Manifesting Presence of the Holy Spirit

“Why did you not believe?”

John 3:1-12 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.
You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things?
I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

Here was a man, this Nicodemus, who was trying to figure it out. He was thinking. He was seriously trying to grasp in his own thinking and in his own mind the answers to who Jesus was and how one can be saved.

Consider the difference between conclusion and revelation.

This Nicodemus was incapable of hearing as God defined hearing. Hearing and seeing the Kingdom of God is a supernatural ability. To see and understand the things of the Kingdom of God requires Kingdom knowledge. Kingdom knowledge comes only by way of Kingdom revelation.

Kingdom revelation comes only by the manifest Presence of the Holy Spirit who comes and brings such knowledge. Only those “born of the Spirit” can understand it. Only those who move in the manifest Presence can comprehend Kingdom stuff. This is why Jesus speaks of the Spirit before making this statement. Everyone born of the Spirit moves in the Spirit. They understand what Jesus meant when He spoke of the Spirit’s goings and comings.

The only way to gain spiritual Kingdom truth is to be revealed to it by the Holy Spirit. I cannot conclude Kingdom knowledge by my reason, I must be revealed to it.

John 16:13-15 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

The definition of “all” is all! All Kingdom truth comes by way of revelation knowledge. We can’t figure it out. Therefore we must cease trying to figure God out in our own thinking and let the Revealer of mysteries bring us the truth that He wants us to understand.

If the Holy Spirit is the one who brings all truth, then there is no Heavenly Kingdom truth that is any truth at all that has not first been revealed.

One can read the Bible all day long and get nothing out of it. One can ask questions all day long, get good worldly answers, and never gain God’s key point of value. In such a case is what Jesus means when He says:

Mark 8:18a “Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?”

Only by the Holy Spirit of God thru a humble heart will we gain spiritual truth expressed in spiritual terms!

Dan 2:26-29 The king asked Daniel (also called Belteshazzar), “Are you able to tell me what I saw in my dream and interpret it?” Daniel replied, “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come. Your dream and the visions that passed through your mind as you lay on your bed are these: “As you were lying there, O king, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen.

The Kingdom of God is a mystery. Who can understand it by the mind of man alone? It’s up there and we’re down here. What is real up there is so vastly in excess and so greatly superior to what we know down here. But Christ died on the cross so that we would be given the Holy Spirit, the Councilor who would lead us into all truth.

We cannot understand by what we think. We understand by dependence. We can only understand by what we are revealed to by faith. Understanding does not bring faith. Faith brings understanding.

I can read the word of God all day long and still completely miss what God is trying to say to me. Even the devil knows the word of God. Rather, it is by a dependent faith that I can understand what the Lord wants me to know. It is by faith I can heal the sick, cast out demons and raise the dead. It is by faith that we can see thousands of souls saved in a day. It is by faith that we gain revelation of the Kingdom of God and then move in it.

It is by faith that we give God control of our meetings. It is by faith that we let Him lead without fear of the enemy or the flesh and without fear of loosing control. It is by faith that we fall to the floor in His Presence and receive. It is by faith that the joy of the Spirit is released in a place.

But now I hear the Lord saying it again and again, “Why do you not believe?” Today, He speaks this same question to church leadership. Is it not true that the church can only go as far as a leadership has faith?

Faith in works is a dead faith. Faith without works is a dead faith. Right faith in alignment with God’s radical ways and supernatural truths is the only way to reap a supernatural reward. These are the radical men and woman of God that are being forged in this hour. It is a leadership like this that will lead their people into Biblical exploits. Stories that will be told throughout the ages will come from people such as this!

How then will we answer the question that is even now being asked, “Do you believe?” Will we believe for the radical harvest? Will we believe for the sick made well, that demons will flee, and that dead people will come to life? Will we believe that we need the Presence to do these things? Or, will we continue in our own thinking and own dead religious meaningless ways? Will we interpret the sign of the time with our own independent thinking or by dependent revelation?

God says, “Will it be you alone, or us together? Do you believe?”

For many who are in Heaven and all who are in hell, the answer to this very question will most likely be answered as follows:

“I didn’t know. No one told me.”

God’s answer would most likely be, “No, you were told. You just did not have ears to hear.”

By faith, we have ears to hear. But like Nicodemus, those that try to figure it out in the mind, cannot hear. Understanding follows faith.

For those in hell, how tragic is this error. But for those in Heaven who did not have ears to hear beyond their salvation, how great is the loss as well! Yes, they had a faith that gained them a home with the Father. But they had no ears to hear the deeper things of God. They never graduated off the baby’s bottle. They did not understand that they could have reaped a great harvest! How great is the loss when God wanted them to go deep into the radical things of the Holy Spirit but they had no ears to hear!

Regarding the church, and this is the heart of what I am hoping to write:

Miracles are coming, healings are coming, and joy is coming. The dead will be raised, and for those who believe, they will see thousands of souls saved in a day and millions of souls in a month.

But what does that all look like? What does the Kingdom of God look like with our natural eyes? No one can see the Holy Spirit. No one can see a cancer or a demon come out of a person. No one can see the inner workings of the Spirit in a dead body that causes it to come back to life. All we see are a people drunk on the new wine of the Holy Spirit! HA!

