The Holy Spirit And Healing Anointing

Think back to how you have developed any of your dear friendships. While each situation is slightly different, there are a couple of common elements. First, you spend time together. That may be time in some club or organization or school or work environment, but you spend time together and you get to know each other over time. Second, you talk to each other. You learn about this person, what do they like, what are their interests, what do they dislike, what causes them pleasure, etc. Third, you each invest something into the other, you do things together that you both like, you also go out of your way to do something special for your friend that blesses him or her. And relationship builds gradually over time. You may or may not have an instant bond with this person when you first meet, but no matter how you start, your friendship grows and deepens over time.

Building a relationship with God is not very much different than building a relationship with another person -- except (of course) that it will never be an equal peer relationship. God will always be the senior member of the partnership, the one Who is in charge and Who calls the shots. One of the prerequisites to building any sort of friendship with God is a commitment to obey Him because we love Him. Jesus made that clear in John 14:15, when He said, "If you love Me, you will obey what I command." The interesting thing about that verse is that He immediately followed it with a promise of the Holy Spirit: And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever-- the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16-17a). So we see that right from the start, Jesus tied a relationship with the Holy Spirit to loving and obeying God.

There is no flexibility on this point. It cannot be an equal relationship. You cannot pick and choose which of His commands you will obey and which of them you will ignore. You must make a commitment to Him that you will obey Him and cooperate with Him when He makes His will known to you.

Moses was someone who God considered a close personal friend. Yet, Moses' relationship with God started out rocky. God commissioned him by sending an angel to appear as a burning bush that was not consumed. Moses tried to refuse the commission. He offered excuses and then finally told God flat out that he did not want the job. God got frustrated and angry with him (Ex 4:8-14). Nonetheless, Moses obeyed God and relocated his family to Egypt. But he did not fully obey God, because he did not circumcise his son. So we see a grudging or partial obedience here. And God was not so thrilled about this. He sent an angel that was about to kill Moses for disobedience when his wife, Zipporah, circumcised his son and the angel spared his life. That story is recorded in Ex 4:24-27. (It is my opinion that the angel never really intended to kill Moses, but was sent to scare him into complete obedience.) Either way, was kind of a rocky start, wasn't it?

Yet there was a change in Moses as he served God. The change started by Moses watching God do some incredible things while he served Him. For instance, God lead them safely out of Egypt, parted the Red Sea, destroyed the army that was chasing them, etc. So they began working together and Moses gained a respect for God, and an understanding of His faithfulness. Then in Ex 24, God initiated a covenant with His people, speaking and appearing to all of them. But they were frightened and they asked God to just speak to Moses and let Moses tell them what God said. So God called Moses up to the mountain and met with him for 40 days, giving him the commandments. (We see this in Exodus 24.)

In other words, Moses started out as only a partially committed servant and as he worked with God over time, relationship began to build. Moses began to experience God's faithfulness and His power. And that had a transforming effect on Him. Maybe you had a similar experience in your walk with God. Maybe when you first started out, you did not really want to obey God in all areas. Maybe you had some struggles and had some areas of your life that you wanted God to keep His hands off of. And maybe He put you into the "refiner's fire" to work on those issues. In other words, maybe He used hardship and adversity to mold your character in certain areas. But God began to refine your character. He also began to move in your life and circumstances and show you that He is faithful and He is all powerful. That is kind of God taking the first step in initiating the friendship relationship that He wants to have with you.

There came a time when Moses began to really build relationship with God. He had started out as a servant and ended up becoming very good at serving God. But there needs to be a transition from servant to friend. There needs to be a time when God says to you the same thing Jesus said to His disciples in John 15:14-15, "You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from My Father I have made known to you."

There was a time where Moses began seeking God and spending time with Him of his initiative, and he developed that friendship with God, that knowing Him. We see this in Exodus 33, where Moses pitched a "tent of meeting." This was a place where anyone could go to seek God. It was not exclusive, it was open to any of the children of Israel. It was sort of a place where God "hung out." And Moses began going there to spend time with God and seek Him. Ex 33:7-11 records

Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the "tent of meeting." Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp.

And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses. Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshipped, each at the entrance to his tent.

The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.

Even though Moses had all of those amazing experiences with God as His servant, he had to spend time in prayer and seeking God to actually develop the deep and intimate friendship with God.

