following the Holy Ghost, he would keep you from any of that ever happening to you, instead of blaming the person, because there's gonna be lots of people that are gonna try to rip you off.

You know people.

You know human nature is just to be self-interested, and so they want you to take care of them.

So you've gotta have the Holy Ghost to help.

You know when people are sincere when they're telling the truth and whether or not, and even in church.

And I talked about this recently.

But you know, pastor, that I know he had a guy sitting on the front row giving bunches of money and bought him an airplane and the whole thing, and found out that he was a head of a Ponzi scheme that was ripping off investors all over the country.

And the FBI got ahold of him and he escaped out of their clutches and was gone for like five years before they found him in Europe and brought him back.

He committed suicide in jail rather than go to prison, but he deserved prison.

Now he's sitting right there in church.

I wonder how many people got ripped off right there in that church?

Probably a few.

Anyway, every Christian has a right to be led by the Spirit, and in fact, the Bible says that you are being led.

See, everybody say I am being led by the Holy Spirit.

Now I heard a hesitation.

Well, you know how do I know?

The Bible said every believer is led by the Spirit.

So say it again I am led by the Spirit.

So then the question is are you following the leading?

That's the thing I could really re?

Re.

You know, put a different title on it Following the Holy Ghost.

Following, see, it's one thing, to be led, it's another thing to follow.

So we're gonna teach you this morning about what the Word says about following and how to follow, how to develop your spirit.

So you know the leading.

And so how does God lead us?

Well, primarily by his spirit, in our spirit.

He's not leading you by your brain, your brain tissue, he's not leading you by your five senses.

He's leading you in your spirit.

Because why he is a spirit?

He's the father of spirits.

So, since he's our heavenly father, he sees us as spirit beings.

It'll help your faith to realize that you're not this right here, you're not this right here.

You're invisible, the real you nobody has seen.

I mean, when you hold a little baby, you know you feel that little baby and you look at that little baby and your little eyes sometimes are kind of wiggling around, sometimes they get cross-eyed.

What happens?

Well, they need to develop.

You know the ability for their senses to encounter the world, that they just, they were in a dark place, they were inside mommy, you know, for nine months, that's all they know.

And then suddenly they go through all this pressure and all this hoopla and all this slapping on the bottom and everything else and all this blood and they cut the umbilical cord.

I mean, yeah, all kinds of things happen to these little babies, and so it takes them a while to kind of go all right and the world is going hot.

You know, eyes are going like that.

You know it takes a while and they get settled down and so forth and so on.

It's kind of the way when you get born again, you don't just instantly come into the kingdom knowing how to be led.

I remember when I first got saved, god just began to speak verbally to me.

I heard his voice.

I heard his voice.

He just started micromanaging my life.

Do this, do that?

Go here, go there.

And then suddenly one day, after a few months, I quit hearing that voice.

Oh, where'd that voice go?

Well, god expected me to do what I'm gonna teach you today, thank God.

I was going to a church that taught me that.

It took a while, you know, to learn this, but I wanna teach it to you because the word works right.

Yes, the Spirit of man is the lamp or the candle of the Lord.

You know Psalm 1828,.

It will light my candle.

My God will enlighten my darkness.

So you don't have to wonder, you don't have to wander, you know.

You don't have to fiddle around making a bunch of dead-end runs and cul-de-sacs.

God, by his Spirit, is leading you and he's expecting you to follow him, amen.

And so we've been given a supernatural guidance system.

Let that sink in.

We have been given a supernatural guidance system.

It's foolproof, it can't be wrong.

What are you saying?

I'm saying your system can't be wrong, but what's wrong is that we don't always accurately interpret its signals.

We don't always listen.

If we're honest, we don't always listen.

In fact, it takes faith to flow with your system Because you know, if you're not hearing see, I mean I know you're, I wanna hear his voice you might hear his voice.

That's one of the guidances.

But it's not gonna last, because God expects us to walk by faith.

And really, let's look at Romans 8 again.

It says here verse 16.

We read verse 14, read verse 16, 8, 16.

The Spirit Himself bears witness, with our spirit, that we are the children of God.

So you knew you were saved, not by seeing a vision of Jesus.

He didn't appear to you.

Probably you know you didn't have an angel tell you you had a witness or you had a knowing on the inside.

