5 HABITS THAT UNLOCK THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT WITHIN YOU
... undeniable happening in the room. She knew Isaiah 53:5. She knew First Peter 2:24. She had taught those scriptures in women's Bible study. She had prayed them over sick strangers and watched some of them recover. Then her 8-year-old son was diagnosed with a serious illness.
And something happened that she could not explain and did not expect. The woman who had led thousands into the presence of God could not find her way there herself. Not because she stopped trying. She tried harder than she ever had. She prayed longer. She fasted. She called every pastor she trusted. But in the quiet of that hospital room with the machines beeping and her son asleep and nothing else demanding her performance, she sat across from me and said something I have never forgotten. She said, "I have led worship for 19 years. I have helped hundreds of people encounter God. So why can I not feel HIM in this room right now?"
I did not give her a quick answer because the question she was asking was not a simple one. It was not a crisis of sincerity. Margaret was one of the most sincere believers I had ever met. It was not a crisis of knowledge. She knew her Bible better than most people I have sat with. And it was not a crisis of faithfulness. She had shown up for 19 years without a single excuse. What Margaret was experiencing was something quieter and far more dangerous than outright unbelief. Millions of genuine, sincere, hard-working believers are living in exactly that same state right now. Not because they are bad Christians, not because they lack dedication or devotion, but because they have been given a legal reality without being given the daily practice that activates it. They know verse 1 Corinthians 3:16.
Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in you? They believe it. They have said amen to it a hundred times. And yet when the storm hits and the ground shakes beneath them, they look at their daily lives and see the same weakness, the same fear, the same paralysis that should have no power over someone who carries the Creator of the universe inside their spirit. So they ask the question that nobody seems to want to answer honestly. If the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that Romans 8:11 says raised Jesus Christ from the dead is living inside of me, why am I still so powerless?
That is the real question. And here we believe you deserve a real answer. Not a motivational one, not a theological deflection that sounds deep but leaves you exactly where you started. A real answer, one that will change not just how you think, but how you actually live starting this week.
And the answer begins with a distinction that most of the denomination church people have never been taught. Are we studying the nature of the believer's union with God including the hidden man of the heart and in His presence?
It is exactly what most of the modern church has quietly forgotten. In His Presence. Real prayer is not a petition presented to an unwilling God. Real prayer is fellowship, conscious, deliberate, daily fellowship with the Father who dwells within. The believer who has never learned to practice this fellowship is drawing on nothing, though everything is already there. Read that last line again. Drawing on nothing, though everything is already there. That is not a statement about God's willingness. It is not a statement about your sincerity or your salvation or your standing before heaven. It is a statement about a practice that most believers have never been taught. A daily turning inward to the One who has already taken up permanent residence in the deepest part of their being. It is called practice fellowship. And in this teaching, everything we are going to show you flows from that one word. Fellowship.
Because here is what most believers have been told. That the Christian life is primarily about what you know, about what you confess, about how many services you attend or how many chapters in the Bible you read or how many years you have been walking with God. And all of those things have their place.
But we saw something deeper. We saw that between the deposited power and the released power, there is a practiced connection.
And without that connection, regardless of how long you have been saved or how much scripture you can quote, nothing flows. The current is there. The power is real, but the switch has never been turned on. So, let me give you the real answer. Now, the answer is found in one fatal misunderstanding that has quietly crippled the modern church. We have confused having the Holy Spirit with actually communing with the Holy Spirit.
And those are not the same thing. Having the Holy Spirit is a legal reality of your redemption. The moment you were born again, the moment you confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and believed in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, the Holy Spirit took up permanent residence inside your recreated human spirit. That is settled. That cannot be undone. No failure reverses it. No inconsistency removes it. No dry season empties it. 6:55 But having him and activating his power are two completely different things.
Think about it this way. You have a smartphone in your pocket right now. It is fully charged 100%. Every application you could possibly need is already installed. The processing power is there. The connection capability is there. Every tool you need to navigate, communicate, create, and solve problems is sitting right there in your hand. But if you never unlock the screen, none of it matters. You will stand in the middle of a city you do not know, completely lost, holding a device that could have given you every answer, every direction, every resource you needed. Not because the power was not there, because the connection was never made.
That is the condition of most believers today. The power is real. The deposit is genuine.
The Holy Spirit is fully present inside the recreated human spirit of every born again believer. But the daily practice of turning inward, of deliberately making contact with the One who is already there, that practice has never been established. And so they live on the surface of a reality that goes miles deeper than they have ever explored. We called the practice of that connection fellowship. Not crisis prayer where you run to God when everything falls apart and wonder why he feels so distant. Not Sunday morning worship which is real and valuable but not sufficient on its own.
Fellowship is the real daily intentional habitual communion with the indwelling One. This is the connection that activates everything God has already placed inside you. And it is the connection that most believers have never been shown how to build. Teach about to learn about the inner man in 1 Thessalonians 5:23.
And the point that cuts through all the religious noise, is that most believers have the order completely reversed. Living body first, soul second, spirit last, if ever. And the result of that reversal is exactly what Margaret felt in that hospital room.
Power present but not accessed. Presence real but not experienced. Everything available and yet nothing flowing. The problem is not the supply. The problem has always been the connection. To understand why most believers never access the power inside them, you first have to understand how God actually built you. Not how the church has described you. Not the vague spiritual language that gets used on Sunday mornings that sounds meaningful but leaves you with no practical framework for your Monday onwards. How God actually constructed you according to His own word. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 is one of the clearest statements in all of scripture on this subject.
