Looking To Your Faith

The Bible's up.

Please Wave them around.

Make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Alright, let's say this again to the Heavenly Father I thank you for Sunday night.

I came out in the rain, it's worth it.

I have a teachable spirit.

I'm ready to be taught the Word of God.

I'll be a not just a hearer, but I'll be a doer of the Word in Jesus' name, amen.

Let's look at 1 Corinthians, chapter 14.

1 Corinthians 14 · chapter mention

You know some of you have heard this before, and for those of you that have, this Word will be water.

If you'll get a few new things out of it, that'll be seed.

The Word is both water and seed.

1 Corinthians 14, verse 14,.

1 Corinthians 14:14

Paul says For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit what Prayeth?

My spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful.

What is it then?

I will pray with the Spirit and I will pray with the understanding also.

I will sing with the Spirit and I will sing with the understanding also.

And then Proverbs 20, 27 says the Spirit of man is the candle or the lamp of the Lord, and he enlighteneth or searcheth all the inward parts of the belly, or he enlightens all of the inward man.

The Spirit of man is the candle or the lamp of the Lord.

So tonight I wanted to just share a message entitled Looking to your Spirit.

Looking to your Spirit.

God is a spirit, man is a spirit and of course we know that we are a spirit being.

We live in a body and we have a soul, and that soul is our mind, will and intellect.

See, I was taught wrong growing up.

The nuns taught me that I was body and soul.

They left out the third part, so they had the equivalent of soul being, the soul and the spirit being the same, and that's not what the Bible teaches.

And so you know that revelation.

Millions of Christians don't know that.

You just heard something.

A piece of information is worth coming out in the rain to hear, because this will save your life.

This will help you.

You know, when you sin, you really don't sin.

If you do sin, it's because your flesh and mind agreed to do it, but your spirit never will agree with sin.

Your spirit can never agree with sin.

Why?

Because it's righteous, it's saved, it's born again, it's made in the image of likeness of God.

If you, if you're spirit, if you wanted to sin, then you're not saved.

A lot of people don't know that either.

They're so condemned and so down.

No, I can't believe.

I did that.

Well, you didn't do that.

Your flesh did that or your mind did that, but not you.

You are a spirit, see, it's good to get that in your thinking all the time, because we've been so brainwashed, wrong religious brainwashing, what it is.

And so God is a spirit, man's a spirit.

God contact, contact, contacts us and deals with us.

Spirit to spirit.

God's not a flesh, so he's not going to talk to your flesh.

God's not a mind, he's not going to really talk to your mind.

He's going to communicate to you.

Spirit to spirit.

Are you with me now?

Kind of easy to understand, but again, it's real easy to forget these things, especially when there's pressure.

You know, believers are led by the Spirit Romans 8, 14,.

They're, they're led by the Holy Spirit through their spirits and they're not led by their mind or not led by their flesh.

And you know, if you're gonna, if you're gonna be led by emotions, you're gonna be misled, because God doesn't lead you through anger or fear or or anything like that.

He doesn't lead you in your mind, he doesn't lead you by your body, a feeling, a certain feeling, emotion.

God doesn't contact our bodies or our senses doesn't contact us through those things, and we need to learn to look to our spirit.

You know, the spirit of man is the candle or the lamp of the Lord.

When he wants you to know something, he will light your candle, he will light your lamp, he will illuminate you in your spirit.

Are you with me?

I know that's simple, but we do forget Sometimes, we just forget about looking to our spirit.

We're looking to every direction, and so believers are number one, born of the spirit.

John, chapter 3,.

John 3 · chapter mention

You must be born again.

Believers are filled with the spirit, ephesians 5-19,.

You should be filled.

Not everybody believer is, but you should be.

And then believers are led by the spirit, romans 8-14.

So, born of the spirit, filled by the spirit, led by the spirit, capital S, the Holy Spirit, or your spirit when it's renewed, when it's built up.

So if we are and I'm contending that we should be if we are to look to our spirits for guidance and answers, then we ought to pray much in other tongues.

This is the key.

I mean, if you're having trouble hearing from God, it's probably because you've let praying in other tongues slide a little bit.

You know, you just.

You know, you just don't take the time, and one of the reasons why I found that people don't pray a lot in tongues is because they don't understand what they're praying.

We live in a society that likes instant.

We want, we want action, we want, we want to be entertained, we want to see things, we want to feel things, we want to have our emotions engaged.

And some of the most tough, some of the toughest kind of praying is just praying in other tongues for an extended period of time and shutting out all the distractions.

You know, when you start carving out time and praying other tongues, everything in the world the phone starts ringing, the kids start crying, the doorbell starts ringing.

