It is not an easy task to transform your nature and get transformed like the disciples of Jesus. Learn to enjoy, admire, worship – learn to express emotions in God’s Kingdom.
When a man grows old, he ceases to give fragrance. A withering flower can’t give fragrance.
We said that we should admire God. But we can also admire the creation, the people. Michelangelo has a statue of Moses, Moses is presented looking like a youth, his body is powerful, although he is one hundred and twenty years old during this period. I think this is the way Abraham was when Sarah died, he was in his old age, but he married again, took a wife for himself Keturah and gave birth to many more children. Abraham was a young man on the inside, very strong. It is said about Moses that “his eyes were not dim” – this indicates that he had a clear mind, excellent memory, high intellect and a strong body. Because he lived his life in the presence of God, saw the glory of God, lived in the light of His rays, in the light of His face. I think he never lost his emotions. It was not a withered old man who was tired of life.
You can recognize a man by his gait – walk like kings! It’s very cool to walk on your own land, what kind of spirit you have – such is your gait. Someone “minces” the whole life through, moves in short leaps, dashes. Self-esteem is very important. Wake up!
Once we got together and talked about being led by the Spirit – which is very important – being led by the Spirit. I was very stirred after a fiery service. Our message is being released for the international ministry. My spirit rises high, it begins to spread its wings strongly so that this message can nourish and work in any country on the planet. And it works. You have no idea what an exciting jump it is from the stratosphere without a parachute! Someone has to catch you on the fly and carry you on. It’s very cool to jump into the dark! For the hands of God to catch you and carry you. And on the one hand, this is incredible horror and fear, and on the other, incredible pleasure. Whoever experiences it once will never remain the same. In other words, “to be carried away by the prophetic host.” Carried away by the Holy Spirit. Usually, after such meetings, I go to calm down and return.
And so I thought: “How is it – to be led by the Holy Spirit?” – and realized that this is not any technology that everyone is talking about: “you hear a voice, have feelings, etc.” I said that what works with me in the move with the Holy Spirit is confidence, conviction. It is the assurance that God is speaking to you. These are different things than just hearing a voice.
I’m talking about the royal gait, or about the spirit that lives in this gait, or about the spirit that leads a man on the planet. Usually I go to where the church is about to be born in order to step on this land with my feet. The churches we have are like that. This confidence that was in Abraham, this young spirit was very bright, he wasn’t a tired old man. He was able to cry until the very last days of his life. His eyes were not dry, they were full of tears of joy and tears of sadness. We need to give God wet prayers!
Moses laughed. Someone said that a person can be identified by laughter. There is homeric laughter when it can be determined that the person is mentally ill. Some cover their mouth with his palm, they feel embarrassed. And there is pure laughter, open, coming from a clear conscience, from a healthy intellect, from a healthy self-esteem. Laughter, emanating from healthy self-esteem, is like a beautiful, pure murmuring brook. So laugh! Let your emotions move! Laugh your dirt out! Laugh your black foam out! Laugh your “homeric passes” out! Let your “volcano explode”.
Cry, it’s so wonderful when people cry. I remember pastor Volodya, who with the words: “We, brothers and sisters, believe in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ …” – always began to cry. What a beauty! This is a pure heart, like that of a child. I always admired him and thought: “Lord, give me such a heart!” As Paul said he “taught day and night with tears.” How wonderful it is!
This admiration – I think Moses had it, until the end of his life he admired, although it is written of him as of a great prophet, but it would be impossible for the Lord to love a dry tree – an uninteresting, empty man. I think there was a wide range in this soul – he could argue with God, even be capricious, and all the time he dreamed of seeing the glory of God. And Moses also said that if God sent an Angel, he would not go, but he would go with Him only. That was the way Moses was.
This topic is very important. Personal relationships. The uniqueness of the relationship. One day a brother felt the uniqueness of one of our prayers – he said that it was “as if you were talking to God.” Not just a “power attack” in prayer, but namely reaching the heart of God. This is the way Abraham talked with God, without haste, Moses talked like that, Elijah, Jesus … Every word of their prayers is written down in the Scriptures.
