Can You Hear HIM? (Pastor: Les Quinones)

God bless everybody.

What's going on?

This is Pastor Less of Inspired Church.

And today, give me a few minutes to give you some good word.

I want to talk to you about the Holy Spirit.

See, here at Inspired Church in Elyri, Ohio, we've been under the topic in our discipleship class is called Can You Hear Him?

Now we already have a part one, but I wasn't able to upload the part one, but here goes part two.

So I'm going to do a small summary of part one.

In part one, I talked about what the Holy Spirit comes to do.

And I broke down every single thing I'm about to say.

The Holy Spirit comes to convict us.

The Holy Spirit has come to comfort us.

And the Holy Spirit has also come to guide us.

Those are all three things that the Holy Spirit came to do.

Now in part one, I did dive deep into those and I had cross-reference Bible verses.

But let's just get right into part two, amen.

The first Bible verse that I want you to look into today is the book of Acts, chapter one, verse eight, because we're going to talk about the next thing that the Holy Spirit does.

And that is it empowers us.

Yeah, it empowers the believer.

Book of Acts, chapter one, verse eight, and it says, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Now, what does this Bible verse mean?

Jesus makes it clear in this Bible verse, guys, that the Holy Spirit doesn't just come to comfort us, it doesn't come to convict us only, and it doesn't only come to guide us, but he comes to empower us.

The word power in this verse means that the Holy Spirit, check this, I need you to follow this.

The word power in this verse means that the Holy Spirit gives you the ability, the strength, and the spiritual capacity to do what God has called you to do.

That is how you get empowered by the Holy Spirit, bro.

The Holy Spirit literally comes and lives inside of you.

And not only that, so it doesn't only guide you, comfort you, or convict you, but it empowers you.

This is how you feel strength when people know you shouldn't have strength for what you're going through right now.

It's unbelievable.

How is it that Pastor Leska stand on his two feet?

How could he still smile?

How could he still preach the gospel when I know what he's going through personally?

It's tough.

Let me tell you how.

Because inside I believe that I'm sealed with the Holy Spirit of God.

And the Holy Spirit had come to empower me, give me the strength and the ability and the spiritual and mental capacity that I need to keep going forward.

How does the Holy Spirit empower us?

The Holy Spirit empowers us with two different things.

The first thing is that it empowers us and gives us the ability to stand firm when life gets hard.

Now I know I'm not the only one that's had hard things happen in his life.

And I could go down a list and explain to you how difficult things have been in my life from time to time.

Because difficult things happen in seasons.

Everything, the life of a believer, is by seasons, guys.

But the Holy Spirit helps you stand firm when life gets hard.

Because you know why?

Life got a crazy way of knocking us down.

We have to hold ourselves accountable and recognize, yo, this that I'm going through, this was all my wrongdoing.

But life has a way of knocking us down.

Life has a very difficult way of knocking us down.

And when we get down, we feel like we're down and out.

Life has hard moments.

We've all gone through hard moments.

But the Holy Spirit, in these hard moments, the Holy Spirit helps us stay motivated.

It helps us stay standing firm and solid with our steadfast faith that we're supposed to have in the most trying times of our lives.

I know you've had some trying times.

And if you're a believer, you're smiling today because of the Holy Spirit that lives inside of you.

Think back.

Think back of all those moments where you said, I give up, but you got back up and you kept going.

Come on, bro.

I wish I was talking to somebody.

Keep thinking about every time that things got so difficult you thought that that was it, but you're here today.

Why are you here today?

Is it because you made right decisions on your own?

No, no, no, no.

Nah, bro.

This is strictly all the Holy Spirit empowering you as you walk through this dark time of your life because you're gonna walk through some valleys.

If David, who was a man after God's own heart, had to walk through some valleys, we are not special.

We are not special.

We're gonna walk through some valleys, we're gonna walk through some dark valleys, we're gonna walk through some deserts, but we have the promised Holy Spirit that now lives inside of us, and it empowers us to stay strong and solid.

Another thing that it does, it helps us witness boldly the good news and the gospel about Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit comes inside of you, and when it starts to live in you, not only does it empower you to stay to stay strong in this walk, but it also deposits a boldness inside of you.

The boldness that the body of Christ needs to operate in in order to spread this gospel and save the lost souls and bring the good news of the gospel to a fallen and dark world.

That's what we're called to do.

And you know what helps us do that?

