Thanks for joining us today on the Line of Fire. If you subscribe to this podcast, wherever you get your podcasts, Spotify, iTunes, Charisma Edify, wherever you get your podcasts, it is now courage in the Line of Fire. You'll be in and out of here in 25 minutes.
Classes are now in session. We're talking about getting to know the Holy Spirit. Getting to know the Holy Spirit is our goal, friends, to infuse you with faith and truth and courage. To help you stand strong on the front lines.
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We'd love to pour that into you. I promised yesterday to tell you a story from Ukraine. One of our fire missionaries, Leanne, has been in Ukraine now for 21 years. She went over with a couple of other single women and two of them have remained now for 21 years.
Both of them now married to Ukrainian Christian men. Her husband volunteered as soon as the war started. Her husband volunteered and served for two years. Served for two years.
I'm not going to go into details of cities and things like this but she shared a really striking story. There was one area tremendously contested by the Russians and by the Ukrainians. And it was almost a death trap to go in and try and defend it. A couple hundred men were sent in, Ukrainian men, and in a very short period of time they were all wiped out. They were all gone. All gone. They sent a second battalion subsequently.
Same thing. Couple hundred plus men in a very short period of time. All of them killed. Leanne's husband, he was not her husband then. Leanne's husband is going in.
Your battalion is next. He had 13 men that were with him side by side. His men. And he just had supernatural faith and the Spirit of God gave him this witness and he said, God is with me. I can't speak to any who died.
We don't know what happened and why. And war, there are terrible casualties on all sides. But this man knew this. He said, because God is with me, I will not die. God is with me.
God will protect you. Just like Paul knew in Acts 27 when the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, no one on this ship is going to die. Paul knew it to the point he could get up and say it publicly. Publicly.
He could declare it. So now this man knew it. He had that assurance from God. They go into battle. When they finally come out from the battle, only 17 survive from the whole battalion. Including this man and his 13.
This man and his 13. You can know God speaking to you. You can have the assurance in your spirit. We're not going down. We're not going to be destroyed. God is with us. And it is absolutely life changing. Now, there are all types of counterfeits to the voice of God.
There's all kinds of weirdness where people think that God is speaking to them a hundred times a day about, you know, what the truth brought. No, left to right faster. Okay. Oh no.
Oh, put the red sock on the left foot and the green sock on the right foot. And people can get weird. You can imagine anything and get weird.
And let me just say this up front. The Holy Spirit's not flaky. The Holy Spirit is not flaky.
We can't, on the other hand, let somebody who's weird stop us from really having a relationship with God. And really hearing the Holy Spirit. And remember, wherever there's something real, there's going to be counterfeit. Wherever there's something real, there's going to be counterfeit. And there can also be satanic deception. The whole Bible warns about deception. So we must be based in the word of God. We must have the word of God in our heart and our mind.
That's the foundation by which everything is tested. And then by God's grace, we need to live lives pleasing to Him. If we allow the pollution of sin in our lives, it's going to color and mess up everything.
It's like getting the pipes clogged with dirt and muck. And then if we're not spending quality time with God, we'll just be filled with the flesh and the world and our own mind. So it's important that we take in the word. It's important that we commune with God. As we do, we will get to know the Holy Spirit better. We will recognize His voice. We will recognize His leading.
We'll recognize His comfort. Have you ever had that? Everything's going crazy around you. And it looks like this is time to panic, and you have a supernatural peace. Like, I didn't create this.
That's not the kind of person I am. I'm number one panicker. I'm the lead panicker. And yet, I just have this deep peace. I just have this deep peace. That's the Holy Spirit doing that work. Traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.
So notice that. Having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. Now what's your mind saying? All people here need Jesus. Jesus said to go and make disciples of the nations. And where to go? Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth.
We're going out. The Holy Spirit says, no, no, not here. They had been kept by the Holy Spirit. How? It doesn't tell us. When they came to the board of Messiah, they tried to enter Messiah, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.
