TRANSCRIPTION | Wednesday, March 10, 2021 | The Seven Spirits of God

 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

And I want you, if you would, to help me welcome church online tonight. Would you welcome those folks that are joining us. And what an honor to get together to pray and seek the Lord. If you're joining us in church online, we're inviting you into a corporate prayer gathering that's taking place at our Columbia location tonight, and then the next two Wednesday nights leading up to Easter, we're going to be having a time where we get together at our most central location and just kind of go after the Lord and make sure that we are prayed up and ready to reach as many people as we possibly can with the good news of Jesus Christ and his gospel. And the way this will work this evening, is for those of you that are joining us in church online, you'll be with us for the message portion. And then at the conclusion, we're going to kind of give you some instructions after we also lead you in participating in communion with us, we'll give you some instructions for how you can pray there in your home or in your private place and just kind of join us in going after the Lord together tonight. So, if you don't have the communion elements there with you may want to pause the broadcast for a minute, go and grab those and gather them, because when I finish the message we will be partaking of that together. And I don't think that there's anything more important that we can do than pray. Prayer doesn't just change things, prayer changes everything. And the New Testament is filled with like-minded stories and historical accounts of like-minded believers getting together and seeking the Lord in prayer. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

I've been just meditating on this passage of text, 1 Timothy chapter two, verse number eight, for the last few days, and even last few weeks. I mentioned it last Wednesday, I want to mention it again tonight. This is what Paul wrote to Timothy. He said, “I desire therefore, that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.” And so what he's saying is that he has this desire deep down inside of him that everywhere, people would begin to pray, and that they would respond by just lifting their hands, surrendering to the Lord, receiving from the Lord, crying out to the Lord, and that they would do that without wrath and without doubting. So laying aside the bitterness, laying aside the offense, laying aside the worry, laying aside the doubt, and just in unity, and in faith, believe God to do something big. And so that's the way we're gonna start tonight, I'm going to share the message in just a minute. But maybe even if you're at home, or maybe you're there watching in whatever setting you have to be in, but especially those of you that are in this room, I want you just to join me for a moment of just, we're going to lift our hands, and we're going to put aside anything that stands between us and God, anything that can become a blockade of us receiving from the Lord, especially if you have wrath towards another person. Jesus clearly said, if you don't forgive, I can't forgive you. In fact, he said, if you'll get that stuff out of the way, mountains can be moved in your life. And so Lord, we just lift our hands to you, and we pray, Father, that there would be nothing that would stand between us in you. That God this is a vision that we have for these prayer gatherings that we would be a people father that would be able to just lay aside wrath and lay aside doubting and that God, we would lay aside anything that stands between us and you, hurts and habits and hangups, God, stuff that has hindered what everything that you wanted to do in our life, that God would just lift in our hands in surrender, but also lifting our hands that we can receive. And we know, God, that when we lift our hands in surrender, by faith we can receive, and that means God we get to lift our hands in victory. So God we just thank you for the three-fold process that's happening in our life right now. That we are surrendering, we are receiving, and God we are victorious. In the name of Jesus. God, our church, we surrender every aspect of our vision to you. We surrender this church totally and completely to you. God, every staff member, every serve team member, God, every ministry, every outreach initiative, every message, God, every attempt to reach children and students and even our worship approach to worship, God, we surrender it all to you. And we pray, Father, that we would receive the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, the fire of heaven, made manifest in earth and that Lord we would be a people who would be able to see you do something that coincidence will not take the credit for as we have victory in the name of Jesus, and this church said, amen and amen. Can you just give Him praise one more time? I like it, I like to praise him. Amen and amen.

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

I want to share with you this evening from the book of Isaiah, chapter number 11, verse number two. I'm going to just read one verse of Scripture, and this will kind of be an anchor for us tonight. And I really, I really believe, if you will hear the word tonight, it can have an impact on your prayer life moving forward, not only privately, but your public prayer life, your corporate prayer life. And I need to say this, and I should have said this already. Tonight, while I'm delivering the message, one of the things I would ask of those of you that are at home, whether you're on Facebook, YouTube, or on 3trees.online.church, that you would place your prayer request in those comment sections. And not only is that going to give everyone that's watching a chance to pray with you at the end, but it's also going to give us a chance here in this corporate gathering to take those prayer requests, and we're going to call every one of them that we possibly can out to the Lord and pray over those. So start doing that now, if you would. And those of you that are in this room, to 270-681-0651, 270-681-0651. You can text your prayer request, and we'll have those ready to pray over when we get to that point in the service tonight. We're going to be together for just a total of about an hour. And that includes the worship set that we've already done in this building, and so I will preach for about 20 minutes, maybe 25 teach you a little bit. Y'all ready. All right, enough preliminaries. Let's go. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

