Fresh Anointing Part 2

Check Your Flow Rate: Digging Deeper Wells of Fresh Anointing

Digging Deeper Wells

When was the last time you truly felt the fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit moving in your life?

Not the last time you sat in a good service.

Not the last time you heard somebody else testify about what God had done for them.

I mean the last time YOU — personally — felt the weight and the glory and the power of the Holy Spirit fresh on your life like it was the first time all over again?

For some of us, that answer comes quick. For some of us, it takes a little longer to dig for it. And for some of us, if we are being really honest this morning, we are not even sure we can remember. That is exactly why we are here today. I want to read to you out of John chapter 7, beginning at verse 37.

John 7:37–38 MEV

On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.”

Out of his heart shall flow rivers. Not a trickle. Not a drip from a leaky faucet. Rivers.

Living water.

Church, Jesus was not describing something that was meant to be reserved for a select few super-spiritual believers.

He was describing what the normal Christian life is supposed to look like. He was describing YOU.

He was describing what this church is supposed to look like when we are walking in the fullness of what He purchased for us.

So this morning, I want to talk to you about digging deeper wells. I want to challenge every single one of us — myself included — to stop settling for shallow water when Jesus promised us rivers.

Because if we are going to be a growing, striving, Spirit-filled church, we have got to get this in our spirits: we need a FRESH anointing. And fresh anointing does not just fall on people who are comfortable.

It falls on people who are hungry. It falls on people who are willing to dig. The question this morning is not whether God is able to pour out a fresh anointing.

The question is whether we are positioned to receive it. Are we digging? And if we are digging, what exactly are we digging into?

The Flow Rate

Now when we talk about digging deeper wells, one of the most important things we have to consider is the Flow Rate.

Think about it in natural terms for a moment. If you have a well, it is not enough to just have a well.

You need water pressure. You need to know how the water is moving. How good is your water pressure this morning?

How often are you pouring the water of the Word and the water of the Spirit over your life?

In practical terms, the flow rate of water is the quantity of a liquid or gas that is moving through, in most cases, a pipe. Now here is what is important about the flow rate — it has two sides to it. There is an inflow and there is an outflow.

The inflow is where the water is coming from. The outflow is where the water is going.

I want you to think about yourself this morning as the pipe. You are the conduit. You are not the source of the water — Jesus is the source. But you are the pipe that the Living Water is meant to flow through. And if we are going to dig deeper wells of fresh anointing, we need to be properly tapped into both sides of that equation.

I think a lot of us have been running on low water pressure for a long time and we have just gotten used to it.

We have accepted a weak trickle when Jesus said rivers.

Think about it this way. In my line of secular work, I have hit a few water lines. And let me tell you something, when you nick a water line it gets your attention real fast. But here is what I learned from those experiences — when you go back in and fix that pipe, you cannot leave any kind of debris inside. Not a rock, not a chunk of dirt, not anything. Because even the smallest obstruction can wreck your water pressure.

The flow rate suffers.

Church, some of us have got debris in our pipes and we do not even realize it.

Some of us have got spiritual blockages that are killing our flow rate and we have just accepted it as normal.

This morning I want to help you identify what is blocking your flow and how to get the Living Water moving through you again. Let us start with the inflow.

The Inflow

The inflow is where the water is coming from. And for every born-again believer sitting in this room this morning, your inflow is the Holy Spirit.

Acts 2:38 MEV

Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

When you repented and accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, He did not leave you empty-handed. He gave you a gift. He sent the Holy Spirit to take up residence on the inside of you. That is your inflow.

The Holy Spirit living on the inside of you is the source of Living Water flowing into your life. Now think about who the Holy Spirit is for a moment.

He is the leader of all truth. He is the revealer of Jesus Christ.

He is the One who convicts, who comforts, who guides, who empowers. Everything that flows from Jesus Christ flows to us through the Holy Spirit.

That is a powerful inflow, church.

If I am being honest, most of us would not even have a desire to crack open our Bibles if it were not for the Holy Spirit stirring something on the inside of us.

Most of us would not wake up in the morning with a hunger to pray if it were not for the Spirit nudging us toward the throne room of God.

The desire itself is the inflow working on us. But here is the thing — that inflow, as powerful as it is, responds to what we do with it. Think about a faucet. The water is there behind the pipes. The pressure is ready.

But if you never turn the handle, nothing comes out.

When we pray, we are turning the handle.

When we open the Word and actually read it, we are turning the handle.

