These are notes on the sermon, Live Led By The Power Of The Spirit, preached by Pastor Joseph Prince on Sunday, March 17, 2024, at The Star Performing Arts Centre, Singapore. We hope these sermon notes will be an encouragement to you!
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Today, people of the world, and some believers even, live led by their own desires, their own thoughts and intellect. Though we’re a generation that’s seemingly smarter and more advanced than any other generation, we’re seeing more darkness; nations at war, divorce rates at an all-time high, widespread bitterness and hatred across societies, and an epidemic of depression and anxiety. This is because we were never meant to live by reasoning or intellect alone. God made us to live led by the Spirit.
God wants the best for us. Isaiah 48:17 (ESV) says, “I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.” God’s heart is for us to be blessed, to profit, in every area of our lives. And when we follow His ways, we will not be met with failure or losses. So, how can we be led by God?
First, we need to understand how God made us—tripartite, with a spirit, soul, and body. When God made us, He breathed His Spirit into us. So we are actually spirit beings that live in bodies and engage intellectually with the world around us through our minds. Now, the spirit is where we are supposed to be connected to God. But because of sin, the spirit of man has been cut off from our holy God.
To deal with sin that is keeping us from God, He sent our Lord Jesus to be our sacrifice, to bear all of our sin and be punished for them all in His own body, so that we can return to God. And when we believe and receive all that the Lord has done for us at the cross, when we repent, turn back to God, and are born again, we re-establish that connection that we originally had with Him.
At the moment that we are born again, the Holy Spirit comes to reside on the inside of us. As our creator, God designed for us to operate out of our spirits and not by relying solely on our minds or reasoning. When we rely on the Holy Spirit within us, we can be led by God. Only the Holy Spirit can lead us into paths of peace and abundance and cause us to experience true success in all areas of our lives. This peace does not only refer to peace in our mental health, but also wholeness for us, spirit, soul, and body.
Before our Lord Jesus went to the cross, He shared these last few words in the upper room with His disciples to prepare them for what is to come. He comforts them by telling them that He “will not leave (them) orphans” and introducing to them the Holy Spirit, another Helper that the Father would give them.
“another Helper”—The Greek word used here for “Helper” is paraklētos, and para means “alongside.” This means that the Holy Spirit is one who is close to us, who comes alongside us to help us.
Why did our Lord Jesus introduce the Holy Spirit this way? This is because the Lord Himself had been the disciples’ Helper all this time when He was with them. By introducing the Holy Spirit as “another Helper,” He was reassuring His disciples that He would be sending them Someone just like Himself, to be with them and to help them in their time of need.
Not only is the Holy Spirit just like our Lord Jesus, but He is also not confined by time and space, like our Lord Jesus was during His time on earth. So, the Holy Spirit is Jesus in His unlimited form! This is why the Lord says in John 14:12 that we will do greater works than He did, because we have the Holy Spirit in us—Jesus Christ, unlimited!
Notice how our Lord Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will be with us forever? Some people believe that we can lose our salvation and that the Holy Spirit can depart from us. But this couldn’t be further from the truth! Once we are saved, we will never ever, by no means, perish. Nor will we lose the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us. He will dwell in us forever!
But what about the saints in the Old Testament? The Bible records the Spirit departing from them . . .
In the Old Testament, we indeed see the Spirit coming upon the various saints for a specific assignment and departing when the work is done. One example is found in Judges 14:6, where the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon Samson, imparting strength to him to overcome the lion.
What is important for us to remember is that these saints in the Old Testament existed before our Lord Jesus’ time and were not yet born again. The blood of bulls and goats that were offered then in the temple for the people of Israel were only enough to atone for their sins. Whereas, as believers today, the finished work of our Lord Jesus has efficaciously remitted all our sins and cleansed us so thoroughly that the Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of God, can dwell in us! So, beloved, don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that you will lose the indwelling of the Holy Spirit because of your performance!
This year, let’s start relying more and praying more in the Spirit! As believers, the Holy Spirit is resident in us. But when we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, He becomes president in our lives. This is how we can be led to paths of peace, wholeness, well-being, and prosperity!
