Category: Holy Spirit

Compounding Effect of God

Sheri YatesLeave a comment

blog image

How do you make a big impact in the kingdom of God?

In Nehemiah, they rebuilt the wall that had been down for 150 years. They had tried to repair the wall, but they failed. Have you ever embarked on a huge project, and it turned out to be bigger than you, larger than anything you can imagine? You start working on it, and it’s too big to overcome?

The only way to overcome a massive project like that is to break it down into the smallest steps, the simplest ones that anyone can carry out. That’s what Nehemiah did. He had each person repair the wall outside their home. “So our city walls are torn down. What if we repair the walls just in our two next-door neighbors? One to the left and one to the right? What if we just worked on those?”

What they found out is the enemy doesn’t like restoration. The enemy doesn’t want us to repair broken-down people or rebuild and take away strongholds. No, the enemy wants us with our defenses down and easily attacked. He wants our neighbors to stay in bondage, and because of that, he sends obstacles, threats, and all kinds of barriers into our path.

So what Nehemiah did was say, “Hey, we gotta fight against the enemy who is trying to come in, but keep working at the same time.” Often, we’re either all out throwing down in fighting or all out working. So what we need to do is do what Nehemiah did. What he did was he said, “Hey. I need to have three hands holding a weapon and defeating and fending off the enemy so that the worker with one hand can keep busy and continue his work.” So for every four hands, four hands defended against the enemy, and one hand did the work.

If we want to see the compounding effects of God’s work in our world, we have to have three hands with a sword and one doing the work. Today, those continuously praying are holding back forces we can’t see in the spirit realm for those doing all the labor. They’re clearing the roadway. The spirit realm is like an interstate with a major traffic jam. The only way to clear it is through prayer because God’s angels will come and push back that darkness.

So when we want to see the compounding effects of God’s work in the things we’re doing, we need to assign people that are called and equipped and gifted with prayer and have them intercede on our behalf while we’re doing the work.

Let the Church Reinforce What You Are Learning

Sheri YatesLeave a comment

Copy of blog image

Let the church reinforce, but don’t rely on it. The church, the organization, should support and reinforce what you believe. But don’t rely on it to find your beliefs. John chapters 14 and 16 say the Holy Spirit is your teacher, your guide, your friend, your comforter, your counselor, and your advocate. He is all you need—the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. It wasn’t always that way, but it is that way today because we have the teacher living in us. The Word of God is in us. Jesus is the Word. He is the truth, the way, and the life.

Many people don’t take any responsibility for themselves to hear from the Great Teacher, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is part of God, and He is our teacher. He lives within us. He is constantly teaching us and guiding us if we will listen. The pastor isn’t always here on your behalf. No, but the Holy Spirit speaks to you.

Your church should be reiterating what the Holy Spirit is already teaching you. Honestly, it shouldn’t be the first time you hear it when your pastor preaches it. Sometimes it is, in the beginning, because you are a baby, just a mere infant, and you are on milk. You need that supply and food, so it is what’s feeding you.

We need to be in the Word of God—listening, receiving, and hearing from Him—so the Word speaks to us and we learn to discern the difference between worldly and godly thoughts. The Holy Spirit will speak to you through your thoughts. It’s kind of eerie sometimes how you do something and you’re like, “Oh, wow! That was really the Holy Spirit telling me to do that. But I didn’t know it. Now I know and in hindsight, I see it was clearly not me. It was God.”

So don’t rely on your pastor for everything. Let him come in and support what the Holy Spirit is teaching you. There is nothing cooler than hearing from God and then hearing your pastor speak a word confirming exactly what the Holy Spirit said.

Break Free!

Sheri YatesLeave a comment


Are you feeling discouraged, rejected, lonely, hurt? Are you doing very hard things, sacrificing for your family? Are you looking for a job, but none are to be found? Maybe you just can’t get above a certain point. 

There’s a true help! There’s a way! There’s an answer! A breakthrough is coming! 

Sit and soak up this song. As you rest in it, chains, lies, bondage, baggage, depression, torment, unforgiveness, and bitterness will fall off of you. Blind spots will be revealed, and love will burst out and overflow! An army will rise up on the inside of you and break every chain! 


Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom! Hallelujah! 

There is power in the name of Jesus
There is power in the name of Jesus

To break every chain
Break every chain
Break every chain

There is power in the name of Jesus
There is power in the name of Jesus
There is power in the name of Jesus

To break every chain
Break every chain
Break every chain

To break every chain
Break every chain
Break every chain

All sufficient sacrifice
So freely given
Such a price
Bought our redemption
Heaven’s gates swing wide

There is power in the name of Jesus
There is power in the name of Jesus
There is power in the name of Jesus

To break every chain
Break every chain
Break every chain

There is power in the name of Jesus
There is power in the name of Jesus
There is power in the name of Jesus

Let the Church Reinforce What You Are Learning

Sheri YatesLeave a comment

Let the church reinforce, but don’t rely on it. The church, the organization, should support and reinforce what you believe. But don’t rely on it to find your beliefs. John chapters 14 and 16 say the Holy Spirit is your teacher, your guide, your friend, your comforter, your counselor, and your advocate. He is all you need—the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. It wasn’t always that way, but it is that way today because we have the teacher living in us. The Word of God is in us. Jesus is the Word. He is the truth, the way, and the life.

Many people don’t take any responsibility for themselves to hear from the Great Teacher, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is part of God, and He is our teacher. He lives within us. He is constantly teaching us and guiding us if we will listen. The pastor isn’t always here on your behalf. No, but the Holy Spirit speaks to you.
Your church should be reiterating what the Holy Spirit is already teaching you. Honestly, it shouldn’t be the first time you hear it when your pastor preaches it. Sometimes it is, in the beginning, because you are a baby, just a mere infant, and you are on milk. You need that supply and food, so it is what’s feeding you.
We need to be in the Word of God—listening, receiving, and hearing from Him—so the Word speaks to us and we learn to discern the difference between worldly and godly thoughts. The Holy Spirit will speak to you through your thoughts. It’s kind of eerie sometimes how you do something and you’re like, “Oh, wow! That was really the Holy Spirit telling me to do that. But I didn’t know it. Now I know and in hindsight, I see it was clearly not me. It was God.”
So don’t rely on your pastor for everything. Let him come in and support what the Holy Spirit is teaching you. There is nothing cooler than hearing from God and then hearing your pastor speak a word confirming exactly what the Holy Spirit said.

God Is the Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever, Part 2

Sheri YatesLeave a comment

Let’s just walk through the Bible. Some people have the question, “If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then how do you reconcile the Old and the New Testaments?” They read the Old Testament through the wrath of God, constantly seeing that God was angry and correcting. You have to know that in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit didn’t live inside of people. Once they had gone really evil, starting to agree with the enemy, there was no correction other than the rod for them. They didn’t have the Holy Spirit to guide them. They didn’t have the power of God to overcome their temptations. They just became increasingly worse and worse.

If you look at the Word, God always provided for His children. From the beginning of time, He provided for Adam and Eve. Even when they left the garden, He provided the clothing. He provided the first sacrifice for them. They didn’t even have to sacrifice the first animal. He did it. God did it. He is a provider.
From the beginning of time, He has been a provider. From the beginning of time, He has been good. From the beginning of time, everything He created was good. From the beginning of time, He gave us choices. From the beginning of time, He told us we had a choice between life and death.
That still exists in the New Testament, the new covenant, today. Not just in the Old Testament, but every day, they had a choice in the old covenant. In the new covenant, they have a choice, too. They have a choice to reject Jesus. In the old covenant, they were given curses for every time they disobeyed. But if you look at the new covenant, in Galatians 3, it says Jesus became the cursed for us. If you read John 16:8, it says the Holy Spirit comes to convict the world of their sin. Their sin is that they do not believe in Jesus. 

There is one sin outstanding against mankind after Jesus came. That one sin is what separates us from receiving the power of the Holy Spirit to instruct us, guide us, comfort us, and love us. There is just one sin. That is it. Before, it was all the sins. If you look at it, God Himself took the wrath—through the body of Jesus Christ—for every sin. He took the payment. 1 John 2:2 says He died for the sins of the whole world. They are abolished. They are erased as far as the east is from the west. They are finished. It is a finished work.

