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[ Silence ] [ Music ] Teach me to gather, thou art always mine. Teach me thus, Mama, how the soul to bear,

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To check the rising of our rebel sun, teach me the patience of unanswered prayer. Amen. [choir singing]

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[applause] May we bow our heads. Spirit of God, descend upon us, we pray. Teach us and strengthen us this day. In Jesus name, amen.

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These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you."

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The subject of the message, communication through the spirit. Communication through the spirit. This is the second saying of Jesus concerning the Holy Spirit recorded in the gospel according to Saint John.

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It is also related to the promise of the Spirit. The Spirit of God is a means of communication with the people of God. The Spirit is the way we relate to ourselves. heard a great deal about the generation gap, but it seems to me that the most

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serious gap that confronts us is the communication gap. The ability to communicate one with the other, communication with the eternal. Another word which may be translated spirit is "numa" which means self. Well, you see, spirit has to do with the essence of one's being.

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It is the core of one's being. It's concerned with our emotions, our passions, our desires, our hopes, and our aspirations. It is one's essential character. That is the spirit of the individual.

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Sometimes when an individual is doing something, you'll hear one say, "Put yourself into it," which means do not be detached, indifferent, unemotional. For the spirit of the individual is the manifestation of the self.

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In the story of the prodigal son, the younger son here in that story, displays a spirit of arrogance and rebellion. In other words he says, "Daddy, I don't want you to tell me what to do. I want to be free from you, free from your roof and rule."

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So you see the young man did not have it together. We have here a portrait of a splintered self, a victim of the disintegration of personality. He's plagued by alienation and brokenness. He's not the person that he ought to be.

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So he cannot commune with himself as he ought to. And as we notice the words, when his conversion experience occurs, it says in the scripture, when he came to himself, when he came to himself, which means that when he was carrying on his Rendezvous in a far country. He was not at himself. He didn't have it all together

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So it was when he Was grasped by the spirit of the father that he made the decision to go

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home to his father So it is through the spirit the Holy Spirit That one comes to himself or herself This is the nature of the spirit to bring about that wholeness that enables a person to commune

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with himself. It is that which unites mind and body. So Jesus here says, "The Comforter, the Father will send you in my name. My Holy Spirit will be with you. The Spirit of Christ will come to caress and possess you. The Spirit of God will be there wherever you are, wherever you go. God's Spirit will be present to help you, to

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give you strength to teach you. The Spirit of God is the presence of God with us in the Holy Spirit. There are other spirits but the Holy Spirit is divine that's why we say Holy Spirit. He blesses us, God does, with his presence. So the Holy Spirit unites us. We are not united with ourselves apart from the

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working of the Holy Spirit in our lives in a personal way. That's why so often people go to pieces when we do not rely upon that unity, that wholeness, that harmony that the Spirit establishes. And to do that one must be true to himself or to herself. Words of Shakespeare, "This above all to thine own self be true." So

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the Holy Spirit helps us to be true to ourselves. The Holy Spirit helps us to be the self that God made us to be. One can never be the person you are made to be apart from the working of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God enables us to be true, to be the authentic self, As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God, or to say they are the

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children of God. For the Spirit of God enables us to communicate with the very depths of our being. God has put his Spirit in us. Though some may try to mutilate the spirit, may try to suppress the spirit, the spirit

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enables us to communicate with ourselves. Jesus said, "The Father will send the Comforter who will teach you all things." The spirit is our teacher. We come to know ourselves through the Spirit of God.

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We can never understand even ourselves and our relationship to self and others apart from the working of the Spirit of God who is our teacher. So you see, we come to understand who we are, our possibilities, and our potentialities, who we are and who we may become through the Spirit of God.

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You're familiar with the story concerning George Washington Carver, though he had a great deal of understanding and engaged in a number of scientific endeavors, spent many hours in the laboratory. He was a man who asked God to teach him the secrets of the peanut and the sweet potato.

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He relied not just on those things, but he gave the credit that God revealed to him many of the things that were discovered by his communion with the Spirit of God. He was open to the Spirit. The Spirit was his teacher.

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So Jesus says that the Spirit will teach you. When you find yourself in a place and you find yourself among people and you do not know what to say as my disciples, when you find yourself in that condition, in that circumstance, the Spirit will teach you what to say.

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Now if one does not commune with the Spirit, then what one has to say will not be of the Spirit. The Spirit will tell you not only what to say, but what to do. The Spirit will bring all things to your remembrance.