And the very God of peace sanctify you holy. And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless. Three parts in that specific order. Spirit first, soul second, body third. 1. You are a spirit. 2. You have a soul which is your mind, your will, and your emotions. 3. And you live in a physical body. Those are not interchangeable. They are three distinct realities and the order matters enormously. This is where teaching in the hidden man of the heart becomes razor sharp. This points out that God designed human to live from the inside out.
1. The spirit in constant fellowship with God was designed to govern the soul and the soul was designed to govern the body.
2. The spirit leads, the soul follows, the body obeys.
3. That was the original design.
That was Eden before everything changed. But when Adam sinned, the entire order collapsed.
Spiritual death entered the human spirit and suddenly human found himself cut off from God at the deepest level of his being. His spirit which was designed to lead went silent. And because the spirit went silent, the senses took over. From that moment forward, man began living from the outside in. What he could see, hear, taste, touch, and feel became his primary source of information about reality. His emotions began reacting to his circumstances. His mind tried to make sense of what his senses were reporting. And his spirit, the deepest part of him, had nothing to contribute because it was spiritually dead.
This is the condition apostle Paul describes when he talks about the natural man who cannot receive the things of the spirit of God. Not because the information is not available, but because the receiver is offline.
Now, here is the good news that changes everything. When you were born again, that order was restored. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new." The recreated spirit is not a patched up version of the old one. It is not a repaired version of the spirit that died in Adam. It is brand new. It is alive with the very life and nature of God.
1 Peter 1:23 says, "You have been born again of incorruptible seed by the Word of God, which lives and abides forever.
Your spirit is no longer dead. It is no longer cut off from God. The Holy Spirit has taken up permanent residence inside it. And in your spirit right now, at this very moment, is everything you will ever need. Wisdom is in there. Strength is in there. Healing is in there. Provision is in there. The peace that passes understanding is in there. The courage that does not bend to circumstances is in there. The clarity that does not depend on favorable conditions is in there. All of it already deposited, already present, already yours. So why does it feel so inaccessible? Because even though your spirit was recreated at the new birth, your soul was not automatically renewed.
Your mind still carries the old patterns. Your emotions still react to what your five senses are reporting. Your thought processes were formed over years, sometimes decades of living from the outside in. And they do not change overnight simply because something changed in your spirit. If you have never been taught to live from your spirit, if nobody ever showed you how to access the hidden man of the heart, then you are a new creation on the inside, still living like the old man on the outside.
2 Corinthians 5:7 puts the challenge plainly, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Faith is the language of the spirit. Sight, sense, knowledge is the language of the body. And the believer who has never learned to walk by faith is still being governed by what they can see and feel and physically experience.
This is why the same crisis that destroys one believer barely touches another. It is not that one has more faith in some mystical sense. It is that one has learned to access the hidden man. They have developed their spirit.
They have built the connection. So when the storm comes, and the storm always comes, they are not dependent on what their five senses are reporting. They go inward. They access the One who is greater than any storm. First John 4:4 says it directly, "Greater is HE that is in you than he that is in the world. HE is in you, not around you, not available to you in theory, HE is in you right now at this very moment." The question is not whether He is there. The question is whether you have learned to live from where He is.
Now, here is the good news that makes everything else in this teaching worth your time.
Colossians 1:13 says, "Who has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son."
Notice the tense of that verb. Has delivered. Not will deliver. Not is in the process of delivering. Has delivered. Past tense already done. Complete. Before you woke up this morning, before this crisis entered your life, before you had any of the faith you are standing on today, the redemption is finished. The transfer has already happened. You are not fighting your way toward His kingdom that might one day receive you. You have already been translated into it.
The dominion of darkness over your life, including the dominion of sickness, of poverty, of fear, of defeat. That dominion was broken at the cross of Jesus Christ. It was applied to you the moment you were born again.
Which means the powerlessness that most believers experience is not God's design for them. Let me say that clearly. It is not a test. It is not discipline from a Father who is teaching you through suffering. It is not the price of a deeper faith that you have not yet earned. It is the result of a connection that has not yet been built.
Ephesians 3:20 says, "Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us." Read that phrase carefully. " According to the power that works in us, not the power he sends from heaven when you pray long enough, not the power he releases when your faith reaches a certain level. The power that is already working, already present, already deposited inside your recreated spirit, present tense, active tense in us right now.
And here is what most people miss about that verse. The power is not automatic. It works according to something, according to a condition. And that condition is the alignment between a spirit that has been consistently nourished and a soul that has been consistently renewed by the Word. When that alignment is established, when the inner man is strong and the connection is active, the power does not trickle, it flows.
First John 4:4 anchors the entire reality. Greater is HE that is in you, not beside you, not available to you if you ask with enough desperation in you. That is the foundation of everything that follows.
The problem is not the supply. The problem has never been the supply. The problem is the connection.And that connection has a name. We called it fellowship. Real daily intentional communion with the indwelling One. Not crisis prayer. Not emergency meetings asking God to send more of what he has already deposited inside your spirit. Daily fellowship.
The daily practice of turning inward to the hidden man of the heart and building the connection that activates everything God has already placed there.
That connection is built through five specific habits.
But before we get to those habits, there is something we need to address first. Something the enemy is doing right now in your life and mine to prevent that connection from ever being made. And once you see it clearly, you cannot unsee it.
Here is something the enemy cannot do. He cannot take the Holy Spirit out of you. Your redemption is settled. Your salvation is sealed. The moment you were born again, the Spirit took up permanent residence in your recreated spirit. And no power in heaven, on earth, or under the earth can remove HIM from that place. The enemy