This is a story. It is not a concrete thing that happened at one point in time. It has been a story of God creating us and redeeming us since Genesis 1. He created us. And since the fall, He has been redeeming us. There are dimensions to the process, so when we believe in Jesus, we are made new and we are being made new. One day, in the new world, we are going to be fully made new in a glorified body. It’s incredible. It’s an incredible story.
Only religion would keep you trapped in the mindset that God is mad and angry. If you read Isaiah 54:9, it says, “So now I have sworn not to be angry with you, never to rebuke you again” (NIV). He is finished with it. He is in the prophecy of Jesus Christ. He is saying, “I am putting all of my wrath and all of my anger into Jesus’ body so you don’t have to bear it.” 

That is the same loving God who created us, redeemed us, and gave provision for Adam and Eve. He is a good God. He is a good Father. He loves you. He wants you well. He prospers you. He is continually on your side. He is standing for you. Jesus is interceding for you. He is praying to the Father all the time. He says this if you have not asked. If you ask not, then you won’t have it. If you ask, you will. He is saying, “Hey, I am just this simple Father who loves you so much. If you would just ask, it is right here waiting for you.”
But sometimes, we are so afraid He is a wrathful God who is going to be angry if we ask for something selfish or we ask for anything, we don’t even bother asking. What is really happening is we are putting ourselves in the seat of God instead of Him. It’s like saying, “Hey, I’m the one who decides what I am going to ask for and what I am not going to ask for. I am the one who is not going to tell Him the desires of my heart.” 

In intimate relationships, you share those things. Back and forth, you’re like, “These are the desires of my heart. This is what I love. I just want this so much.” It’s a conversation. It’s not begging. It’s not a vending machine. It’s not like ask and receive. It’s literally an ongoing dialog with this lover of your soul.
That is the God who gave us the Holy Spirit that lives in us, guides us, talks to us, and comforts us at every corner and in everything as long as we welcome Him and say, “Holy Spirit, would You speak to me today? Would You guide me today? Will You tell me which way to drive when I pull out of the driveway? Would You continue to remind me that there’s no condemnation in You and I am not supposed to live under condemnation? I just love You, Father.”
That God is the same. Hebrews 1:3 says Jesus is the “exact representation” of God (NIV). He represents exactly who God has been since the beginning of time. If you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the four Gospels—you will find that Jesus is loving and kind. He is for people. He is not against people. He wants to work in their lives. Many times, He healed entire crowds. That is who He is. 

Jesus took the punishment we deserved and took it upon Him. Not getting the punishment you deserve is called mercy. Not only that, but then He gave us a gift. That gift is called grace. That grace is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a gift to us that will tell us and warn us of things to come and remind us of the things we have forgotten if we would just listen and receive.
Yes, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is love. It is who He is. It’s not what He does. He is the Redeemer. He is continuing to redeem us every day until we have our new bodies.

God Is the Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever

Sheri YatesLeave a comment

If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then reconcile the Old Testament with the New Testament for me.
I could write a novel about this. Let me just say that for starters, God is the God of life. That is why He created the Garden of Eden. From the beginning of time, man has been rebellious against God. God has had to plan to redeem and bring them back to life in the Garden of Eden. That is heaven. That has been His plan all along. His plan was life. The thief came to steal, kill, and destroy. But He came to bring life. 

