I want to give you some practical keys on what I've found is a big help to stirring your spirit man up, so you can begin to flow in the gifts of the spirit. A key part of it of course is your personal devotional life. Building a life where you're in the word of God, reading the word of God, praying the word of God, spending time with the Lord, worshipping Him, sharing with Him, building your spirit man, praying in tongues, all of this is the normal devotional life of a believer, so we need to be feeding our inner life, feeding your spirit man, so you've got something to give. If you don't feed your life spiritually there's not much to give, so we can make it a practice that we feed our spiritual life, hungry for God, hunger - God, use me today God, today I just wait on You. Lord, today give me something for someone or bring someone into my life that I can minister to and share with. That kind of praying, you're stretching out for God to do something.
Now here's some simple things you can do in our environment, and this is a way of breaking it down so it's very easy to do. Number one, free up your spirit. You can't prophesy and flow in the gifts if your spirit is all uptight with tension, so free up your spirit, relax, laugh more and pray in tongues, because praying in tongues actually energises your spirit. When you pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit is speaking through you. He's speaking language to your spirit, and your spirit is expressing, you are flowing with Him. It's a great way, pray in tongues, stir your spirit man and it starts to energise you, and we'll do some exercises on that a little later. The second thing is expect faith, expect God to speak with you. You've got to reach out expectedly. See if I'm going to pray for someone and I'm full of doubt, not that much happens when there's doubt, but when you come, you say God, I just expect You to give me something for this person. I'm believing that when I get myself in that place, You will give me something I need.
It sounds a little risky, but actually what faith does is it steps out trusting God. What am I trusting, that I'm good enough? No, I'm trusting that God is good, God loves them, and God's willing to help them. I'm just here available, so it's a faith that God is willing to do something. The third thing is, so we stir up our spirit, reach out our faith, then just focus your attention. One of the things that people find very difficult to do, is to just focus their attention to listen. You know if you want to hear someone, you've got to stop and listen. There's too much distraction, you can't hear, so the key thing we saw in flowing with the gifts of the spirit is hearing, being able to pick up the small impressions of the Holy Spirit - and they're very small, so I've got to get the noise out of my head. Now for some people that's a problem, because there's a lot of noise, and the noise comes from unresolved personal conflicts, spiritual, emotional conflicts. The noise comes from the voice of demonic spirits speaking into our mind, condemning, judging, accusing, belittling, pressuring, confusing. That's one aspect.
They also come from your own beliefs in your heart; I'm no good, God wouldn't work through me, or I've just blown it, or I'm not - you know, all of those sorts of beliefs of the heart, which are contrary to the word of God, demonic spirits use to stir up and energise confusion and turmoil inside you. It's normal for us to be at peace and rest. In the kingdom of heaven there's righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, so turmoil inside your emotions have to do with what you believe in your heart, and that in turn is activated on by spirits to keep you in a state of turmoil so you can't be useful to God. Getting the idea? So we need to be committed to the journey of growing, growing inside and in our freedom and peace on the inside. He's promised to give us peace, so one of the things I have found - there's a lot of things can help in that, but one thing I've found I've learned to meditate, to take the scripture and to picture it, and hold it in my mind and begin to pray, and just keep my imagination fixed on that picture, locking in around that. I've learned, I've trained my mind to stay focussed and you can do the same.