How quick we are to criticize what we do not understand. But who can understand the Kingdom of God with natural eyes?

But when the Spirit falls, we will be confronted and tested with this question: “Do you believe this? Do you believe I am doing a radical work or do you just see the offensiveness of one who is drunk on the new wine of God?”

We have a fleshly brain in our natural body, given to us as a part of our soul. God gave it to us to be used for His purpose. We have been given a freedom to think as we see fit and choose as we see fit. Oh how critical are our choices in this life!

But God has asked us to yoke our minds to the mind of Christ. He has called us into a forever state of dependence upon his Holy Spirit. In this way, we connect our natural minds to the supernatural mind of Christ. It is only then that we can see supernatural things. It is a complete dependence. Independence is a deadly lifeless way!

Mark 8:22-25 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

There is such wisdom in this scripture! Jesus saw fit to open this man’s spiritual vision before healing him of natural blindness. How much more important is it for us to be revealed to supernatural Kingdom things rather than to base what we know upon what we see in the natural!

God has called us into a state of complete dependency. Independence is what got Lucifer kicked out of heaven. For the very root of independence is pride. There is no humility in independence.

Why then do we have to figure it out? If I have the answers, I have put God into the little tiny box of my religious mind. I have based my conclusions on earthly experiences of what I see, taste, touch, hear and smell… or in the vain imagination of what I might presume.

We are supposed to be supernatural beings. When we give our minds over to Christ, He starts to show us wonderful things supernaturally. We then gain supernatural experiences. We then have testimonies that we can speak before the spiritually hungry and thirsty. They receive it in the same way I got it… namely revelation knowledge by the Spirit.

We start to overcome the world so that Jesus can have the harvest, the reward for His sufferings! We start to see miracles, healings and radical understanding that so far exceed the smallness of what we think!

God is the revealer of all mysteries. So how then will we respond when the Father asks us, “Why did you not believe?”

Today, there stands before us an “eternal” choice. What stands before us is a harvest of one or a harvest of a thousand. What stands before us today is a hospital of dieing people or an empty hospital. What stands before us are spirits of death going around making a mockery of God, or these same demonic spirits fleeing from our cities in seven directions under the power of God’s Presence.

What stands before us today is despair or joy… division or peace… anger or love… fear or hope. We have a choice today to live in the poverty of the intellect of this world, or the riches of the knowledge of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven.

Stands before us today is our choice. Will we believe in faith for these radical ways or question in doubt and judgment?

How great is the loss when we in the church silence the supernaturally radical for form of worldly order and fear based protectionism.

How great is the loss when our disbelief results in little Kingdom understanding and little earthly fruit. How great is the loss when our failure to listen and trust in the supernatural results in a tiny harvest.

How great is the loss when our failure as a church to hear the deep things of God means that many who might have been saved languish in hell as a result.

Consider the story of Lazarus.

When Jesus was crying at the tomb of Lazarus, I am convinced he was not crying for Lazarus. Jesus was about to restore Lazarus back to life. So for Jesus, there was no loss regarding this Lazarus whom He was about to restore. No, Jesus was crying for a different, far more serious reason. I believe Jesus was crying because this dead Lazarus was symbolic of the dead lifeless church all down through the ages.

John 11:38-40 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

Jesus restored Lazarus because many wanted him to be alive, not the least of whom was Jesus Himself. They grieved over their loss. But Jesus grieved over the far greater loss that He foreknew.

I believe that Jesus was crying for all the lost souls all through the years that could have been saved that were not because of generations of dead, Spiritless, lifeless, religious and ineffective church.

I wonder how many church leaders today are crying out right now that Jesus would come and restore their dead churches? How I hope for this brokenness of self so that Father can have the church he desires!

How recognizable is the smell of death to those who hunger for life!

This is a heavy word. But now is the time to die to everything we hold dear… to all that holds us back. Now is the time to wipe the slate clean and start afresh. It is never too late.

Now is the time to do away with the age old religious chains whose name is engraved on every link…. “OUR YESTERDAYS.” Now is the time to be made hungry again and thirsty again for the fresh waters of life that satisfy our thirst and then their thirst.

You know we must be filled first before others can be filled.

Now today the choice is ours. We have nothing to fear if the Holy Spirit is leading our meetings. Then we will know where to steer the church God has given us. Then we will be made known to where the attacks are coming from. Then we will gain the anointing power to be used of by God to do great exploits.

There will be thousands of arguments against letting go. The devil is fast at work against the Spirit filled church because he knows that these are God’s greatest weapons against him. Every good sounding argument will be leveled against the radical ways of the Spirit.

But just how big is the devil anyway against the power and fierce zeal of our God? If God is really in control of our meetings, by what power can the devil override God? (Likewise if we are in control of our meetings and God is not, what scenario is the devil more likely to be in control of… God’s meetings or ours?) If God created satan, then what of anything he might try to do should we fear? Perfect love casts out fear, and perfect love is supernatural. And if Perfect Love is manifesting in the room, what devil can stand in that place?

Now then, we all will be asked this question, “Will you believe?” Should we not reconcile ourselves to this now rather that in Heaven when it will be too late?

2 Cor 10:3-5 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

How then will we choose? Will it be in selfless dependent heartfelt faith or by the independent intellectual arguments of a worldly mind?