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The Spirit develops that that is within us. It has a way of leading out that God has placed in us, just as a flower that grows and unfolds unfolds and blossoms. All of it's within the flower, but in the period of time it begins to unfold. And so when the Spirit of God is working with us, it is bringing out, it is

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leading out, it is leading us in that unfolding process, that development that enables us to grow more and more like Jesus. The Spirit you see works in us through the Word of Jesus. See the Word is the mediator in the work of the flesh and the Spirit.

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In other words, the person doesn't know what you're thinking unless you express it by some word. And then of course not only is it important that you express it by a word, it's also important that you express it in the right spirit. So it's not only what one says, but it is the spirit in which one says or does what he or she

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she says or does. I often think of my experience when I was in seminary with Mrs. Daly. Mrs. Daly was what we call the house mother and she had charge of the dining hall and I had a job in the dining hall. It was a work scholarship in other words I got my meals for serving tables and she decided to move me from being a waiter to

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being a dishwasher and that was quite a demotion and it did a great deal to crush my spirit. I assure you and I went to her and I asked her what is it that I've done? She said well, you haven't done anything particularly, but I think this may help your spirit. I think it may help your spirit and it did.

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We can do a lot of things and we can go through certain motions, but if the spirit is not, if the right spirit, if it is not motivated by the spirit of Jesus Christ, that's what Paul is talking about when he says, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not the spirit of love." It is the Spirit. Jesus says here that the

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Father will send the Spirit and the Spirit will guide us, the Spirit will teach us. The Spirit is the comforter, the comforter, comforter. You know when we think about comfort we think about somebody soothing us when we are bereaved we've sort of gotten away from what the real meaning of that word is

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but it really has to do with fortitude and courage to face life that's what it's talking about when when the scripture there in Isaiah says comfort ye, comfort ye my people speak ye comfortably into Jerusalem it's giving them the courage to face life they're in Babylon there they are in the slum and

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the squalor of Babylon and they're looking forward to going to Jerusalem and crossing a desert and they're uneasy, they're anxious about that journey and he says to the prophet comfort ye, comfort ye my people and Jesus says I will send you the comforter, comforter. In other words, the courage to be able to stand up to life. We can get some rather difficult

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blows dealt to us in the course of life. And we can get knocked down to our feet, but somehow the Comforter is here to strengthen us that we may stand up to life, no matter what life brings. I will send you the Comforter. The Spirit of Christ teaches us to ask the right questions. We don't know what to do in a given situation. We say, "Well now what

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would Jesus do? What did Jesus say in his word for me to do in this situation? What does he say that I may apply to the decision that I might make?" The Spirit of God calls to mind that Jesus would not have us to do certain things and it calls us to remember that he would have us to do certain things. The Spirit of

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God is sent to us and it's important for us to have the Spirit of God in us and and for us having the Spirit with us. That's communication. Being able to communicate, to communicate through the Spirit.

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You know, we can send a letter in the mail, we understand that. But we feel somewhat strange because it's in the realm of mystery when we talk about communication through the Spirit. spirit but it's it's real it's just as real as the Sun that shines out there this morning. You know there's a certain communication that comes in the spirit

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when you're speaking to a group just like I'm speaking here to you there's a certain certain feeling tones you can feel when someone wants you to hurry up and get through and go home so they can go home. You can also feel when what you are saying somehow finds a lodging place and somehow their minds are giving a scent and

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they can say, "Look, I can confirm that." You can feel it. There are certain feeling tones, and that's not only just when you're speaking to an audience, it's when you're with people.

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We send out certain feeling tones, and some people say, "Look, don't touch me." You know, we're like a mimosa plant, very sensitive. people are to curl up certain feeling tones that are sent out, that are sent out. But the Spirit of God sends out a spirit of acceptance, a spirit of love, a spirit of kindness. The Spirit of God communicates the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

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John says, "I was in the Spirit." You see, he was able to communicate. Well, when you look at the situation, when he's out there on the Isle of Patmos, he's out there isolated from the main traffic of human existence.

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They have tried to get rid of John. They say that he was boiled in oil and somehow he miraculously escaped and They said well, we'll do this. We'll just take him away from his church We'll put him out here on the Isle of Patmos where he'll be by himself and he'll die from loneliness

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But in that experience John said I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day I was in the spirit. No, no audience there, but I was caught up in the spirit and I was able to commune. I was able to commune with God and I felt that I was in the presence of a host of witnesses that the human eye could not see. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and I heard a voice speaking to me.

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When you're in the Spirit, you can hear the Lord speaking to you. The Lord opens the secret seat, gives you guidance on what you are to do. God has ways of speaking to us. For you see, the Spirit is our friend.

