I'm going to give you a picture of what a foundry should be, and I'll tell you a little bit about my foundry. An oasis is found in the midst of a dry, dull, dreary, dead, desert land. In a barren land, it's a place where water is found. It's a place It's a fertile area, a place of life. To the desert traveler, the oasis is a place of welcome relief. It is a marvelous thing to come upon an oasis. It is there that one finds refreshment, and revival, and renewal, and rejuvenation, and rest, and relief. We live in a world that's very vast. somewhere that you are blessed, somewhere that you find fulfillment, somewhere that you enjoy being, somewhere that is safe. Children, he wants your home to be a place that you can come to and you can just relax because it's safe. Because kids live in a pretty tough world nowadays, too. He wants our homes to be an oasis to us. Now, he has a plan for doing that. If we want that, don't we? Everybody wants their home to be like that. Everybody wants this home that's safe and warm and loving. We don't want that. And God has a plan to achieve that for us. The plan God has for achieving that for us is a little bit roundabout. You know, I could go through with you tonight a list of rules of how to actually run your family. And when you're married, how to run your family. And you go, yeah, you might even write them down. And you might decide you're going to keep the rules. But you know what? You wouldn't. Because we're terrible rule keepers. We are terrible. What I want to do is try and get you to walk with the person who will lead and guide you and help you every step of the way. So you don't have a role to keep, you have a relationship to keep, and keeping the relationship will mean with your family. And I'll tell you a little bit about our family. We were saved after we had been married for several years. Six years. It was six years. But we had two children when we got saved. And our children were, our oldest two children, Oren and Zoe, began their lives in a very different family. to the one that our later two came into. We were trying to do a good job and have a stable family, but we had some really strange ideas about raising children. First of all, we thought that kids would be good unless you messed them up. We read a book. We thought kids would be good unless we actually messed them up. We found out that wasn't true. Next time we found out, our eldest, when he got to being about six months old, We would put him down to bed at night. He would howl the house down. We would go up, we would pick him up. We would talk to him, we would walk him. I would put him in the car and go for a drive with him to help him go to sleep. Really having children was kind of breaking our alliance. Our plan that he was good just didn't seem to be working. Then I had a friend come to our house, another lady, and she insulted us greatly. She said, he's really needing your merry dancing. And so we talked about it. And we made a decision. We decided we'd try it out. She said we should have put him down and leave him there and not go back for him. So we did. We're all right now. He had it. I hate to preach now. We've got a good workforce. We're reaching out to everyone. He's always had a big voice. He could kick, and he could scream, and he could beat you to let you know he was not happy. It was so bad that my wife, I had to say, listen, you can't be here. My sister, she thought he was dying. And I said, you've got to go. So she went down to the garage at the end of the house to hide from the screams. He'd drawn out of the cup, he'd choked himself, something terrible had happened, he was dead. We went up to his room, he crept into his room, because we wanted to see was he okay, and Oriel was asleep. But not only was Oriel asleep, but Oriel had laid down, pulled the covers over him, and decided to go to sleep. In that one thing, he blew our whole theology of raising children. Because you know what? He had decided we weren't coming, so it was time to go see WLC. He was not dying. He was not in dreadful straits. He was just trying to get Mom and Dad's response, and he learned that he could do it. So we started off with some crazy ideas about child raising. And you know, we began to take on more truth that really helped and began to change our lives. Now, we've got 4 children all over the world. We've got 9 grandchildren, and they're being raised in Godly homes. Do you know what a joy it is? 10 of your grandchildren are being raised in Godly homes. They're being raised in better homes than our kids. Their parents looked the Lord in the air, didn't seem to walk with God. And as I look back on it, do you know what made the difference? God did. We didn't give up, right? We messed up lots. Even after we were saved, we messed up. But you know, God made a difference in our home. And God changed our home, and continues to change us. Continues to work in our lives. And do you know that God can take and God can change your home? perfect people. No perfect moms and dads, no perfect homes. But do you know that as you let God into your life, and you begin to let God work in your life, you find that God actually changes your home. God changes your home. Try to go to Ephesians chapter 5. And I'm going to kind of touch off several pastors here in Ephesians chapter 5. over these next few days, it's going to cover everybody in this room. Tonight