How To Cultivate The Spirit’s Companionship
Can two walk together, except they are agreed?
-Amos 3:3
Now this is what is known as a rhetorical question; it is equivalent to a positive declaration that two cannot walk together unless they are agreed upon, and for us to walk together they must be in some sense old.
They also have to agree that they want to walk together, and they have to agree that it is to their advantage to travel together. I think you will see that it all adds up to this: For two to talk together voluntarily they must be, in some sense, one.
Amos 3:3 Commentary On Walking Together With God
Read and Learn More Holy Spirit
Sometimes we preachers preach in the third person, and you can develop a habit of thinking in the third person. we don’t talk about “Lls”; we talk about “they.” I don’t like that. I think we ought to ger personal about this.
Are You Ready For This?
There are Some of you are not ready for this sermon at all. You are trying to face both ways at once. You are trying to take some of this world and to get some of that world over yonder.
You are a Christian, but I am talking about an advance upon the first early stages of salvation and the cultivation of the presence of the Holy Ghost, so that He may illuminate and bless and lift and purify and direct your life.
You are not ready for this, because you haven’t given up all that you might have the All. You want some, but you don’t want all; that is the reason you are not ready.
You who have not given up the world will not be able to understand what I am talking about. You want Christianity for its insurance value.
You want just what a man wants when he takes out a policy on his life, or his car, or his house. You don’t want modernism, because it hasn’t any insurance value.
You are willing to support this proposition financially. He would be a Poor man who would want insurance and not be willing to pay for it.
If Jesus Christ died for you on the cross you are very happy about that because it means you won’t be brought into judgment, but have passed from death into life.
Meaning Of Amos 3:3 Explained – The Spirit’s Companionship
You are willing to live reasonably well because that is the premium you are paying for the guarantee that God will bless you while you live and take you home to heaven when you die!
You may not be rash because your conception of religion is social and not spiritual. There are people like that. They have wandered down the religion of the New Testament until it has no strength in it. They have introduced the water of their own opinion into it until it has no taste left.
They are socially minded. This is as far as it goes with them. People like that they may be saved. I am not prepared to say that they are not saved, but I am prepared to say that they are not ready for what I am talking about.
The gospel of Christ” is essentially spiritual, and Christian truth working upon human souls by the Holy Ghost makes Christian men and women spiritual.
I don’t want to say this, but I think that some of you may not be ready for this message because you are more influenced by the world than you are by the New Testament.
Amos 3:3 Bible Study Guide
I am perfectly certain that I could take up fifteen boxcar loads of fundamentalist Christians this hour in the city of Chicago who are more influenced in their whole outlook by Hollywood than they are by the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am positive that much that passes for the gospel in our day is very little more than a very mild case of orthodox religion grafted onto a heart that is sold out to the world in its pleasures tastes and ambitions.
The kind of teaching that I have been giving has disturbed some people. I am not going to apologize at all, because, necessarily I have been traveling along thinking.g I am all right and there comes a man of God who tells me that there is yet much land to be possessed, it will disturb me.
That is the preliminary winge that comes to the soul that wants to know God. whenever the word of God hits uS, it disturbs us. So don’t be disturbed by the disturbance. Remember that it is quite normal.
God has to jar us loose. But some are prepared. They are those who have made the grand, sweet committal.
They have seen heaven and earth recede; the things of this world have become less and less active, and the things of heaven have begun to pull and pull as the moon pulls at the sea, and they are prepared now. So I am going to give you these few little pointers to help you into a better life.
The Holy Spirit Is A Living Person
The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity. He is Himself God, and as a Person, He can be cultivated; He can be wooed and cultivated the same as any person can be. People grow on us, and the Holy Spirit, being a Person, can grow on us.
Biblical Perspective On Amos 3:3 And Spiritual Fellowship
Be Engrossed With Jesus Christ
Be engrossed with and honor Jesus Christ. John said: “But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39).
I ask you to note that the Spirit was given when Jesus was glorified. Now that is a principle. Remember that He came and spread Himself out as a flood upon the people because Jesus was glorified.
He established a principle, and He never never flooded the life of any man except the man in whom Jesus is glorified.
Therefore, if you dedicate yourself to the glory of Jesus, the Holy Ghost will become the aggressor and will seek to know you and raise you and illumine you and fill you and bless you. Honoring Jesus Christ is doing the things that Jesus told you to do, trusting Him as your Al1, following Him as your Shepherd, and obeying Him fully.
Let us cultivate the Holy Ghost by honoring the Lord Jesus. As we honor Jesus, the Spirit of God becomes glad within us.