That is how God is the same today and for always and forever. He is for you, not against you. He wants to prosper you, not to harm you. He wishes, in all things, for you to be in good health. That is His heart for you. His heart is the Garden of Eden. He has been reconciling our screw-ups back from the beginning of time in Genesis 3 all the way to the New Testament and all the way through today.
There was a curse put on us when we decided to depart our ways from God. When you don’t stay under the ways of God, guess what happens? The enemy has free reign in your life. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee. But if you don’t submit to God and you don’t resist the devil, he will pester you. He will take your life. He will destroy you. He is out to take you down. God is a gentleman. He is not in control of your life. He is only in control when you surrender. He is in charge of this world. He has the beginning and the end in His hands. He knows the outcome. You can trust Him in all things because He is the beginning and the end.
He is the reconciler. He is reconcilingman to Him, the earth back to heaven. He is the ultimate reconciler. He paid the price. He sent His only Son to die for you so His Holy Spirit could live in you. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit could only come upon you because there hadn’t been a sacrifice. Jesus’ Spirit wasn’t released into people yet.
It’s like when Noah was on the boat and he sent out the dove, and it came back. It had nowhere it could land. The second time it went out, it came back because all it could do was pick from the trees. It still had nowhere to land. But the third time he sent it out, it landed and never came back. That is the picture of the Holy Spirit. 

The first time the dove went out, it was like the Holy Spirit. God would give His Spirit to people and let them use the Holy Spirit for a little while, and then He would take the Spirit back. Then when Jesus came, it was a unique time for the Holy Spirit because the Spirit resided in Jesus. He could give the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit came back. But the Holy Spirit didn’t go back fully and never returned to God until Jesus died. When Jesus died, He sent His Spirit, who is permanently deposited into us, guaranteeing our inheritance now.
It wasn’t like that in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, after we sinned there became curses for our sin. Guess what? Jesus became the cursed for us when He died. We no longer live under the law. We live under the blessing.
People do not understand that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever if they don’t understand that God is the God of the New Testament, that He is Jesus, or if they have not read the Word from cover to cover and understand that God is love. He is not a wrathful, angry God who is sitting up in heaven, mad and angry. He has blotted out our transgressions as far as the east is from the west.
What He is upset about is that you have rejected His Son, Jesus Christ. You have rejected the gift. You have rejected receiving the Holy Spirit, so He cannot be your guide and your protector. You have rejected His provision for the plan to work out salvation inyou. You have rejected it, and you continue to reject it daily. You have accepted Him as your Savior, yet you turn around and continue to reject Him and live in your own ways and your own understanding. You live according to your own time, your own calendar, and your own schedule.
He has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him. He has given us the opportunity to know Him. He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. One of the things I hate the most is when people say, “Sin separated you from God. God can have nothing to do with you when you are in sin.” But the first thing God did when Adam and Eve sinned was He went after them. He came into their presence and said, “Where are you? Come out.” Why? Because He is love. 

God has been seeking after us all along. Sin didn’t separate Him and make Him angry and make Him not have anything to do with you. No. He has been working it out, seeking you, pursuing you, wanting to know people, and wanting to get people to come to Him. That is His heart. His heart’s desire is to seek and find the lost. He came for the sick. He spends time with the sick. He doesn’t just spend time with the holier-than-thou. He didn’t come for that. He didn’t come for the righteous. He never did, but He wants to be in community with us. His heart is for everyone to be saved.
Yet people die without being saved and knowing Him. Why? Because He is a gentleman. He gave man a choice. He gave us a choice from the first day: good and evil. “Here are two trees. Pick which one you will choose. Pick one you will follow.” Every day we get that in front of us, minute by minute. “Who will you choose? Will you go out and party with friends, or will you stay here with Me? Will you spend time with Me, or are you going to put yourself on the throne? Where are you going to be?”
He is the same God yesterday, today, and forever. When you remove yourself from His umbrella of protection, just like Adam and Eve did, the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. The locusts will start taking apart your life. You are not under the protection when you remove yourself.
Yes, He is the same. He is the same loving guy who is trying to restore what we have destroyed.

In Jesus’ name, I bind all of this.

The Compounding Effect of God

Sheri YatesLeave a comment
How do you make a big impact in the kingdom of God?
                                                           
In Nehemiah, they rebuilt the wall that had been torn down for 150 years. They had actually tried to repair the wall but failed. Have you ever embarked on a really large project that was bigger than you and anything you could have imagined? Did you start working on it, but it ended up being too big for you to overcome?
Well, the only way to accomplish a huge project is to break it down into the smallest of baby steps that anyone could carry out. That’s what Nehemiah did. He had people repair the wall outside of their own home. 

