Everything you are in public is formed by what you are in private. You can stand before any man if you stand before God. And to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, not like these silly little evangelists that come in and have their healing lines and people falling down and all of the other circus and blasphemy that goes on. I am talking about really the power of the Holy Spirit, not some kind of circus show for money.
Like I have said, so many people say the Spirit of God is here. No he is not, because if he was you would be dead.
We must be men filled with the Holy Spirit.
We must be men who seek God.
And let me tell you something. There is a big difference – and I want to point it out to you and it will probably get me in trouble if this goes on to YouTube – but it is this: There is a sense in which we look at Ephesians five, we look at Colossians 3:16-17 and we do understand that there is a direct relationship between the Word of God and it dwelling in our heart and the fullness of the Holy Spirit working through us. But there is another sense that if you are just a man who is sitting there meditating upon Scripture and thinking that because you are doing that you are going to be filled with Holy Spirit and have everything you need for the ministry, you are wrong.
You must go to God and cry out for greater and greater manifestations of his power in your life to carry out the task that he has given you. You must have that. You must go to him. It is an encounter with God. Yes, founded upon his Word. Yes, everything God does with you in prayer must be conformed to his Word. But seeking God is more than just simply having a good Bible study. It is crying out to meet with the living God. It is waiting at his door step and rising up and not just simply believing by faith that he has done something to you. It is rising up and knowing that he has done something to you.
We have to be men, but not men like John Wayne or Jean-Claude Van Damme, not men strong in the flesh and strong in personality and strong in their presence and strong in their words, no, men strong, strengthened in the Holy Spirit.
The battle is horrifying. To think that you are going to oppose principalities and powers and mights and dominions, you are going to oppose the ancient serpent. You are going to go down into the well and fight hell itself. You are not going to do that in your physical strength. You are going to do that in the power of the Holy Spirit. And do you know what is so sad today? What is so sad? It is that it is so hard to speak about these things. And do you know why? Because of all the corruption and that ludicrous activity of many, many groups that consider themselves groups filled with the Spirit when they are not filled with Spirit at all. They may be filled with a spirit, but it is not holy because whatever they are filled with causes them to do things that contradict everything we know about Scripture and the fruit of the Spirit.
I am talking about power, not to fall down on the ground and shake like a worm, not power to claim a Mercedes Benz, not power to say you healed somebody when, in fact, he didnít get healed. I am talking about the power to live the Christian life, the power to walk in sacrificial love, the power to pray down strongholds, the power to preach the gospel. That is what I am talking about. That is what we need. We can be men and women transformed, transformed.
