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It's an honor to be with you. I love being in the house of God, and I'm so glad that He brought you here today. We're gonna talk about hearing God through the voice of the Holy Spirit. And before we get started, I have to ask a little question. How many of us in the room are the type of people that like to be prepared? You're someone who wants to be prepared. You want to know what's coming, you like the information, you want the context that you need to make the decision. That's me, okay? But how is it in life that we often get partnered up with or married to people that just like to shoot from the hip? Why is it that way? I don't know. But I am a preparer. I like to be prepared. I like to understand what I'm getting myself into. And that translates to a lot of different areas in my life. And one uh year early on in our marriage, we were at a house in Colorado and we were close to a ski resort that was really great. And I I had never been skiing before, and I told Clayton, I'm like, we should go, we should go. And he got all excited because he grew up going skiing, that was normal for him. So we get closer and I start to get a little anxious. Like, am I gonna know how to do this? People can get really hurt. And he just gave me one of those, trust me, babe. I got this. I'm not gonna let you get hurt, right? So we get our tickets and our boots and our poles and our skis, and I finally get it all together. I don't even know how to walk in snow in the skis. And it's time to go up to the ski lift. Well, to the right, there's a ski lift that goes to the very top of the mountain. But on the left, there's a little itty bitty one that goes all the way up to the little bunny hill over there. And I told Clayton, I said, you know, I really want to love skiing with you for the rest of my life, so can we please start on the bunny hill? And he's like, That's fine, but it's really made for children at the ski school. He's like, the snow's different, it's shorter, it's not as much of an incline. And there's the ski lift itself is also made for smaller people, okay? We have the last name small, but there is nothing small about our height, okay? And if you have a if you're curious about that, just come stand next to me after service, okay? So imagine we're like, I'm like, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to be prepared. I got this. So it's like so awkward with the skis and the boots and the poles, and I don't know how to do it. I get up to the top of the hill, and you'd think that one time would be enough for me. No, I went down that bad boy four, five, six. I lost count of how many times, but how many of you know when I got to the bottom of it the last time, I was prepared. So we went up to the mountain and to the very tall, very, very top, and I went down and I was so thankful. Not one time did I fall that day, and we ski we skied the rest of the day until the lift shut down. All because I was prepared. So because I took the time to prepare, I was able to now enjoy a lifetime of skiing because I had the preparation, I learned the moves, I know what it feels like. My heartbeat in today's message is to help prepare you to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit in your life. Because here's the thing: He's speaking, he's talking to you, he wants to minister to you, but oftentimes we don't know how to discern his voice from all the other sounds that we hear. I like to prepare, but how many of you know Jesus also liked to prepare? Before he died on the cross, he gathered his disciples, as Clayton mentioned, and when he was in that place with them, he told them several times about something he was gonna send to them, someone he wanted to send to them who would be with them to help them live their Christian life. And I don't know about you, but if I had laid everything aside to follow Jesus for three and a half years, left my life that I knew, I ate with him, talked with him, heard from him, ministered alongside him, and then he was gone, I would be very discombobulated. And what I love is that Jesus didn't want his disciples to be unprepared, he prepared them. Here's what he said in John chapter 14, verse 25. Jesus says to them, I have spoken this while still with you, but the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I've said to you. So he's saying, When I'm away, when I've ascended to heaven, I'm gonna send someone, a helper, the Holy Spirit, who will teach you and instruct you in the way that you should go. And him saying it in that context would have been enough for us to take notice. He mentions this phrase uh probably four different times over a series of chapters in John. But then he goes on. So after Jesus dies on the cross, he's resurrected, he's on earth for 40 days, nails in his hands, still on earth before he ascends. And here's the last thing that Jesus says before he goes to the Father in heaven. It's in Acts chapter 1, verse 4 and 8. And while Jesus was staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. The last thing Jesus said to them was, Do not depart from here until you have the Holy Spirit. He said to them, essentially he's saying, Don't try to do it on your own. Don't try to make your own decisions of what you think should happen. You need the helper, you need the voice of the Holy Spirit filling you and in your life to direct you in the way that you are to go. And I wonder if God's instruction to us might be the same. For me, sometimes I just make decisions, not really paying attention. But what God desires is to walk with us every day of our life, to guide us, to direct us, to speak us, and to teach us the things that we need to know. These are Jesus' final wishes. What are final wishes? Well, we call final wishes things that someone puts in order so that when they are gone, it takes care of their loved ones. God thought it, Jesus thought it important enough that his