The city walls are torn down. Repairing the whole thing looks like a huge undertaking. But what if each of us repairs the portion of the wall between his two next-door neighbors, one to the left and one to the right? What if we just work on that bit? That doesn’t seem so bad.

What they found out is that the enemy doesn’t like restoration. The enemy doesn’t want us to repair broken-down people or repair and take away strongholds. No, the enemy wants us with our defenses down so we are easy to attack. He wants our neighbors to stay in bondage. To that end, he sends obstacles and threats and all kinds of barriers into our path.
Nehemiah knew they needed to find a way to fight against the enemy who was trying to come in and keep working at the same time. A lot of times, we are either all throwing down in fighting or all working. We need to do what Nehemiah did. He made sure that three hands were holding a weapon and fending off the enemy so that the worker could keep busy with his free hand and continue the work (Nehemiah 4:16–18). For every four hands, three hands defended against the enemy, and one hand did the work.
If we want to see the compounding effects of God’s work in our world, we need to have three hands holding swords and one hand doing the work. What that means for us today is that in our session praying, those people who are praying continuously are holding back forces of darkness we can’t see in the spirit realm for those doing all the labor. They are clearing the roadway, if you will. Let’s say your car is stopped on an interstate because there’s a major traffic jam, but you can’t actually see what the problem is. That’s like the spirit realm. There’s a traffic jam, and the only way to clear it is through prayer because God’s angels will come and push back that darkness.
When we want to see the compounding effects of God’s work in the things we are doing, we need to assign people who are called, gifted, and equipped with prayer and have them intercede on our behalf while we are doing the work.

Holy Spirit

Sheri YatesLeave a comment
Maybe your parents always told you that you were the best and the brightest. You are the smartest and the sharpest. You’re the best looking and the kindest. Maybe they always told you great things. Maybe you made tenth place in your athletic event and your parents are like, “Good job for trying! We’re so proud of you. You’re so awesome.” Maybe they always spoke in positive and encouraging words even when you fail—if you got an F on your test, they were like, “It’s okay. It’s no big deal. You still are smart and sharp. You’re the sharpest and the brightest.” But the truth is that there’s a lack of understanding there.
The truth is that we’re made up of three parts: body, soul, and spirit. In your spirit, that is all true. In our spirit, we’re perfect. We couldn’t be more perfect. Our spirit is seated at the right hand of Jesus Christ and a finished work. Our spirit is perfect, a masterpiece, chosen, holy, blameless and so loved. So viewed from the eyes of God that our sins are so far removed from us. But while we are on this earth, our body and our soul—which is our mind and spirit—they are being renewed in the likeness of Jesus Christ every single day.
Our job on this earth is to tame and renew our mind so it comes in line with the Holy Spirit. Our job is to train up our body to come in line with the spirit. Our job is to command the body to stop craving the desires of this world like sexual immorality and quick fixes. Our job is to train up our emotions to not be emotion-led but to be spirit-led; to understand when our emotions flare that tells us that we have a trust issue with God. There’s an issue when our emotions flare up. We need to go seek God about and say, “God, why am I so angry about this? Father, why am I so sad? Help me align my emotions with you, God.”
They are a dashboard—like in a car. Your car has a dashboard. It will show up a yellow light and say “low fuel.” Everybody knows what to do. Go to the gas station. Well sometimes, a light comes on and it says, “check engine.” That might actually spark a panic attack in you or anxiety because you start thinking like, “I don’t have the time or the money to go have my engine replaced. Am I going to have to replace my car?” You automatically start thinking about the negative what ifs because it’s expensive and you think, “Oh my goodness!” But that’s not what the car manufacturer intended it for. They gave you the dashboard so they tell you there’s a problem. Don’t continue on this trip any longer until you have this problem checked out or you may have a bigger problem. It’s a warning system to give you a warning to tell you, “Hey you need to check the engine. There is a problem.” They didn’t do it to frustrate you or to cause you to have an anxiety or a panic attack. They did it to help you.
God did the same thing with our emotions. What he did with our emotions is he gave us a yellow light to tell us, “Oh my goodness, there might be a problem here. Don’t go any further. Stop blabbing your mouth. Don’t tell someone off. Just stop and pause and check in the engine,” which for us would be do a heart-check. “Heart-check me, God. Show me what I’m missing or why is this causing me to get so flared up?”
So our job on this earth is to continue to get our emotions and our will in line with the Holy Spirit. You know what, God has a work that he wants you to do. He’s called you, he’s chosen you, he’s pulled you out, plucked you before you were born to do work. And the truth is, you can say no or you can say yes. He’s got it for you and it’s your choice. So what is your decision? Well, every day we have to get constantly conform our will into God’s. Even like, Jonah. God told him to go to Nineveh, but you know what, he was like, “Whatever. I’m not gonna line my will with yours, God. I’m gonna align my will on my own. I’m gonna go to Tarshish and I’m gonna do what I wanna do.”
Our job on this earth is to stop and listen to God and say, “God, I wanna do what you want me to do. When you say go to Seven Eleven, I wanna go to Seven Eleven. When you say, turn left out of your neighborhood instead of right today, I wanna go that direction.” That’s maturity. Maturity is learning to obey at the very moment God speaks and to not delay.
Our job is to continue to reconcile our mind and our will into the Holy Spirit’s perfection; continue to say yes; continue to be refined by fire; continue to make the hard decisions even if you don’t want to just because God said so; and to get our body in line with the Holy Spirit. Like, “Body, you know what, you’re not gonna sit here and lie to me and tell me all these things are wrong. I’m going to command you to listen up and obey the Holy Spirit. I’m not gonna be sexually impure anymore. I refuse to use my eyes for purpose which they were not designed. I refuse to use my body for that which it was not designed by God and I refuse to allow pain to rule me so I can’t do the work of God. I refuse. Body, you listen up to the voice of the Holy Spirit.”