I mean everything in the world.

Then you forget oh, I didn't pay the light bill, oh, and you'll find a million things that will interrupt your prayer time.

And so that's why I go away, I go, I go at least.

I mean I don't wait to pray in tongues till that time, but I mean I do want to give myself to do it uninterrupted, because there's nothing can interrupt me when I, when I just take my time away, and then I go away and I spend hours praying in other tongues.

So in verse 14, we just read it when you pray in tongues, your spirit prayeth.

So what's happening?

When you pray in tongues, your spirit has activity, your mind doesn't.

Your mind is unfruitful, your thinking is unfruitful.

See, this is the part that will sometimes stop us from praying long enough to really do any good.

I mean, if you're just going to pray in tongues for a couple of minutes, it's better than nothing, but you're not likely to get very much out of it.

It takes some time, take some time praying in other tongues, and so when you pray in tongues, your spirit prays.

That means it contacts God.

Yet your mind doesn't necessarily understand.

And when you pray in tongues, your spirit becomes active.

And your spirit needs to become active.

If your spirit is not active on a regular basis, then what happens?

Well, it gets a little.

It gets a little bit less bold.

Your flesh and your mind are going to overrule your spirit, because your spirit has not been, has not been active spiritually, just like if you're not going to ever move.

Except you sit in a chair all day long and you never do anything.

You ride the work and you ride the escalator, you ride the elevator Pretty soon.

You do that long enough.

You don't ever really walk.

You don't ever really exercise.

I don't even talk about exercise, I just mean move in your body.

I mean sometimes you just get all stovable.

That's what happens to your spirit.

So, but the more you pray in tongues, your spirit begins to be more dominant over your mind and body.

Your spirit becomes more dominant.

You become spirit dominant.

That's what I like to say.

Your spirit, you need to be spiritually dominant.

Your spirit needs to take the lead.

It can't do that if it's never given any activity.

See again, what happens is your mind and your flesh overrules your spirit.

Your spirit wants to pray in tongues, but since you don't get entertained and you don't immediately get a revelation and you don't get, you know, you don't get fireworks and you don't feel goosebumps and you don't get anything that you can identify while you're praying.

Maybe you prayed 30 minutes and you don't feel like you did any good at all.

Well, don't listen to that thought.

That's a lie.

Your spirit has been active, it's been contacting God, and that's when God can contact you back, except sometimes you don't know why, because your mind is unfruitful.

Well, when can I understand that God is talking back to me?

Well, that's what I mean about building yourself up, you've got to edify yourself.

Verse four, chapter 14, he that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifies himself, but he that prophesies edifies the church.

So I've heard preachers say why we shouldn't ever pray in tongues.

We ought to be prophesied.

Don't be praying in tongues.

Well, that's not what that verse is saying at all.

The but there is not negative on edifying yourself.

Well, edify yourself.

That's kind of prideful.

No, no, edify means to construct.

See, being an ex-homebuilder, you know builder, you know.

I've built a lot of houses and I can identify with the word edify because it means to build from a foundation.

So when you pray in other tongues for 10 minutes, well, you haven't built much.

You hadn't even hardly turned a spade of dirt yet.

I mean you're going to have to do a little bit more praying if you're going to build something.

Edify means to build up from a foundation.

It means to rebuild, restore or repair.

A lot of times people get offended, they get wounded, they get discouraged, simply because they hadn't spent any time praying in other tongues and allowed their spirit to edify itself, to rebuild or repair.

Are you, are you with me now?

I mean, it's so important, especially right now, because we're just we're, we're being inundated with false information.

It's everybody saying let's be safe, stay home and be safe.

Stay home and help other and be Help other people be safe by you stay.

See, it's a lie, it's a lie, it's just all a lie.

Every bit of every time you hear the word save, just think lie.

Every time you hear a word somebody saying safe, think manipulation.

I'm being manipulated.

Now I'm being talked into being a good citizen do what the leaders tell you to do.

I read a.

I read a comment on an article the other day and it was talking about Linda Hidalgo's latest that she she extended to stay at home order.

I don't know how she does that.

It's conflicts with with what the governor said and and for sure what the president said, but that that Democrats do that all the time.

They always conflict.

They do their own thing Until somebody makes them stop.

That's why we got the lawsuit out, but we moved it from her and went all the way up to the governor.

It's only on.

A real way to stop Lena is to stop the state government.

They're out of order.

This whole, the entire country's out of order.

That's all unconstitutional folks.

Everything that we've been doing and saying for the last three months has been unconstitutional, and so now people are finally coming out.

You know, I read where the, where the little newcainey.

They had a, a Waterpark opened illegally.