He ceases to hold back, He relaxes and becomes intimate and communes and imparts Himself, and the sun comes up and heaven comes near as Jesus Christ becomes our all in all.
To glorify Jesus is the business of the Church, and to glorify Jesus is the work of the Holy Ghost. I can walk with Him when I am doing the same things He is doing, go the same way He is going, and travel at the same speed He is traveling.
I must be engrossed with Jesus Christ. I must honor Him. “If any man serves me, he will my Father honor” (John 12:25). So let’s honor the Lord Jesus. Nor only theologically, but let’s honor Him personally.
Walk In Righteousness
Let’s walk in righteousness. The grace of God that bringeth salvation also teaches the heart that we should deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world.
There you have the three dimensions of life. Soberly-that is me. Righteously is my fellow man. Godly-that is God. Let us not make the mistake of thinking we can be spiritual and not be good.
How To Apply Amos 3:3 To Cultivate The Spirit’s Presence
Let’s not make the mistake of thinking we can walk with the Holy Ghost and go wrong or dirty or an unrighteous way, for how can two walk together unless they are agreed? He is the Hob Spirit, and if I walk in an unholy waft how can I fellowship with Him?
Make Your Thoughts A Clean Sanctuary
To God, our thoughts are things. Our thoughts are the decorations inside the sanctuary where we live. If our thoughts are purified by the blood of Christ, we are living in a clean room no matter if we are wearing overalls covered with grease.
Your thoughts pretty much decide the mood and weather and climate -inside your heart, and God considers your thoughts as part of You.
Thoughts of peace, thoughts of pity, thoughts of charity, thoughts of God, thoughts of the Son of These are pure things, good things, and high things. Therefore, if you would cultivate the Spirit’s acquaintance, you must get hold of your.
Thoughts and not allow your mind to be a wilderness in which every kind of unclean beast roams and the bird flies. You must have a clean heart.
Seek to Know Him in the Word It is in the Word we find the Holy Spirit. Don’t read too many other things. Some of you will say, “Look who’s talking!”
Well, go ahead and say it, I don’t mind; but I am reading fewer and fewer things as I get older, not because I am losing interest in this great big old suffering world, but because I am gaining interest in that other world above.
So I say, don’t try to know everything. You can’t. Find Him in the word, for the Holy Ghost wrote this Book. He inspired it, and He will be revealed in its pages.
What is the word when we come to the Bible? It is meditation. We are to come to the Bible and meditate. That is what the old saints did. They meditated. They laid the Bible on their old-fashioned handmade chair, got down on the old, scrubbed board floor, and meditated on the word.
As they meditated,” faith mounted. The Spirit and faith illuminated. They had nothing but a Bible with fine print and narrow margins and poor paper, but they knew their Bible better than some of us with all our help. Let’s practice the art of Bible meditation.
How To Apply Amos 3:3 To Cultivate The Spirit’s Presence
Now please don’t grab that phrase book and go out and form a club. Don’t do it Just meditate. That is what we need. They are organized by death already.
Let’s just be plain Christians. Let’s open the Bible, spread it out on the chair, and meditate on it. It will open itself to us, and the Spirit of God will come and brood over it. So be a meditator.
I challenge you: Try it for a month and see how it works. Put away questions and answers and fill in of blank lines about Noah. Put all that cheap trash away and take a Bible, open it, get on your knees, and say, “Father, here I am.
Begin to teach me.” He will begin to teach You, and He will teach you about Himself and Jesus and God and the Word and life and death and heaven and hell, and His Presence.
Cultivate The Art Of Recognizing The Presence Of The Spirit
I have just one more point: Cultivate the art of recognizing the presence of the Spirit everywhere. Get acquainted with the Holy Ghost and then begin to cultivate His presence.
When you wake in the morning, in place of burying your head behind the Tribune, couldn’t you get, just a few thoughts of God while you eat your grapefruit? Remember, cultivating the Holy Ghost’s acquaintance is a job. It is something you do, and yet it is so easy and delightful.
It is like cultivating your baby’s acquaintance. You know when you first look at the little wrinkled fellow, yelling, all mouth, you don’t know him. He is a little stranger to you. Then you begin to cultivate him, and he smiles. It isn’t a smile at all.
He has colic You think it is a smile, and it is such a delight. Pretty soon he wiggles an arm, and you think he is waving to you. Then he gurgles and you think he said “Mama.” You get acquainted!
Is this for ministers? Is it for housewives? Housewives and clerks and milkmen and students. If you will thus see it and thus believe it and thus surrender to it, there won’t be a secular store on the pavement.
There won’t be a common, profane deed that you will ever do. The most menial task can become a priestly ministration when the Holy Ghost takes over and Christ becomes your all in all.