We have to grow from infancy into Him who is from the beginning. That infants know Him who is from the beginning is not yet the limit. Young men have overcome the wicked one – that is, they no longer struggle with sin. The next stage is when you are not fighting against sin. Some people are “stuck” in the atonement, “stuck” in the Blood. He sinned, asks for forgiveness, then again they struggle with sin. They are not worshipers. They are struggling with God all the time. We must cross this line. Scripture says that “the fathers have know the Him who is from the beginning,” that is, the beginning of you no longer exists, but He is all in all.
God speaks many times until we understand on another level. I hear it many times when a man speaks that he knows everything, but he doesn’t know anything. Because it’s not about information, but about empowerment. There Abraham went to see off the Angels. And so he walked and walked. How far did he go? Over the mountains, over the horizon? And the Lord was silent. How long do you accompany God? How long do you not let Him go? Abraham walked until God sent him away. It’s a mystery. They walked for a long time, then God said: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” What touched Him so deeply? Abraham simply walked and walked.
This is the dimension of meditation that I look for in you too, so that you gain the ability to abide in Him. It is much more important than doing things apart from Him. Abide in Him, take pleasure in His intimacy. And that’s all. Like Mary. Perhaps, she heard this “annoyance” in the kitchen. But she feared being distracted – she sat at the feet of Jesus and caught every moment. It was important for her to be with Him. It is so difficult sometimes to be with Him! But we have to learn.
There is such a translation of the Scripture: “Be silent to Him!” Sometimes we rewrite the lyrics to sing directly to Him and not about Him. Intimacy with Him is not outside of us. Some preach about His presence as something unattainable, long and difficult to seek. In fact, His presence is in us. These are the eyes turned to Him. And we need to learn this – to live in His presence. His presence is 24/7. I experienced a strong liberation. Some go to the meeting as to a victory parade: “Long live our church, hurray, comrades! Long live our Bible, hurray, comrades! ” But this is not a parade.
Jesus didn’t play such games. He didn’t do auto-training. He was a Man of sorrows and grief, they didn’t accept Him, they spat on Him, they beat Him, rejected Him, but He just remained Himself. He continued to be the wounded Lamb — that was all.
Whether there is a meeting or there is not – what difference does it make? – we need to be with Him always. It pours in so much enrichment and brings new colors, new revelations, and much deeper than in a meeting. And the peak of my experience with the Lord is not in meetings, but outside of them. What do we do in the meetings? We share, we express our Christian faith. Worship is an expression of our faith. But we also believe outside the meetings. We don’t come to church to believe here and then leave it. We are here demonstrating our faith that we breathe, we live outside of our gatherings.
When we leave the meetings, I go to Jesus. Jesus is not at the meetings, but where I am with Him, where I don’t let Him go, Jesus is there.
I look at Moses and admire him. This is how old age should look like. I look at Abraham, this is how an elderly man should look like – full of strength, mental health, sobriety, reason and full of emotions. He continues to laugh, cry, his eyes are always wet, they are not dry. He constantly expresses his emotions to the maximum. He is truly a man, truly the son of Adam and Eve. This is the beauty of God’s man. This is the most absolutely beautiful man in the full meaning of this word – a man of God. Today I wish all of us to become a man of God, not just Christians, believers, members of churches.
I really like Moses, Abraham and Elijah. They lived to a ripe old age and were absolutely strong and healthy. They were as powerful as rocks. And so they came to the thirty-year-old Jesus and spoke “as equals” because the Spirit of God made them perfect. Jesus was perfect, and they were perfect. God’s people are like that. I didn’t understand what a prophet looks like before. What Jesus or Paul looked like. Now I understand a little more. They were real. Furious in their feelings, furious in their emotions. They were genuine, honest. They were not restrained, pretentious people who played prophets. They were thrown open in their spirit and never played spirituality. They didn’t play a spiritual one, for sure they thought of themselves that as of the last. But God saw them differently. This is what we need today. I wish all of us this royal walk in things – the colors of life, the odors of life. So that we blossom like the garden of the Lord, but for this you need to work, because life has trampled on you. Someone stole your trust in people, someone stole your trust that you can open up in the church. But this doesn’t mean that everyone is like that.