You just knew down in your knower.

I like that one.

Everybody say I know in my knower.

See, sometimes you're knower.

No thanks before your brain picks up on it Again.

You know, reason is the voice of the mind.

Feelings are the voice of the flesh.

If you are led by reason or by logic, and that's how you make decisions, you are gonna miss God and you're gonna make a lot of decisions wrong.

That's me, engineer builder.

Two by four, two by 12, two by six, everything's gotta make sense.

Build a wall, raise the wall, get the floor joyous, so forth and so on.

Everything's ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch.

And that's not how God operates.

You know, women have a little easier time with this than men.

See, women have women's intuition.

Women have intuition.

See, women have women's intuition.

If you ever I quit asking honey, how did you arrive at that?

And I just gave.

I gave up a long time ago.

You know, 52 years, you finally know what questions to ask and what questions not to ask.

We might get to the same decision and we might make the same decision, get to the same point.

But she went all the way over here.

Woo, boom.

Well, you know, we made that decision because tomorrow's Tuesday, tomorrow's Tuesday, what does that have to do with it?

And then, you know, you just go off on a story and then the next thing you know, and boom, there it is.

See, men are different.

Men are just two by four, two by six.

One plus one is two, two times four is eight, and so women.

You know, it kind of reminds me of the old redneck, south Texas rednecks.

Ernie and Vern decided to go fishing down in Copano Bay.

There's a causeway, you know, over Copano Bay, there kind of close to Corpus, between Rockport, right out of Rockport, and so they decided to go fishing one day and they're anchored just away from the bridge so they could cast and let their corks be under the bridge.

You know where you can catch some fish or feeding on the pilings around in there and so forth.

And suddenly you know they look and here's a funeral procession, the hearse is going over the causeway.

So Vern stands up in the boat and pulls off his straw hat and puts it over his heart and he just stands, you know, just real reverent, you know, and watches the thing until it goes out of sight and he sits back down and Ernie said man Vern, I didn't have any idea that you were so respectful of the dead.

He said well, we were married 40 years.

I thought it was the least I could do.

He probably got tired.

He probably got tired of asking questions, oh praise God.

But God is on our side.

He's working for us, not against us.

He's guiding us along life's journey.

We have to learn to follow the Holy Ghost leading.

So he leads us.

Now how does he lead us?

Well, he leads us by the Word and the Spirit.

You see, the Word is God's general will for your life.

So you're not going to be led very well if you ignore the Word.

You know, because it's got just normal things in there that you need to be doing.

If Jesus is your Lord, then he wants you to operate according to his Word.

He is the Word, jesus is Lord, so the Word is the Lord.

And when you decide that the Word has final say on everything, every decision you make, you know one of those in their first Corinthians is don't be or second Corinthians, don't be unequally yelped with the unbeliever.

So that'll kind of tell you who is a candidate to be.

You know, for you to marry Glad.

It's violated that big time.

She violated that, but God worked it out for her and for me.

Thank God for that.

But you know it's just safer to be.

Look at the Word.

I mean same with going in business with people, same with having close relationships.

Let's choose our friends carefully and let's be guided by the Word.

The Word tells you to walk in love.

Well, walk in love tells you how to treat your wife, how you treat your husband, how to treat your kids, kids how to treat their parents.

If everybody obeys the Word, then you're going to.

You're already very close to being guided and led by the Spirit, because the Spirit and the Word always agree.

But then there are specifics of life that you must find out about.

Well, one of my favorite specifics of life is when I heard from God about starting this church and I went to Brother Osteen, went through this whole thing and I won't go through that entire testimony.

But later on, when it came time to start it that was middle of December he called me and said you know, john, if at this time or anytime in the future you decide to start that church, you have my full and unreserved blessing.

I waited for that.

There's no way I'm leaving without it.

And I got it.

So I started my, I started working pretty specifically, and but nowhere in the Bible did it say that you're going to hold your first service on January 29, 1995.

That wasn't that date, wasn't in my Bible.

As a matter of fact, the address of our first building wasn't in there 6827 FM, 1960.

Well, that address wasn't in the Bible.

How did I find out?

How did I know that that building was the building?

How did I know that the date was the date?

The witness of the spirit I just started walking.