How? How did they know this? So they passed by Messiah and went down to Troas. During the night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, come over to Macedonia and help us. After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. So the Holy Spirit prevents them to go in one place. The Spirit of Jesus says no to another place.
Paul gets a dream and then they conclude it was God. So let's say you try to do something. You hit a brick wall. Is that the devil trying to stop you?
Or is God closing a door? How do you know? Paul went to the Thessalonians and said, I wanted to come there, but Satan stopped it.
So how do you know the difference? That's the whole thing. We need to grow in our relationship with God, grow in intimacy with God.
And remember, it's not up to us being so brilliant and amazing. Do you sense the Spirit? Close your eyes. What do you hear? I hear my baby crying.
That's what I hear. When I close my eyes, I hear the baby crying. I hear the kids fighting in the next room. When I close my eyes, I hear my colleagues saying, what are you doing?
Sleeping on the job? I've heard the teaching, just pray, ask God your question, and then close your eyes and the next voice you hear will be the voice of God speaking. That's never worked for me. It's never worked for me.
53 years in the Lord. That's never worked for me. And like I said, sometimes the first voice you hear is the voice, Mommy! The voice of your kid in the next room. But hang on. I've heard voices.
It's my own mind. You want me? Go! Go! No! No! Don't go! Low! Go!
No! It's my mind thinking. But then, as I'm worshiping the Lord, unexpectedly the Holy Spirit will begin burdening me, showing me things, speaking to me. And you know, wow, that was the Lord. That was the Lord.
So they were able to tell what was Satan trying to stop them. That's other cases that Paul writes about are here. The Spirit says, nope, not that way. Nope, not that way.
This way. This is part of life in the Lord, life in the Spirit. So it seems to be a distinction between the Spirit of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but even here, there's another difference that Paul is making an understanding. So three distinct leadings led them to where they needed to go, having been kept by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.
Paul had a vision. Now, by the way, you know why it's really important that they had the special leading? Because everything goes wrong! When they get there. It's terrible when they get there. They initially see some fruit, you know, they share with Lydia, and some people come to the Lord, some Jewish people come to the Lord, and then Paul drives a demon out of a slave girl that made money for her owners with divination, and that's all going on. And then, what happens?
They get thrown in jail, and severely flogged. They were where they were supposed to be. So midnight, think of this, and it's got to be a pit of a prison. Miserable place. I remember being in Rome one time, and they brought us to this little prison. It was underground, and I mean, miserable.
You go down there, just absolute horror. And the guy there said, we believe Paul was imprisoned here. Now, my friend who had been living in Italy for many years, they think Paul was imprisoned in just about every ancient prison they have there, but he might have been imprisoned in a bunch of them.
He might have been. What if Paul saw this thing at midnight? They're praising God! They're seeing him as praising God. They knew they were where they were supposed to be. They had been supernaturally led there by God. We just celebrated 25 years of our missions organization, Fire International, which was born out of a revival movement, out of a ministry school that we birthed. Out of that, laborers were sent out all around the world, and now some of them have literally been on the field for 20 years. 25 years, remarkably enough.
What a tribute to God's grace at work in us. And they've had to know that they know they need to be where they are. I mean, they're in some dangerous countries. One of our missionaries was killed by Al Qaeda terrorists years ago.
And there's still teams going back into that same country where he was killed. You have to know that you know that God's called you to do certain things. When you're under pressure, look, you could be in the business world. And you know you've been praying and God's been stirring. You need to expand. You need to step out. But we have to invest all the money we have. You do what God's leading you to do. You have to know that you know. And then when you do, there can be faith to withstand the storm.
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If you never have, you will really enjoy the wellness products. And remember, 100% of your first order when you use the code BROWN25, 100% of your first order goes back to the Line of Fire. It's harder to get discouraged by the things around you, harder to get discouraged by the things around you when you have that deep witness of the Holy Spirit. Now, let me say something that's going to sound interesting. God has intentionally limited himself. God has intentionally limited himself. He can do whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to.
