I want to share something with you that will help you to continue strong in your walk with God as you face difficult Seasons many Believers aren't aware that the Holy Spirit has a hiding nature now when I say that he has a hiding nature I do not mean that he abandons you for Jesus said I will give you another and he will never leave you the Holy Spirit doesn't abandon you the Holy Spirit doesn't reject you many Believers imagine that if they make a mistake that the Holy Spirit flees at the first sign of that mistake well you have to ask yourself if you believe that why would God take from you your only power to be holy as a punishment for you not being holy that is a performance-based legalistic perspective on the holy spirit that is to think of him in terms of religion and law and we imagine that our performance determines his presence when it doesn't your performance does not determine his presence on your life but these truths that I want to give you concerning the Holy Spirit spirit and his hiding nature can help you to be established even against the most severe trials in your life the Holy Spirit does not abandon you he does not reject you he does not leave you when you make a mistake the Holy Spirit abides Faithfully with you he's the indwelling presence of God the deposit on your life marking you forever indicating that you belong to God the Holy Spirit abides and if we understand the hiding nature of the Holy Spirit again not that he abandons us but if we can understand the hiding nature of the Holy Spirit then we can have a better grasp on what God is doing in certain seasons of Our Lives because like it or not there are seasons when you feel like God Is A Million Miles Away there are seasons when you feel like not nothing is working in your favor there are seasons when you feel like even the hand of God is against you as if God has just left you to the attacks of the enemy Luke 3: 20 and 21 say one day when the crowds were being baptized Jesus himself was baptized as he was praying the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit in bodily form descended on him like a dove and a voice from Heaven said you are my dearly loved Son and you bring me great joy the presence of the holy spirit in scripture is often symbolized in the form of a dove symbolized that doesn't mean the holy spirit is a dove it just means that's one of the symbols of his presence in the symbolism of who the holy spirit is we find that one of his traits is that hiding nature now what do I mean by that hiding nature again I emphasize I am not saying that he leaves you and if anybody tells you that's what I said they didn't hear the full message the Holy Spirit abides in you but that hiding nature is to draw you closer the more you mature in faith the closer you come to Jesus the less you rely on experience the less you rely on feelings the less you rely on Miracles and the more you rely on your trust in his word see I think much of the church has it backwards we imagine that if I'm constantly having these encounters and there's nothing wrong with having these encounters but far too many Believers are reliant to upon the emotion of those encounters and they panic when they can't F God in their emotions they lose their whole sense of identity maybe God is trying to teach you what it is to truly have faith yes it's good to have encounters with God we sense his presence here in these meetings and it's a wonderful thing I look forward to it I love when I sense the presence of God on my life I I love when I sense the physical power on my physical being I love when I see Miracles I love when I can feel him in my emotions when my when my being is responding to him and there's nothing wrong with feeling him in your emotions people often criticize moves of God saying well you're just being emotional well did not God create the emotions is there any part of our being that wasn't created to respond to God we don't pursue emotional experience but emotional experience sometimes is the result of having a true encounter with God people often ask do you want a true encounter with God or do you just want emotion but that assumes that encounters with God have no emotion how can you stand in the presence of God be aware that he's near sense his goodness and his love and not be moved but still to rely upon that as the test as the measure against which you hold your life and encounters with God the the the test the measure against which you hold your Spiritual Development if I'm not feeling feeling feeling I must be doing something wrong my friend you don't understand the hiding nature of the Holy Spirit I'll show you why he hides number one when the Holy Spirit hides and when I say he hides I mean that he's withdrawing the experience in terms of our emotions our physical being and that that Human Experience in the spirit we have to learn to encounter him 24/7 but we'll never be able to do that if we're relying upon the outer shells of Who We Are to indicate to us what's happening in our spirit so number one when the Holy Spirit seems to be hiding from you number one he's testing you granted there are times when you're not going to be able to sense his presence because of sin and because of compromise but that isn't always the case so you have to do self-evaluation you have to examine your heart before God you have to say like the psalmist wrote search sech me oh God be vulnerable before him ask him to reveal to you any sin or compromise and if you find none then stop fretting about it because then you fall into the Trap of legalism torment yourself saying there must be something I've done wrong somewhere