In our world today, we’re constantly bombarded by varying opinions (e.g. contradictory health studies on what diets are good for us), and it’s hard to decipher the truth. When we start believing lies and misinformation, it can lead to fear and anxiety; to the degree we are worried, anxious, and depressed, to that degree we have been led into believing a lie.
Where, then, can we find the truth?
The Word of God! Beloved, is there a lie you have been believing? Whether it’s about yourself or the situation you’re in, instead of turning to the world for answers, get your truth in God’s Word! The more we continue in God’s Word, the more we will know the truth.
Earlier in John 14:16–18, our Lord Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth, and in John 16:12–14, He said that when this Spirit of truth comes, He will guide us into all truth! This truth includes everything that we do, whether it’s in the area of our parenting, our careers, or studies, our relationships.
The more we pray in tongues and allow the Holy Spirit to lead us, the more we will be led to the truth. If you find yourself in a situation where you’re unsure what to do, pray in tongues! The Holy Spirit will teach you in all things and guide you in all truths. And the truths that the Holy Spirit will reveal to us are truths that will set us free, save, heal, and deliver us.
How can I recognize the leading of the Holy Spirit? As children of God, the Holy Spirit leads us by instinct, intuition, inspiration, illumination, and revelation. As you pray, the answer will rise up within you. And when that happens, you will have an inner knowing, a peace or acknowledgment in your spirit, that the prompting is from the Lord, because the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit.
The apostle John confirms this in this passage of Scripture, where he tells the people he was writing to that they know the things he was telling them is true, because they have the Holy Spirit who bears witness with what they already know!
Pastor Prince shared his personal experience of being led by the Holy Spirit one night as he was putting his son, Justin, to bed. Pastor Prince had wanted to share something with Justin that would encourage him and minister Christ to him, so he asked the Lord and received the word, “Windtalkers.”
That night, as Pastor Prince shared with Justin about the Navajo code talkers and their exploits during World War II, he noticed that Justin looked stunned. Pastor Prince used the topic as an analogy to show Justin how praying in tongues is like a code that the enemy cannot decipher. At the end of his sharing, Justin, who was very excited, showed Pastor Prince the devotional he had been reading just before and the topic was also about Windtalkers.
Through this experience, Justin must have felt really loved by the Lord to hear the Lord encourage him through his father. Pastor Prince concluded that the Holy Spirit will lead and guide parents to minister to their children, and that as parents, you can ask the Lord for a word in season that will speak to your child.
Similarly, the Lord through the Holy Spirit can supernaturally lead and guide us in other areas of our daily lives in seemingly natural ways and give us good success! Another truth this example demonstrates is how the Holy Spirit reveals to us the Father’s love. The Holy Spirit led Pastor Prince to share on Windtalkers with Justin so that Justin would know how much he meant to the Lord for Him to confirm the Word He had already spoken to him through the devotional!
But why is having a personal revelation of God’s love for us so important?
Many issues we see today stem from a deep-rooted wrong belief that we are not loved. We see this in the parable of the prodigal son, where, even though the father loved both his sons, they did not believe it. The result? The prodigal son led a riotous lifestyle while his elder brother became bitter, seeing how his father lavished his love and material goods on his brother.
Some people enter into adulterous relationships because they have a wrong belief that their spouses don’t love them. Others look for love in all the wrong places because they crave their parents’ love or because they believe that nobody loves them. When we believe wrong in this area, we become candidates for wrong behaviors.
So beloved, it is important for you to be established in God’s love, and to know and believe that you are deeply loved by the Lord! The Father, in His love, sent His beloved Son to redeem you, and our Lord Jesus demonstrated His love for you by going to the cross so you could be saved by His grace. This is the truth that sets us free and the truth the Lord wants us to be anchored in!
In fact, the first thing we receive with the baptism of the Holy Spirit is the sense of our heavenly Father’s love. Let’s take a look at this verse:
Before our Lord Jesus even performed any miracles, He was first baptized in the Holy Spirit. And as the Holy Spirit fell upon Him, God declared and affirmed His love for our Lord Jesus. This shows us that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is intricately tied to the Father’s affirmation of His love for us!
