Romans 8:14 “for all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”

Our permanent relationship of having the Holy Ghost living in us makes us a child of God forever. However, being a child of God and in the family verses being led by the Spirit of God is an action and participating experience. You have to know you are being led by the Spirit of God if you are going to operate in the living laws of life. I get feedback from many people and have been influenced over the years from people who believe and teach that, you can back slide and go to hell after making Jesus the Savior of your life. And they have at times with heated debate argued with scripture and have tried to prove their point to me however, I have learned to not debate with people who are born again believers who oppose them selves and even though they are born again they do not now how to use the mind of Christ that lives with in them which persuades and comforts them in their trials of life.

In James 3:17-18 it tells us. ““But the wisdom from above is first of all pure (undefiled); then it is peace-loving, courteous (considerate, gentle). [It is willing to] yield to reason, full of compassion and good fruits; it is wholehearted and straightforward, impartial and unafraid (free from doubts, wavering, and insincerity). And the harvest of righteousness (of conformity to God’s will in thought and deed) is [the fruit of the seed] sown in peace by those who work for and make peace [in themselves and in others, that peace which means concord, agreement, and harmony between individuals, with undisturbedness, in a peaceful mind free from fears and agitating passions and moral conflicts].”

We find in these two verses the type of wisdom the Holy Ghost is and wants to plant into the believers thinking. We must have a confidence with in us that we can approach God and not concern our selves that we are going to be rejected by Him and thrown out of his kingdom in any way. Any double mindedness on our part weakens our boldness to approach His person and in turn, we can not believe that He really hears us and totally listens to our concerns. That is why it is so critical that any preaching or teaching we sit under does not even give a hint of God ever being displeased or impatient with us.

Sometimes I wonder what bible of love and hope do these people who are supposed to be nurturing God’s kids read and what God do they serve who think that God is a task master in any form. These statements when I hear them even at times cut me to the quick and I moan from the hurt. These are people that I consider to be hirelings who bruise the sheep and have a religious arrogant attitude. In this same message why didn’t he relate the truth being that, because of Adam and Eve’s deception, God in His mercy made coats of animal skins to cover their nakedness? Because they were so ashamed of themselves for what they did, it crippled them and they had no will power with in them to confess to God because they didn’t believe that He would forgive them. Isn’t this the mercy of God we want and need to seek after Him?

Adam and Eve had a choice of asking and experiencing God’s forgiveness or let their embarrassment and shame take control of them and force them to leave the Garden of Eden which means (God’s protected hedge) that He had around them. Nothing has changed over all these years. It is the same trick of Satan to put a wall of guilt between God and ourselves. To be delivered from this fiendish imprisonment we must relate to the life style Jesus our older brother had when He walked the earth.

Paul the Apostle tells us in Hebrews 5:7-8 “In the days of His flesh [Jesus] offered up definite, special petitions [for that which He not only wanted but needed] and supplications with strong crying and tears to Him Who was [always] able to save Him [out] from death, and He was heard because of His reverence toward God [His godly fear, His piety, in that He shrank from the horrors of separation from the bright presence of the Father]. Although He was a Son, He learned [active, special] obedience through what He suffered and, [His completed experience] making Him perfectly [equipped], He became the Author and Source of eternal salvation to all those who give heed and obey Him.”

If we are being led by the Holy Ghost this passion that takes over our lives causes us to have dreams and vision in the night time hours and a very real awareness during the day time for the Holy Ghost to speak to us at any given moment and give us a word of wisdom or warning as it is needed. We must have a deep rooted persuasion with in us that, God is not like a man who lies and His friendship and total love for us will never let us down no matter how painful the trial or adversity that is coming against us. There is a terrible need with in the body of Christ for fellowship gatherings in our homes where we can have some loving times of sharing our trials with one another with out judgment and prayer with the breaking of bread as scripture tells to do. I have found myself in prayer at times seeing the body of Christ as a rag tag army of believers with their armor strewed on the ground and trying to stir up the gift and anointing in themselves, but it is being accomplished in the flesh and the dead letter of the law.