along the lines well thank God our repentance doesn't necessarily Rely Upon Our memory because if we had to remember every sin and repent of every sin verbally then we would be in trouble because we've probably done so many things wrong we can't remember everything we've done but instead of panicking we realize okay if there's no sin there's no compromise something is happening here I must know what that is 2 Chronicles 32:31 listen to what it says here watch this now 2 Chronicles 32:31 however when ambassadors arrived from Babylon to ask about the remarkable events that had taken place in the land watch this now God withdrew from Hezekiah in order to test him and to see what was really in his heart there's a great testing that comes in those Seasons great crushing is what produces great anointing there will be seasons in your life or you will feel as though everyone around you has abandoned you I'm not encouraging isolation we as Believers are to live in Fellowship but there are some Seasons when no matter how close others even try to be to you there's just this sense of Disconnect where you feel no one really knows you no one really understands you where others criticize your love for God calling you a fanatic saying you've lost your mind saying you're taking it too far and they criticize it because they don't understand it and then the enemy lies tempts and tries to torment he speaks things and we with the word of God and the shield of Faith defeat those lies but still there's this sense of the question God where are you if you fail a test you have to take it again I remember there was a season in our ministry where I was so stressed about one of the projects that we were doing and I said to the Lord and this I am not proud of I'm very ashamed to say this but I'm being vulnerable so you can can learn from my mistakes and things just weren't happening the way I wanted to see them happen very ambitious I have a lot of Drive I want I'm a perfectionist in some ways and I want to try to do my absolute best and I set these goals and expectations on myself put those on myself and that can be torture many of you who are like that know what that's like the Holy Spirit has had to help me say why are you putting standards on yourself that I didn't that's what Pharisees do they raise standards God didn't not and so I remember I came to this place and I said to the Lord again foolishly speaking I said Lord if if if you don't come through for this I I'm just going to have to quit the ministry and you know what the Holy Spirit spoke to me he said then quit and I'll raise somebody else I said no no no no no no no no no no no no we're we're good we're good well this project took me like 3 years to do I kid you not this one project we were trying to do this was this was probably I was maybe I want to say 17 18 years old we're we're just starting this thing out and by comparison to what we're doing now this this was nothing but at that time it was just very difficult and I'm pushing and pushing and pushing and I remember a whole year goes by and I find myself frustrated again and and in my foolishness I repeated what I had said and I don't know if this was verbatim with the Holy Spirit spoke word for word but this is the message the the the idea he dropped in my spirit when I said that out loud the Holy Spirit spoke you just bought yourself another year and I realiz realized I had been failing the test I repented another year goes by still trying to push this through I came to that frustration again and this time I said Lord I know you can do it I Surrender I give it to you and he came through God wants to trust you and I when I say trust you he wants to entrust you he wants to entrust you with things to Steward think about what he's given you think about how he's raised you so far think about the favor he's put on your life and sometimes we're so focused on then and there that we're not thankful for here and now and and if we're not careful when we sense and we feel like God isn't doing anything like he's not showing up he's watching to see how you respond because here's why it's in the testing it's in these moments these Seasons that he begins to purify your motives because only someone who is pure in heart will continue to serve God even if they don't get what they wanted out of [Applause] it lift your hands and say test me Lord L you write it in the comment section test me Lord you got to watch out for those tests you ask for God to use you he'll test you before he uses you you ask for God to bless you he will test you before He blesses you and he'll test you and T see to God it's not a matter of time what's time to him a decade to us is nothing to God he'll test you again and again and again and again and some of us are stuck because we just haven't passed the test because every time we hit those Seasons where we feel like God is distant we fall apart we start complaining we go back to our old sinful habits we go back to the old nature and the old way of thinking but we start identifying with our struggles and saying things like well I guess God just doesn't love me or I guess this just nothing good could ever happen for me and we start to see ourselves as just the one who always struggles and and we fall back into these old patterns and because of that we don't strengthen ourselves in the spirit God will bless you but only after he tests you and then when he blesses you he'll test you again because he wants to see what you do when you finally get what you wanted from him think about what Joseph went through he obeyed God and was eventually put in prison for it what do you do