covers all of us, everybody. It doesn't matter how old or how new you are, tonight's going to cover you. We're going to cover moms. We're going to cover dads. We're going to cover children. We're going to cover all of you, OK? So everybody's going to get help. Because God doesn't say, well, you can't get help when you're 24. God says, no, he will help you whatever age you are. And he will do it. God will help you. So Ephesians chapter 5, I'm just going to touch on some of them, and then I'm going to read some of them. In Ephesians chapter 5, verse 2, he says, walk in love. Now, what the Apostle Paul has done here in Ephesians is he's laid out great spiritual truths in the first three chapters. And then he comes into a practical section, and that was very practical. Do you know that God's very practical? Do you know that God has plans for your life that are really practical and that you can access and actually do? He hasn't got them on the top shelf. You know, you gotta go get a Bible college degree, and when you get the Bible college degree, then you gotta study the Bible for yourself for five years, and then you can go, no, no, no, we can all understand that. If you would take the Bible at face value, you'd find that it's very practical. God says walk in love. Do you know that your home should be in heaven? Would you want to do that? And then he talks about us being light after we're saved. Here our homes are supposed to be places of light. Light for us in our homes, but light to the world. Do you realize, as the world gets more wicked, our homes change. How come your home is different? People get to come into your home and see those things, and they can. If we will just apply what God is telling us to do, and it's not difficult, and it's not impossible, if we will apply the things God tells us to do, we will find that our homes can be places of blessing. But let me give you kind of where we're going in the next couple of days. I want to say again that Chapter 5 of Ephesians says, Really, we can't do it apart from that. God knows that we can't be the right kind of parents, that we can't be the right kind of husbands, that we can't be the right kind of wives, that we can't be the right kind of children, apart from being filled with the Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit, we're going to look at it tonight, it's not some difficult doctrine that you would have to get a degree for. It's very straightforward. It's very easy for you to come to a place of understanding that and being there. First of all, speaking to yourself in the Psalms at hand, in the spiritual Psalms, singing and making melody of your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. All right, now let me read you just the next two verses, and then we're gonna move on. Verse 21, spending yourselves one to another in the fear of God, why submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord? Now, I want you to know this. This passage here says, why submit yourselves to your own husbands. It does not say husbands make you That's why it's between the wife and God. Cousins, we need to understand that this is between the wife and God. But you know what, ladies? Isn't this idea of submission hard to get your head around? Aren't we struggling with this idea? This is a hard, you know what? We're going to look at what it actually means. And I think you'll find it's not as hard as it looks. But you're going to find this, that if you're filled with the Spirit, you can do it. And you can do it with ease and with joy. Now, then he comes in verse 25 and he says, Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. Now you know, in the early days of the relationship it was really easy, we all fall in love and all blow up and everything else. But you know what? As relationships go on, it gets harder. It gets harder for us to actually love our wives. You need more power than you've got to love your wife the way you should. Now we've got all the young people here tonight. I want to show you something that it says out to young people. Look at chapter 6 and verse 1. Gentlemen, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth. You know what God says? God says to you, young person, honor your mother and your father. And he makes you a promise. He says, if you do, I will give you a long, happy life. Now you know what? If you don't, you will have a hard life. It's a dreadful thought. It's a terrible thing to do. You don't want to give love to your father. You end up having a hard life. We have a man, someone, a bunch of men. Average age is about 35, both these men. They have lived hard, difficult lives. One man is 46 years old, and he says he spent half of his life in prison. Only half of his life in prison. They have had hard, hard lives. Now, do you know why they've had hard lives? Because they did not love their mother and their father. Because they didn't have perfect parents, but you know why? We are going to look at what all these things mean to us, but here is where we are going And you're going to find your marriage is drastically improved. Now, you're the person who says, well, my mom and dad don't care about these things. Listen, you get filled with the Spirit and you're going to find that your life works. Because God has a plan for our lives to work. And it's practical, it's real, it's... And Lord, we know you've got good things for us. Every