Finding the Flow of the Spirit

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this session today. I would like to take just a few moments here and talk about being used in the gifts of the Spirit, understanding the flow of God, how God can work through us to help other people.

My text today will come from the book of Matthew chapter 11, reading with verse 28. Matthew chapter 11 and verse 28. He said — Jesus said — "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." I'd like to take my thoughts here today from verse 29, where he said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me" — and learn of me.

I remember growing up in church — I had been in this my whole life. My father was my pastor from age 12 and through now, and I'm 42 now, but prior to that I grew up in church as a kid, and our family church pastor, John Hurley, was my pastor. But I remember growing up in church, watching the move of God and the waves of the Spirit, people getting drunk in the Lord. It wasn't uncommon in our churches to have prophets and evangelists to come through and watch God [mightily] use them — miracles. I remember on one side of the church where I grew up, there was a room that was filled with wheelchairs, walkers, canes and crutches, where people came in crippled but they would leave healed. It was not uncommon to hear conversations about prophecies and gifts of discernments, and just the powerful move of God that would happen through men of God that allowed the Lord to use them.

So over the years I had heroes, and I would love to hear these powerful stories of God using people to do great, great miraculous things for the Lord. And one of the men was named Dan [Garthes]. He was a hero of mine. He was our district superintendent in West Virginia growing up. And I remember as a teenager talking to him, and he would tell me stories about his father, Lloyd [Garthes], who was a prophet of the Lord. Lloyd [Garthes] was preaching the revival service when my dad repented, and the service when he was filled with the Holy Ghost. My dad used to love to tell the stories about the prophet Lloyd [Garthes].

I remember Dan [Garthes's] son telling me about a moment that his father stepped into J. C. [Cole's] church in [Parkerburg], West Virginia. They were sitting on the platform and looked out at the audience, and Brother [Garthes] said, "See that woman right there?" He said, "Yes." He said, "See that man over there?" He said, "Yes." "They are having an affair" — to Pastor [Cole's] surprise. But later, sure enough, it's exactly what was going on. And how would you say — how did Lloyd [Garthes] know this, but not knowing the people? Because he knew God.

It was amazing, because when Lloyd [Garthes] would preach a revival service or come in and hold a revival, they said back then there weren't very many restaurants, if any, back in the country where I lived. There were no hotels in the area, and the evangelists would stay in the home of the saints. They said, when Brother [Garthes] — Lloyd [Garthes] — would stay at your house, when you would get up in the middle of the night you would have to watch where you would step, because you might step on him, because he would be in the living room praying all night long.

I remember moments of my dad, that God used him mightily. I watched the Lord speak to my dad, Frank [Bounds] — just a tremendous church planter, man of God. But I would watch God use my dad, and people would drive down the highway and stop and come into that church where he planted, and with one prayer they would say, "The Lord spoke to me to have you to pray for me," and he would lay hands on them and prophesy to them. And he'd say, "If it doesn't happen, then I am a false prophet." He would speak with such confidence. I saw and I watched so many miracles happen under his ministry — just in one town alone, over a hundred miracles happened in that town. But also with my dad, I grew up and, in the morning, you could guarantee he was on his knees praying and reading his Bible every day. He had this place as a devotion with God.

And I want to say to you: how do these men — just two examples of thousands of people that God uses mightily — how do they get to that place of discernment, to be used in prophecy? To speak — I remember Brother Billy Cole at a camp meeting that we had in West Virginia, and just before he got up to preach, he turned around and looked at one of the ministers on the platform and he said, "The Lord has shown me pain on this side of your body, but we're going to pray for you, and God is going to heal you." How did Brother Billy Cole know that? Brother Cole could even know — he told me one time, he said, before he would go to a meeting, he said the Lord would reveal to him exactly how many people were going to get the Holy Ghost in that service. How does that happen?

I want to talk just for a few moments on how that can happen in our lives, when God uses us. Just like my dad, he had a place of prayer. He had a place of devotion where he learned the things of God. When you look at the verse Jesus was teaching, he said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." And he said — he said, "[For I am] meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." What was he saying? He said, "You've got to become yoked with me to understand me."