Romans 8:15 “For [the Spirit which] you have now received [is] not a spirit of slavery to put you once more in bondage to fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption [the Spirit producing son ship] in [the bliss of] which we cry, Abba (Father)! ” When we say abba Father, what we’re really saying is Papa God. I have seen a pattern over these many years in talking to many people that they come from a dysfunctional family back ground because the father’s authority in the family was abusive or non existent. I am not talking about drunken or drugged up dead beat fathers here. These are men like my father who were hard working and supplied food for the table but were never taught by his father how to take time with their children and minister to their many spiritual and physiological needs as they grew up. In all my conversations with my father, he never once told me he loved me. A child as he grows is absolutely helpless and needs to become attached to a father image that he can relate to. This is what fortifies his relationship with God the Father as he grows up to find what his God given purpose is in the earth. Mothers can’t be substituted for fathers and give a child what it needs in his place. We are talking about two different parent entities here. This is why the family settings were ordained by God and when you mess around with it as it is being done in the courts today, it will produce the next generation being crippled and unlearned spiritually, mentally and emotionally which is what happened in Sodom and Gomorra in the Old Testament.

Let me again use myself as an example of this. I was forty five had been saved twenty one years and I will use a term that most people can understand. I was going through a mid life crisis. I have already shared what happen to my wife and me about how God prospered my business that was going under. During this same time the burden of this and the fear of taking care of my family had become overwhelming in my life to the point I would find myself on my knees at night crying out to God and feeling that there was no one at home up there. I now know that trials have a way of opening up our understanding that grows us up to become less of a co-dependent person who is learning to know themselves better.

I went for a while not evening knowing that fear had a grip on my inner self and it had put a wall between God and myself. During these first twenty years of my Christianity even though I was an elder in the church I was not being taught about God my Father who gives the born again believer the power to live the Christian life to its fullest with a Godly confidence. After some period of time one night in talking to God whom I had never been able to address Him as father, I was crying out to Him as Lord and He said to me. “Do you know what’s bothering you?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “You know what it is name it.” After some persuasion I admitted that I was terrified of the responsibility I had to support my family and I told Him my father was dead and I couldn’t go to Him for advice and I felt alone and abandoned.

God began to show me that I had a lot of religious beliefs that were hindering Him from being a father to me because of the shame and bruised hurts of the past. He also told me that I had a hate for my own father and I had to forgive him for what I had held against him by not being there for me when I needed him as a child. I told God he was dead and how was I going to forgive him. God said, “I will stand in for your father and unless you do this it will hinder me from being the Father I want to be in your life. “ I then in tears repented. All those years I had never realized that I had ought against my own dad. And because of this I lived in bondage to something that was hindering me from receiving God my fathers love and favor. I could give many examples of the men I have had a chance to minister to who are cripples today because they have ought against their fathers which hindered them from experiencing the Love of God our Father and in turn love their wives and children because they didn’t really love themselves.

I had been saved twenty years and God was beginning to reveal Himself to me as a loving father. Over the next three months God began to instruct my wife and me that he was going to move us to Texas. I had a failing business, no money and God tells me to pack it up and move. Some times when I think about it, I know it had to be God because if you know anything about Italian families, they are very close and no one had ever left the neighborhood and tracked across country. We thought that when we got to Texas we were going to be a part of some big ministry when in fact God wanted me to leave my mother and family and cling to my wife, raise my family and grow up in my wilderness walk with Him being my loving father providing my every need.

You will find if you haven’t already that God doesn’t give you the whole picture and He wants us to trust Him for the impossible. It’s like driving up in the mountains; the beams from the headlights at night only show so far ahead as you go around those curves. God always calls His children to do the impossible and not to lean to their own understanding of how to get His purposes planted into the earth. He does this so we come to understand His steadfast love and know that He made the way and only He should get the praise and thanksgiving. I have used this reference of scripture many times in my writings and when talking to people. We know the story about Jesus walking on the water and Peter asking Him as he peered out of the boat of life wondering whether it was a ghost or mirage or the Lord who was encouraging him get out of the boat of his ideas of life for security and join Him and walk on the water by faith. When Peter by faith believed that it was Jesus calling him to get out of the boat and walk on the water to meet Him and he did, he then began to doubt and began to drown.