child of yours knows that and understands that. And Lord, would you bless tonight that we might get a hold upon truth. And Lord, would you make it simple so we can gather, Lord. May it be, Lord, that nobody here goes away wondering and with questions, Lord. May it be that we actually may hold upon this truth and can apply it. And Lord, may we see changes tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so Ephesians 5 verse 18, 18 says, and we are not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but we fill with the spirit. Now, there's a contrasting picture there for you. The first picture is, don't be drunk with wine, right? Now, and it's using it as a contrasting picture. You ever see somebody who's drunk with wine? They are controlled from the wine. They're controlled by the, whatever it is they've been drinking, somebody who takes those, they're controlled by it. You know, you would say, well, awesome, they're not reading themselves because they're got a hold of them, and they're controlled by it. And the picture is this, just in the way, as a substance might control you, God said, let the spirit of God control you. Let the spirit of God be in your life. Now you know what? Being controlled by a substance is dangerous. Now, I want to say, keep your finger there, because the thesis is where we are, but I want you to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Because the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 and into verse chapter 3, and he talks about three different kinds of people. And you and I need to work out tonight where we are, which one of these people we are. Right? Which one of these people are you? So first we're in this, chapter 2, and verse 14. All right? So the natural man, who seetheth not the things of the spirit of God, for there are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Right? So the first character we're dealing with here is the natural man. We might call him the unsaved man. And it says here about the unsaved man that he can't perceive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him, and he can't know them because they are spiritually discerning. I can illustrate that from my own life. My wife got saved when we were in our mid-twenties, and after she got saved, she came home and she didn't leave me leaflets to read. And I don't try to leave her leaflets, but she didn't make any sense to me. She asked me to read the Bible. She asked me to read the Gospel of John. And I remember struggling with the Gospel of John, thinking, who wrote this dictionary? It's just so hard. It makes no sense to me. It just didn't make any sense at all. Now, you know the problem? The problem was, I wasn't yet saved. I was looking at the Word of God, and it was going over my head. It didn't make any sense to me. It was there. I was reading it. It was true. But it wasn't making any sense to me. And I couldn't get this thing. I just couldn't get this thing. I didn't know what happened. You know, it was just completely different. I would take it, I would read the Gospel of John, and it was as though it was written to me. It was personal, it was for me. And you know what happened? I had been saved. And when you get saved, the Spirit of God comes into your heart, and everything changes. Now, if you're not saved tonight, the first step in all that we're talking about will be for you to come to the place We may not think our sins are so bad, but what do we understand about our sins? Rarely do you meet somebody who's got no sin. But we're all sinners, we've all done wrong. And the Bible says that because of sin we were in the place of hell. And that's terrifying to me. That'll be terrifying to you too. It's a terrifying thought, the fact that you would be a sinner and you were in the place of hell. to pay the price for your sin. And the Bible says that if we will believe on Him, if we will trust Him, or depend upon Him at all costs, that He will save us. And when we get saved, we pass from being the natural man, we're no longer the natural man. And, you know, maybe tonight you say, well, it's not safe. And I know I'm safe. And I'm not the natural man. That's good. It's good for you to know that. But there's two other characters in our passage. By the way, if you're not saved, call out to him and he will save you. He did it for me that night, at the foot of my bed, and on the first road in Talbot, Dublin. He did it. And you know what? Of all the things I've regretted in my life, I've never regretted that night. Never regretted that night. He would do it for me. A lot of people in this room would say they've known that too. If you're not saved, tonight will be the night to get saved. It's always a good night to get saved. As long as you've got God in you, it's a good night to get saved, right? But that's just the first character that we deal with, right? Then he says in verse 15, he says, but he that is spiritual. So there's an actual man who's not safe, and there's a spiritual man, judge of all things, yet he himself is judge of no one. