Jesus says in John he says if you obey my Commandments you are my disciples
indeed last year when I was in London and I had a couldn't sleep at night
because of the jetlag so I opened the Bible started to kind of
scroll scroll through my Bible and this verse came up to my mind and I felt the
Holy Spirit put on my heart and he said the price for intimacy is not fellowship
with the Holy Spirit it's obedience to the Holy Spirit
obedience to the Holy Spirit is the key to the next level in the Holy Spirit see
Jesus defines friendship different than you and I define friendship each one of
us our friends are the people we spend the most time with it's the people we
don't command come on if you command them you're not friends no more it's a
dysfunctional friendship and somebody needs to see that some of you need to
see it one of you need to see a therapist because if you come or both of
you because if you come to your friend and you say the reason why you're my BFF
why because you do everything I tell you
how many people like yeah of course bff for life well you look at him excuse
me are you okay no you you look like you will come against that but Jesus's
definition of friendship is different than yours he says this because you do
what I say we're friends friendship with the Holy
Spirit is not based on talking to the Holy Spirit because how many of you have
those people who talk talk talk talk and they never do my wife went shopping to
Costco and she came back and she said babe can you help me to get the water
out of the trunk and I said yeah yeah yeah I got it I forgot later in the
evening as I was going out about something else there is that water she
took it from the trunk and put it at the edge of the garage it's still standing
there the amazing part is to the time that I could got the water back into the
house I still talk to her we've continued to fellowship and many of us
we think that the next level with the Holy Spirit determine is determined by
how much more time we add time to spending time with the Holy Spirit my
friend Holy Spirit's define friendship different than you do it's not the
amount of fellowship it's the amount of obedience and that's
why you can look at some people who your like man but they don't talk to the Holy
Spirit hours upon a day but what if Holy Spirit told them to do something else
God will bless you not based on your prayer but based on your obedience and
sometimes when we don't obey we want to pray to cover lack of our obedience God
told Saul I want you to go wipe out Amalekites guess what guess what Saul
did he brought sacrifices to compensate for lack of obedience and some of us we
will sacrifice to cover the fact we're not obedient we will add prayer we will
add fasting just so that we don't have to do what he's asking us to do I
remember when three years ago the Lord star putting in my heart to write a book
and I said no way I'm gonna be writing a book I'm not an author English is my
third or fourth language I'm referring to tongues I only have a high school
diploma who's gonna read my stuff and I remember but I felt this strong
prompting you have to do that you have to talk about that stuff we need to
communicate that in the form of the book and so for a month I didn't do it and I
felt like the presence of the Lord lifted from my prayer life so guess what
I did what every Pentecostal person did I added one more hour to my prayer
instead of praying two I started to pray three hours things got worse so I
started to fast a little bit more I was like man I'm gonna get a breakthrough
and after I was done with all of my craziness i felt the Holy Spirit says
why can't you just do what I told you he said why are you what is all this I said
this is what I learned obedience is the greatest sacrifice you really want to
sacrifice obey Abraham did not sacrifice his son he just obeyed God Jesus did not
try to sacrifice his life the Bible says he learned obedience he just obeyed
anytime you focus on obedience you will always sacrifice
don't focus on sacrifice focus on obedience and whatever he leads you to
do just do it if he leads you to give give if he leads you to save save if he
leads you if he leads you to do that begin to follow the Holy Spirit and your
next level in the Holy Spirit will be unlocked people come and say how do I go
into the next level of the Holy Spirit do I increase my prayer life no increase your
obedience and if that obedience if he lead you to pray more awesome wait on
the Holy Spirit to lead you otherwise you become a copycat of everybody else
you'll copy everybody's acts of obedience instead of
developing intimacy and follow what the Holy Spirit's leading you to do somebody
say Amen