You will find if you haven’t already that God’s intensions for us is to always walk on water and not doubt His Fatherly protection and how we need to be quick to run to Him at all times and learn to quietly rest in His care, with out worry. There will be a time in your life that you will have to make a decision to get out of the boat and walk on the water. Once you decide to trust Him and put your life in His hands the boat that we cling to for security will disappear and you will find that there is no way to get back in it. This type of faith at times can be very trying, but this has to happen and can only take place as we learn what it means to live in the faith of Jesus and submit to the love of God the Father and His holding power. When we live in the faith of Jesus verses a faith in Jesus this represents the difference between life and death. Of, represents being empowered by an inner awareness of a living person working with in you. In, represents a mental belief in the principles of scripture with a non living entity of doctrines of do’s and don’ts that man manipulates to fit into their own goals of what they think life represents however, it has no reality that ministers to the child with in us.

Only the Holy Ghost brings life and empowers us to live the Christian life with a freedom to think and explore our inner decision making with out being dictated or manipulated which gives us a hope of success, that man could never accomplish unless the ideas that are created in our minds are in the mind of God and being transferred to our minds. How well do you know God as a Father with a trust to do the impossible and how many things has He done in your life with out failing you. We must have these experiences and the expectation of more to come with Him if, we intend to grow up and do our Father’s Business in the earth.

Romans 8:16 “The Spirit Himself [thus] testifies together with our own spirit, [assuring us] that we are children of God.” So by what I have just said, you can see that this verse gives us a personal testimony of life experiences we can talk to others about with common sense and with a living God that matures us by living by the faith of Jesus Christ. This is what assures us to continue to continue. It is these types of continuing encounters with God on a personal basis that makes us know how to interact with God as a Father. We need constant experiences through faith because our flesh or human nature has a tendency to forget and fall back from receiving God’s grace.

Romans 8:17 “and if we are [His] children, then we are [His] heirs also: heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ [sharing His inheritance with Him]; only we must share His suffering if we are to share His glory”. There is a logical process of events of how to grow up in the Lord. We first discover the love of a father and as we experience this relationship with Him, we begin to be persuaded how much He loves us in our trials of life as we learn to be like Jesus going to God with tears and strong cryings for our needs and wants to be met. This then gives us an open heart to realize that He wants to share every thing He has as an inheritance because we are His children. You can see the process of persuasion that we must go through to grow up and become His ambassadors in the earth. God’s glory is us taking on the actual life style of Jesus as His Father’s love carried Him all the way to the cross.

It was God’s plan to empower all His children with the Spirit of Christ and through us learning His love laws of life; we can experience our call with a hunger with tenacity and live life unafraid. Scripture tells us that the kingdom of God suffers violents and the violent take it by force. We as born again believers have no time to lollygag around playing church in any form because, the days in which we’re living are evil and we must take our rightful place as God’s heirs to do battle to deliver people of the bondages that they live in because of not knowing Jesus personally and the born again believer who has no clue as to what happen to him the day he became a child of God. We are more than able through Christ’s life alive in us to overcome these excruciating trials at times and endure the same sufferings that Christ experienced even to the dying of self that we incur from time to time.

Romans 8:18 “but what of that? For I consider that the sufferings of this present time (this present life) are not worth being compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us and in us and for us and conferred on us!” We must recognize what our trials and sufferings represent and why they are necessary and then be taught what the abundant life represents by experiencing it. If you don’t understand our fight of faith how can you have the ability to compare? When a Christian doesn’t understand their kingdom walk they can’t even make sound choices as scripture tells us. God gives us a command to “choose this day who we will serve”. The real issue that I see with in the Christian community is two fold. One, we are judging our trials on the consequences that we suffer because of what we believe to be sin in our lives. This is the gospel of the me theology. I talked about before and how it causes us to be for ever sin conscience and focusing on our faults and failures. Secondly, this is because our righteousness in Christ is not being taught with clarity and because of this the ignorance with in the body of Christ is staggering.