When we fast, when we sit in stillness before God, when we worship Him in Spirit and in truth we are turning the handle and allowing the Living Water to pour into us.

Some of us have had the faucet turned off for a long time.

We wonder why we feel dry and distant from God.

We wonder why church feels routine and the Word feels like it has no life in it.

Church, could it be that the faucet just needs to be turned?

Could it be that the Holy Spirit is right there, ready to pour, and all He needs is for you to make the move to open up?

The inflow matters.

Getting the Word in you matters.

Prayer matters.

Fasting matters.

Fellowship matters.

These are not to be seen as religious duties, rather they are the mechanisms by which you open yourself up to the Living Water that Jesus promised.

But the inflow is only half the story. There is also an outflow that needs to happen. And this is where things get real.

The Outflow

The outflow is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

What I am describing to you is what the Bible lays out as normal Christianity.

I am describing what happened in Acts chapter 2 when the Holy Spirit fell and those believers began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

I am describing what Jesus said would happen when He told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high.

Here is something important I want you to understand this morning. A lot of times when we pray for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, we pray like we are begging God to send us something from far away.

We plead and we beg and we cry out like Jesus is somewhere out there withholding the Holy Spirit and we just need to say the right thing to convince Him to send it down. But that is not the picture the Scripture paints.

Remember, if you are born again, the Holy Spirit is already living inside of you. Jesus already sent the Comforter. He is already there. You are not waiting on God — God is waiting on you. So what we need to be praying is not "God send the Holy Spirit to me" but rather "Holy Spirit, flow THROUGH me."

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit is not about getting something you do not have. It is about allowing what is already on the inside to come out. And I know some of us get scared about this. We hear about speaking in tongues and we immediately start thinking about what we are going to look like.

We think about the people in the pews around us. We think about whether folks are going to talk. And so we sit on it. We suppress it. We let the Holy Spirit stay tucked away on the inside because we are worried about looking like a fool.

Church, let me ask you something. Which matters more what the person sitting next to you thinks, or what happens to you and through you when the Holy Spirit has full freedom to move? Because here is what happens when you allow the outflow.

People can see the Word of God come alive in your life. When this outflow happens people can see that you actually believe what you say you believe.

When this outflow happens, you are given supernatural power to be a witness for Jesus Christ.

Acts chapter 1 verse 8 says you SHALL receive power when the Holy Ghost comes upon you and you SHALL be witnesses. That is not a suggestion. That is a promise with power attached to it.

Some of us have been Christians for years and we still have not led anyone to Jesus. We wonder why witnessing feels so hard, why we freeze up when opportunities come. Could it be that the outflow has been blocked?

Could it be that we are trying to operate in our own power when the Holy Spirit is right there ready to give us supernatural ability? Church, if we are ever going to return to being an Acts 2 church, we have got to be willing to let the Holy Spirit flow out of us.

We need to check our flow rate.

The Danger of Stagnation

Now I want to talk to you about what happens when you have an inflow but no outflow. Because this is where a lot of believers live and they do not even know the danger they are in.

If you have ever watched any of those survival shows — and I know some of you have — you know that one of the first rules of survival is that you cannot drink from a stagnant pool. Those pools are filled with bacteria and parasites and diseases that can make you desperately ill. It is not just bad water. It is dangerous water. Water that can kill you.

But how does a pool become stagnant?

Water flows in, but it never flows out.

That is it. The water has nowhere to go. It sits. It settles. And over time, what was once fresh and clean and life-giving becomes toxic.

This can happen to us spiritually.

We can have an inflow of the Holy Spirit through prayer and reading and study and fasting — all of those good things — but if there is a clog in our outflow, if the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is not being allowed to operate in our lives, then over time we are in danger of becoming stagnant.

Stagnation is not just mildly inconvenient, church. Stagnation is detrimental to your spiritual health. It is harmful to your growth. And I believe it is one of the leading causes of people walking away from their faith in Jesus Christ altogether.

Think about what happens when you become stagnant spiritually.

You start having a harder time trusting God for the everyday things.

The Word starts feeling dry.

Prayer starts feeling like talking to a wall.

You show up to church out of habit and you go through the motions and you go home feeling exactly the same way you felt when you walked in. Think about what happens to you when you are physically sick.

Even the smallest tasks feel monumental. You have no energy. You have no motivation. You just want to lie down and not be bothered. When we become spiritually sick from stagnation, we feel that same way about the things of God.

Witnessing becomes too hard.

Loving difficult people becomes too much.

Praying for someone feels like too big an ask. And little by little, we drift. But it is not just about you.