when doing the right thing seems to put you in the wrong place when having Integrity cost you when standing up for what's right costs you do you fall apart and say God what did you do I thought I did what was right now you're supposed to why did you do what was right you see Joseph eventually came to Piper's house if I were him I may have looked around well I'm in charge I control wealth this is the dream come true I would have thought it was the Fulfillment be careful what happens when God finally does bless you don't lose your awareness of him it's in the testing that motives are purified when the Holy Spirit hides he is not leaving you he is leading you to deeper places as he walks on ahead he fully expects for you to follow it's like he says follow me come this way he starts walking why are you leaving me the holy spirit says come here I want to show you something something he walks away and we start panicking wait where are you going my friend when he walks ahead he's not abandoning you he's summoning you to the mountain he's calling you to deeper places Acts 17:27 says his purpose was for the Nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him though he is not far from any one of us Jeremiah 29:13 says if you look for me wholeheartedly you will find me how many times have you heard someone say well I tried to seek God and I couldn't find him you're a liar you are a liar let God be true and every man a liar you say David that's harsh that's the truth if you say I've tried to seek God with all my heart nothing you're lying either you're lying to me me or you're lying to yourself but you're lying because the Bible says that if I look for him wholeheartedly I will find him that's a fact so if I haven't found him yet it just means I haven't looked not truly God's not hiding in the sense that he doesn't want to be discovered he's pulling us in deeper places you know he likes to shake things up he will disrupt things that distract you well just ask Jonah God gives him a command he says go Jonah says no and he goes the opposite direction and what does God do he doesn't just let him get away with it the Bible says that a a wind came from the presence of the Lord I believe that was the Holy Spirit and and it destroyed and it was destroying the ship God will destroy your means of Disobedience God will destroy what you're using to disobey if you're in a relationship you shouldn't be in God will destroy it if you're going somewhere you shouldn't go God will make it to where you can't get there if you're participating in something you shouldn't be participating in God will make you miserable in it God will disrupt now you say God isn't disruptive yes he is I didn't say he's destructive I said he's disruptive which means he changes your plans without your permission people talk about Jonah and the whale what about Jonah and the wind that that that that is what destroyed any chance he had of stepping outside of the call of God the lord loves you too much to leave you in your disobedience he loves you too much to leave you to yourself the lord loves you too much to let you destroy your life you think he's just going to stand by and watch you be distracted and wander aimlessly no my friend when God marks you and calls you there's nothing you can do to get away from that nothing you can do and so sometimes sometimes part of that with that sense of withdrawing because when things go wrong we feel like God's not there so part of that sense of his withdrawing is really just him trying to get our attention and he will do what it takes to get your attention he will do what it takes to cause you to turn back to him there's a reason why you're unsatisfied outside of the call of God there's a reason why you're miserable if you try to go back to the things of this world you're ruined for anything less than his presence he will shake things up he will remove what you're depending on he will remove what is familiar he will remove what you're relying upon and so sometimes the Holy Spirit Will disrupt things make you uncomfortable and he's actually drawing you to deeper places I don't know what I would do if it wasn't for the constant correction of the Holy Spirit now guys as you continue to pursue the call of God on your life as you continue to step into what God has destined for you to do you will face Seasons where God seems distant you will face Seasons where you want wonder if he's near to you and it's tempting to get angry with him it's tempting to become fearful it's tempting to ask a frantic list of questions what did I do is he mad where should I go what is wrong and we fret and we worry and we work ourselves up have peace have peace if you sense the pooling that that that that withdrawing he's not saying Go away he's saying come up here he's not saying leave me alone he's saying come closer and we begin to see that nothing around us nothing in this world mattered as much as we thought we thought it did it doesn't matter as much as we thought it did we step into that perfect walk of Faith let me know in the comment section where do you think you are right now is it a combination of some of these Seasons or is there a very distinct season that you're in write in the comment section right now and let's pray father I thank you that your Holy Spirit guides Us in every season and I pray precious Lord that you would help us to serve you well and to remember that it's all about Jesus in every season no matter what we're facing in Jesus name we pray I want you to say it because you believe it type amen if you enjoyed this message you 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