The Holy Spirit, we're sealed with man.

When you're filled with the Holy Spirit, you know what happens?

You're under his control.

It don't matter what you want to do anymore.

When the Holy Spirit decides to move, oh my gosh, you're gonna feel the tug.

This is the thing.

You have to surrender to the tug.

You have to surrender, submit to the will of God in your life, and let the Holy Spirit guide you all the way through.

Next Bible verse I want to bring up to you, man, is the first book of Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 13.

Because another thing that the Holy Spirit does, it helps you what?

Overcome temptation and spiritual opposition.

Ooh, this is gonna get good.

First book of Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 13.

Amen.

It says, No temptation has overtaken you, except what is common to mankind.

And God is faithful.

Say faithful.

Amen.

And God is faithful, he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, what you can stand.

You ain't gonna face a temptation that's gonna make you feel like you're going overboard.

No, because he won't allow.

Look, he says, he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.

And then he says, but but when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

Oh my God, this shows me that when we're faced with temptation, the Holy Spirit we're sealed with will show you an exit.

It will literally show you an exit from falling into the temptation.

The temptation will come because temptations will come.

And when the temptation comes, the Holy Spirit is the one.

Have you ever been tempted?

And then you say, No, no, no, I shouldn't do this, I shouldn't do this.

That's the Holy Spirit taking over you.

The Holy Spirit is literally ministering and empowering you, trying to let you know, hey, we don't need to go that route.

We don't need to feel that.

I don't want you to operate in that, bro.

I don't want to feel that.

So it shows you an open door.

What the open door could be anything: turning off your phone.

Turning off your phone, walking away from the certain situation.

If you're tempted to do something that's gonna make you be out of character as a believer, you have an exit.

And the Holy Spirit will minister to you and show you, hey, simply walk away.

Or when you're in a conversation that you know you're about to say something out of pocket, the Holy Spirit will tell you, don't say nothing, just be quiet.

And this is what happens when you're sealed with the Holy Spirit and you allow the Holy Spirit to move in your life.

Another thing that the Holy Spirit allows us to do, it allows us to walk in the spiritual gifts of God's calling.

Wow.

We all have spiritual gifts that the Lord has placed inside of us, and those gifts are to be used for his glory and honor, bro.

So what the Holy Spirit does, it shows you what they are, and then it helps you bring them about, it helps you manifest them, it helps you use them for God's glory according to God's will for your life.

Because we face things, and when we face things, we say, I got this.

A hard situation comes and we'll be like, yo, I got this, I got this, man.

I know what to do, I got this.

A lot of us don't even consult with the Holy Spirit we're sealed with.

We're not that prayerful.

Bro, let me tell you, we should be more prayerful, and I include myself.

We should be more prayerful with everything.

And if the Bible says, in everything pray, we should be more prayerful because we think that we got the strength to handle these oppositions and these temptations that come to us, but no, the Bible teaches us that the Holy Pirate, the Holy Spirit, excuse me, empowers us to be able to stand firm.

So it's not with your own strength.

What I need you to understand today is that God never meant for us to fulfill a supernatural calling with our natural strength.

Oh, that's good.

Nah, bro, because nature and the spirit are divided, they are not the same.

Amen.

You don't have to say, I could do this, because now you got the Holy Spirit.

Now that you're sealed with the Holy Spirit as a believer, you don't gotta say, I could do this.

Nah, nah, nah, nah.

You could simply just say, I can't do this on my own strength.

But the Holy Spirit that I'm sealed with empowers me to be able to do it.

It gives me the spiritual capacity, it gives me the strength to stand firm and be able to go through what I'm facing right now because it empowers me.

Book of Zechariah, chapter 4, verse 6.

Zechariah 4:6

Look at what it says.

Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord Almighty.

What you cannot accomplish by your own power, the Holy Spirit can empower you to accomplish through God's strength.

So this ain't about how strong you are.

There's not an amount of weights or leg presses that you could do that can help you walk this walk with strength.

Nah, bro, this is all spiritual.

Because the Bible says, not by might nor by power.

So it doesn't matter how mighty you are, it doesn't matter how strong you are and the power you possess, but by his spirit.

He was specific.

He said, but by my spirit.

It is his spirit that now lives indwelling in every believer that gives you the strength and empowers you to keep going forward.

You know what else the Holy Spirit does?

It transforms us.

You want to know how?