The truth is, sometimes our body and our soul, they fail. We make mistakes because we’re human and we’re being transformed. We’re in the process of being transformed. Because we’re being transformed and we’re in the process, we’re going to fail. So if you were raised by parents who never let you see your failures or they caught you every time before you failed—or you’re a parent raising kids, you catch your kids before they fail or you never let them see their failures, you’re doing them a disjustice, because they’re going to hurt so bad later when they fail. They’re gonna be so mad, they’re not gonna know how to respond or how to even handle any negative criticism from an employer or spouse or a child for that matter. You are doing them a complete disservice.

The truth is, your spirit is perfect but your body and your soul is not. You have to understand that it’s not so you know you need a savior to get through every day and you need to day yes. It gives you a dependency on God when you know that you fail without him. Failing doesn’t mean, “I am a failure.” Failing means, “I did something that wasn’t in the perfect mark of which God has asked me to. Failing means I did something without a hundred percent of my heart or I didn’t do it unto the Lord. I didn’t do it as if I was serving God. Failing is doing it on my own apart from God. Failing is leaning into my emotions and giving way to them and yelling at my children or my spouse or my friends and taking them out because I’m mad and I choose to fail. Failing is not recognizing that I’m still human and I need to make the decisions that God has asked me to make so I can be made into his likeness in every area and bring those other two parts into submission into the Holy Spirit.”
The truth is, everyone needs to understand you’re made up of body, soul and spirit and your spirit is perfect. Yes, you are a masterpiece. When you know who you are and you stand on it, it’s way easier to bring your body and your soul into submission and say, “Hey soul, stop trying to go your own way. Stop trying to be emotion-led because you know what, God is worthy and he’s made me a masterpiece already and I’m gonna stand up in the masterpiece, chosen, loved, holy, blameless person of God that I am and I am gonna stand fully on that. I refuse to go my own way, I refuse to live out of my emotions, I refuse to let the sun go down on my anger tonight because my Father who has named me and adopted me is worthy. I refuse to let my body command me and lust to rule me and selfish ambition and my selfishness to take me to places where God never intended me to go.”
I, Father, wanna stand in who you say who I am and bring my body and soul into submission, the end. In Jesus’ name, I bind all these. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.