Isaiah chapter 11, verse number two, it says, “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him and speaking prophetically about Jesus. The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon Jesus and the spirit of wisdom, and understanding the spirit of counsel, and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” So I want you to think about this with me, Isaiah gives as profound of Messianic prophecies as anyone that's in the entire Old Testament. And in this particular passage of text, he is prophesying about the way in which the Holy Spirit is going to be made manifest through the life and ministry of Jesus. And so again, what he says the Spirit of the Lord is going to rest on him. And then spirit of wisdom, spirit of understanding, spirit of counsel, spirit of might, spirit of knowledge, spirit of the fear of the Lord. I want you to notice,it's referencing seven manifestations of the Spirit of God. I’m going to say it again, it's referencing seven manifestations of the Spirit of God. And if you are saved, and you have a relationship with Jesus, then what the Holy Spirit did in and through the life of Jesus can be made available to you and me. And so when we read Isaiah, chapter 11, verse two, if we don't have context for it, it's possible that we could miss something really important. So, in the Old Testament days, there was the tabernacle that functioned as a place and presented a process for worship. And it had an outer court, and then it had an inner court, and then it had a holy of holies. And it was a way in which that people maneuvered through sacrifices for their sin, sacrifices of former their worship, and many other things. But when they would come into this outer court, and then they would make their way into the inner court, right before they went into the Holy of Holies, which is where the high priest was allowed to go and have this incredible encounter with the manifest presence of God on earth. In this inner court, there were a couple of items of furniture. And each of those items of furniture had meaning. One of the things that was there was a table, and on the table, it had showbread that had meaning we don't have time to talk about all that tonight. But on the other side, there was a menorah, and that was a candlestick that had seven lamps within it. Some of you are probably familiar with a menorah. And the way that it worked is that all seven of those lamps were completely interconnected to where that there was necessarily no joints between them, but they just completely flowed. So if you filled one lamp, it would begin to fill all of the other lamps, does that make sense to you? And so it signified that there was unity there. And when the priest would go in, and he would approach this menorah, they had to make sure that they kept it full of oil, and they had to make sure that it stayed lit at all times. And that all said And lamps are lit. But while the priest was standing there at the menorah, and he is facilitating the oil, and he is facilitating the fire, what he would do is he would pray for the seven manifestations of the Spirit of God in his life, and in the life of the people of God. And that's what Isaiah is referencing in Isaiah 11:2, that that menorah stood for the Spirit of the Lord, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of might, the spirit of knowledge, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord. So these seven things. And they're praying, as they're noticing this fire. And so this fire is lit on these seven candlesticks, these seven lamps better stated. And what it says to us is that God, I believe, wants to light the fire of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

Do you guys remember in Acts chapter two, when the Holy Spirit was poured out that it says that fire sat down upon each one of them individually? Do you know that the Bible talks about the fact that God is a consuming fire. The Bible talks about the fact that the eyes of Jesus are like fire. Now we know that all of those associations with fire are linked to God's love for us, God's passion for us. But when you think about that menorah, and those seven lamps being lit, and them representing seven manifestations of the Spirit of God, you need to understand that God wants to light each of those fires in your life, so that you have the Spirit of the Lord so that you are lit with wisdom, you are lit with understanding, lit with counsel lit with might, lit with knowledge, lit with the fire of the Lord, look at somebody and tell them “get lit.” It would be a great thing to throw in the comment section right now, so all your friends that are observing can just know that get lit. And what I want to believe tonight, that we are going to be able to experience the Holy Spirit in such a way that as individuals, we're going to see those lamps of God's Spirit lit in our life. But at the same time that we as a church are going to see those lamps of the Holy Spirit lit in our church. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