He's Almighty God. No one can stop him. The only thing that constrains him is his own will. Or if he's set in parameters.
If you do this, I will respond this way, or this way, I'll respond this way, so we work with him. But he sets the rules. But he has intentionally limited himself. For example, he set up the world to operate in a certain way that he doesn't interfere with every choice we make every day. That he allows bad choices to be made. He allows bad people to do bad things.
He allows that. He doesn't take full control of us where we have no freedom. That's how demons take control of people.
Demon possession or oppression demonize people where they can't control themselves. So the Holy Spirit does not take control. God does not take control of us where he forces you every day to pray. He forces you every day to be holy. He forces you every day to read the Bible.
He allows us to make choices, be they good or bad. But we can yield ourselves to God in such a way where we really know he's leading. Where we are carried on that wave. I've never surfed, but those who surf, you know what that's like, carried on the wave.
The few times I water ski, you're carried on that. We can be carried and led and moved by the Spirit. So the devil wants to stop you from walking with God in the Spirit. The devil wants to stop you from walking with God and being a man or woman of the Spirit. Whatever you understand that means in its fullness, understand it's the devil who wants to stop you from working in that. So we need to lay the right foundations in the Word in our own lives because God is not turning us into robots where he just presses a button and we do whatever he wants. It comes out of relationship with him.
Oh, we'll reap what we sow and we'll give account to God on Judgment Day. But what he's looking for is to deepen our relationship with God. Everyone that's married, the longer you're married, the better you understand your spouse. Nancy and I have been married now for 48 wonderful years. I love her more intensely than any time I can ever remember in my life.
We are happy and blessed and having a wonderful marriage together. But I hear her voice all the time. I don't mean an audible voice, but I know what she's thinking and maybe I'm about to go on a tangent while speaking and I hear her voice, you don't need to do that. Or this is not the time.
Or I'm trying to think, should I do this or that? And I just hear her common sense voice. Many of you know what I'm talking about. You know, I feel her kicking my leg under the table when she's not even there. Like, no, that's not the right, you're not supposed to bring that up, remember? Remember, you're not supposed to bring that up.
I mean, we've always joked, sometimes she'll accidentally move, we're out having dinner with someone, she'll accidentally move and her foot will kick by and she'll say, no, no, no, I was accidentally kicking. Because I'm thinking, what did I do? What did I say? We can know the Holy Spirit's voice. We can know the Holy Spirit's witness.
We can have that intimacy with God. When God called me to quit my job and teach at a Bible college on Long Island in 1983, he was speaking that to me. He was speaking it.
But let me back it up. A colleague of mine said, Mike, there's a school that just opened on Long Island. Remember, I had my PhD at this point from New York University in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. I've been studying Scripture intensively for years. I've been preaching since 1973, so now it's a decade later. And a pastor of my congregation says, Mike, there's a new school that opened on Long Island, you should pray about it, ministry school. I said, why would I want to go to ministry school?
I mean, why would I, I've gotten good education. He goes, no, no, not to study there, to teach there. I felt the Lord showed him that I was going to be teaching there.
Isn't that something? Well, we then visited the school. They were having a special seminar as the school was about to launch. They're having a special seminar and our kids went to the children's program as the service was going on. There was a special service and they came out raving about it.
They loved it. And it was on Stony Brook, Long Island, the service was located. As we're driving away, Nancy starts singing, we're moving to Stony Brook, we're moving to Stony Brook. She just knew in her heart that God was calling us out there.
That's interesting. Then I'm in another state with Nancy, we're going out to eat with someone, and I feel the Lord lays on my heart, you need to pay for them. You would have expected they were paying for us, but I just felt this prompted, you need to take up the tab.