I studied this concept about being yoked. They would take a yoke of oxen — two ox, put a yoke around them, a wooden yoke. Another word for that yoke, the Greek word, is for "balanced mean" [as heard]. You'll find that the yoke causes independence to become impossible. You cannot go your own way. When you begin to look at when you become yoked, you become dependent on the other. And what Jesus was saying was, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me." You've got to become yoked with God to learn who he is. It's not just going to church. You can never learn him until you are yoked with him. Spectating him — just becoming a spectator of what God is doing in a service — you will not learn how to operate in the gifts. Just by viewing from the seats, you're not ever going to learn how to be used in the gifts of the Spirit with God. But when you become yoked with him, you become a participant of what he is doing. And the greatest way to become used in the gifts of the Spirit is by being yoked with him in prayer.

I have watched men over the years that God has used. Even the moment God has used me — but it was no different in a congregation, or on an airplane ministering to someone, or in a hotel, or when the Lord has used me somewhere at a restaurant to minister to a waiter or waitress — there was this unction that would come up over me. I was familiar at the moment, whether the airplane, or the pulpit, or in the altar, or after the service, or in the hospital praying with someone. There's this feeling that comes up on me. It is the moving of the Spirit that I learned to become familiar with by my time alone with God in prayer.

Ministry is not something that we should ever do in the absence of a walk with God in prayer. And that's what he was saying: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me." And I have learned over the years that if I could get alone with God, if I could spend a long time with the Lord — I watched my father do it just at daybreak, or before daybreak, and so I sort of took that on, early morning prayer with the Lord — it was in those moments that I stepped out of my mind, out of the way I think. The Bible says we walk by faith and not by sight. That when I would begin to seek God in prayer — you know what I'm talking about — I stepped out of the logical thinking into a spiritual flow, begin to feel things that God was showing me. And I would ponder those things in my heart that I would feel in prayer, and I would watch it come to pass.

Just like Mary said, when she was told that she was going to conceive and bring forth the child and call his name Jesus — when the Holy Ghost overshadowed her, she pondered that in her heart, and it was confirmed by an elder in her life, Elizabeth, that Jesus would be born. When God starts speaking to us and teaching us, there's going to be a confirmation on what he's telling us. God would give me a word when I was young in prayer. Then I would go to church, and my dad would preach about what the Lord had spoken to me in prayer. I watched this begin to unfold in my own life. I watched that what I felt was God become confirmed by the elder, or my pastor. And I learned: this is God. There's no way that anyone knew what God was dealing with me about, but God has confirmed it through the voice in my life — that is, the elder in my life.

And what I'm saying here is that we've got to learn to operate in our ministries out of a relationship with God and our devotion. This is how it would work: ministries should be what we do in the overflow of our devotion, becoming yoked with him. I'm not talking about prayer where you just check off the box — and you prayed this, and prayed this. I believe in intentional prayer, but we also — Paul taught us in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 — we need to pray in the Spirit and with understanding also. We need to learn to pray being yoked with God. We've got to fast and seek God. You know, "Seek the Lord while he may be found," Isaiah told us. But to get in this place with God to where you lose track of time — you don't know if you've been here twenty minutes or an hour and a half. You don't know; you just got lost in prayer. And then God begins to speak. God begins to deal with you, and you begin to learn his heart. You begin to learn his ways.

When they would yoke an ox with another ox, making a team of oxen — when they would yoke them together, the inexperienced ox would learn from that lead ox. They would yoke them together, and the purpose of a yoke of oxen was to pull a burden, was to pull a load. A miracle was founded by this. You see it all through Scripture — you really do. You see that oxen were used for a symbol and a sign of strength, of being a burden bearer.

You'll find this in the book of Numbers. It says God brought them out of Egypt; he had, as it were, the strength of a unicorn. A unicorn was the profile image of an ox. They called it a unicorn, but a [unicorn] wasn't an ox. God even compared himself to the strength of the ox. When you begin to study this, you'll find in Psalms — Psalms chapter 92 — he said, "My horn shall be exalted like the horn of a unicorn, and I shall be anointed with fresh oil." You see, what God is calling us to is greater than our own ability. God's calling us to do great things. There's not one of us that can lay hands on the sick in our ability and cancer be removed from their body. There's not one of us that can have the word of knowledge and give someone direction, or what's going on in their life like Lloyd [Garthes] did with the situation in that church — that needed healing, a word of knowledge, or a word of wisdom, or divine revelation — to be able to preach the gospel the way we do and understand the wonders of God. There has to be this concept that we become yoked in the Spirit.

