If you open your Bible just for a moment, I'm going to share something just briefly, and then I want to pray for people tonight, going to get people filled with the Holy Ghost aye? Get people filled with the Holy Ghost! I just want to pick up where I was speaking on this morning, [Having a Full Lamp] and I was sharing on a parable, one of the great parables in Matthew 25; and Jesus spoke, and the disciples had asked to hear Him, and they said: when are you going to come again, because they were already were aware that He was about to depart - and said: when will you return? What's the sign at the end of the age? What's the sign of you coming; and He began to describe it all.
One of the things is absolutely clear, Jesus will come again, and there's things that He wants to be busy doing. It's not, I come to Jesus, fill in my life, and then go to heaven. This is so far from the plan of God as to be quite a deception. That's not God's plan for you. God wants your life to be powerfully engaged in advancing His kingdom. He wants you to be filled with the Holy Ghost, and moving; and so we share with you three parables. One of the parables is the parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins. One is the parable of the talents; one is a parable of a story concerning how God will judge the nations. Each one's got something to tell us, now here's the thing.
This one here - I'm not going to go through the whole story, I'd encourage you to read it yourself, but this is what happened. He said: at midnight (verse 6), there was a cry heard; Behold, the bridegroom is coming. Go out and meet him; and the virgins, all of them, five wise, five foolish, rose and trimmed their lamps; and the foolish said to the wise: give us your oil, some of your oil, our lamp is going out. And the wise said: no, buy for yourself; and then those that were ready - some went out to buy, and those who were ready went into the wedding when the Lord came, and then the door was shut.
So I'm not going through all of it. If you want to know about that parable, read [Having a Full Lamp ~ Sun 1st Apr 2012 AM]. What I want to do is highlight one thing. It says that these foolish virgins, they suddenly become aware that they lacked substance of God in their life. They lacked vision, they lacked the flow of the Holy Spirit. They lacked anointing and activity of the Holy Ghost in their life. They lacked oil for their lamps; so the Bible describes them as virgins. In other words, they are people that have been set aside for the Lord, set aside to serve God; and each one of them had a lamp, pictures or is typical of your works, your life, your ministry - let your light shine before men; and in order to get the lamp burning, in order to have influence in the community, in order to influence lives with the life of God, they needed to have oil.
They needed a supply of oil, the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and the thing that they suddenly realised was, they had not given time and attention to building a supply of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Now let me just talk a little bit about that, and I want to give you some simple, practical things that can change your life if you'll do them. I want you to get filled with the Holy Ghost, and a staple. I don't want any one of us to say that our lamp is going out, our influence is dimming, we're not showing up like we could show up. We don't have much life and anointing of the Holy Ghost, and I want your life to change.
My life was radically changed by the Holy Ghost. When I got the Holy Ghost, came into my life and I got filled with the spirit, my life began a radical change. I started to change on the inside. I started to change on the outside, and I changed for the better; and I have come to love the Holy Spirit. I've come to really, really love Him. The Bible says in Romans 14: the kingdom of heaven is not about eating and drinking, and keeping rules and how you dress, how you look; but it's about right standing with God, peace with God and in your heart, absence of conflict, and joy that the Holy Ghost gives.