You need to take up the tab here and pay. Okay, I'll do it by faith. Couldn't afford it, but felt we were supposed to do it. Then I'm in a meeting and I had $50 cash in my pocket to get us through the week. We were out of state and I felt the Spirit say to me, give the money and the offering. There's no pressure in the offering. I just felt, okay, I don't know how we make it the rest of the week, but if you said to do it, do it.
I felt it was like a little test, a little test. Are you really listening? Are you really listening? Are you really listening?
Then I'm at a service. It's a midweek service and someone else preached that night and the pastor got up and he held the Bible out and he dangled it over the pulpit. He said, sometimes I feel like God's saying to us, I dare you to believe it. I dare you to believe what's written here. I dare you to believe what's written in the Word. And just then I felt this prompting.
Go outside, go on the street, find someone and share the Gospel with them. So I did. I went outside. I saw a couple going into a restaurant. I just said, hey, if you ever want to find out about eternal life, how to get right with God, check out that church meets over there and thank me.
Good night. I went to the restaurant, but I knew I had obeyed the prompting of the Spirit. I then sit down and back in the service and I just had the sense. Time to quit your job. Time to go teach you Christ for the nations. And as I felt that, I heard the Holy Spirit. Yes, yes, it's time. I came home.
This is early summer. I came home and told Nancy, I'm going to quit my job and teach at the school. She burst out laughing, not because she was incredulous, but just the suddenness of it.
But she'd already felt it in her own heart. Yeah, I'm going to be going out there. And I called my mom because we lived real close to her and she was a widow then. I said, hey, Mom, I'm going to be teaching at a school out in Stony Brook, but once a week bring the kids over for dinner. We'll hang out.
You know, we won't miss a beat with that. Good time with the grandkids. I called my boss and I said, listen, I'm going to be teaching at a Bible school in Long Island.
I'm going to be leaving sometime in the fall and just want to give you several months advance notice. Hey, Mike, I'm excited for you. And bear in mind, all I heard was the voice of the Spirit in my own heart. That's all I heard. The director of the school who was going to be hiring and firing, he hadn't even arrived yet. He was a Scotsman who has been living in Zimbabwe. He hadn't even arrived yet. But when I visited the school again, one of the leaders that had come up from the base in Dallas to the school in Long Island. He has a word for me about God's about to call me out of my job.
Isn't that something? I remember we drove back to the pastor come with me. He and I, we were just celebrating the goodness of the Lord and that he's alive and he's speaking and acting. And then sure enough, I meet with the director. I had already sold my house and God had provided supernaturally. The sale of the house was like a series of miracles. Sometimes you've had that, right? We've had the opposite sometimes, but this was, whoa, it was amazing. I hadn't even been hired yet.
We already moved all the way out two miles away from the school. And the director said, OK, listen, we have everyone we need right now. We have our New Testament professor, Old Testament professor.
I'm teaching some classes. We have our pastoral leaders, but the next person I hire is going to be you. And then to everybody's shock, to everybody's shock, the Old Testament professors, I feel like I'm supposed to move back to Dallas. I'm supposed to go back to Dallas. Suddenly they have an immediate need for me.
I show up on a Sunday afternoon. The pastor, the director of the school hasn't said a word to anybody. Hasn't said a word to anybody about this except just the internal leaders. There's a guest speaker there and doesn't know anything going on. And he points to the Old Testament professor. He said, hey, you're leaving.
You're leaving. The director was shocked. Who told him? How did he know? The Holy Spirit just revealed it. And the director said, it just so happens that Mr. Brown, I've been in my doctorate yet, Mr. Brown is sitting here. He's going to be the new Old Testament teacher.
Because I started offering you some free night classes leading into it. He's going to be the Old Testament prophet. Just boom, boom. The Holy Spirit's real. He has a voice.
He speaks. The next broadcast, we're going to open up some amazing truths about the personhood, the personality of the Holy Spirit. This could really be a life changer. So make sure you tune in. And if you're enjoying these broadcasts, tell a friend to tune in. However you're listening or watching, tell them to tune in as well.
This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the Word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we're making a difference. So go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org, and click donate.