Sometimes I meet a good person, a sister or a brother, and then I find out they’ve left. They left because of a conflict with the pastor or with the people. But we were connected with you personally, and not through an organization. We personally knew each other by the spirit. I didn’t leave you, why did you leave us. Someone is deceiving, but you shouldn’t look at things like that. You are an individual, he is an individual, approach each issue individually.
Jesus never looks at us as part of a crowd. He looks at us personally, as if He doesn’t hear anything about you. It is written of Jesus “as though He didn’t hear.” When the crowd brought a woman to Him, whom they wanted to stone, He didn’t listen and didn’t notice them.
Recently a brother sent me a dream. It was so powerful that he couldn’t tell it in front of everyone, because he would cry. I asked: “Why can’t you tell, it’s a good dream?” He replied: “I can’t!” And he began sobbing. I rarely saw him in such a condition, because he is usually quite self-possessed, mature and strong. And then I asked him: “Can I tell then? Do you really want me to tell people about it? ” He said: “Yes, I want to, share it.”
He had this dream after the Word about Miriam, when she received a spit from the Father. He saw in the dream that some people came to him to expose him for his old sins, who know that those were really his works. They aggressively walked into his room. And suddenly I, a man of God, appear and say that I will stay there with him. The brother feels ashamed, he knows that this will reveal his secret affairs, because those two beings know everything. He is uncomfortable, he wants me to leave this room, he doesn’t want me to be a witness, because it’s true. But I insist and say: “No, I will stay with you!” And when they come, they begin to release what is fair, to release the truth about what he did. And then I turned the whole thing so that we laughed, laughed at them. And when they pressed harder, we laughed even harder. And all this was flooded and silenced by our laughter. We just laughed at them, at the words they spoke!
This is how you have to stand for each other! And my brother was crying, he could not tell himself, he was so much touched that he was shaking with tears. This is what I call “being in Him.” This kind of nature of the church shall be invincible. It is deep, simple, beautiful, ornate with the refinement of love. Love is neither simple nor rude. Why, then, do poets write poetry, why do musicians compose complex music, why do artists paint? Because love should be ornate, refined.
There is the art of love. Not just bricks and blocks. We should love in such a way as to delight each other, to elevate. It is written that “the virgins love You and admire You.” We must open these springs within ourselves, so that there is a spirit of admiration in the church, so that emotions overwhelm, so that we can cry before each other, weep and not be afraid to be judged. So we can laugh. So that demonic manifestations can be released, if someone has them. So that we can dance. So that we can release the innermost and not be afraid.
November 9
Sometimes I also release the innermost – it doesn’t matter, whether it is «helpful» or «not helpful». I know it encourages people when you share about your weaknesses. When you share strength, people become weak because they feel that it is not given to them. But when you share weaknesses, people understand that they have the same weaknesses. This is very powerful!
“He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He id despised and rejected by men, and who will declare His generation?” This image of a victorious prosperous Christian is sometimes a disgusting portrait. In fact, we need to go back to the beginning, into Alpha, and then Omega will be well. You need to put your Alpha in order, and the Omega will come healthy.
If some of you feel that you are getting worse towards the end of your life, and some can honestly say that at the beginning of your journey you were purer, holier, then is this the way we should reach the finish line?
Shouldn’t we be flying at the end of our lives? Shouldn’t we walk in the air?
I think we are touching this emotional honesty today. You need to be led by the Spirit, but in my life I don’t strain for this. This doesn’t come from me. These are very unique things. What helps me is not the guidance of the Holy Spirit as a medium, it is not some kind of super sensitivity, it is not hearing, not having some experience, it is a deep confidence in love, when you are convinced in Him, in His attitude towards you.