I remember one day I was, I knew it was going to be 1960.

I don't know how I knew it, I just knew 1960.

And I was driving down 1960 between Stubner Airline and Champion Forest Drive.

And the closer I got to Champion Forest, I had this I don't know how to describe it a buzzer of an alert on the inside.

And when I got to the corner of Champion Forest, 1960, it was just kind of peaked and and and it reminded me of eight years before I had done this same drive when I was broke and unemployed and and I had that same feeling then and I actually I said where's a church?

There's a church here and I was looking around and I knew Champion Forest Baptist.

Down the street my cousin was teaching men Sunday school in that church.

I knew that church was there, but that's not what I was talking about.

It was closer to 1990.

And it was so real and so God reminded me as I'm driving down the road.

I kept and it got stronger and stronger and then as I got to 249, it kind of got weaker and weaker.

And then I remembered an old building that I, when I was a home builder, we used to come over over here we're building in Westador way on 1960 and 45.

We would have to drive a long way for a restaurant.

Back in those days there weren't hardly.

It wasn't anything like it is today.

You had to drive to go eat every day at lunch.

And so we found this place called Big Ben's Barbecue and it had been a nice seafood place before that and they went out of business because it's hidden off the road.

It's kind of in a strip center, but it's in an independent building and it's off the road so it's easy to drive right past it.

And that's what had happened to me.

I drove right past it that day but I was looking for that building that used to be Big Ben's Barbecue, and I wondered is it torn down, is it gone?

And I went right past it when I got to 249.

You know it was John.

I didn't have that witness in me.

It's like a GPS.

I said it's like a GPS, what I know.

Y'all are crazy, you're thinking I'm crazy, but the word look, we have a supernatural guidance system.

I had an Acura one time, 2002 Acura, and it was one of the early navigation.

I had navigation in there and I had a Japanese woman that came with a car that lived under my dash and she talked to me Turn right at next intersection.

I got rid of that car.

I didn't like the Japanese woman talking to me, couldn't turn her off, but this was better, this, okay, you don't have to laugh, it's fine, it wasn't that funny.

It was a Japanese car.

Okay, not being racist, I bought the Japanese car, okay, anyway, so I had this GPS.

So I got a call from one of my prospective members that we do from Lakewood and said Pastor, there's, we live in Champions Park and right at the entrance of our subdivision, across 1960, there's a, there's a building for lease.

And I thought, well, that's, that's the building I'm looking for.

And, sure enough, I turned back around, came back and that was the building I was looking for, and now it's putt putt golf.

But it was Big Ben's barbecue.

When I was a home builder, I was lost and I used to drink beer and eat barbecue.

I did it was.

It was against my religion to ever, ever have Mexican food or barbecue without beer.

You just don't do it, it's wrong.

And so I used to sit by this pole in this building at a table where a bunch of builders, we get a pitcher of beer, we get all the barbecue, and we sit there and drink beer and eat barbecue and I'm laughing.

I'm thinking, god, you're picking out a building that I used to.

I was a sinner and I used to sit in there, and now I'm going to be preaching the gospel.

I'm going to be in this room.

How many of you remember I used to point to that pole.

I said we used to sit right there.

God's got a sense of humor.

He also is a redeemer, he redeems things.

And so I so see it's not in here.

I mean, I read and read it's not in here.

I had to find it by the inward witness.

Are you helping anybody?

There are things you're never going to discover without what I'm talking about today, and there are millions of Christians that are in that case.

They have never been led by the spirit.

They are led by the spirit.

They don't follow the spirit Cause they don't know how, they've never been taught.

And so just putting God's word first place, you know, treating people right set you up for the specific will.

Putting God's word first place will set you up to be led by the spirit into his specific will.

First, john 510, we have the witness on the inside of it.

Every Christian has the witness.

So, yeah, we have an inward voice, the voice of our conscience.

We might talk about that next week.

That's legitimate, especially if you read your Bible a lot and you grow in things of God.

Your conscience is a safe guide.

Before people talk about their conscience, before they're saved, their conscience would allow them to be a mass murderer.

The conscience is not.

Your conscience, before you're born again, will allow you to do all kinds of evil.

I think we live in a world that's proof of that, and people that are lost, and obviously lost, they talk about.