Stagnation spreads.

Nothing is worse to look at than a green, murky, stagnant pool. If someone is thirsty and they are genuinely looking for something to drink, they are not going to choose the stagnant pool. They will keep moving.

Church, there are people in our community in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in our own families who are desperately thirsty. They are looking for something real. They are looking for something alive.

And if they look at our lives and all they see is stagnation, why would they want what we have?

And here is something harder to hear: stagnation is contagious. Someone can look at a stagnant believer and think, "Well if he can just get by without fully surrendering to the Holy Spirit, so can I." And their inflow starts to get blocked too. Their flow rate drops. The cycle continues.

If your family is watching you live a Christian life without any evidence of the Spirit's outflow without the gifts operating, without the power moving, without the anointing being visible they are going to absorb that model. They are going to think that is what Christianity looks like.

We cannot afford to be stagnant. The stakes are too high.

The Cure

But I am not going to leave you sitting in the stagnant pool. Because there is a cure. And the cure is exactly what you would expect it to be: the outflow.

When a church is truly touched by the Spirit of God, everything changes.

The atmosphere shifts.

The people change.

The hunger level in the room goes up.

Hope comes back.

Sometimes it only takes one person. One person willing to stop suppressing the Holy Spirit and start letting Him flow freely can change the entire temperature of a room. One person who stops worrying about what they look like and starts caring about what God wants to do can be the spark that lights the whole church on fire. We are living in a moment right now where people are leaving churches in record numbers. And there are a lot of reasons people give for why they leave.

But one of the biggest ones is that people are hungry for something real.

They are hungry for Spirit and fire. They walked into a church hoping to encounter the living God and they left with a bulletin and a handshake.

Church, we need to be the place where the Holy Spirit has full freedom to move. We need to be the place where the power and presence of Pentecost is not just a historical event we talk about but a living reality we walk in.

We need to be operating in the gifts of the Spirit.

We need to be a people who believe that the same God who showed up in Acts chapter 2 is the same God who is here in this room right now and He has not changed and He is not done.

You cannot lead your family to make wise decisions without the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

You cannot consistently overcome the plans of the enemy without it.

You cannot walk in the full will of God for your life without it.

And you cannot be the witness that your neighborhood needs without the power that the outflow provides.

Jesus said rivers. Not a drip. Not a small stream we can step over. Rivers of living water. That is what is available to us. That is what has been promised to us.

The question is whether we are willing to open up and let it flow. Church, some of us need to get to the Word this morning and let it flush out the debris. Some of us need to surrender the fear, surrender the pride, surrender the comfort of how things have always been, and say "Holy Spirit, I want You to have full freedom in my life. Inflow and outflow both." Some of us need to stop being satisfied with just enough of God to get by and start digging for rivers.

Altar Call: Fresh Anointing

I want to close this morning with something that Charles Spurgeon said. Now Spurgeon was not a Pentecostal. He was a Baptist preacher in 19th century London. But even he understood the absolute necessity of the Spirit in the life of the church.

He said this: "A church in the land without the Spirit is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember that you stand in somebody else's way; you are a fruitless tree standing where a fruitful tree might grow."

A fruitless tree standing where a fruitful tree might grow. That is a hard word. But it is a word we need to hear. If we are not walking in the anointing that Jesus purchased for us.

If we are not allowing the Holy Spirit to have both inflow and outflow in our lives. If we are sitting in stagnation and calling it stability. Then we are not just missing out for ourselves. We are standing in the way of what God wants to do through us and around us. But this morning, I believe that changes. I am going to ask you to do something that requires honesty. Not performance. Not emotion for the sake of emotion. Just honest, humble surrender before the Lord. If you came in this morning and somewhere in this message you felt the Holy Spirit put His finger on something — a dry season, a blocked outflow, a fear you have been carrying about fully surrendering to the Spirit — I want you to respond to that this morning. If you are hungry for a fresh anointing. If you are tired of the trickle and you want the rivers Jesus promised. If you want the Holy Spirit to have full freedom in your life — inflow and outflow — I want to invite you to come to the front right now.

This is not about being perfect. This is not about having it all together. This is simply about saying, "God, I want more of You. I want to check my flow rate and I want You to have access to every part of the pipe." Come on, church. Let us position ourselves together this morning.

The same God who showed up in that upper room in Acts chapter 2 is in this room right now. He has not changed. His power has not diminished. And He is ready to pour out a fresh anointing on every hungry heart in this place. Let us pray.