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. Now what's he talking about there? He's talking about somebody who is safe and spiritual. Let me make spiritual very simple for you. Spiritual is simply to be filled with spirit. It's the spirit of God being in the the Spirit of God, and let the Spirit of God control our lives. Now you can do that when you're 5, you can do that when you're 50, you can do that anytime. You have to be saved first, which you can yield yourself to the Spirit of God who will look at you, and you can let Him have control of your life. And what happens is, He begins to lead in your life. Everywhere I turn. I can go my own way, I can do my own little jump, and the Spirit of God comes in, He can lead in my way, and He always gets it right. And when I obey, when I follow Him, do what He wants me to do, you know what? I always win. I don't want to be a winner, don't you? I don't want to be somebody who looks down on somebody and I win when I follow him. But there's a third character here. So the first character is the natural man, the second character is the spiritual man, somebody who's filled with the spirit of God. And Paul is talking to the third character here in chapter 3, verse 1. And I, brethren, do not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. Now the word carnal means fleshly. Right? Do you have chili con carne? The word carnal is in there. It's flesh. Right? Now, it's not spiritual. He's talking about flesh. Right? Now, he's not talking about a man. This person is saved. The book of Corinthians is written to people who are believers. They are children of God. And he's not talking about somebody who's unsaved. Now, he's talking about somebody who's saved. but who is not in the Spirit of God control, they're ruining their own lives, doing their own thing. And he has to speak to them as unto carnal. Even as unto babies in Christ, I have fed you with milk, and not with me, for hitherto you were not able to bear it, neither are ye yet now able. You know what, because they were carnal, because they wouldn't yield to the Spirit of God, and I was like, they were carnal, and he says, they weren't able to bear strong babies, he just had to feed them with baby food. And sometimes we're like that. Sometimes we don't grow. The reason we don't grow spiritually, the reason we don't move ahead, is because we want to keep control of our life. We want to do it our way. Sometimes we're afraid to give control to the spirit of God. Sometimes we just don't want to. But we end up being carnal. Look what he says. He says, for we are yet carnal. For where there is of only envy and strife and tradition, are we not carnal and walk as men? You can go to people and you're ending them on strife when you're fighting and fussing and getting involved. You'll figure it out in a moment. There's strife in a moment, there's a fight and a fuss and divisions. You know, I mean, we're together all the time. You know, those things show up. And you say, OK, Pastor, I could have gone a long, long way before I heard that. I would have been happy. In fact, nobody told me this stuff tonight. I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad. Right? We have a solution. The Bible has a solution. The Bible can change that for you tonight. That's God's plan. God wants to change that for you tonight. But you know what? You never get helped if you recognize you have a problem. Did you know that you never get help to recognize you have a problem? I told you about my son-in-law earlier. My son-in-law earlier was no better. Now, he would disagree with me, but I know it was my fault. He'd say, how come it was your fault? How did you make him get in the way? Well, here's what happened. As Ori and I had a close relationship, but it was kind of a striving relationship. Oriel's very different to me. He does things completely different to me. He's very good at doing what he does, but he does things completely different to me. And often, he would irritate me. And you know what irritation is? Irritation is male anger. And so I would be very often irritated with Oriel. because of the way he did things, and the way he didn't do things, and the way he was just dreaming, and out of it, and so on. And, you know, I think fathers, you can recognize that feeling, can't you? It's easy to be irritated, particularly with your boys. Sometimes your girls can kind of wheel their way in under your skin, and make you feel good, so you don't get so irritated with them, but you can be irritated with your boys. And I was irritated with Oprah. So, you know, when I came to his teenage years, you know, we didn't have the relationship we needed to stabilize him. When he came to his teenage years, you know what, I was kind of irritated with him, so, you know, Ori had to find other people who weren't irritated with him, and he found the wrong people. So, you know, on my side, it was my fault. Now, the reason I'm telling you that is because you know what, Ori didn't change till I recognized that. Now, there's two separate things going on in Kuwaiti here. I'm not convinced. That's what happened. He sees it completely different because he was dealing with a whole different situation. But I understand what was going on. You know what, man? Before we can be talented, we have to recognize we have a problem. I'm going to ask you to let the spirit of God fill you tonight, but you know what? If you think you're doing fine and there's no problem and I can handle it, And the truth is, I need it, too. Well, look at that. What we've got to do tonight is we've got to recognize, you know, I need this. Let's do this. Let's recognize the cause on the way to pray, and the less God can work in our hearts, even as we're alone