Montgomery County didn't, didn't let them have that open, but they opened anyway and they had hundreds of people come and they, they had a percentage in their park, they, they limited the number of people there and and and they had one father, he had his two little kids and they said you know well, we just felt like it wasn't any less safe to be here.

You know, as far as the coronavirus, I'm not.

I'm more concerned about my kids being hurt on the slide or maybe Drowning or something.

I'm gonna watch them real close.

If they hit their head and go underwater, I'd I'd be more concerned about that than I'd be them concerned about having kids.

Don't get corona.

I mean, at least he knew, thank God, somebody.

You know it just looked like an average guy, you know.

But your spirit, you edify your spirit.

In other words, you become a homebuilder.

You, you're constructing something on a foundation and you're building up yourself.

And Jude 20 it says building up yourself on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.

You build yourself up.

That is necessary, it's not prideful, it's not something that that you're ashamed of.

No, it's necessary.

It's not necessary unless it's necessary.

And this is necessary, amen, everybody say.

I'm building myself up.

You literally build and develop not your faith but your spirit by praying in tongues.

A lot of times people's spiritual growth has been stunted and I know that being obedient to the Word of God, is is the main way to develop our spirit.

But also praying in other tongues, is is equally important because it is a spiritual exercise and it causes us to be able to hear back from God when he wants to talk to us.

But because, again, he's not gonna talk to your thought life, he's not gonna directly deal with your flesh.

Are you with me now?

So look to your spirit for answers.

You know, stop asking so-called prophets what they think.

There used to be a lot of that in the charismatic church.

You know, prophets, the New Testament prophet is not.

It's not like the Old Testament prophet.

People in the Old Testament went to prophets for guidance Because they didn't have the Holy Spirit in them.

We do.

We have the Holy Spirit living in us.

We have no excuse to go to someone.

Glad it's not used to know a couple, lakewood years ago husband regularly would ask his wife honey, you got a word about our situation?

And they'd laugh about it.

But he really meant it because he would never pray and he wouldn't.

He was just kind of a slug.

You know, that's the way a lot of men are, you know, I know a lot of men.

Men don't do any of the praying.

They'd expect the wife to do all the praying.

That's lazy.

Come on, men, let's pray in the Holy Ghost.

Come on and so.

But look to your spirit, look to your own spirit for guidance.

But if you're gonna look there, you got a, you got a.

You got to edify that spirit.

You've got to build that spirit up and do some construction and Maybe some demolition.

Maybe you need some repair, maybe some things need to be pulled out of there.

I used to, you know, as a builder.

I used to, you know, I'd have to have a framing inspection after I built the house, got it up in the framing stage and the rougher, you know, was about to come.

We'd have the shingles delivered.

But but when the framing was finished, I had to get the city of West you to come, send an inspector over and they'd go through the house and you know they'd put a little Little tag anywhere that they saw something that they that was missing.

They saw something that wasn't right, they saw something that didn't like and they almost always found something.

The code is this thick and you know you're bound to do something wrong.

I mean, the inspector say wants another $25 inspection fee, so he's gonna come, come by the second time.

And but my framer never even bought, he wouldn't, he didn't, he knew exactly and he'd go over there and he'd he'd knock it all out.

It.

Sometimes it involved pulling the stud out.

It was crooked, or maybe it maybe wasn't nailed right, or maybe this, maybe the bracing wasn't done right in the attic, or but whatever the the problem was it need you see this is similar to when we're, when we're doing a construction project.

We need to edify ourselves, build ourselves up.

Come on, let's just lift our hands, thank God for the ability to pray and other tongues and our supernatural prayer language.

It's supernatural.

We're able to speak divine mysteries and that we don't even know in our brain, but yet in our spirit we're contacting God, the God of the universe, the God that made everything, and the Holy Spirit is a genius.

Why wouldn't we want to consult him on the way that he wants to be consulted.

Amen.

So many years ago, when I first got a hold of this, I mean I just, like I died, went to heaven.

I mean I just couldn't blest it.

Where has this life been?

I can't believe I've lived to be 33 years old and all this is going Past me and I never knew anything about it.

I mean, how could I live here now?

They were ever heard of John Osteen.

How could I live and you'd be born here there?

He heard of him, never heard of any of these people.

And and so I remember listening to a six, a six tape.

We're back then we had cassette tape, a six tape series from Kenneth Copeland.

I didn't know it what he looked like.

I'd never seen him before and I just imagine how he talked.

He looked like maybe a, an old guy about 60 years old chewing a cigar.

I mean, that's what he looked like to me when I saw him.

He didn't look like any of my imagination.