final wishes for his people, his disciples, his church, was to send the person of the Holy Spirit to us. And that matters. For me, I grew up going to church and I loved being in church and I was involved in all the things, and I was dotting all the I's, crossing all the T's, trying to do the right things, trying not to do the wrong things. And as a teenager, I got to this point where with I where if I was honest, what I read in the Bible and the life of God in the Bible didn't match what I was experiencing on the inside. I had the form of Christianity, but I didn't have the fullness. And I started going to this church that reminds me of the Ark. And um, when I first went, I had come from a different church background and it just was different to me. But you know, there's like a bad kind of different and a good kind of different. This was a good kind of different. And I was like, they're just so passionate, there's so much joy in this place, they feel like they really love God, and the messages that were coming from that place really spoke to me. And so I knew God was piquing my interest here. And so I did some study, I talked with pastors, I tried to search the scriptures. What is this? And I realized that the main difference was that this was a place that allowed the Holy Spirit to really move and to advance God's mission for this church. And I wanted to be a part of it, and I wanted to receive everything. Certain parts of my life, I couldn't overcome some things, and I was struggling, but I was doing all the right things, and I realized I need the Holy Spirit to fill every crack and crevice of my entire life. And so I prayed for that, and let me tell you, I had known the Holy Scriptures, but I didn't know the Holy Spirit. But once that time came, my life completely turned around. And one of my favorite scriptures is in John chapter 7, verse 38. This is Jesus talking about the Holy Spirit. He says, Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. And he was talking about the spirit. And I want to encourage you that when you open your heart to receive what it is that the Holy Spirit is trying to speak to you, that it will produce rivers of living water inside of you. Rivers of living water. So who is the Holy Spirit? There's a couple questions I want to answer for us today. First of all, who is the Holy Spirit? If you want to discern his voice, you have to know who it is that's speaking to you. And then, second, once you know who he is, what does his voice sound like? So these are what we're gonna cover today. Excuse me. Who is the Holy Spirit? He is fully God. 100% God. Now, sometimes I think this conversation can be kind of hard because we have different experiences with our perspectives of the Holy Spirit, but he is 100%, has always been and will be God. For us, we believe in the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Three persons, three distinct persons, one God. And that's who we serve. But sometimes the Holy Spirit gets put on the shelf in our lives. We don't realize the way that He can activate God's word, the way that He can speak to us, the way that He can bring comfort into our lives that nobody else can. So we have no relational context for a Spirit. So oftentimes it feels like the Spirit is different and other and not personal to us. But that's the complete opposite of who the Holy Spirit is. That's the complete opposite of what Jesus designed for his church to experience. God the Father, we understand that. We have a relational context for that. He leads, he provides, he guides. The Son, we understand that. He's in the image of the Father. He does what the Father says and does. That's Jesus, the Son of God. But the Holy Spirit, who is he? Is he really equal? Yes, he is equal. The Holy Spirit was never not God. There's a double negative for you. The Holy Spirit, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the waters at creation. In the Old Testament, he anointed priests and kings to minister to God's people. The Holy Spirit led the people of God through the wilderness with a pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. He's the one who anointed the mouth of the prophets that you read about in scripture that heard from God for God's people. He also is the one who divinely inspired the words that are on the pages of our Bible. The Holy Spirit has been very involved in the life of God's people, and he's not going to stop. In the New Testament, we see that the Holy Spirit was involved in the conception of Jesus. He anointed Jesus, he rested and remained on Jesus at the time of his baptism. The Spirit's the one that raised Jesus from the dead, and the Spirit is the one that after Jesus ascended came and filled God's church so that we would be the witnesses and reach our area with the people of the message of Jesus. So here's my heart for you as a church that as you receive the Holy Spirit as God in your life, as you uh have a reverence for his place in your life, that we would be a church that fulfills the mission of Jesus in this area, that we would partner with the voice of the Holy Spirit, that it wouldn't just minister to you, but that his voice would minister out through you and to the people that are around you. So the Holy Spirit, he is God. Another thing about the Holy Spirit is he is the spirit of truth. He's the spirit of truth. In a world where it feels like there's so much deception, so many things that are confusing, so many things where it's like, ah, it's just kind of muddy. The Holy Spirit is a clean and a pure source from heaven for your life. He wants to speak what's true to you, but don't take my word for it. Here's what it says in John 16, 13. It says, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears from the Father and the Son, he will speak. He will declare to you the things that are to come. I love the imagery of this passage because the word guide here is like someone who's in an unfamiliar country. Have