in this. What's the spirit we're living by? You are the Lord. It's so easy for us to blame other people. Oh, bless us, dear. Would you come in and would you convince our hearts right now of the need to actually yield to you and to let you have your will and your right in our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. There's so much the Holy Spirit does in my life, I really don't have time for it. I have to go to a conference on the Holy Spirit. I hope you're going to preach, that's one of the reasons I hope you're going to preach. Because every time I go to preach, I have no idea. If I didn't want to preach it in my own flesh, I couldn't do it. I wouldn't want to do it. But every time I go to preach, I need to pray the Lord with your spirit. And he does. He's faithful to do it. So the command is a continuous command to keep on being filled with the spirit. And what it is, is it's a moment-by-moment relationship. next to nothing about you. I know Pastor Shaw, I really don't know his children very well, I'm just getting to know them. But I don't know any of the rest of you very well. I don't know what you need. I don't know what you need to hear, I don't know what you need to emphasize, but the Holy Spirit does. And if I'm willing to be guilty of him, and let him take control of it, then he can use me And that's so powerful to us. That's what needs to happen. So, how do you want to let the Spirit of God control me so that I can speak to you while He would have me speak? Now, it's not like there's a telegram service or a telephone service. You know, here's something else I'm convinced of. I'm convinced that every believer, at some point, has known what it's like for the Spirit of God to move and show them what to do. Every believer has had a point in their life, maybe, of one of the Christ's, of God's coasts of them, and they were actually able to follow along. I'm convinced that we know this thing. It's kind of like a child knows their mother's voice, and they never forget it. They know their mom's voice in a crowd. You know, I'm convinced What happens is, sometimes we don't recognize it as being his voice, sometimes we don't want to do what he tells us to do, and we draw back from it. It's an ongoing relationship with him. It's when we come to a place where we actually let him have his way in our lives. Let me give you some pictures. In film, the Holy Spirit is like, is not quite full, but a glass can fill with water. Now, in order for you to fill a glass with water, you know, what you've got to do is you've got to empty it first of whatever else is in it. And then you fill it with the water, but it's full. It's got the water in it now, but it's full. That wants you to be filled with the spirit. Now, this time, is the moment we get saved, a spirit of doubt comes in to do it all. But what we're quite happy for is, we won't let them have control of some things, because we need them on those things, and other things we won't let them have control of. You know, also in my life, ever since I got saved, I needed the Holy Spirit when it came to preaching. Because when I got saved, I had never spoken to a crowd before, and I really would have been quite happy to have the pressure of my life and never speak to a crowd. I would have assumed it would be just fine. I had no ambition to be an orator, to be a speaker at all. All I wanted was, I wanted to live a nice peaceful life, and somebody else can do the speaking for me, but then I got Satan scared of that, so I wanted you to actually preach to people. And I'm not kidding you, I would go to my Bible, and I would, before I would be able to preach for years, I would find Exodus 33, where Moses said, if you don't go up there with me, then take me now up there. Moses doesn't mean an apocalypse, but I was. I didn't want to go up there, apart from God willing, because I knew I couldn't do it. And I needed the fulfilling of the Spirit. But you know, there were other areas of my life that I thought I could handle myself. I could handle alliances. I could handle my family. I could handle a whole bunch of stuff all by myself. And I didn't need them. So you know what? I didn't know this crisis. I wasn't going anywhere. I was just letting them control some of that. Because that's where you are tonight. You're letting them control some of it. You're willing to say, well, I can't handle this area at all. He wants to control all of it, right? Another picture we have is a wind-filling sail, and therefore carrying a ship along. Isn't it amazing that the wind can take a ship and move it over the ocean? You've got this huge ship that's got huge weight involved in it, and maybe even goods in it, and they pull up this sail, and the wind That's a great picture, folks. In fact, look how much of your children are in here. Adam wants to fill your life with shit so that he pushes you and your life along. And the things that you may find to be impossible to do, the things that you know are, of course, great and wonderful and it's not how it works for other people, but it does work for me, that's what I want for you. If you will let me, I will fill you with my Spirit and enable you to do it." You see, God can have two positions in our lives. God resists the proud. The Bible says, believe me, He gives grace to the humble. When it says God resists the proud, it's God who has arranged things up against us