In a similar vein, if you want to develop friendship with the Holy Spirit, you are going to need to spend some quality time with Him. I am not talking about chatting with Him as you do the dishes or drive to work. I am talking about dedicated quality time that is set aside explicitly for Him. You need to demonstrate to Him that He is a high priority to you by giving Him some of your high priority time.

You can invite Him into your activities. You can ask Him to give you special assignments from God to do with Him. You can explicitly tell Him that you want to develop a friendship with Him and invite Him to show you how you would go about doing that. You can begin telling Him some of your desires and dreams and ask Him what it would take for Him to be willing to do that with you. For example, you might tell Him something like, "Holy Spirit, I really desire to pray for the sick in Your dynamite, explosive power. What would it take for You to be willing to do this with me? What changes do You want from me? How can I better cooperate with You in this?" Or you might tell Him something like, "Holy Spirit, I want to learn to live in Your presence on a regular basis, to be a carrier of Your glory, to see You touch other lives through me. How can I develop the type of relationship with You where you might be willing to do that in my life?" Or maybe "Holy Spirit, I want to be highly effective in evangelism and praying for the sick. I want to learn to see what the Father is doing, so I might do it with Him in Your power and authority. Will You please teach me how to get to that place?"

Tell the Holy Spirit that you would like to enter into a covenant with Him where He transforms you and makes you into someone who He enjoys living in and working with. And commit to do your best to cooperate with Him in the process. Offer Him control of whatever He wants in your life -- and really mean it -- He can tell if you are not sincere. Then work hard to submit that area of your life to Him.

And in addition to all of that, you will need to set aside some quality relationship time with Him. Yours might look different than mine, but for me it was taking 1/2 an hour out of the middle of my day. I put on worship music and I get still and quiet before Him and I pray directly to the Holy Spirit. At times, He starts talking to me before I have a chance to sit down. Other times He makes me wait on Him for a while before He starts talking to me. When that happens, I invite Him to lead the time. If my mind starts to wander, I ask Him if He is taking me there or if I am wandering. If He is taking me there, then I invite Him more intentionally into that area. If my mind is wandering, then I ask Him to help me focus better on Him. Let me give you an example.

I lead the prophetic teams at church and we had our first prophetic service, where people come for prophetic words and the teams take turns selecting people from the congregation and prophesying to them. That day, I had my Holy Spirit time about 1 PM. As I was waiting on Him, suddenly my mind became filled with ideas for the drop-in prophetic service - have a handout for people on judging prophecy, have something on an overhead projector giving them an idea of what to expect and how the service would go, get someone to help with labeling the prophecy tapes and putting them out on a table for people to pick up, etc. At first I thought my mind was wandering and that I was being distracted in my dedicated time with the Holy Spirit. So I apologized to Him for being distracted, and then I invited Him to focus my attention and I tried to concentrate on Him. Soon my mind was back on logistical details for the prophetic service.

So I asked the Holy Spirit if He was taking me there. He said, "Yes, I am. This service is very important to Me, so I want to give you some directions for it." So we spent most of our time discussing the upcoming service. At first we went over logistic details, and then I began to ask Him to put a strong prophetic anointing on the team members. Then He showed me that six teams was too many, we should only have five teams, or it will take too long to cycle through the teams and the members won't get enough chances to prophecy. As it turned out, there were 11 people scheduled to prophecy that night -- five teams of two and then me. So the Holy Spirit asked me if I would be willing to "sit out" prophesying and simply facilitate the meeting. I did not like the idea -- after all, I am the strongest prophet on the team and I really love to prophesy. But God said, "Yes, but tonight is about building your team, and if you step down and don't prophecy I will take the anointing that is on you and put it on them." It became clear what the Holy Spirit was asking me to do, so I agreed to it. As it turns out, the meeting went very well, and many of the team members prophesied at a higher level of detail and clarity than they normally do.

That day, He wanted to use our dedicated time together to give me directions for the meeting. Other times, He lets me ask Him questions. I have asked Him how He feels about things, what He likes or dislikes about certain things, etc. At times He comes on me so strongly that it is more of a power encounter and I can feel His nearness and His power surging through me. Other times He is very quiet and I rest in Him and listen to worship music with Him and tell Him how special He is to me and how much I want to move into a deeper friendship with Him.

Again, the way the Holy Spirit interacts with you in your dedicated time might look different from how He operates with me. But you do need to set apart some quality time for Him on a daily basis. You need to approach Him on a daily basis in order to build relationship with Him. Commit to obey Him. Let Him know that you very much desire to develop a close and intimate friendship with Him. Ask Him to teach you how to do that, and He will!