you ever traveled to a country where you didn't know the language? It's different. You don't know what the signs mean, you don't know what side of the road to drive on, you don't understand how to order your food that you need. And it's helpful if you have somebody, if you have a guide that's there able and ready to help you. So here's the question: Are we in a place where we're open to allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us through our life? I don't know about you, but I come against some unfamiliar territory sometimes. I don't always know what to do, I don't always have the right perspectives or understanding. And I need the Holy Spirit, the truthful spirit that is clean and pure wisdom of God to guide me into the different areas of my life that He has planned for me. And I know if that's true for me, I wonder if that's true for some of you too. He is the Spirit of truth. Here's what else Jesus says in John 14, 26. But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I've said to you. The Holy Spirit in the last verse was speaking and declaring. In this verse, he's teaching, he's instructing, he's imparting wisdom to people. He will teach you and bring to remembrance what Jesus has said. Acts 13, 2 says, While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them. So here we see the Holy Spirit is speaking, teaching, declaring, he's testifying, he's bearing witness. He is a spirit of truth, and he speaks truth to you. You can trust him. It's important that you see him as God, and it's important that you see him as a spirit of truth because it's not like you're just hoping this works out. It's not like you're like, oh, should I be fearful about opening up to the voice of the Holy Spirit? He is God, he is trustworthy, he is eternal, he knows what's best for you, and he's eager to speak truth in your life. So my heart for you today is that we would open up to whatever it is that he would like to do for us in that area. So he's God and he speaks the truth. My daughter Emmy was about three years old in this picture right here. Okay, this is the year we started the church. I love that little nugget. She's my oh, I almost said she's my favorite. She's my favorite girl. I know you've never done that before. Um so this day in particular, I was very excited to take her with me. She was finally getting to the age where she could do girl things with me, you know? We get our cute little drink and we go do our errands. So her favorite drink at the time was a sonic water with strawberries. So it had strawberry chunks in it, whatever. This will be, this matters for later. Um, so she had this drink, and um we had we were coming back in the car from this errand, and she's getting in her car seat, and I'm buckling her up, and I just she grabbed her cup and I could just see it in their eyes. I'm like, rebellion. That's rebellion, that's what it is. She's about to do something. So I just told her, I said, hey baby, be careful with your water. I don't want you to, you know, lose your drink, and yada yada. She just looks at me straight on, has that cup like this, and dumps it in the floor of my car. I was like, Emmy, mommy just told you not to do that. I said, Why did you dump that out in the carpet of the car? I mean, it's like ice, strawberry chunks, water, like nasty. Um, I said, why would you do that? And she said, the Holy Spirit told me to do it. Man, like that's not the Holy Spirit, sis. That's the spirit of toddlerhood, is what that is. You know, and for her, she's just doing what she knows, she's pushing boundaries, that's part of that age. But that story sticks out to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, she attached the name of the Holy Spirit to something that was not the Holy Spirit. And we all miss it from time to time. But as I was preparing and thinking about that story, my heart went out to those of us in the room that may have had a hard experience or a harmful experience with someone who had labeled something the Holy Spirit that was wrong or weird or hurtful in any way. And if that's the case for you, I want to apologize for that. But I sincerely believe that God has brought you here because he wants to mend that place so that he can empower you in your life. So that was the first thing. Second thing, she believed in the Holy Spirit. She believed he's a person, he told me to do this. She also believes that he speaks. That's another part of the equation. But for her, she had not yet become skillful in discerning what the voice of the Holy Spirit sounds like. So the question that I want to talk about today, briefly with you guys, is what does the voice of the Holy Spirit sound like? Things have sounds, instruments have sounds, you can determine one from another. A piano is different than a tuba, right? A cello is different than a clarinet. You can recognize the noise, the sound that's coming from it. So, how do we recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit? Because he is talking. The first thing that the Holy Spirit sounds like is the Holy Spirit comforts. He's not angry, he's not out to get you. The Holy Spirit is described as a comforter in Scripture. His voice to you will bring a comfort and an assurance to your life. How many of you guys have uh, you know, prefer to do things with other people? I do. I grew up in a household as the oldest of four girls, and it was crazy and chaotic and fun and overstimulating all at the same time, but there was always some around someone around, and oftentimes we would have a conversation with each other, and we just say, we go to our one of our sisters and say, Hey, can you come keep me company? And it didn't matter what we were doing, if we were getting ready, if we were just hanging out on the couch, we just wanted them with us because we loved them, we were close to them, and just having their presence there was so comforting for me. And unfortunately, this also translates to