We must have a fighting tenacious personality with in us with Godly vision with purpose and a desire to win, which is empowered by the God that is at work with in us This part of the verse that states, to us and in us and for us and conferred on us represents a Spirit of life, so powerful, that it wants to invade our entire soul and gives us an assurance of total well being as Adam and Eve experienced when God would meet with them in the cool of the day and weave His spirit in them as they came to Him with total transparency and with no feelings of shame or guilt.

Romans 8:19 “for [even the whole] creation (all nature) waits expectantly and longs earnestly for God’s sons to be made known [waits for the revealing, the disclosing of their son ship.]” From this scripture we have to deduce that, that God’s true children have not yet reached maturity and there is an expectation from every thing God created of a completion taking place no matter how hard the Devil wants to derail God’s plan. We who are His children or our son ship needs to become physically manifested or be seen in the earth. If you look at this verse with our natural mind it will just be passed over and have no significance. With our natural mind does it make sense that a rock or dirt or a cloud or inanimate material has life? From my understanding it shouldn’t have life. So what was Paul trying to communicate here? We need to go to back to the Garden of Eden and see what God’s plan was for mankind.

In Genisis 2:15 it says. “The Lord God took Adam (the man He made out of the red clay of the earth) and put him in the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” In verse 20 Adam was commanded by God to name the cattle, the fowls of the air and every beast of the field. This was God’s plan for man to have dominion over God’s creation. The word for dominion in the Hebrew is radak: meaning, to conquer, reign and for God’s creation to yield to the power of His authority that He gave us to rule over the earth. God planted His children in the earth which brought them into conflict with the Devil who is the ruler of this plant because this was where he was cast down to when he was thrown out of heaven. If you watch the news and keep up with current events taking place right now, we see that the world scene is in complete chaos. All the major T.V. news channels and talk show news anchors have an opinion on how to solve the fighting going on between the Republicans and Democrats, the war in Iraq and the laws being passed on the new rights for gay marriages, taxes and every other story they can come up with for ratings, recognition and prestige.

I believe some of them are sincere and call they call themselves Christians and are standing up for righteous living. Lets remind ourselves again that because you belong to some denomination, that does not qualify you to be a Christian. You must be born again and have the Holy Ghost living in you to get God’s wisdom. Many of these talk shows on television remind me of children who are trying to find out who they are and do not have the spiritual awareness that unless their wisdom and knowledge is coming from the Holy Ghost through scripture, it ends up with strife and unfulfilled expectations of people forever trying to learn and never coming to the truth. When there is no authority and wisdom coming from people who are God’s kids in specific places of society speaking thus says the Lord, the people perish. This is the same trick Satan used on Jesus in his wilderness walk in tempting Him to do it his way when He walked the earth.

This example is found in Matt. 4:1-11 where we have the story of Jesus being led into the wilderness by the Holy Ghost. This is where we are in this dispensation of time in our wilderness walk on earth. However, we must be functioning in a Promised Land mentality and bring God kingdom into reality in our lives and the lives of others. Jesus was tempted by Satan in three areas and you will see that His response was always from an inspiration from the word of God not his personal opinion. I will comment between verses in parentheses. The story goes. “THEN JESUS was led (guided) by the [Holy] Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted (tested and tried) by the devil. (We are living in our dispensation of time which is our wilderness walk and we are going to be tried daily by the Devil and we must resist him but this can only be done by the wisdom of the Holy Ghost with in us.) And He went without food for forty days and forty nights, and later He was hungry. (In the Old Testament we have another person who had a relationship with God and wanted to fulfill his calling and constantly sought his fathers presence all of his life. In Exod.34:27-28 it tells us that Moses was with God on Mt Sinai getting the Ten Commandments and it says. “The Lord said unto Moses. Write these words: for after a tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. And Moses was there for forty days and forty nights and he didn‘t eat or drink water and he wrote on tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” This word tenor in the Hebrew is peh: meaning in the mouth as a blowing that totally envelopes the entire being of a person. This represents the yearnings of the Holy Ghost to so totally bond with us so when we do go through our testings and trials as Jesus did our initial response is thus saith the Lord when the Devil shows up to tempt us to do it his way. Scripture tells us that God wants to write His laws of life on the fleshy tables of our hearts which is in contrast to Moses writing God’s laws on cold lifeless stone tablets.)