Well, it hurt my conscience.

Well, you don't have one.

You don't have a conscience, you're lost.

You're of your father, the devil.

Another thing George Bush said after 9-11, he got up and said well, we're all children of the same God.

No, I started screaming at the television.

No, we're not.

No, sir, why don't you keep that kind of talk to the people that know better?

You're not a preacher, you're something, but you're not a preacher.

Me and the Saudis do not have the same father.

Islam is not God.

It's not the God of America.

That's another thing I want to see changed.

Let's redo our immigration system and quit importing terrorists and quit importing people that want to practice Jihad.

And people want to come over here and change our country into theirs.

Let's let them stay there and we can evangelize them, but let's keep our country for people that really love this country and its God, because that God is the God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That's the God that we're under.

Keep that in mind, please.

All right, so we do have an inward voice and of course you know the Holy Ghost can speak to His Himself, and that's a strong voice.

I've heard His voice rarely, rarely, rarely, but when he speaks you listen, and anytime there's what I call spectacular guides, visions, dreams, spectacular guides.

Let's not stumble over the supernatural to seek for the spectacular.

The inward witness is every bit as supernatural guidance as all those other things.

But those other things happen rarely and they happen probably just a few times in a person's life.

So let's let the major thing I want you to get out of this, this message, is the witness of the spirit.

Everybody say the witness of the spirit.

So inward witness.

So what is it?

What do you mean?

Inward witness?

For example, acts 27, where Paul said I perceive that this voyage will be with much hurt, not only the lading and other shipment of our lives.

See, he picked it up.

He didn't say God told me, an angel appeared to me.

He said at that moment, before they sailed, I perceive.

So, in other words, his knower picked up something from the Holy Ghost and it was I perceive.

In other words, he had an inward witness, not a voice, inward witness not to sail and they, of course, they sailed anyway.

And so that's one of the reasons, because Paul obeyed the witness and spoke it.

That's one of the reasons why they didn't sink and why they didn't perish.

Yeah, the ship sank and all of that.

But they all were saved, every life on.

God gave him all that sailed with him.

That's how God looked at it.

276 people sailed with Paul.

You had an owner of the ship, you had the captain of the ship, you had the centurion of the Roman soldiers, the guards, and yet God said I have given all of them that sail with me.

Paul was in charge.

So everybody say the inward witness, praise God.

It's a perception, it's a you know.

Jesus said in John 11, you know, he heard about his friend Lazarus.

He's sick unto death.

And he stayed three more days where he was.

He said I got to walk in the daytime, I've got to walk while there's light.

I don't want to walk in the darkness.

You stumble in the darkness.

So he was talking about the inward witness.

He did not have an inward witness to travel to where his friend was dying and in fact when he got there he was already dead For several days.

Lord he stinketh, remember that one.

And then he said Lazarus, come forth.

Somebody said if he had just said come forth, all the graves would have come forth.

But he was specific Lazarus.

If you're the graveyard, praise God.

And so he walked by the inward witness.

It's a knowing and awareness.

I've heard people talk about a red light and a green light.

You just have a hesitancy.

You have a peace, an overwhelming peace, or you have a lack of peace.

A check Put the brakes on.

James and I were involved in a decision that we were making.

He was talking to somebody about something and we both just were kind of taking a step at a time.

Step at a time.

It came time to really get down to whether we're gonna do it or not, and he presented me with a document and I just lost all my peace.

I said, nope, we can't do it.

And he said, well, I felt the same way, but I just wanted some, you know.

And so we agreed right then and I felt so good I can't tell you when we made that decision I felt like flying out of the office Because I knew, see, it was a.

It was the confirmation that we'd made the right decision.

We didn't just bust through the door and make these, see, a lot of times, we just needed to wait.

I told a preacher this past week.

I said you're in too big a hurry.

You need to get all the facts and let's take your foot off the gas You're fixing to spend money you don't want to do.

You're fixing to get the wrong plan.

Just take your foot, let's fight.

Well, you asked me and I could tell he was just going too fast.

He's trying to just mm.

And you know, sometimes we do that, we just go mm.

We just, we just.

And some of the biggest, most costly decisions I've made is because I didn't give myself time to wait on the Lord to reveal to me through the inward witness, I'm trying to make decisions based on reason and all of that.