my marriage, okay? Poor Clayton, he's a saint, truly. Um, I ask him to keep me company with stuff all the time. I turn a one-man job into a two man job real quick. I'm like, hey, come do this with me, you know. Uh, especially when it comes to late at night, getting ready for bed. You know, for men, their get ready for bed routine is like easy. They just do this. Lay in bed, right? That's all they do. They just like flip flop down. But for us ladies, you know, there's some steps. You have the moisturizer, the cream, the toner, you have just all the things, right? So a lot of times I'll say, Hey, will you please come keep me company? And he's a man of God because he sits on that cold tile floor and is so patient with me. But there's something about it that I love because I'm like, I love this man. I want him to be near me. And even if we're not talking, his presence brings me comfort. The Holy Spirit is the same way. He loves you, he's close to you. And the thing about him is his presence alone can bring you comfort, but the words that he speaks can also bring you comfort. In John 14, 16 through 17, Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit again. He says, Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper, also translated comforter, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. Just like a person, just like having my spouse close to me, I love it. It's the Holy Spirit is in you and he dwells with you. I had a word of comfort come to me recently. You know, Clayton and I have bad days too, and we had a bad day a couple weeks ago, and it was a situation that came up that was, you know, a little stressy, and we were just not really sure. We're like, okay, well, how is this gonna be, how are we gonna handle this? What are we gonna do? And you know, your mind planning, preparing, like, what are we gonna do? And the next morning I had my time with the Lord, I read in my Bible and I kind of finished it, and I was like, God, is there anything else you want me to read? And I felt the leaning to go read Nehemiah for no particular reason. That's just the book that popped up. And as I'm reading, I'm just reading, I'm like, God, is there anything you want to speak to me? Just kind of going through it. And we get to this point, and it's like the words popped up on the page in 3D. I could not avoid it. And so I took notice and I read through it. And it was exactly precisely the situation we were going through. And what God did in that moment for me is he showed me that he's close to me, he knows the thoughts that are rolling around in my head, he knows what I need, he knows the word I need, he directed me to the book. And in that scripture, there was an answer that we needed for that situation. And it wasn't just about that moment of comfort, it changed the way that we lived thereafter. So instead of having 1,800 conversations about this one thing going on, we could trust the Lord. We had a word about it, we had truth from heaven that brought comfort and changed the way that we navigated something because we were open to the comforting voice of the Holy Spirit. So he brings comfort. Psalm 139, David says, You know God when I rise and when I lay down. You know my thoughts from afar up, you know when I go to sleep, you know the words that I'm gonna speak before they're even on my mouth. And then he says, This, where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in jail, you are there. What he's saying is, I can't get away from the presence of the Holy Spirit. He is with me, he dwells in me, and what he's saying is that no matter what highs I'm facing in life, no matter what lows I'm dealing with, God will be there and his voice will bring comfort to you. The Holy Spirit comforts, the Holy Spirit also counsels. He's a counselor, he's called a counselor in scripture. And initially, you think of a counselor, you think of someone that you sit across from, you talk about stuff going on in your life, and they help you emotionally, they help you with some skills to equip you. And I'll say the Holy Spirit does do that. He does help you emotionally, he brings repair to the areas of your heart that have been torn apart. He equips you with skills for life and godliness. Yes, he does do that, but that view of counselor is very limited. The view of counselor here is like a legal advocate, somebody ready to come alongside you and to speak truth into your life. I don't know about you, but I need God's truth in my life every single day. I can't go a day without it. And when you study out the Greek of this, what it means is someone who's called alongside to help. Clayton and I were on a marriage, I think it was a marriage vision retreat. And um, we were taking several days, just the two of us, to have time where we pray over our upcoming year. So what are your goals? What pray over your finances? That was always a fun conversation. Um, your in-laws, your, you know, if we had kids, that so it was kind of something that you do before the year starts. Seek God, come into agreement together, set some goals. So we did that in the morning times, but then in the afternoon we just got to go have fun. So we decided to stay on the lake and um just hang out on the lake all the afternoons, all the time. So we were excited about that. And we were at Table Rock Lake in Missouri, it's nestled in the Ozark Mountains, it's gorgeous, beautiful, green, the water's clear, it's so windy, so you can just like haul down the lake and you don't have to turn around for a really long time. Well, we got out on the water, everything was good, and then we're about an hour and a half down this lake away from the house, and the boat just all of a sudden stops working. And Clayton, he gets in there, he's you know, oh man, I can't fix it. So I'm just thinking, okay, we don't have some great, we don't have great options right now. We could try to get some skis out and like go to the shore and hope we don't mess