and won't let us move forward. But when we're humble and we let Him have His way, He gives grace. how you could overcome those problems and see that the things you didn't believe were possible. You know, with all the flaws in us and all the mistakes and all the failures we've made and more, we shouldn't really be ashamed. And you can have a million pounds in the bank, and if your family are not like, you know, learning the rules, it might be fun, but it won't be a whole lot of fun. Your family is not a whole lot of fun. So many things in the world you can do, but your family is not a whole lot of fun. How am I going to help you with your family? But if you're not going to help me with your family, you know, it's a failure of the spirit to enable them. The idea is total control. The idea is you giving over control of your life to the Spirit of God and basically saying, well, whatever you want to do. How terrifying, isn't it? He's a problem for us, though. If we don't give our lives to Him and say, well, whatever you want to do, you know what? You know, it's interesting with the addicts that we deal with at our church. You keep on watching them coming in, right? And you watch a guy come in who's about 25, and they come in smashed, broken, because addiction does that to you. See, the young guys, so often for them to... and then after a couple of months they're gone, they're back up in the world, and they end up in addiction again. And we'll see them again a few years later. And here's the problem for them. The problem for them is, they think they can handle it. That they haven't suffered enough. And they need to go back there and suffer more. They're not willing to give control of their lives over to God. Hey, you've got an older guy who's been around a lot of times, and he's been crushed. Often times, in fact, those guys are ready to go if there are other panhandlers than you take from them. And they will let God do His work in their lives. You know, it's the same for all of us. You may never have been an addict, but we need to come to the place where we say, well, I can't do this anymore. I can't raise my family. I can't be the right kind of parent. I can't be the right kind of husband. I can't be the right kind of wife. I need you to keep going. Would you step in? And you know what I said? I loved him. I was waiting for you to ask him. Because he wants to be involved in your life. He never intended for us to do a sober run. There were only a few of us and he wants to step in. And he wants to be involved in our lives. How could you be filled with the Spirit of God? You're here tonight, Mark, you're not filled with the Spirit of God. Let me give you some help. First of all, you need a wand. You need a wand? You know, the day you got saved, God had worked in your heart so that you'd want to get saved. God didn't come and grab you, put your arm around your back and say, you know what, that's it. He never does. No. He never forces. Somebody said God's a gentleman. And you know what, He will not force you to let His Spirit take control and fill you so that you can live the kind of life He wants. He's not going to force you. You're going to have to want Him. You're going to have to come to a place where you're willing to give it over. And when the spirit of God comes into your life, he says, look at me, it's nearly the same. You can't control it. That's very often the problem with us. Because we know that the sin of our lives, and we need to come and say, okay, Lord, I want you so badly, but I'm willing to give up this. You can even say, Lord, I want you so badly, but I have a problem, would you help me? And he'll help you. I'll give up the sin. You can't have the Holy Spirit and sin. You can't have the Holy Spirit and wickedness. You have to let Him make you holy. There's an interesting picture in Isaiah chapter 6, when Isaiah, who believes he's a good man, and in many ways he was a good man, when he sees the Lord high and lifted up, he says, Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips, I am well amongst the people of unclean lips. And you know what he doesn't do? He not sends one of the angels in a chair to take a hot And He won't be able to deal with you. I know you don't have the Spirit, you have to deal with sin. But it's a matter of you confessing of you letting the Spirit of God deal with it. Do you know what I want to say to you? And this is very true. You can be as full of the Holy Spirit tonight as you want to be. He's not holding out on us. You can be as full of the Holy Spirit as you want to be. In your life alone, He will do all of that. You get to the place where you're really fed up with the fruits of your own way. And it's when you come and you say, okay, Mr. Keyes, you take over. I'm making a mess of it. I need help. And we always make messes. We always create problems. But when we yield it again, He begins to lead us and guide us in a way Or, please take control of my life. I yield to you. I want to obey you. Help me, Lord. Because you're not going to believe in that. Lord, I want to obey you. Help me. And then you need to stay filled. What's going to happen is, you ask the Spirit of God to fill you, and He will fill you. He will do it, because He says He will do it. You say, I don't know, is that a pastor? I've heard all kinds of things where you only have to speak in tongues, and you have to do this, and