And the tempter came and said to Him, if you are God’s Son; command these stones to be made loaves of bread. But He replied, it has been written, Man shall not live and be upheld and sustained by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. (The Devils first temptation wasn’t about Jesus hunger but about the fact that he tried to put doubt into His mind as to who He was, which questioned His security in God. We see here a testing that is also common to all of us in us coming to believe that God our Heavenly Father loves us enough to feed and clothe us in our daily needs and us learning to trust His provision and not lean towards our own understanding as to what’s going on in our lives. The devils ploy here is to keep us focused on our needs rather than believe what our inheritance is from God our Father as His children and His promise of provision. The second temptation started with the Devil again challenging His authority as to be God‘s son.)

(We see here that the Devil’s tactics have not changed. This idea of a holy city in the physical sense was Jerusalem where during the one thousand year rule Jesus will come to govern the earth with us being His ministering servants to the people of the earth. In the spiritual sense it is the place where God wants to sit in our hearts where He is wants to be the final authority that gives us rest while we let Him rule. The Devil intent is to confuse our thinking and give us a fleshly thrill from time to time by giving us a prideful dart to tempt us to build our own concept of kingdom living but not according to scripture. This is what the majority of the denominations have fallen for and what they have done is tempted God by telling Him they have a better way to build His house then He does.

In the Old Testament the Israelites were constantly complaining to Moses because they had needs and they held him accountable to mediate for them to God for their needs and wants. There was no independent thinking and a commitment with in themselves to petition God on their own and become tenacious and warrior like in their pursuit of righteous living. Being a part of church fellowship is necessary if, God is building this house of believers. Now being a part is one thing. However, church membership was never meant to be a constant sitting in a pew and belonging to one denomination all of your life like chicks being fed week in and week out. Church was meant to be like a nursery where God’s children can be loved and taught not judged into wholeness by God ordained leaders who will disciple and nurture God’s children to become a mighty force of independent thinking people who get to know the voice of the Holy Ghost and go forth in the arena of life to do the works of Jesus. Jesus knew the word and by knowing it, He didn’t fall for this trick and form another denomination with His own beliefs.)

We see the ultimate temptation. The devil couldn’t get Him to doubt His position as God’s son and even though Devil used it to make Jesus doubt who He was, God the Father used it as a test that caused Jesus to meditate on trusting His heavenly Fathers word verses the Devil influence. This made Him stronger and able to handle the second temptation because it showed Him not to lean to His own understanding but speak to the devil with the inspired word of His fathers leading. Finally the devil tried to bribe Him by showing Him all the pleasures of sinful behavior He could participate in which is a temporary season of his existence of power in the earth. Scripture defines this in 1John 2:16 as, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.” Jesus told His disciples that His kingdom was not of this world. As a born again believer we must come to understand that we are in a spiritual battle and we must make a decisive commitment of who we are going to submit to if we are going to take back and rule over what Adam and Eve surrendered to Satan in the garden.