It doesn't work.

Are you with me?

Are y'all getting anything out of this?

And so, being led by the Spirit, praise God, every one of you are being led.

The question is are you following the leading?

That's the question.

There's no question.

He's leading you.

I think that's 90% of the battle, if you can get the confidence faith because do you believe the Word?

See, the Word says you're being led.

Why?

Because you're saved.

Why would God save you and then not give you this guided system and expect you to accomplish something he wants you to accomplish, and then not give you the GPS, not give you the tools, the supernatural equipment it takes for you to get to where you need to be doing the right thing at the right time of the right people.

You're here now because you've been led.

Amen, doors, closed, doors opened, and you had enough sense to walk through the not, you know, blunt your nose against the closed door, but just okay, that's closed, let's go over here.

This door is open.

Okay, are you with me now?

Praise God, hallelujah.

So, being led by the Spirit, six real quick things, not big, big, just six points, real quick.

Number one Romans eight, 14.

It's absolutely God's will for you to be led.

The Holy Ghost is leading you.

You've got to.

You've got to determine that.

See, don't, don't say well, I wish God would know he's leading you.

You just need to learn to follow.

You need to identify the leading.

Are you with me now he is leading.

Number two develop your prayer life, especially praying in other tongues.

I can't tell you when you're praying in other tongues, what does it say?

It says your spirit prays.

Where do you get your leading?

In your spirit.

So when you're praying in other tongues, your mind is not active, your mind doesn't know what you're saying.

Most of the time you can pray to interpret that.

Down the road you can do that, but for now just pray in the Holy Ghost a lot, pray it, pray, pray in the Holy Ghost as much as you can uninterrupted.

I mean when you can develop the ability to pray in tongues for 10 minutes, then go for 30 minutes and then go for an hour and then go for two hours.

You can't do it.

I don't think anybody can just start off praying in two hours and they've never done it for you.

You will get distracted.

Your phone is going to ring, someone's going to come busting in your door.

They're going to interrupt you because the devil does not want you to get that kind of constancy and pray it in the Holy Ghost.

But when you do, your spirit is praying, your spirit is active and really, because your spirit is active that's many times after you pray you kind of know what to do.

It's not a voice, it's a knowing.

Is this helping you now?

All right, so absolutely, you're being led.

Develop your prayer life by praying in tongues and praying in your understanding.

Number three read your Bible every day.

This is part of being led, putting the word first place.

You need to read it.

Number four walk in the light of the Word, do what it says.

In other words, walk in love For sake wrath.

Tell the truth.

Honor your Word.

If you said it, do it.

You expect God to honor His Word, then you need to honor your own Word.

When you say so, don't be so quick to volunteer If you're not going to follow through.

Don't be quick to say I'll do it and then don't do it.

This is going to tear your faith down.

It's going to confuse your angels.

Your angels are listening to you.

Well, we don't know whether to move or not.

I mean, I never know when he's joking, I don't know if he's being sarcastic, I don't know if he's really means it.

We better just stay here.

Is that what you want your angel to do?

To stand there like this, his arms?

I want my big old bruiser out there beating on my enemy, not the flesh and blood, but the demon powers.

Wouldn't hurt to swat one of the other ones too.

But anyway, I'm going to say Number five instantly, obey the leading that you receive.

I mean, when you identify that you have a leading, don't hesitate, don't sit around.

Well, I'm gonna wait until tomorrow.

Maybe God will change his mind.

No, this is obey.

It takes faith to walk out there on the witness of the Holy Spirit.

And when you walk by faith, what are you doing?

You're pleasing God.

God is so pleased when you walk by faith.

In fact, when you make a mistake doing it, he's pleased because he sees that you're attempting, he sees that you're moving.

You're never gonna get where you need to go by being afraid of a mistake.

If you took a step in the wrong direction, don't you think God's big enough to turn you back around and take you back to where you came from?

Now let's quit being so afraid.

Fear is the opposite of faith, and fear is filling the nation.

Fear is filling the airwaves.

Fear is everywhere.

Don't let it get into you.

Don't let it get into your thinking.

Obey the leading.

You know Gloria Copeland.

When she was just a baby Christian, her husband were getting into the ministry.