you have to do that. All of those things are not their way. When the Spirit of God came into you, oh weren't you God saved? What needs to happen in your life is, you need to yield to him in that way. And when you yield to him in that way, it's a case of him directing you, saying yes. And he's going to yield to you. Tomorrow morning you're going to wake up and he's going to walk with you today. And you're going to know his presence. But you'll just sense it. The Spirit of God speaks to you through your spirit, and He will just nudge you in the right direction. You say, yes, Father. And you'll come to something in us that no one else has done that. And you will sense His displeasure. There's a story told about Spurgeon. Spurgeon, possibly the greatest Baptist preacher of all time, was seen on a busy London street. to stop in the middle and take his hat off in the middle of the street. And then after a few seconds, he put his hat back on and he went on. And somebody came rushing up to him and said, Mr. Spurgeon, what were you doing? Don't you know you could be killed in the middle of the street? And he said, I had lost the sense of the presence of God, and I was not going anywhere until I got back. Now, do you know when it's like that, that you can know the sense of the presence of God, and you can know when it's not there? That's what Christ bought for you on the cross. He bought a sense of the reality of his spirit. So you need to stay filled. You need to learn to breathe spiritually. Exhale. Confess yourself. Something happens and you've done something wrong, and you've done something that displeases him. Lord, forgive me. And then inhale. Ask Jesus again to take control of your life. Just inhale. Inhale again. And then you can pray to yourself with God's word. One of our men that's been through the men's and we've been interested in just something like that, we had a preaching time for him, and he said this, that when he got a job and he'd been walking with God and having a sweet time, and he found himself going down all the time. He got a job, he was out in the world, he was dealing with all the problems and issues and difficulties, and he found that we just wear on. So what he did was this, he began to listen to preaching tapes, and he began to put up verses to memorize in the catalog of his family. And he said it was amazing. He would give us all this thing out there. Do you know no relationship can be built without communication? No relationship can be built without communication. relationship with the Spirit of God aren't going to let you down. And you do that with the Word of God. You do that as you kneel to the Word of God. And then don't mention it. Don't pour water on the Spirit. How do you do that? Well, we could spend a long time talking about that. Basically, how you mention the Spirit of God is, you refuse to follow His evidence. And you know what? I've done it. And you can do it too. You can quench it. And what needs to happen there is you need to come back and say, Lord, I am so sorry for throwing cold water on you. I am so sorry for quenching you. Lord, I need you. I want you. Whatever it is, I want you. Don't quench the Spirit of God. Don't grieve the Spirit of God. Ephesians 4.30 says, Grieve not the Spirit of God. You don't grieve your enemies. You may annoy them, you may bother them, but you don't grieve them. It's the people that love you that are grieved by the things you do. What we're talking about tonight is we're talking about a relationship with a real person called the Holy Spirit of God. Don't grieve them. Don't hurt them. You know, isn't it true that in relationships and in marriage, a husband can grieve a wife and a wife can grieve a husband? And you know what? Well, we've grieved each other enough. It kind of stinks. When you grieve the Spirit of God, it saddens things. You need Him. I need Him. Let's not grieve the Spirit of God. Let's not do things that offend Him and hurt Him. You see, when we grieve Him, what happens is, there's a loss of fellowship. There's a loss of the Spirit. And there's a spiritual darkness that descends on a person. You know, after I got saved, I was only saved like eight years. And God called me to preach, and I had to go, yes Lord, that's what I am. And I was supposed to sell my business, sell my home, take my family and go to America to go to Bible college, and I knew that was what I was supposed to do. And it was wonderful and exciting at first, and then I began to think it through and think, oh my goodness, this is terrible. This is absolutely terrible. I don't think I can do this. So I would create a dating plan. I'm bringing dating plans. I would create for me a dating plan that was not what God wanted, that was not what the spirit of God wanted. And you know what would happen? My relationship with God would go dark. Absolutely miserable. After a while, I would get fed up, and I would say, okay, okay, okay, I'll do it. And the lights would come back on again. Because all I was doing was I was reading, and eventually I got to a place where I couldn't handle it anymore, and I said, okay, I'm not questioning it anymore. If that's what you want, that's what I'll do. And I had some bad idea, because he had the right plan. He always has the right plan. But you know, life would go down. You know what that means? That means that there's brightness in life, and beauty in this