So, when you think about a prayer time, one of the things that I so often hear people say is they're like, well, I just don't feel like I know what to pray. And I don't feel like I know how to pray. And there are so many things that you can pick out in Scripture that you can just pray through. And it becomes like a set of laps or tracks that you can run on while you're praying. You ever watched a runner run around a track and how they make laps around that track? And I'm not talking about just praying for the sake of vain repetition. But I'm talking about bringing order to your prayer life, bringing clarity to your prayer life, bringing purpose and process to your prayer life. And this is a verse, Isaiah chapter 11, verse two, that I've memorized. I often pray this verse in my prayer time. And I start, you know, just praying that God would light the lamp of understanding, that he would light the lamp of the fear of the Lord, that he would light the lamp of counsel, etc, etc. And when you think about these seven manifestations of the Holy Spirit in your life, this first one is the Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit of the Lord. Is anybody familiar with a New Testament verse that says this, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is  liberty and freedom.” Some translations say liberty, other translations say freedom. So let's choose the word freedom, okay. So where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. So you want the Spirit of the Lord in your life. Because when the Spirit of the Lord comes into your life, there is freedom. And so I think about how that if I'm going to experience the spirit of the Lord, where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. I'm going to have to be intentional about having intimacy with the Holy Spirit. It means I'm probably going to have some times where I go into a private place, and I shut the door behind me, and I pray in secret with nobody watching, and I'm not trying to perform for anybody, and I'm not trying to show off for anybody. I'm just enjoying the presence of the Lord and the Holy Spirit. That might be in your garage, that might be in your backyard, that might be on your daily drive. But you get to a place where that you can just cultivate intimacy with the Holy Spirit. Intimacy. In-to-me-you-see. Just let the Holy Spirit see into you. All that stuff that you would hide from everybody else, those thoughts you don't want anybody else to know that you got. You just engage in an intimate way with the Holy Spirit. And it's a time of confession, it's times of admission, it's times of just saying, God, I need some freedom from this offense, I need some freedom from this bitterness, I need some freedom from this lust, I need some freedom from this greed. Am I making sense to anybody? And so it's just a way of praying that God, I want to be intimate with you, I want to have a personal relationship with you. And God, I want you to light the lamp of freedom in my life, that I would be able to experience intimacy with you. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

Here's the next one, the spirit of wisdom. The spirit of wisdom. You ever thought about the spirit of wisdom? You ever thought about the fact that wisdom can be a manifestation of the Holy Spirit in your life? You realize the Bible says that if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally. Here's what I've learned. When you invite God to light the lamp of wisdom in your heart in your life, you will begin to experience order. And that's important because God likes things that are decent and in order, but do you understand that it takes wisdom to put things in order. 

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Pastor Eric Gilbert

I grew up on the farm, and we used to haul in bales of hay. And I can tell you, there are some people who can stack hay, and there are some people who can't stack hay. But when you grow up in Creelsboro and you're moving wagon loads of hay, it becomes important that somebody knows what they're doing or you're gonna pick it up three or four times, not just once. Because you're going through the creek bank, and you're going through the potholes and you're trying to make it through the barn lot. And I can, I can tell you that there are some men that are wiser than others when it comes to bringing order to the harvest. I can tell you, if you're ever in Creelsboro, and you're picking up bales of hay, you want the Don on the wagon. You want him to stack your hay. See, we're trying to reap a harvest. And even as we try to reap a harvest, it's gonna get messy sometimes, because I'm gonna tell you something, I refuse to pastor a museum, this place is an emergency room, and it will forever be an emergency room. And that means sometimes it's going to get messy. And we're going to need the wisdom of God to have order. But here's what you need to know if confusion and chaos abound, there is a lack of wisdom somewhere. And so God's not the author of confusion. And so what you may need to do in your life is if you're surrounded by confusion, and you're surrounded by chaos, that is not a manifestation of the Spirit of God. It may mean that you need to pray specifically, God light the lamp of wisdom in my life so that I can bring order to this chaos. The next thing you see in Isaiah 11:2 is the spirit of understanding. When you think about having understanding, it's really just about having clarity. In many ways, it goes hand in hand with being able to bring order. But when you have clarity, hard decisions become easy. So it's not just that you're praying to have the wisdom to bring order, but you're also praying that God would give you supernatural understanding, so that you can bring clarity, you can bring that decision, even to the places where it's hard to make the decision. Clarity is undervalued in the life of most people. You better pray for God to light the lamp of understanding. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

Let me show you another one, the spirit of counsel. The spirit of counsel. So if we're going to pray, God, light the lamp of counsel in my life, what that means is that you're inviting God to help you to make good decisions. You notice how it all kind of starts to tie together, that there's this element of okay, I want God to help me to bring order. And I want to be able to have the clarity to bring that order, even in the hard places, and that what would have been difficult might actually now be easy, because God has lit the lamp of understanding but also when I'm looking back over my life, and I'm seeing the decisions, there's good decisions because God has lit the lamp of counsel. And there's wisdom in a multitude of counselors, but you will never have a better teacher than the Holy Spirit. And Jesus said it is to your advantage that he go back to heaven, so the Holy Spirit can come watch and be a helper to you, be a comforter to you and be a teacher to you. You'll never have a better counselor than the Holy Spirit. I was reading this passage of text, it talks about the fact that the Gibeonites in the Old Testament, they made a horrible decision, and it ultimately cost their people for generations to come. They were never the same after this one decision that they made. It wasn't a good decision. It was a bad decision. And the Bible has this to say about that people. It says they did not ask counsel from the Lord. They did not ask counsel from the Lord, I believe anytime you're asked a question, you probably should seek counsel, that you would invite the Lord to light the lamp of counsel. And that you would be able to not only make a good decision, but maybe even help other people with a good decision. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