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So the Spirit is sent to befriend us. So let us not be at odds with the Spirit. Be on good terms with the Spirit. For the Spirit comes to help us.

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Do not try to run from the Spirit, for the Spirit is our friend. Do not try to quench the Spirit. The Spirit comes to teach us, to serve as our guide,

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to help us in our talk, to be with us in our walk. You see, the Spirit is a means of fellowship. We talk about communication. The spirit is the way we communicate.

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It's the means of fellowship. If we really wanna have fellowship one with the other, we commune with the spirit of God. It's the spirit of God working in you,

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the spirit of God working in me, and the spirit of God in you, and the spirit of God in me, somehow have a happy meeting.

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And oh, that's the glorious fellowship. The glorious fellowship when there is this happy meeting. It's the I and the thou that come together. And the I and the thou in this world

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are brought together by the great thou. And this great thou unites us. It unites us in our purpose. Jesus prays that his disciples be one,

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as he and the Father are one. We who are many can be one only through the Spirit. It is through the communication of the Spirit that we experience this oneness.

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That's what the older people were talking about. I used to hear it often when I was a boy. Give us that love that runs from heart to heart and breast to breast.

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Togetherness, unity, oneness, all of this has to occur through the communication that is made possible through the Spirit of God. So we want this oneness, but it just does not happen because people are gathered together in the same place. We have feeling and we

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yield to the presence of the Spirit and the power of the Spirit and we're grasped by the Spirit of God and we are empowered by the Spirit of God to do the work of God. Communication through the Spirit. Communication through the Spirit. Not just presence in the sanctuary, not just singing the hymns, not just saying

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the words, but communication through the Spirit. That's what Isaiah is talking about when he says, you know, I was, it was at the year that Uzziah died, he said, "I went to the temple and when I went to the temple I sat there in the worship service and as I sat there in the worship service something happened that

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had never happened before. Oh I've been there many times before but on this occasion the heavens opened and I was I was in the spirit and the heavens opened and I saw the Lord. I felt his spirit. I heard his word and I listened as I heard the words "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts." The whole earth is full of his

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glory. I was in the Spirit and it's that Spirit that enables us to call God Father. For those who have the Spirit of God, Paul says they cry "Abba, Father, Father I stretch my hands to thee, no other help I know. If thou withdraw thyself from me or whither shall I go. And thanks be to God, thanks be to God that he gives us

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his spirit, that he comes from heaven to the earth, that both God and Jesus somehow are available to us and they meet us and they grasp us and they so teach us and lead us and empower us that we can be ourselves and live meaningful lives. So as Brother Sam Austin leads this song, "Even Me," we extend the invitation now for you to let the Spirit of God guide you.

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To let the Spirit of God lead you. To let the Spirit of God put you before God. Jesus is the Lord. [inaudible]

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We invite you to come out. We invite you to accept Jesus Christ. We invite you to be open and accepting to His truth. We invite you to make a decision.

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Make a decision. ♪ Lord, I hear ♪ ♪ Of showers of blessings ♪ ♪ Thou art caring ♪

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♪ Full of grace ♪ ♪ Country ♪ ♪ Shouts at the ♪ ♪ Thirsty souls ♪

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♪ Refreshing ♪ ♪ Let some drops ♪ ♪ Now fall on me ♪ ♪ Even me, yes ♪

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♪ Even me ♪ ♪ Give and me, Lord ♪ ♪ Give and me ♪ ♪ Let the blood ♪

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♪ Now flow ♪ ♪ For me ♪ ♪ Pass me not ♪ ♪ O gentle Savior ♪

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♪ And far though ♪ ♪ My heart ♪ ♪ May be ♪ ♪ I am longing ♪

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♪ For thy favor ♪ ♪ Was a blessing, oh, bless me ♪ ♪ Even me, yes, even me ♪ ♪ Even me, even me, yes ♪

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♪ Even me, even me ♪ ♪ Lord, even me, lord ♪ ♪ What a blessing ♪ ♪ Lord has been ♪

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♪ Bread of heaven ♪ ♪ Bread of heaven ♪ ♪ Heaven, bread of heaven ♪ ♪ Heaven, let me feed of thee ♪

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♪ And let me feed on thee ♪ ♪ Vine of heaven ♪ ♪ Vine of heaven ♪ ♪ Let thy blood ♪

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♪ Atone ♪ ♪ For me ♪ ♪ Even me, yes ♪ ♪ Even me ♪

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♪ Even me, Lord ♪ ♪ Even me ♪ ♪ Let my blood ♪ ♪ But doubt ♪

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♪ Form me ♪ [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]