world. You know, we're looking at this week at relationships and family, and you know what? We need to work at getting those things out. But do you know if there's one relationship of both all of your relationships, and only one that can satisfy you? Ladies, I know you know this, but I won't tell you anyway. Your husband will never... There is one and one only who can satisfy you completely. That's the Spirit of God, your relationship with God. But you know what happens? When your relationship with Him is right, no longer are you looking to sort from somebody else what you need. What you've got is you've got what you need, and now you have something to give. And if you get a marriage where you have a husband and a wife that are both receiving from Him You have an oasis. You have a happy home. You have a place that is good to live. Now, you can't make your spouse, but you know what you can do tonight? You can ask the Spirit of God to fill you up. And He will. And you can learn to walk with Him and learn to let Him have His way in your life. And you would find great changes in your life. You'll find love that you haven't had before. You'll find all kinds of things changing in your life because the Spirit of God is the one that's able to make you the better ones you can be. And if you would yield to Him tonight, you would be amazed at love. If you're here tonight, and you're safe, and you know you're out, but you're not, then go to the Spirit. You need to ask God to do that work in your heart. Just say to Him, He'll do it. He is faithful. And listen, He will help you and teach you to walk the way. Let's do this. Let's just bow our heads a lot today, and I'm going to give you a few minutes just to do this. Don't worry about yourself. If someone is not saved at all, may they even now cry out to you and ask you to save them. And moreover, if someone recognizes their need to be filled with your spirit, may this I'm trying to think, what's the moment? What's the event? I'm aware. I'm in the medium field now. Is there anything that you struggle with? Is there something that you feel like is just such a battle for you, but might it not be that the Spirit of God has put his finger on it? To me, the Bible says the Spirit of God will not always strive with us, but He does strive. And He will seek to strive. The sad part is that the striver doesn't really have to deal with it. Because instead of the problem that we had before, He tried to help us get rid of it. So tonight, I think what we need is just, hey, it's really God. Let's make decisions for God. That's what it's about, isn't it? I mean, this world would turn bright side up if God's will was being done out there But surely, in a church like this, if I got sprays on, I'd say, hey, that's what I ought to have done right here. And all it is, it's my will against God. And all I need is that. I'll get to be the best husband I can be when my will is submitted to God. I'll get to be the best pastor by His grace I can be when my will is submitted to God and He has His way in my life. That's what we need, isn't it? I mean, that's what we want. That gives us perfect unity with God. And nothing between. You know, I was told in the Scriptures, the psalm says, Can you honestly say that? Could you honestly look in the mirror and with your heart open before God and say, look, you have surrendered everything to the Lord Jesus Christ. If you've got one thing that you have to surrender, you're not surrendering. God can't do it or what he desires to do it. But he wants to. And God has a plan for our lives. And it's a blessed plan. Let's enter into that tonight. 390. Sing it with your heart this evening as you think about the words, All to Jesus I surrender All to Him I freely give I will ever love and trust Him Presence daily there I surrender all I surrender all All to Thee, my blessed Savior I surrender all All to Jesus I surrender, calmly at His feet I come. Worldly pleasures all forsaken, Take me now. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all. Cause me, Jesus, Thy surrender, make me safe for holy night. Let me feel Thy Holy Spirit, truly know that Thou art mine. I surrender all, I surrender all, All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all, All to Jesus I surrender, Lord, I give myself to Thee, fill me with Thy love and power, let Thy blessing fall on me. I surrender all, I surrender all. All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all. Please come back tomorrow night as help for you in the Word of God. And then come back if there is hope, because we'll come back. And you each need to come back and be able to consent to the others as well. So you need to be here tomorrow night. Yeah, we do hope you'll come back tomorrow night. You can Wednesday night as well. I appreciate, again, the Obama State, the work of the ministry. We are taking a law offering for them, the offering box and bag. Anything that's given this week, we'll go to be a blessing to them. Just show our appreciation. We've taken the time to come over and serve us this week. And we want to do that for them. And Christine Angeli. And so she just wants everybody to know she was mad at me. Everybody else in the field, you'll see around. We had the fellowship today with Kate and stuff back there. She's got a PA and some fellowship time here as well. Thank you for coming. He left some creature on that.