Romans 8:20 “or the creation (nature) was subjected to frailty (to futility, condemned to frustration), not because of some intentional fault on its part, but by the will of Him who so subjected it—[yet] with the hope.” We see here an attitude of mercy by God when it says not because of some intentional fault of its own. When some one comes under subjection, they come under control by that entity. King Solomon states in Eccl.1:2 that life is “Vapor of vapors and futilities of futilities all is vanity emptiness, falsity and vainglory.” This is what happened to mankind when Adam hid from God because he was enticed by Satan to eat from the Tree of Good an Evil. Yet in spite of that God said it was not his fault. To our natural mind this doesn’t make sense. There has to be blame put on Adam for his disobedience, right? Here we see the subtlety of right and wrong reasoning in our natural mind and how Adam and Eve were sold into bondage to think in right and wrong concepts and work out their relationship the way they thought it was supposed to happen with God. This is what happens when man born again or not works out his own goodness apart from the righteous Spirit of Christ.

Our natural mind and reasoning has a hard time believing what Paul the Apostle said in Phil.2:12-15 he states “ Therefore, my dear ones, as you have always obeyed [my suggestions], so now, not only [with the enthusiasm you would show] in my presence but much more because I am absent, work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ). Not in your own strength for it is God who is all the while effectually at work in you energizing and creating in you the power and desire, both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight. Do all things without grumbling and faultfinding and complaining [against God] and questioning and doubting among yourselves], That you may show yourselves to be blameless and guileless, innocent and uncontaminated, children of God without blemish (faultless, un-rebukable in the midst of a crooked and wicked generation [spiritually perverted and perverse], among whom you are seen as bright lights (stars or beacons shining out clearly) in the [dark] world,

Is it possible that a born again Christian who loves God and is trying to live the Christian life be reasoning and working out their own salvation living under the curse of the laws of death and no matter how hard they try to love God they live under this vanity and futility spirit that this verse talks about? If you are reading this stand up and take notice. Could this be true in your life and are you being deceived in not understanding God’s commitment to keep you secure and safe in spit of your ignorance and vulnerability of being deceived by the devil. Vanity at work is a living entity that infected the soul of having an excessive pride in one’s own talents, looks and processions etc. This is our inheritance from Adam and what he passed down as a curse and what we came out of our mother’s womb with the day we were born. This is the Devils nature in which we were sold into slavery at birth.

Romans 8:21 “that nature (creation) itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and corruption [and gain an entrance] into the glorious freedom of God’s children.” As born again believers and sons and daughters of God we must have an intense vision and awareness of this bondage and decay that the Devil wants to inflict on God’s Children. The Holy Ghost daily doesn’t want us to acquire this stupor that scripture talks about that makes us become dull of hearing to His voice. This is where we have to with intensity hunger and thirst to live in God’s Righteous Spirit.

Romans 8:22 “we know that the whole creation [of irrational creatures] has been moaning together in the pains of labor until now.” A born again believer who is growing has to be one who is actively searching for a wisdom higher then their own and actively participating in study and being daily informed as to what’s going on in the world and how God is being pushed out of society, there are wars and rumors of wars, sexual perversion and all the ungodly accounts and total confusion that permeates our society. This is what God’s creation was condemned to when Adam and Eve surrendered their authority given to them by God to protect and nourish God’s creation. It is obvious that it is God’s born again children that are to take control and win back what Adam and eve surrendered to the Devil. This is what the body of Christ is called to do in each of our arenas of life.

Romans 8:23 “and not only the creation, but we ourselves too, who have and enjoy the first fruits of the [Holy] Spirit [a foretaste of the blissful things to come] groan inwardly as we wait for the redemption of our bodies [from sensuality and the grave, which will reveal] our adoption (our manifestation as God’s sons)”. These words first fruits is the living reality of the very presences and personality of the Holy Ghost. It is this first taste and awareness of the Spiritual word that Paul describes in Heb 6:4-5 when he says, “we have once and for all been enlightened, have consciously tasted the heavenly gift, and have become sharers of the Holy Spirit. And have felt how good the Word of God is and the mighty powers of the age and world to come.”