By changing us from the inside out.

Oh my goodness.

Because we like to focus on people knowing that we're believers by showing them externally that we're a believer.

I would try to show people that I was a believer by dressing like what I thought a believer should dress like.

But the inside I was still rotten.

I was still the same.

And I never submitted or believed that the Holy Spirit now lived and dwelling inside of me.

So what I did, I just portrayed the perfect Christian.

And whenever I went to church, I looked and said exactly like what they wanted me to say.

I said everything they wanted me to say.

But when I got in my car, back to being less.

I didn't know the difference.

I didn't know that now inside of me lived a power that could help me change.

If I allowed him to change and transform me.

Because this is about allowing the Holy Spirit.

Now remember, let me tell you, the Holy Spirit can't come inside of you and just start working.

You have to surrender, you have to submit, you have to let go and let God, through the Holy Spirit, you're sealed with to start to transform you from the inside out.

And why did I say from the inside out?

Because what is in the inside always comes out.

So you could betray to be perfect like I did, all you can, but eventually what's in the darkness will always come to the light.

So why not allow the Holy Spirit that you now know you're sealed with empower you and help you just transform you completely from the inside out so you can be a true and genuine believer?

See, the Holy Spirit doesn't just change our behavior.

Because that's how that's how it operates inside of us when we allow it to through our free will.

Remember, we've been given free will.

So the Holy Spirit will not operate on you if you do not surrender and let him do it.

The Holy Spirit will not transform you if you do not allow him to transform you and surrender and say, yo, I need a change for real.

I need a change.

I'm tired of living like this.

Holy Spirit, change me.

Holy Spirit, operate in me.

Holy Spirit, work in me and transform me from the inside out.

But it doesn't just only transform you, it changes your behavior.

And it doesn't just change your behavior, He changes our hearts.

He changes our desires.

He changes our mindset, and he changes our character.

Everything about you starts to change, but let me tell you something.

Your behavior, your heart, desire, mindset, and character, all of those are different seasons where you have to allow him to operate on you.

Those are all complete different seasons.

He ain't gonna take all that work and do it all at once.

He can, but you gotta learn, bro.

You gotta learn.

You gotta learn to submit.

Because let's say this, he changed your behavior.

And in changing your behavior, now he has to go change your heart.

Of course, he has to change your behavior so then your heart can change, because your heart is used to operating under your flesh.

And after he does those two, then comes the season of him changing your desires.

Your desires is what contaminates your heart.

So if he works with the heart first, come on, guys, then he can go ahead and eliminate the desires as long as you allow him to.

And when you allow him to eliminate the desires, now your mindset.

Why the mindset goes next?

Because it's the mind that triggers the desires and contaminates the heart.

I need you to follow me.

The mind contaminates the desires, which contaminates your heart and comes out in your behavior.

This is why there's an order of how the Holy Spirit works and start to transform you as long as you allow them to.

And finally, your character.

You can't be who you used to be in the world and serve the Lord.

Your character has to be one that matches the Holy Spirit that lives inside of you.

Because remember, we're called to now be what?

Christ-like.

Amen.

Now, even though Christ was perfect, that does not mean we're going to be perfect, including me.

No one here is perfect.

But we're called to a standard because we proclaim the name of Jesus.

We're bold about our faith now because the Holy Spirit that lives in us empowers us to stand firm in our faith and witness to the world.

Amen.

The Holy Spirit doesn't just make you better.

Because if you think about everything I said, it's like, man, I want that.

Yeah, you should want what I was explaining.

Because the Holy Spirit makes us better.

But it doesn't only just make us better, He makes you more Christ-like.

He makes you more like Jesus.

The question I got for you is this.

Have you ever remembered?

Yo, look, check this out.

Have you ever remembered a Bible verse in the middle of your struggle?

Out of nowhere.

You're struggling with temptation, for example, since we talked about temptation earlier.

And then 1 Corinthians 10, 13 pops in your head.

Has that ever happened to you?

Or any Bible verse with any type of struggle?

But the Bible verse always goes along with your struggle and it helps you?

Huh, that wasn't you.

You ain't that much of a scholar.

Let me tell you the truth.

You know what it is?

That's the Holy Spirit you got dwelling inside of you.

Because Jesus said that he will leave behind the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit will bring to remembrance what he has said.

Oh my gosh.