up the boat and then hope we can find help. We could, we didn't have a trailer nearby. I mean, we're in like towns and perhaps states over because there's like three states around this. I'm like, what are we gonna do? And then we realized there was a membership on the boat to this company called Seato. And SETO is like uh roadside assistance, but for the lake. So we called them. We were like, SOS, we need help. We're baking out here. Can you come, you know, scoop us up and take us back? So they come to us, but I want you to think about this. The Holy Spirit is described as someone who comes alongside to help. And it actually has a like um the background of the word has to do with like the ocean and a boat just like this. That's why I'm using this illustration. So it's this idea of someone who is stranded, away, distant, can't do anything for themselves. And then they call for someone to come alongside to help. And when they do that, it leads them to safety. So here's what happened: that guy came with a boat. He came right next to the boat, super close, so that he could tie the rope on the front of the boat. And what he did was he took us through all the weaves, all the waves. He knew how fast was safe. He knew what angle to take the waves so that we didn't, you know, get too off because we couldn't steer, right? He had all the wisdom, all the understanding, all the counsel to get us safely back to our home. And that's what the Holy Spirit does in our lives. He comes alongside us to provide counsel to us. He hooks up to our boat, so to speak. And there's a path that God has for your life, and he brings direction, and he leads you in the way that you're supposed to go. He helps you navigate the unfamiliar territories that you're in, and his voice is a voice that sounds like solid biblical wisdom in your life. That's what the Holy Spirit does for us. So, what area of your life do you need guidance and counsel in? Have you felt the tug of the Holy Spirit in an area in your life? If you've made this your church home, there's probably a tug you felt to come and worship at this place. You might have felt it with your spouse when you got married, or maybe you felt it if you were in like a group of friends or something that was uh not maybe the best for you. There's just something in you that you're like, mmm, I don't feel great about this. You don't leave feeling better than when you spent time with them. Could that be the leading of the Holy Spirit in your life? Perhaps. So he comforts, he counsels, and the Holy Spirit corrects us. He lovingly corrects us. I thought of a lot of different examples because I am one who's been corrected much. Especially as a child, my mom used to always say, You're gonna pay for your raisin. Um, but maybe that's why Amy dumped the water, but that's neither here nor there. But here's the thing: the Holy Spirit will lovingly correct you so you stay on the path that's good for you. You want a surgeon when they're in surgery to be able to receive correction if they're about to do something that is not best for you, it produces a better outcome. You want your spouse to be able to come to you and say, Hey, what you said was pretty hurtful. Because when you receive that correction, it strengthens and improves the relationship. You want your 15-year-old learning how to drive to receive correction because it will keep you safe. There's something about correction that improves the relationship, produces better outcomes that is safe for us. And so the Lord corrects us, and it's not in an angry or demeaning way, it's in a loving way that is guiding us in the direction we're supposed to go. So I thought of a lot of examples, but I think the one that's most practical has to do with a work thing. Um, I wasn't in ministry at this time, it was a while back. And we were dealing with online contracts, and online contracts were just then becoming a thing, and quite honestly, I was just very naive. And I was on the computer, I was filling out this contract, and I was about to click this one button, and I just all of a sudden it was like stop sign, don't do it. Well, how many of you guys have the philosophy that my husband does, which is no cop, no stop when it comes to the stop sign? Um I stop at the stop signs, but um, but this was a stop sign from the Lord. It was like boom, don't do it. I just knew. But what did I do? I clicked the button, anyways. I made a mistake, and it was a big one, it was a costly one, it was really bad, and so I was so grieved. I knew that I had a thing either. So I had to do something about this, so I went to my boss the next day, and I was like, I just it was so embarrassing. I was like, man, I really messed up. I really messed up, I screwed up this contract, can we fix it? She was like, No, it's fine. And I was like, no, I did wrong and I need you to fix it, and I'm going to keep asking until we make it right. So we ended up bumping it up a couple layers, got everything fixed out, everything was fine. But I would have been saved a lot of stress, grief, heartache, embarrassment if I would have just listened to the correcting voice of the Holy Spirit that day. God, it's not just the big things in your life. He wants to speak correction and wisdom and instruction on the little things in your life too. So my question for you today is would you be open to allowing the Holy Spirit to continue to speak into your life in every area of your life, not just the one that you have at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning. God has more for you. He wants to lead you in a way that produces a dynamic, a spiritual vitality in you, a life with God that is full and satisfying. He has that for you. And it helps whenever we yield to his voice and recognize it. So if you'll bow your heads and close your eyes with me. I just wonder if when it comes to hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit, there's an area you need to hear it in.