We call it the anointing, and in the Bible the anointing compares it to the horn of a unicorn, talking about the strength of that. Matter of fact, even talking about the church, in Proverbs 14 and 4 it says, "Where no oxen are, the crib is clean, but much increase is by the strength of the ox." What God wants to do in our lives, and through our lives, must be done by the strength of God. And that's why he said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me." He said, "For I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." He said, "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

You want to have burnout ministry? Start operating in ministry without prayer. Start preaching — start preaching without the anointing. Plant a church without the timing of the Spirit, and what you're going to find — you're going to find that if you do not become yoked with God, it is going to pull out of your physical body instead of [from] the strength from the Spirit of God that is in our lives. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. Over the years, I've seen some of my hardest times in ministry were those moments when I was not spending time alone with God. Ministry becomes light when prayer is our focus. But ministry becomes heavy when just ministry is our focus and prayer is set aside.

Why is his burden light? And why is his yoke easy? Because he's God. There is nothing too big, too heavy for God to pull in our life. Maybe God's called you to a city. Maybe God has called you to a specific ministry that seems overwhelming beyond you, to ever reach what you feel God has called you to. But with the Lord, remember this: all things are possible. The apostle Paul, he said, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." We do not need to take on any ministry that God hasn't allowed us to become yoked with him to do. Don't just grab a ministry. Don't just try to be used in some ministry. You need to get yoked with God and find out: what is it that he's calling me to do? What is it that he's calling me to say?

I feel like praying for somebody right now. Oh God, in the name of Jesus, I pray for some pastor, pastor's wife — somebody right now that is in a ministry, but they feel burnout. They don't know what the next thing is. They've lost their desire to pray. Ministry has consumed their minds. It has weakened their spirit, even weakened their physical body. But I pray they'll get back to an old-fashioned prayer meeting, oh God — that they could spend a long time with you, in Jesus' name, we pray.

I've learned that ministry can be very, very taxing. I've learned ministry can be taxing, but I've learned that the burden can be lifted alone with God, alone with the Lord. I want to say this before we stop here today: ministry must be something we do out of our walk with God and in prayer. We can't do things without him leading us.

Have you ever wondered: how does a preacher know what to preach? How does the prophet know what to prophesy? At what point did the person know they were to lay hands on the sick and they would recover? How did that person know that they were to be used in the gift of tongues, or the gift of interpretation? How does that pastor know that he's supposed to go plant that daughter work? There's only one way: we've got to become yoked with him and allow God to lead us. Nothing that I do personally in the pulpit, on a pastoral ministry, do I do any different than what I do in prayer.

I remember one day specifically, pastoring, and I was in prayer — and in prayer I just felt an unction to pray for the specific family, and in that prayer I started praying in the Spirit. I say "the Spirit" — not talking in tongues, but I was praying yoked up with the Holy Ghost — praying three specific things. When I got out of prayer, the man of that house called me and said, "We need something right now." And he named the three things that I just said in prayer, just a few hours before. What I'm saying is, we can't do this without God.

For all the parents that are watching: there was a moment, just as a young parent, I felt like nothing was working — the timeout chair, the discipline, things of that nature. But you know what I did? I realized maybe her spirit is troubled. She was just a young toddler. I went up to her room, and I prayed until I got yoked up in the Spirit. When I did, I watched the glory of the Lord come over her, and it just calmed her. When the Holy Ghost began to move — what did he say? The burden becomes what? Light. The yoke becomes easy. The Spirit of the Lord began to fix what discipline would never fix. We're apostolic people. We're Holy Ghost-filled people. We've got to learn to put our children in the presence of God. Why? He said it this way: he said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Some of you watching right now — I feel this — have been praying and seeking God for this session. Some of you are burdened, and you're worn out; you're weary. I'm going to tell you what you need to do: you need to go [get alone] for the Lord [as heard: "go give up for the Lord"]. You need to cancel some things. Get alone with God, and wait on the Lord, and pray until his presence comes in that room. And he's going to cause the heavy burden to become lifted. The Lord is calling us back to old-fashioned prayer and fasting. And when we do, there's going to be a tremendous move of God that's going to come upon us. We're going to learn to flow in the Spirit again. Turn the media off. Turn the social media off. Turn those things off until you can get alone with God and feel yoked with him. Because he never called us to do ministry alone. He never called us to be independent from one another. He called us to be yoked with him, to have power in him through prayer.

God bless you today. I pray that the Lord will move upon your soul, your mind and body. He's calling us back to the gifts of the Spirit. We will see more miracles than we've ever seen in the history of the church. God's calling you to be used of him. God bless you. Find a place alone with the Lord, and get yoked up with him in prayer. In Jesus' name. Amen.