And since the word of God is something that was the spoken word of God written down, that is what the Holy Spirit is going to use to bring to remembrance to you and help you walk through your season, help you walk through your desert, help you walk through your trials and tribulations and empower you to make it through.

It wasn't luck.

It wasn't like out of nowhere.

Oh, and then I remember this Bible verse, so I used it now, man.

This don't got nothing to do with you.

It was straight up Holy Spirit fire.

It was straight up Holy Spirit doing what it does.

Help, empower, convict, comfort, guide.

And that's how he works, man.

Now, have you ever wondered this?

How does the Holy Spirit speak, though?

I've wondered that for mad years, but I wonder how is it that the Holy Spirit actually speaks?

Because many people expect to hear some thunder, a thunderous sound.

Many people expect to hear lightning flashing, to see lightning flashing, and many people expect, this one's a good one, to hear a loud voice.

I'm gonna tell you that that's not really the case all the time.

You know how else the Holy Spirit speaks?

He whispers.

In the whisper of the silence, the Holy Spirit speaks.

And have you ever been in a trial, bro?

And you done cried out to God as much as you can.

You I mean, you're you're you're in tears, you're on your knees, and you're like, God, I feel like I don't even have the next words to say.

I keep asking you to talk to me, to guide me, but you're not saying anything.

And the moment you be quiet, have you ever heard just a whole download drop on you from the Holy Spirit?

Because he speaks in the whisper, he speaks in the silence.

A lot of the times the Holy Spirit is with his arms crossed, just waiting for you to be quiet so then he can take over.

Because we do too much of this.

And sometimes as believers, we gotta learn, yo, we're sealed with the Holy Spirit that empowers us.

And if it empowers us, it's trying to guide me.

I feel lost right now in this trial and tribulation.

Let me silence my mind and my heart and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to me in the whisper.

Look at the first book of Kings, chapter 19, verse 11 and 12.

Look at what the word of God says.

It says, The Lord said, Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord.

For the Lord is about to pass by.

Then a great powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord.

But the Lord was not in the wind.

After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

Interesting.

Verse 12 After the earthquake came fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire.

Came a gentle whisper.

My God.

This shows us that sometimes we expect God to make some big noise.

We feel like we're only going to hear from God when there's something loud and powerful.

He's going to come through like a rushing wind, but he's not, because he's not there all the time.

His voice is going to be thunderous like an earthquake, but he wasn't in the earthquake.

He wasn't in the wind.

And he wasn't, he was not present in the fire.

You know where he was present?

After it all happened, it says, after the fire, he came in a gentle whisper.

In this Bible verse, God wasn't in an earthquake.

He wasn't in a fire, and he wasn't in a wind.

But he spoke through a gentle whisper.

Look at what the word whisper means.

A quiet communication requiring close attention.

Yo, check this out, and he jotta catches.

The Bible says that he came in a whisper.

The word whisper, the definition to it is a quiet communication requiring close attention.

Bro, God whispers because whispers require relationships.

Ooh, this is good.

Thank you, Holy Spirit.

God speaks in the whisper because He wants it to be personal.

This is a personal walk between you and God.

This is personal.

You know what makes it personal and what gives us, human beings, the access to actually go to the Father in prayer is the Holy Spirit we're sealed with.

So the Holy Spirit will speak to you in a whisper.

Why?

Because it's a personal walk.

This is personal.

And in order to hear from the Holy Spirit the way we should as believers, you ain't gonna hear him through all the noise of the world.

No, you're not.

You know how you're gonna hear him?

If you're close to him.

I need you, I don't know what you're facing right now, but I need you to believe that you're sealed with an empowering Holy Spirit.

Hmm.

And this empowering Holy Spirit is going to guide you and help you through what you're going through now.

But you gotta be close in order to listen to his whisper.

Because he's not always in the noise.

You may look for him in the noise of your life, but he's waiting for the noise to stop so then he can whisper.

Closeness is because God wants intimacy, not just information.

Think about this.

Why would a God that knows all things about me want me to inform him about things about me?

Check this out.

He knows all your information, he knows all your details, and yet, knowing all your information and all your details, he still wants to get close to you.

He still desires to get close to you, knowing everything about you.

We go to him in prayer, and we're like, I used to pray and say, Well, what's the point of me telling you how I feel if you already know what I'm feeling?

And I would skip that.

And I had a friend of mine tell me, no, don't do that, bro.

Talk to him.