I now I am literally talking to some one who is reading this at this time. Unless you sense this awareness of the world I am talking about and are participating in it with passion and a planned format of how to hunger and thirst after it, your either not born again or you are asleep as to knowing who you are in God’s family and living as a un saved person. Let me give you a simple example of how easy it is to let God through the Holy Ghost get you active in Godly pursuits. When we came out of our mothers womb, we received all the characteristics of our parents. If your last name is smith, you will look like a Smith and have all the characteristics of a Smith. You really don’t have to try to hard to be a Smith. Just let it happen. When we became born again we received all of God the Father’s characteristics and we permanently become His children. In reality, we became impregnated by the Holy Ghost and He created us into a new creation in Christ. The Holy Ghost is the one who created the universe and nourishes God’s creation and our person. The Holy Ghost is in spite of our selves actively with great love and patience at work motivating us with great pangs of wanting us to come to completion with out judgment in the morning, noon and night time hours.

Romans 8:24. “For in [this] hope we were saved. But hope [the object of] which is seen is not hope. For how can a person hope for what he already sees?” It is only in us believing this passion that the Holy Ghost has to bring us to completion that can give us this hope. It is in us having a continual dialogue with the Holy Ghost daily that encourages us to see the physical manifestation of this as it comes to pass. We are talking about a God hope being made real to us by a living person who wants to make a permanent home in us.

Romans 8:25 “But if we hope for what is still unseen by us, we wait for it with patience and composure.” The Holy Ghost even has to give us the patience and composure to wait and trust in what He is speaking in our ear. This moaning, groaning and inner struggle that is going on has never been greater as we see this dispensation of time coming to an end.

Romans 8:26 “So too the [Holy] Spirit comes to our aid and bears us up in our weakness; for we do not know what prayer to offer nor how to offer it worthily as we ought, but the Spirit Himself goes to meet our supplication and pleads in our behalf with unspeakable yearnings and groanings too deep for utterance.” There has been a growing awareness for years of the presence of the Holy Ghost and this is taking place because of the true interpretation of rightly dividing the word of God and speaking it out of our mouth which has creative power. We must all be having more of these wind encounters as a physical manifestation of the Holy Ghosts presence should be growing in us. A Christian can come to sense a shadow of His presence at work constantly at their side guiding and directing their path that is very sure witness with in them. Let me share another physical spiritual manifestation that happened to me when I first met Christ after the one I had in my automobile.

After I became born again I asked this fellow who had witnessed to me what church he attended and he directed me to this Pentecostal church that he had attended for the last twenty years. These people were all tongue talkers and to my natural mind I thought these people were nuts. I didn’t have a clue as to what this was all about. Over the next few months they took me under their wing and began to show me scripture where by faith we can allow the Holy Ghost who now lives in us the opportunity to express Himself in a heavenly language in our prayer life to God so I could have the things that God wanted to give me for the abundant live He had reserved for all of His children. Since they made me understand that this is one of the many gifts that God gives His children which empowers them to live the love laws of Christian life, I wanted to know where scripture defines it and how I can obtain this gift for my self.

In Acts 19: Paul is having a conversation with the Ephesians who were gathered there and stated to them, “He asked them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed [on Jesus as the Christ]? And they said, No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. And he asked, into what [baptism] then were you baptized? They said, into John’s baptism. And Paul said John baptized with the baptism of repentance, continually telling the people that they should believe in the One who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus [having a conviction full of joyful trust that He is Christ, the Messiah, and being obedient to Him]. On hearing this they were baptized [again, this time] in the name of the Lord Jesus. And as Paul laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke in [foreign, unknown] tongues (languages) and prophesied.

We need to fully understand what Paul is saying here. These people were baptized in water by John the Baptist at the Jordon River. However they had never been born again with the Holy Ghost coming into their lives and had made Jesus their savior. We have the so called Christian churches today constantly talking about people repenting of their sins, being water baptized and they think that this is what qualifies them for eternity. This is indeed a disaster and I have no words to express the total lying nature of this belief. Again not to be mean and argumentative, the Catholic Church has children water baptized like this when they are infants and they think this will entitle them to heaven. They then believe that when you get to be about thirteen that you can go through a church rite by the Bishop tapping you on the side of the check and you receive the Holy Ghost. I went through both of these rites when I was Catholic however it was only a symbolic human attempt to mimic the Holy Ghost and it had absolutely no power to change my fallen nature.