Now, you didn't look anything like that.

But but anyway, I just, I just meant I got baptized, a holy ghost, and I just started praying.

Another time I Glad to tell you I'd get up.

We had a.

We had a blue room upstairs.

They all the furniture in it was blue, the bedspread was blue, the Carpet was blue.

I don't know how in the world she ever agreed to blue carpet, but anyway it was called the blue room.

It was our guest bedroom.

I'd go up there and shut the door all day long and spend all day long praying another time.

You know, I because I could do that.

I was a homebuilder, self-employed, so I didn't necessarily keep office hours.

I knew I had to check on jobs and all that, but I'd take time off just pray all day long praying other times.

And it was hard at first because, again, I didn't, I was young in the Lord, I I didn't know when he was.

You know, I didn't get anything necessarily, was Tempting to think I wasted my time, but I wouldn't let myself say that.

I just went, I held to these verses right here.

So then after a while I'd get kind of a phrase that come out of my mouth in English like a phrase of some sort, and I'd I'd Speak that and then I'd pray more in tongues and I'd speak something else and it seemed like it would rhyme.

And then, you know, then, then, then then there'd be a kind of a little Minitur prophetic word that come out to edify, exhort and comfort me I'm the one there, pray it it wasn't for anybody else, just for me and and I'd speak, speak that small Peace out, and sometimes it would rhyme and sometimes it wouldn't.

And then later on is a you know years, a year or so Went by, maybe I don't know how long it was for the first time ever prophesied in public.

It was a while, but that day came and I mean it.

It was nerve-wracking, but I'd had a piece of it in my prayer time and and I, and so the Holy Spirit brought a little part of that, that little word that I got it after praying in tongues and, and so I launched out on that and and delivered that on a Sunday night At Lakewood.

I was so nervous, my knees were knocking.

I mean I know I must have sounded, you know, like I was about to throw up, but anyway.

But the, the first time that I remembered I'd only been baptized in Holy Ghosts for about Maybe two weeks and we were going back in those days.

Lakewood had a Thanksgiving convention.

Anybody remember the Thanksgiving conventions?

They'd have Thanksgiving, and I mean so forget about eating Thanksgiving with your family.

We're going down, we're gonna have a convention.

See, I mean, my family did not catch on to that.

They didn't much like that because we, glad us had a big family, I had a big family We'd alternate Thanksgiving with the families.

And now we're going to Lakewood, we're going to the and they held it downtown at the old Sam Houston Coliseum and this particular is the first time I'd ever been and I was excited.

We setting up the bleachers and stuff and then the floor of the old Coliseum.

That was where they used to play ice hockey.

You know, did you know?

Houston had an ice hockey team and they had professional tennis.

I knew the guy that headed up the professional tennis league in Houston.

They played inside in the old Sam Houston Coliseum.

It was a.

I mean, I think they used to have rodeo events there, the entertainment I think we had Roy Rogers in there one time and different ones.

Anyway.

So here we are and Oral Roberts is the main speaker that night.

Man, it was so exciting.

Never heard, I've heard of him, but I never heard him preach and he preached that night.

It was just so exciting and glad us, not man.

We were preying in tongues on the way home.

We got home kind of late, got up the next morning.

We're gonna go back out to the convention we're this is Friday after Thanksgiving day.

Thursday and Thursday night we were down at the convention.

And so that morning I was at the master bath, you know, I was shaving.

I had my face all lathered up and I'm standing at the mirror and she's getting ready too.

And I'm shaving and I start humming and I realized I'm humming this old Ray Charles song, born to Lose.

And I said, well, I'm not gonna hum that old song.

I'm not born to lose, I'm born to win.

I'm born again, I don't need that.

And so I stopped it and then pretty soon I was humming it again and I rebuked the devil all over again.

Next thing, you know, I'm singing standing in front of the mirror Born to lose.

I live my life in vain.

You know, all my tears were flowing like the rain and when I sang that part I realized it hit me.

I realized that's not part of the old song.

I grew tired of living in my sin Born to lose.

But now I'm born again and I ran into the master bedroom by the phone.

We had a pad and a pencil and I sat down on the bed phone dripping off on the bedspread, and I wrote the rest of the song.

It just come flowing out of the end of my pencil and that was the first experience I had with songs and hymns and spiritual songs, because I'd been praying in other tongues.

Come on, lift your hands and receive that Praise God.

Well, you know, I don't know.

I mean, I've sung it for all these years.

I used to sing it, I used to play it on the Omnicord.

Anybody remember me singing it?

And that's when I realized that all music comes from heaven and it gets stolen in the heaven lease, it gets in the second heaven.

