The Holy Spirit Has a Language: Build Your Future From Within

Sermon outline

The Holy Spirit in you can only help you build when you speak His language: see what God has promised in your heart, call it as though it were, and guard your eyes and imagination from what is wrong.

1. The Comforter has come: be filled, and keep being filled

   Jesus promised the Comforter, whom the Amplified Bible calls Counsellor, Helper, Advocate, Intercessor and Strengthener, and at Pentecost they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. Without the Spirit the things of God are dry; with Him every scripture and prayer is alive. You can only fill what is hungry and empty, and the filling is a daily walk, not a one-off.

   “You cannot fill something that's not hungry and empty.”

   • John 15:26
   • Acts 2:1-4

2. You are His temple and not your own: let the Spirit lead

   Your body is a moving, breathing temple of the Holy Ghost, bought with a price, so consult Him about your job, your studies and your direction. Do not copy other people's plans, or you will run a race God never gave you. The Spirit stopped Paul going to Bithynia and sent Philip to the Ethiopian; He also speaks through people, but only trust those who are Spirit-filled and sound in the Word, and test every dream and vision against Scripture.

   Illustration: Someone tells you they had a dream that you should sell everything you have and give it to them: has God spoken to you?

   “Don't copy a plan for another person.”

   • 1 Corinthians 3:16-17
   • 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
   • Acts 16:6-10
   • Acts 8:26-40
   • 2 Timothy 2:15
   • 1 John 4:1

3. The Spirit quickens the dead and calls what is not

   God quickens the dead and calls those things which be not as though they were. Whatever is dead in your finances, job or family, the Word by the Spirit can breathe life into it, and what does not yet exist He can bring into being. The Holy Spirit cannot help you build if you do not speak His language, which is the Word of God.

   “The Holy Spirit cannot help you build if you do not speak His language.”

   • Romans 4:17
   • John 16:23
   • Genesis 1:2

4. If you can see it, you can have it: build with your imagination

   God made Abraham exceedingly fruitful, and He is in the multiplying business. Wherever you start, on a milk crate in one room or taking a taxi, use your imagination: put a picture of what you are believing for on the wall and keep looking until it drops into your heart. Dreamers like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Gandhi held a dream no one could take from them; dream and work.

   Illustration: When the church started he kept a picture of a large dome church on the pulpit and told his sons that one day they would have their own dome; he keeps model aeroplanes and aviation magazines on his desk, because a magazine costs R26, not R26 million.

   “We don't build castles in the air. We build them in our hearts.”

   • Genesis 17:5-8

5. Let there be light: speak what you want to see

   God looked at darkness and said 'Let there be light'; He did not describe the darkness. While you see poverty, sickness or a half-empty church, say what God says: let the weak say 'I am strong' and the poor say 'I am rich'. That is the language of the Holy Ghost.

   Illustration: Do not say half the church is empty; say half the church is full and the other half is filling up.

   “God said, let there be light while he saw darkness. While you are seeing darkness, say, let there be light.”

   • Genesis 1:1-3
   • Joel 3:10

6. Three truths about the spiritual world

   The spiritual world hugs the natural world; everything in God's spiritual world is beautiful, with no cancer, poverty or lack; and that higher dimension is always creating and bringing order. So rise in the Spirit and pull what you see there into the natural, and when the doctor or the boss brings bad news, thank them for the information and declare what is true where you live. Move out of poverty lane and sick lane, because as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

   Illustration: With Pastor Johannes holding up a Bible as 'the building we have', he acts out seeing a 5,000-seat auditorium in his heart and pulling it towards him until the Spirit says 'you have it'; he says the members God has planned for the church are still scattered across Durban's suburbs and townships, and prayer meetings call them in, joint to joint.

   “Don't allow somebody else to mar the photo God the Holy Spirit has put in your heart.”

   • Ezekiel 37:7
   • Jeremiah 1:5
   • Proverbs 23:7

7. You don't have to be a crook to be successful

   Quick success through fraud and dishonesty ends in jail, and those who do it while claiming to be born again bring shame on the gospel. Believers are ambassadors who bless people rather than steal from them; work, tithe, give and let God build you up step by step.

   “There's no such thing as quick success. It's quick jail time.”

   • 2 Corinthians 5:20
   • Ephesians 4:15

8. Guard your eyes: whatever you see, you will take

   Eve saw the fruit, it entered her imagination, and she took it. Adultery and theft are never 'mistakes' but pictures that were meditated on first, and a so-called rhema that tells you to leave your spouse is not from God. So keep your eyes off evil and fill them with good things: success stories, books on growing your business, pictures of a blessed home.

   Illustration: Say, 'I have a problem: I don't know where to park all my cars.'

   “Keep a guard over your eyes because it's a doorway to your heart.”

   • Genesis 3:1-6