You're not waiting for God to do a big thing. He's inside you waiting for you to believe and flow, and so meditating in that, changes your experiences with God and changes you. It's been practiced as long as time goes, and it works. If you talk to anyone who experienced God on a regular basis, and you'll find that engaging their imagination with the word of God is a vital part of that. It's important to do that. The third aspect of being filled, is choosing to yield and stop working to make something happen, and start believing and yielding. One of the challenges people have is just to let go control. We're so uptight, and so afraid, and so in control, you come and say: would you pray for me for God to do something? You can almost feel the tension inside of all the control and the fear, rather than actually being renewed. God is not angry with you, He loves you. Before you came to Christ, He died on the cross. Now won't He give you everything you have need for today? Can you imagine God being so mean, that He would die on the cross, but then make life miserable for you the rest of the time, hold back from you? It's just not true. God is good all the time.
All the time He's good, so meditating in His goodness and His nature, taking the truth and allowing your heart to rest in it, you start to get filled with God. All I can say is: I'm not trying; I'm choosing to yield and believe, and that's where the life flows. It's in the yielding and believing, so when you come to pray for someone, come to minister to someone, just - Gill, you're nearby, just come here - and that brings us to the next thing. We're not just to be filled with the spirit, we're also to be ministers of the spirit. You can hardly minister something you don't have much of, but God's intention is all minister. 1 Corinthians 12:7, now the gift, and the manifestation of the spirit of God, is given to every person - given, therefore it's just received. So the deal is just about receiving, so I don't need to try hard to do anything. Just come around here. I don't have to try hard to do anything.
If I just take your hand, and what I'll do is I'll say - why don't you close your eyes, and I want you to look towards the Lord and expect Him to do something for you. Look to Him, see. Already as she does that, something's starting to happen, see, already, without me doing anything. I'm not even trying to minister, just the presence of God. Now she began to direct her inner man towards God, and He began to move. Ministry is not something you have to work hard to do. It is the overflow of a person within you, and connecting with the Holy Spirit, connecting and being filled and yielding to Him. Now there's many ways we resist Him. When we get angry with people, and won't deal with our heart attitudes, when we hold unforgiveness and bitterness, we grieve Him, and therefore you can't be filled with the spirit, so you can't stay angry and be filled with the spirit. Face your anger, come honestly before God about what has caused you to feel such feelings, and what you really believe underneath about that, and ask God to show you the truth, and then be filled with the spirit again.
We don't have to stay living in these fleshy things. In fact the life of defeat as a believer, is inevitably trying hard to put on a good show, trying hard to look good. Now everyone's all dressed up, you all look good. You actually look beautiful, wonderful. [Laughs] However, we know that's not like that all the week. [Laughter] Isn't that right? Now you see if I was just to consciously think: well God, I'll just think about being the temple. Thank You Lord, I'm the temple of the spirit, and I would think these kinds of things; that Your presence just fills me, and fills everything around me, so wherever I am, Your presence is overflowing - now she can begin to feel that presence just like that. [Laughter] Full of joy. See, you notice it's not struggling, it's not hard. It's not something you have to struggle to do. Jesus said: this is the work. He said: strive to enter your rest. Isn't that a crazy statement? What He's really saying is this. He's saying: the challenge is not to work hard to be a better person; the challenge is always to break through unbelief and negative thinking, and believe.