And in the first mention of the Holy Spirit in the book of Romans, a book that is crucial to the Christian faith, it says:
Again, this shows us that when we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive a sense of the Father’s love for us.
Next, we are to be established in the truth of our adoption into God’s family, that we are God’s children, His sons and daughters.
When we are established in our sonship through the Holy Spirit, we will put to death the misdeeds of the body, and we will live. This means we will reign over any addiction, temptation, and negative emotion that the enemy will try to plague us with when we are led by the Spirit of God.
This does not mean that there is no place for repentance, which simply means to turn toward God. In other words, we repent from sin when we turn to God and set our eyes on Him!
Not only does the Holy Spirit testify with our spirits that we are children of God and of God’s love for us, but He also affirms our forgiveness in Christ.
The Holy Spirit fell upon the people as Peter was preaching about the forgiveness of sins through our Lord Jesus’ finished work! This shows us how important this truth is to the Holy Spirit, and this is a very vital truth that He came to reveal to us!
Our Lord Jesus tells us in Acts 1:8 that when we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we receive power, power to heal the sick and cast out evil spirits that are oppressing people.
Once again, when we look at Judges 14:6, we can see the power of the Holy Spirit demonstrated:
When the Spirit of the Lord fell upon Samson, he was able to tear the lion apart! What is interesting here is how “came mightily” is a Hebrew word that also means “to prosper,” which is captured in the Young’s Literal Translation of that verse.
This means that when the Holy Spirit is upon us, we can expect what we do to prosper! Even if there is a task you can’t seem to complete or seems difficult, when the Holy Spirit is upon you, you will receive might and power and will be able to accomplish that which you were not able to before.
To help us connect with and engage the Holy Spirit, our Father has given us a gift: we will be able to pray in tongues when we receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit! This is a powerful language from heaven that the enemy cannot wiretap and that will bless us tremendously!
Here are some benefits of praying in tongues:
In 1 Corinthians 14:4, it says, “He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself.” The Greek word for “edifies” is oikodomeo, which means “to build a house, erect a building . . . to restore by building, to rebuild, repair.”
This means that as we pray in tongues, we can rebuild or repair our bodies broken down by age, stress, or disease. Notice also how the verse doesn’t say that only your inner man is edified. It says that the one who speaks in tongues edifies himself. This includes every other part of our body! So, this means that your entire self—spirit, soul, as well as body—gets edified or rebuilt as you pray in tongues.
Whether it’s at work, or when we’re doing chores, on the road, when we pray in tongues, we experience God’s rest and refreshing!
Tongues is a powerful prayer gift not limited by distance, time, or head knowledge. When you pray in the Spirit, you may not know it, but you could be effectively and supernaturally covering your loved ones or your future with God’s protection. The best part about it is that you can do it as you’re pretty much going about your day. You can pray in the Spirit under your breath as you’re driving, showering, or attending to any mundane chore and be praying powerful prayers throughout the day!
Praying in tongues gives you access to all these blessings. This is why God wants you to receive and utilize this powerful grace gift!
If you have received Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit is already resident in you. But if you’ve never prayed or spoken in tongues before and would like to, here’s a simple prayer you can pray over yourself to receive this gift: “Abba Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I ask for the infilling of the Holy Spirit.”
Now that you’ve prayed, fully expect to be able to speak in tongues. Begin by speaking the syllables that come to you by faith. As you do, the Holy Spirit will increase your vocabulary and soon you will find that there is a flow. This year, make it a point to keep praying in tongues! The more you do so, the more you’ll begin to see the Lord move in your life as you release His power through this wonderful gift of tongues!
We hope these sermon notes blessed you! If they did, we encourage you to get the sermon and allow the Lord to speak to you personally as you watch or listen to it.
© Copyright JosephPrince.com 2024
These sermon notes were taken by volunteers during the service. They are not a verbatim representation of the sermon.
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