I had a guy say this to me one time, and I wrote it down in my journal that I referenced today, “One day can separate decision from disaster.” One day can separate decision from disaster. So sometimes when you got a big decision in front of you, and people are really putting pressure on you to make a really hard call, and you just don't feel like you've got that clarity that you need yet, what you're going to need to do probably is create a little space for you to get some counsel from the Lord. Some counsel from the Lord. I've shared this with you guys before, but in 2013, I've always said this, and I stand by it to this day, I really do believe it would take the audible voice of God to move me and Mandy out of South Central Kentucky. Like we just love what we do. We got blood, sweat, and tears. We planted this church, it's just where we want to be for the rest of our lives. But in 2013, I got a phone call from someone and they offered me my dream job. And like when I went into ministry, if you to ask me like, what if you want to do anything in the world, what would it be, I would have drawn you a picture of that job that was offered to me in 2013. And, I remember like calling some people that that meant a lot to me. And I said, hey, here's what's going to happen. I feel like you know, probably, I'm going to accept this job and Mandy and I are going to be putting some things in motion for this next step to take place, and one of my overseers in my life, he said, Eric, are you going to go pray? Well, that's a wonderful idea. Why didn't I think of that? And so we went to a mountain to pray, my wife and I, and we decided going up the hill, we're gonna stay for three days. And we were going up the hill fully thinking that major transition was coming to our life. But after the third day of being in that cabin, we went back into the living room, and we just sat down, we looked at each other and I'm like, what are you hearing the Lord say, and she’s like, what are you hearing the Lord saying? We got to go home. That's exactly what he's telling me, we got to go home. And I remember coming down off that mountain, and like an infusion of vision, and an infusion of clarity for what the future of our church was supposed to look like, as I was casting vision and trying to lead the best that I could. And I've thought back so many times of like, my Lord, what about it just went with what sounded good. What about it just went with all these things that look like what's going to be a promotion, and further success, and significance, and manmade legacy. But what if you just get counsel from the Lord and you realize that everything that glitters isn't gold, and that there's a lot of things that God has for you that's never gonna make sense to man. And sometimes you gotta get counsel from the Lord. One day can separate decision from disaster, one day.  Look at somebody and tell them “get counsel.” 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

Let me give you another one. And so the next one is, might, the spirit of might. When you invite God to light the lamp of might in your life, I believe with it you get authority. And I think also you get some divine energy. Just a might, a power, it's not by your might, it's not by your power, but it's by His Spirit. And so when you stand, there's a kingdom authority on your life, that what you bind on earth is bound in heaven, and what you loose on earth is loosed in heaven because you're operating not in your own might or in your own power, but you are operating in the spirit of the Most Holy One by and through the name of Jesus Christ, and every knee must bow, every tongue must confess, and every demon must flee because you're a part of the church and the gates of hell cannot prevail against you. Invite God to light the lamp of might of your life, because if the church could use anything right now, it is an infusion of boldness, might, authority. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

The next spirit it talks about is the spirit of knowledge. And I just think what that brings to your life is revelation. You know, Stuff You shouldn’t Know. You know stuff, there's no other way you would know it, then if God told it to you. It's where God gives you knowledge beyond your learning. One way you could look at it is this, when God lights the lamp of knowledge in your life, and begins to release revelation, you will be able to manage areas that you have no training in. And it's not that you don't try to get training, it's not that you don't try to educate yourself, it's not that you don't do what you need to do in the physical aspect of it, or the higher learning aspect of it, but it's that you're also inviting God to go beyond the process, to invite to light the lamp of knowledge that you would walk in Revelation before the Lord. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