A person who has the miracle encounter of salvation could get saved and this allows the Holy Ghost to come in and make a permanent home in them. Also at the same time, they could allow the Holy Ghost to speak through them in an unknown language that our minds do not understand. In this Pentecostal church that I was now attending it had the actual living presence of God flowing in their midst with power, visibility and they didn’t have to have rites and man made doctrines to mimic God’s powers. Even though they had the living life of Christ operating in their midst, they had mingled seed teachings that was hindering the Holy Ghost from having full rein in their meetings.

There needs to be a full teaching on this with in the body of Christ so that God kids can participate in the living laws of life as God intended. I am only touching the surface on the basic life we can have in the Holy Ghost. I believe I would have spoken with tongues when the wind of the Holy Ghost entered by body when I had my born again experience. Even though I felt the love of the Lord for the first time the experience to some degree scared me and because the Holy Ghost is a complete gentlemen, my ignorance hindered Him from completing what He wanted to do at that time.

Well for the next six months at the church the whole congregation came together to help me receive the gift of tongues and allow the Holy Ghost to speak through me. It seemed like every service when they had the altar call, they had me at the altar praying and begging God to what they called being filled with the Holy Ghost. This is where their interpretation was misunderstood. Scripture tells me that we received all of God’s gifts when we became born again and we are then and will always be filled with the Holy Ghost. The allowing Him to use our tongue to exercise our spiritual man, teaches us to surrender to His Righteous Spirit that is in us and it is a constant re-enforcement of our eternal connection with him with power. I had these wonderful people at night coming over to pray for me at my home. Every one had advice. Some said you had to mimic tongues. Some said you had to tarry and sit in a chair and let the church lay hands on you. Some said if you had sin in your life you couldn’t be baptized in tongues and there were many other suggestions. With all these non scriptural ideas, you knew that they were sincere and wanted to help.

In John 7:37-38 “ Jesus stood and cried with a loud voice, If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink! He who believes in me [who cleaves to and trusts in and relies on me] as the Scripture has said, from his innermost being shall flow [continuously] springs and rivers of living water. But He was speaking here of the Spirit, Whom those who believed (trusted, had faith) in Him were afterward to receive. For the [Holy] Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified (raised to honor).”

Well after six months of seeking this gift of tongues and not knowing about these verses and what Jesus said. I was becoming disillusioned and tired of going down to the altar time after time. The real issue was that I didn’t feel worthy and my natural mind couldn’t comprehend how this was going to happen. Finally, we had a week of revival meetings being held at the church. Somebody at the church told me that the message was going to be on being baptized by the Holy Ghost in tongues and if I really wanted it, I had to really show God by being the first one down to the altar. I thought alright I’ll try one more time. At the altar call I ran down to the altar and of course the whole congregation came down to the altar to pray for me again. There I was with my hands up raised asking God to let this happen. Well a few minutes went by and the Pastor walked up beside me, laid his hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear “stop begging God for the gift, you already have it.”

When he said that something down deep in my stomach like a river came rumbling up through my chest and exploded out of my mouth in a language that my mind could not comprehend and it seemed as if I had no control over this experience. For the next two hours I prayed in this unknown language with a joy and laughter that actual shook my body that zapped my physical strength. I spent all this time laying hands on the people around me praying for them to have the same experience. Well about one o’clock in the morning the meeting kind of ended and as I walked out of the church the Pastor asked me how I felt. I remember telling him that this experience certainly puts a hop in your step. I got home totally exhausted and as I crawled into bed that night I tried to pray in tongues again and it rolled out on my mouth. Continued in part five.