If You're Seeing this Sign, God is Testing You Right Now

As you can tell, Pastor David isn't with us in this moment, but it's for a very, very special reason. I'm so excited to share that he is currently welcoming his newest baby girl, Lillian, my newest niece, into this world as we speak. So with that being said, we have a very special message we have prepared for you. So here now is Pastor David to share that.

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.

Amen.

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— 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.

Right.

Your performance does not determine his presence on your life. But these truths that I want to give you concerning the Holy 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. Amen. 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.

Amen.

There are seasons when you feel like 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 chapter 3, verses 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. And as we look at Scripture, we see that according to the Bible, that doves have various different traits. For example, the dove is considered innocent. See Matthew 10:16. The dove is considered pure. See Leviticus 14:22. In Nahum chapter 2, verse 7, We see that it's in the nature of doves to mourn. Grieve not the Holy Spirit, the gentle dove. Yes, the Holy Spirit is a gentleman. Of course, he'll surprise you. Of course, it's his nature to come upon the scene suddenly, as we saw in the book of Acts. Of course, there is great force behind his power. Of course he is strong. Of course he speaks sternly, firmly, and sometimes with righteous indignation. But the Holy Spirit is also gentle. How do you know? Well, what's one of the fruits of the Spirit? Gentleness. How can he give gentleness if he doesn't have any? That's right. The Holy Spirit is gentle. That doesn't mean he's dull. Or boring. It just means he's gentle. There's a, there's a certain class about him. There's a certain air of royalty about his presence. True moves of the Holy Spirit have a certain elegance and beauty to them. There's a beauty and an elegance to the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, let's look at the Holy Spirit's presence briefly in the Song of Solomon. I'll show you several things here. The Holy Spirit appears a few times in the Song of Solomon, symbolically, that is. He's the unquenchable fire of God's love for us. You can see that in Song of Solomon chapter 8, verses 6 and 7. Of course, that is a reference to the symbol of fire. He's the sweet and alluring wind that draws the 2 lovers together. That's Song of Solomon 4:16. That wind is what fans into flame that love that we have, that union with Christ. In Song of Solomon 2:14, the young man tells the young woman, my dove is hiding behind the rocks, behind an outcrop on the cliff. Now, this is not directly talking about the Holy Spirit, of course, because the young man is calling the young woman the dove. But what the Scripture reveals about doves in that verse is that doves have a hiding nature. In Jeremiah chapter 48, verse 28, let me show you something else. Jeremiah 48:28, you people of Moab, flee from your towns and live in caves. Hide like doves that nest in the clefts of the rock. So the doves would nest, and they would hide. That's in the nature of the dove to do. We see that, of course, in the Scripture revealed. In the book of Psalms, the Israelites were said to have found treasures in plunder. Psalm 68:13, even those who lived among the sheepfolds found treasures, doves with wings of silver and feathers of gold. So, 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. Now, my daughter loves to play hide and seek. When I play that game, I have to hide in a certain way that she can find me because if I hide too good, we— she will not find me. And there's been times where she just went off to play with something else and I'm like, weren't we playing hide-and-seek? She says, I couldn't find you. But I'll have to hide in such a way that I'm still playing the game but she can still see me around the corner or— Maybe through, through the door. Now, I do not have to abandon my daughter to play hide and seek with her. Now, I'm not suggesting that this is a game that we're playing, but I'm simply illustrating the point that God does not have to abandon you to take you to the place of testing, to take you to that place where you do not sense him. Now I'm about to say something that many might misunderstand, so I want to make sure that I'm doing a good job communicating it, and I want to make sure I'm saying this correctly. The more you mature in faith, the closer you come to Jesus, the less you rely on experience, the less you rely on feelings.

Amen.

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 upon the emotion of those encounters And they panic when they can't feel God in their emotions.

Yeah.

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 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 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?

Come on.

Amen. But still, to rely upon that as the test, as the measure against which you hold your life and encounters with God, 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.

That's good.

Isaiah 45:15 says, verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Savior. 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 me, O God. Search me, O 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.

Amen.

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 where 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.

Yeah.

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?

Amen.

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 learn from my mistakes. And things just weren't happening the way I wanted to see them happening. Very ambitious. I have a lot of drive. I want to— 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 did not. And so I remember I came to this place and I said to the Lord, again foolishly speaking, I said, Lord, if you don't come through for this, I'm just gonna 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 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 probably— I was maybe, I wanna say, 17, 18 years old. We're just starting this thing out. And by comparison to what we're doing now, 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 in my foolishness, I repeated what I had said. And I don't know if this was verbatim what 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.

Oh.

And I 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 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 it. Lift your hands and say, "Test me, Lord." You write it in the comments section. Test me, Lord. You gotta 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 test— see, to God it's not a matter of time. What's time to him?

A decade.

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. Or 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. Oh, that's so good. 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 costs 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—

Help me. Why?