I'll give you one final one, maybe the most important of all, in fact, I would say that it is the fear of the Lord. Have you ever prayed and invited God to light the lamp of the fear of the Lord in your life? To where that you have legit, reverential all for God. And if God lights the lamp of the fear of the Lord, yes, you're going to have reverential all. In fact, it was a sign and a testament in the book of Acts chapter two, that God was actually moving among them. But I think what it also does is it births integrity in your life. The reason a lot of people don't really live right, and the reason that so many people do things that allow Jesus' name to be mocked, and the reason so many people seem to not have a moral compass, and etc, etc, I believe, is because we have lost the fear of the Lord. Like we want God to heal us, we want God to save us. We want God to fix our marriage. We want God to do something for our kids we want, we all want and those are great things to want, right? But do you realize that the beginning of all wisdom and the beginning of all knowledge is actually the fear of the Lord? And that at some point, the reason we make some dumb decisions is because we don't have reverential all for God. And our integrity fails. We're not innocent, we're not pure, even in the little things, because we don't have that reverence for the fact that no one else may be watching, but God is watching. And you begin to live in such a way that you don't want anything to hurt your witness. You have a reverence for the love, he's given you. Think about that. You have a reverence for the love he's given; you can love because he first loved you, right? But the way he loved was through a cruel, rugged cross, as he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. And I think sometimes we just trample that blood under our feet with a lack of appreciation of what sin really cost. And when you begin to have a reverence for how much he really loved you, it'll straighten you up. Because you realize that there's nothing you can do to make even that little sin go away. It's got to go to the blood and be baptized. It's the only eraser for even the smallest of sin is the blood of Jesus, and just a reverential all for the cross, the throne, and the willingness to say, God, release in me, light a fire that just burns with integrity, burns with integrity. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

So, those are seven things that helped my prayer life. And somewhere along the way, a mentor poured them into my life. And I share them with you guys tonight, because I believe that some of you are you're craving, there's something that you're craving, like I want more fire of God in my life. I want the light of God's fire to burn brighter. And whether you're in church online, or you're in this room tonight, I just think maybe this is a great way for us to just kind of go after the Lord and seek God and invite freedom, wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and the fear of the Lord to be lit in us as individuals and in our church as a whole. Can we agree for that tonight? Come on, bless the Lord tonight. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to take out two elements for communion. The only reason we can pray is because Jesus has allowed us that opportunity. Not only did Jesus’ sacrifice give us the ability to escape hell and gain heaven, but it gives us the ability to be able to talk to the Heavenly Father. And we can come to the Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus, and petition him and ask him to do the things in our life that need to be done. The reason we can invite the lighting of these seven manifestations of the Spirit of God is because this first worked in Jesus, first rested on Jesus. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

So, Jesus, when he was sitting with his disciples that the Last Supper, he took the bread, and the Bible says he blessed it, and then the Bible says he broke it, and he gave it. And I often say this as we're talking about the bread, that it was the stripes of Jesus that were on his body. And the Bible says that by the stripes, we are healed. And undoubtedly, there's places in all of us where we need to be healed. Maybe it's emotional, maybe it's physical, maybe it's spiritual, but we need to be healed. And so I’m going to ask you tonight as you just believe God, even there at home, like something you're believing in God to heal. Put your faith towards that right now. Father, release healing, physically, spiritually, emotionally. God, I pray for my Aunt Treva tonight, God, just writhing in pain and just in desperate need of the healing that only your spirit can bring. I ask you Lord to touch her life right now. God, I ask you to touch my body. I ask you to heal me from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. And I join so many others in that same prayer. And God if there's any place in me where I'm emotionally wounded and jagged edges on my heart, God, would you bind it up. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father. I’m going to ask you to take and eat of the bread. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

The cup represents the blood of Jesus, shed for the remission of sins. And you know, as we're preaching and teaching and talking about this stuff tonight, like you might be feeling some shame over man I've got confusion. I've got chaos. I've made bad decisions. I don't have revelation, my integrity is failing. Like that's a very real possibility for some of us. Aren't you glad to know that the blood of Jesus dealt with our shame. And so we don't have to be hindered by condemnation that the enemy tells us we can't ask God for these things. It's because of the blood that we get to ask that we get to experience these things. And so just take a moment and confess any place in your life where you feel less than, any place in your life where you're dealing with sin, a hurt, a habit, hang up, a place where you're wrestling with condemnation, just invite the Lord to put his blood on it right now. Lord, I just thank you in the name of Jesus, that Lord because of your blood, because of your blood, we can be healed, we can be saved. I’m going to ask you tonight to just take and drink the cup. Amen and amen. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

For those of you that are on search online, here's what I want you to do. I want you to put your prayer request in YouTube, Facebook, or the online churches comment sections and just let us know we will pray over those. And I'm gonna ask you now to find a place there, wherever you're at. If it's at all possible, turn on some worship music that really stirs your spirit, allows you to feel the presence of God, and just get alone with the Lord. Or maybe you've got your family there, just gather around that coffee table and go through those comments and start praying over other people, pray over Isaiah, chapter 11, verse two. Let's believe God together tonight. God bless you. Thank you so much for being with us this evening. I love you guys.