Because that's how you build a personal relationship through the Holy Spirit, you're sealed with.

And it is in the silence of the storm where you start to feel the peace.

Because in the earthquake, you just hear the noise of the earthquake, and in the fire, you just feel the fire burning and trying to consume you.

But when everything is over, that means the storm has gone, and now it's time for God to speak and bring you peace when you need it.

Amen.

I got a question for you.

Do you feel close to God?

Right now.

Do you feel like you're close to God?

I need you to answer that within yourself.

You need to tell yourself right now.

Answer that within yourself.

Are you close to God right now?

Do you find yourself close to God?

The reality is that we need to remember that we will have times in our lives.

We will have days in our lives where we feel like God isn't close.

So I ask you, is he close?

Because if he doesn't feel like he's close, that means you're in a time right now where you feel like he isn't close.

But let me tell you the good news.

If you're a believer, you're sealed with the Holy Spirit.

And that means that not only is God close, God lives inside of you.

He is indwelling through his Holy Spirit that Jesus left behind for us to live with, to guide us, to comfort us, to love us, to convict us, to empower us.

Come on, man.

I need y'all to get this.

Book of John, chapter 17, verse 20 and 21.

John 17:20

It says, My prayer is not for them alone.

I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.

Verse 21.

This is where it gets good.

That all of them may be one.

Father, just as you are in me, and I am in you.

May they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

Now, clearly, we could clearly see who was talking here.

You know who it was, just in case you don't know, it was Jesus.

And what was Jesus doing here?

He was doing a prayer for all the believers around the world.

And in this prayer, he declares that we are all one with God.

And the Bible does teach that.

The Bible teaches that we are one with God, but we do not become God because we're one with God.

That does not make us God.

No.

We are one with God in a relationship.

We are one with God in spiritual union through the Holy Spirit.

And we are one with God in the purpose and will that he has for us in our lives.

But we don't become God.

We are united with him through the Holy Spirit that lives inside all believers, and that connects us to Christ.

That is how we are one.

And then another Bible verse in the book of John, chapter 15, verse 5, it says, I am the vine, you are the branches.

John 15:5

If you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

Apart from me, you can do nothing.

Oh my God.

And here, this is Jesus talking again, and he's describing the connection that we have with him.

And he uses the connection because he compares himself to a vine.

Interesting.

And then he says that we are the branches to him being the vine.

You know what that means?

He's the vine, we're the branches.

That means that we are an extension of Jesus.

The vine has branches.

The branch is part of the vine.

That means the branches are an extension of the vine.

Jesus describes himself as divine and says that we believers are the branches, and that without him, without the vine, the branches that we are will not be able to bear fruit.

Oh my God.

Because he says, if we remain in him, we will be fruitful.

My gosh.

We will be fruitful.

But apart from him, apart from Jesus, we won't be able to do nothing.

But you know why?

Let me explain to you.

Because once the branch is cut off from the vine, the branch dies and can no longer bear any fruit.

That's because the vine.

Listen to this, bro.

I need y'all to get this.

The reason why, when the branch is cut off and won't bear any fruit, that's because the vine is the source for the branch.

The vine is the source for the branch.

The vine feeds the branch what it needs because the vine is connected to what?

The root.

So here we go.

God is the root.

Jesus is the vine.

We are the branches that bear the fruit and proof that we have the Holy Spirit sealed inside of us, that we have a relationship with God because God is the root.

God should be the root of the life of every believer.

And the believer should only be able to be fruitful when it's connected to the vine that is Jesus.

This is why we are one with God.

We are one with Jesus and we're one with the Holy Spirit.

We're one with all of that.

We're one with God.

We're one with Christ Himself.

Why this type of connection is important?

Because we need it.

With this type of connection, we are bound to hear from the Holy Spirit at any given time.

At any given time.

When you believe that God is your root, when you believe that your source you're getting from the vine that is Jesus, and you're the branch, when you believe that it comes from the root of God, you're connected to hear from the Holy Spirit at any given moment.

He's not always in the noise, but he's in the whisper and in the silence.

So maybe it's noisy right now.

Just wait.

Just wait.

And when the winds start to quiet down or the earthquake stops, give yourself time to listen to the Holy Spirit to speak.

And it will.

I really hope this blesses you.

Follow us at Inspire Church Ohio on all um social media accounts.

God bless you all.

Hope to see y'all soon.