Well, why did you do what was right? You see, Joseph eventually came to Potiphar'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. Amen. It's in the testing that motives are purified. Number 2, he purifies you. The Holy Spirit will go through these seasons where he seems to withdraw his presence. Remember, he abides in you, but in terms of your emotions, in terms of those physical sensations that we sometimes get in these meetings, he'll withdraw in in that sense, for a season. Why? Hosea 10:12, sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord till he come and rain righteousness upon you. When you sense that distance between you and God, what happens? You begin to seek him. And so when the Holy Spirit begins to pull like this, What happens? It alerts us, and it causes us to realize that something in us needs to be purified. Something in us needs to be worked on. Now, that's a constant reality, which is why the Holy Spirit is constantly leading us to deeper places. But when he does this in certain seasons where you feel that distance, he's purifying something in you. These are difficult places indeed. No one wants to talk about this. We'd rather hear about the moment of breakthrough or the day of the miracle, and I love hearing about that too. But, but if I don't prepare you with these truths, then when you face difficult times, you're gonna— you— some of you may think God abandoned you.

Yeah.

Or, I don't feel or sense. In fact, I found that the closer I've come to him, the less I even need those experiences and encounters that we would call feeling God. Come on.

Why?

Because I go from experiencing God in just body and emotion to actually just walking with him in spirit.

Amen.

And there's this consistency, this stability, To where you're not going up and down. One Sunday you're standing worshiping God, praising him, and by the next Sunday, oh, I'm defeated again. The enemy got me. I want to walk with him in such a way that even in the midst of the most difficult circumstances, I have a firm foundation.

Yes.

That I'll cling to him even when life throws at me unexpected tragedy and trials. Not saying, God, where are you? Where have you been? Not allowing myself to get bitter and angry at God for not doing everything exactly like I thought he should. But instead, letting him purify you. In those seasons where you feel like he's not there. There will be seasons where you're going to feel him close. Praise God for those. There will be seasons where you don't feel him, but he's still there. Praise God for those seasons too. So number one, he's testing you. Number 2, he's purifying you. Number 3, he's drawing you closer. 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. 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. Yes. 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.

Amen.

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 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.

Yeah.

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 wind came from the presence of the Lord. I believe that was the Holy Spirit. 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.

Yes.

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.

Come on.

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 gonna 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. Amen. 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. Think about some of the things that have happened in the past 3 years alone. The 3 years alone, how much our world has changed in the past 3 years. There's no going back to normal. Everyone can feel it. Something's different now. Something's different in our world. That's not a doomsday prophecy, it just is. So you got to learn to have joy in every moment.

Yeah.

But you know, I can't tell you how many believers came to me saying, I'm so worried now, I don't know what I'm gonna do, uh, the financial system may collapse. I said, well, what was your faith in? And to many of us, when we started hearing about financial collapse, to many of us it actually revealed that our trust for provision wasn't in God, it was in the system.

Yeah.

And then when that got shaken up, we found, oh, it was God taking care of me all along. When we heard about disease, when we heard about war, when we heard about unrest, all of these things caused the heart to become unsettled. But when you're unsettled, when you're filled with fear, let that reveal to you that your misplaced trust— let your fear reveal to you your misplaced trust. 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 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 pulling, 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. And we step into that perfect walk of faith.

Amen.

One day, as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the word of God. He noticed 2 empty boats at the water's edge where the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, its owner, to push it out into the water. So he sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there. Now I'm at verse 4 of Luke chapter 5. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, now go out where it is deeper and let down your nets and catch some fish. Verse 5. Master, Simon replied, we worked hard all last night and didn't catch a thing. But if you say so, I'll let the nets down again. And this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear. A shout for help brought their partners in the other boat, And soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking. What the disciples had attempted to do in their own strength, what the disciples had attempted to do by their own power, with their own knowledge, they were actually able to succeed in with the help of God's power. These were fishermen. They knew what they were doing. But they caught nothing. It was only after they allowed the Lord to make use of their boat that their boat was blessed. Turn to somebody next to you and say, blessings on my boat. Blessings on my boat. You have to understand the law of stewardship. You have to understand the law of stewardship. The law of stewardship states that if I do well with what God has already entrusted to me, then he will increase my responsibilities. Now, whenever God increases someone, God doesn't increase you just for the sake of you, or as James says, to consume it upon their own lusts. I want you to take a moment to think about You watching online, do the same. Maybe you can even write it in the comments section. Who would you bless? What ministries would you bless? Who would you help? What difference would you make if God suddenly were to triple your resources? Would you help your struggling parents? Help an orphanage? Feed more of the hungry? Would you go to your pastor and say, Pastor, we can get the building? Would you help that friend in need who can't buy their groceries? Would you bless that single mother who can't pay her rent?

Amen.

I think you would. You online as well, I think you would. The only step that keeps us from getting there is fear. We say things like, God, if you bless me, I'll start giving. No, my friend, God will meet all your needs whether you give or not because you're his child, period.

Amen.

He's not going to abandon you. And no, he's not going to curse you if you don't give. That's just not true. It's not even in the Bible, not in the New Testament sense anyway. You, you not giving to this ministry is not going to curse you. You can, you can leave here without giving a cent. I'll still love you. Jesus will still love you, and you'll still be blessed. You'll still be provided for. God will still take care of you. You know why? Because he loves you, because you are his child.