I mean, have you ever listened to the Beatles and their instrumentals, their songs?

If you just forget about the words, if you just listen to their songs, the instrumentals are absolutely magnificent.

Most of them are unbelievable.

They ought to have been sung in church but they got stolen.

The devil stole them and gave them to rock stars and artists like that country stars.

But a lot of all the music.

See, the devil is not.

He is not the creator.

God's the creator.

Praise and worship is created in heaven and sometimes it's on its way to earth it gets stolen.

You know, if more of us would pray in other tongues, I believe we could, girls.

I think we could.

I think we could intercept some of those songs and get them for the gospel.

Some of the most beautiful songs have yet to be written.

I'll tell you that's by the Holy Ghost.

I believe that.

But you know, as I progressed along in the spirit of God and I got more skilled at that, my spirit grew and began to take dominance over my flesh and my mind.

Then my public ministry was born out of my private devotions.

I mean, I believe everything that I ever did sprung from the time that I spent praying in other tongues, and I'll just tell this one other here about two years ago, I guess it was just right after I had gotten out of the hospital from my triple bypass One morning.

I think that of course I was out of the hospital in the end of January, I think January the 20th, something, six or something and so this was in March.

I just spent the morning.

I hadn't even come back to preach yet I was due to my first service.

Back would be Easter Sunday after that heart surgery, and so I had taken a little break and just let myself recover.

And I was praying in tongues that morning, just praying in tongues, praying in tongues, and cut off all of the distractions that I could.

And while I was praying in other tongues I began to see something.

Now this is.

These things don't happen very often.

So if you're thinking that you're gonna pray in tongues every time you pray in tongues you're gonna see something or feel something or hear something well, that's part of the reason why you haven't pressed in.

You just gotta press in.

And Brother Hagin said most of the major revelations he ever received from God came after five or more hours of praying in tongues.

But it didn't happen for him real easy either.

You know it takes, you know diligence, but any of that, that morning I'd been praying.

Maybe I'd prayed an hour, I don't know.

I didn't want timing it, but I'm just sitting in my easy chair in my study taking it easy, praying in other tongues, and I saw this wall in the distance and it was covered over with nettles and briars, green and and stickers and stuff.

I grew up in South Texas I was born here, but I grew up down there and they got a lot of those kind of things down in the in that part of the country seems like everything that you, if you walk through a pasture, everything hurts you.

There's every kind of sticker that you can think of, and so I saw this wall, and as I was looking at the wall, I kept praying, I wondered what it was, and I saw this door come up out of this wall and it started to open, slowly open, and the door was like 12 inches thick, real heavy.

It had been completely camouflaged and now, as it's opening, I could see it clearly and I'd say the wall is maybe 8 to 10 foot tall.

This doors that big.

It's opening toward me.

And then God began to speak to me in a prophetic utterance, and and I just spoke it out loud, in fact I had my, my iPhone, and so I recorded what God was telling me after praying in tongues, and essentially what it was is that he was opening a door that was reserved for me, a door into the regions beyond.

That was what he, the term he used.

I knew that was in the Bible, I knew Paul talked about preaching in the regions beyond and I looked it up later.

But he said you're going to bring a demonstration of the spirit and a revelation of the word that will deliver people from dead religion and tradition.

And see, I believe that this whole thing that's happened now, two plus years later, is the beginning of that door opening into the regions beyond.

You know, I tell you, I started googling different towns and you and I glad it's not took a trip down to South Texas.

I, we went to corpus just to spend a few days and I, I drove to little towns just to see if I could find a witness.

If this is where you want me, lord, is this where you, where I want to go.

I didn't feel a thing, I was just like dead.

But I believe what God really wanted is starting to happen right now.

I believe the the doorway to be able to speak into the church and wake up the church, wake up the pastors.

And we're not going to convince people, we just have to proclaim it.

We have to proclaim it and I just believe that that, as we pray this out, I just believe God is going to perfect all of the connections that have to be made.

Are you with me now?

You agree?

So we're word and spirit people, so we spend time in the word and we spend time praying in other tongues.

I just, I just want to preach this message to you tonight to know, don't let that slip, take time.

I mean, you know more time than just doing it in your spare time.

In other words, I know we can all pray in tongues on the way to work or we can pray in tongues when we're doing other things, but you know it's good to give yourself to pray in other tongues from time to time and look to your spirit and you will receive the guidance and answers that you need.

Come on, lift your hands and receive tonight.

Look to your spirit, praise God.

Looking to your spirit.

Everybody say I'm looking to my spirit for guidance and answers.

I'm edifying myself.

I'm constructing a building from a foundation and it will not.

It will not be shaken, amen, amen.