They were getting in the full gospel.

He was already traveling and was gone from home and she was home with two little kids, you know, young mother, and she did have a car in the garage, you know.

So she just by herself, and she was giving herself to pray in the Holy Ghost.

She was doing a lot of praying in the Holy Ghost because they'd learned about that.

You know, they were taught by Brother Hagin.

That was their original teacher 1967.

They were all Billy Brim, kenneth and Gloria Copeland and several other famous people that we talk about.

All the time they were in that meeting with Brother Hagin.

He was teaching on the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

They got filled with the Holy Ghost and she was practicing that one evening and then, during praying in the Holy Ghost, she kept getting the light is on in your car and she said, well, you know, god doesn't talk about things like that.

I want to hear things about the ministry.

I want to hear things about, I want to hear spiritual things.

I want to hear, you know, lights on in the car.

What is that?

Yeah, that God wouldn't talk about a light on in the car, you know.

And so she just kept praying in the Holy Ghost, lights on in your car, and so she just wouldn't go away.

So she said, well, nobody's here.

I guess if I make a fool of myself, it'll just be in front of God, you know, I guess I'll just go out in the garage and check the car.

You know, what have I got to lose?

Not a whole lot of faith, but anyway.

So she gets up and goes out in the garage and she had not shut the door.

Coming home from the store earlier where there were two babies, had to get them out of the car seat and all that.

The door hadn't shut all the way and her dome light was on in the car and if she hadn't checked it then all night long that dome light would have run her battery down and her husband is out of town and she's going to be without wheels, she's not going to have her car.

And she just busted out crying oh God, jesus, I'm going to save my family.

Thank you, lord of me.

Yeah, I'll tell you what.

And that wasn't a witness, that was a still small boy.

That's really her spirit telling her.

That's really her spirit telling her.

And so, in her knower, she became aware of something that needed to be Is this helping you today?

So always obey that leading.

And then, finally, god guides as much as what he doesn't indicate as what he does indicate.

So sometimes we're guided by what he doesn't say, what I've seen.

People frustrate their leading by just doubting their pathway that they're walking.

You know, the Bible just talks about continue.

If you continue in my word, then are you by the disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

So continue.

Quit trying to figure out a different pathway just because you've got trouble.

Well, I heard pastor say that and he went away and God showed him something different.

Well, that has happened to me, but generally I don't let circumstances move me and I don't go away to pray and ask God to give me another pathway.

I just keep going.

I figure God's a big enough God to communicate.

When I need to turn left, I'm going to turn left, but I'm not going to turn left ahead of time and I'm not going to ask God.

Well, should I turn left or should I turn right?

I've seen people get completely out of the will of God, trying to micromanage their pathway.

Don't do that.

If God didn't talk until you don't make him, I don't know if that helped anybody, but it helped me.

Thank God, help me.

Thank you pastor.

Thank you pastor.

Thank you, lord, amen, praise God.

Back when brother Osteen was on East Houston road, people would come out there on that side of town, in that neighborhood, and they'd do everything they could to get him to move.

Why don't you just move?

Why don't you move, man?

You just need to move.

You move over my part of town.

I'll be coming more often.

We really be able to help you then.

See, all the rich people wanted to be convenient.

They wanted their own parking place.

I had a guy that wanted a parking place one time and I didn't give him one and he left the church.

Well, fine, go to the church, it'll give you a parking.

I'm not giving you a parking.

I don't even have a parking place.

The only reason I have one is because I get here.

First, I had a parking place at Lakewood.

When I left Lakewood to start this church, they had to call the EPA out the Superfund Cleanup Because my car leaks so much oil underneath it.

The parking space was just about an inch.

Y'all know where I used to park.

It's about an inch thick.

So he didn't bother going to the Lord and say Lord, do you want me to move to Memorial?

Lord, do you want me to move off of the high 10?

And will it?

You know all of that.

No, he stayed right where he was.

God never talked to him about moving and he built a 7,500 seat sanctuary out there.

Are you with me now?

See, don't be trying to make God talk when he does.

Just keep moving, just keep walking.

Be led by the Spirit.

Come on, lift your hands and receive today.

Praise God, hallelujah.

Did you get anything out of this today?

Glory to God.

Thank you, lord.