The Work Of The Holy Spirit Series

Part 3 – “Cooperating With The Holy Spirit, The Source Of Power”

Submitted by Dave White – Central Florida District Coordinator

 

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is the gateway into the supernatural manifestations of God.

Many believers who have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit never reach their full potential in learning to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, who is the source of all power.

Many believers are too concerned with receiving the Holy Spirit as an outward experience or with some feeling of ecstasy from the natural standpoint, that they have missed the reality of what the Holy Spirit came to do in us and through us on a continual basis through the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

When the baptism of the Holy Spirit is just an experience with believers, they talk about “it,” the outward manifestation and miss the reality of the Holy Spirit on the inside of them.

As believers, we should be conscious of the Holy spirit’s indwelling presence every waking moment. Too many spirit filled believers are living a life of defeat, they are living as if they have absolutely no power over the enemy.

The number one reason that so many spirit filled believers live this way is that they have never moved passed living in the realm of feeling and or reasoning.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. As a Born Again, Spirit Filled child of God, do I really lack anything for living a life of continuous, triumphant victory?
2. The life of God within me, that I received at my New Birth, did that actually make a change in me?
3. Am I really a new creature?
4. Do I live differently now that I have been born again?
5. When I am faced with difficult situations in life, how do I handle them differently today than I did before I was born again and especially since I have been filled with the Holy Spirit and speak with other tongues?
6. Has there been a change?

2 Corinthians 5:17

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

1 John 4:4

4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

The Greater One Is In You!

If the Greater One is in you through the New Birth, then any other spirit is of a lesser order and is powerless against the Greater One IN YOU.

How do we move into this greater empowered lifestyle?  We must learn to cooperate with the Greater One by obeying His Word.

John 14:23

23 Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him”.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20

19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

The Greater One is in you, cooperate with Him.

The enemy will try every means to undermine God’s rule and authority in the believer’s life. We must always remember, the battle is kingdom against kingdom, and one of those kingdoms is inside of you!

Because you are born again and Spirit-filled, you have the person of the Holy Spirit dwelling in you or we can say living in you.

There Isn’t Anything More To Get That Will Put You Over In Life. If God The Father, God The Son, And God The Holy Spirit Can’t Put You Over, Then You Will Never Get Over!

Colossians 2:9-15

9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 AND HAVING DISARMED THE POWERS AND AUTHORITIES, HE MADE A PUBLIC SPECTACLE OF THEM, TRIUMPHING OVER THEM BY THE CROSS.

Not only has Christ caused us to triumph over the enemy through His cross, He also sent the wonderful GIFT of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity to infill us with POWER.

Acts 1:8

8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”.

The Holy Spirit is the source of the Power of Almighty God within the life of the believer. As spirit filled believers, we have all of the power heaven has to offer dwelling within us. What we have to learn to do is cooperate with his indwelling presence.

The Holy Spirit is the Power Source, we need to learn to walk in the light of what we have right now. You need to learn how to put the Greater One to work for you because He is waiting on YOU to move first.

Our God is a Faith God, not a God of feelings. When a believer makes statements like “I just don’t feel like I have any power”, that person has removed themselves from FAITH and moved into the sense and reason realm. These realms (Sense and Reason) are the realms of the enemy, the devil.

The word says we walk by FAITH, not by SIGHT (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Sight refers to the natural realm. But we walk in a supernatural realm of the Spirit. we believe what we can’t see. Feelings have no place in the believer’s life, feelings will lie to you and cause you to be defeated.

Acts 1:8 says that we, the believer, would receive POWER when the Holy Spirit filled us. The POWER that came as a result of being baptized with the Holy Spirit, like all things from God, is by faith and is activated by faith.

This POWER that came is not a result of feelings.

You and I can experience the greatest manifestations of God’s power when we rely on the Greater One who is in us.

If we will learn to allow HIM to do HIS powerful, anointed work in and through us, HE will put us over in life. Basing our faith on the word, not on our feelings will cause us to live in victory.

Every believer has the Holy Spirit dwelling within him, and if he has received the infilling of the Holy Spirit he has also received the enduement of power from on High.

These realities are true whether we feel like it or not.

We must believe the Word of God no matter what our feelings tell us.

FEELINGS ARE THE VOICE OF THE FLESH

If you are walking by feelings, you are being dominated by the flesh.  The Bible tells us to crucify the flesh. If the flesh is crucified, the voice of the flesh is also to be crucified.

You can’t walk by feelings and be a successful Christian, for if you are walking by feelings, then your flesh, not your spirit, is dominating you.

REASON IS THE VOICE OF YOUR MIND

You also can’t walk by reason and be a successful Christian either.  But you can walk by faith and be a successful Christian, because faith is of the Spirit.  Walking by faith is letting your spirit man dominate you.

Walking by faith is listening to the Voice of the Greater One on the inside of you and walking in line with the Word of God.

How do we walk by faith and not by sight? We walk by faith by putting faith in what God has said in His Word. It never pays to walk by sight. It never pays to walk by feelings when God has spoken to us by His Word. We must listen to what God has to say in His Word and act on that.

It always pays to walk by faith — to simply take God at His Word — because He is faithful who promised.

Hebrews 10:23

23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

As we learn to lean on the Greater One who dwells within us, and as we are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the power of God is made available to us and the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit can operate through us as the Spirit wills.

We need to learn how to put the Greater One who indwells us and who has empowered us to work for us. When we do, we will have no need to walk by sight, to look at circumstances, or to be ruled by our feelings.

We can rise above our physical limitations and natural circumstances and enter into the realm of the supernatural through the power of the Holy Spirit!

This article contains excerpts from Kenneth Hagin’s study guide The Holy Spirit and His Gifts bible study.