The Ministration Of The Holy Spirit.

1. Prayer and learning to listen to the Holy Spirit.
2. Learning to Obey the voice of the Holy Spirit
3. Activation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer and learning to listen to the Holy Spirit.
Listening to the Holy Spirit is the State of being able to receive word (instruction, guidance and direction from the Holy Spirit). Being still and waiting in the presence of God is one of the avenues of receiving from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can speak to you when you are still and silent in His presence. You can also receive instructions, guidance and direction while you are praying.
Being still and silent__ that is being quiet and not speaking a word. The Holy Spirit can speak to your spirit when you are quite. The Holy Spirit can also speak to you audibly in a conversational voice just like man is speaking to you.
Note: One of the reasons why most of us are not able to hear from the Holy Spirit or receive from the Holy Spirit is because we do not create time of receiving from Him. Why? Because we and so busy to be busy for God and we live in a noisy world and we are not able to easily create a still environment. There are so many voices around us that we can not recognize which voice is speaking yet Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice.

“The door keeper opens the door for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought all his own sheep out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. But you refuse to believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” John 10:3-4, 26-27 (NET).

If we get familiar with Jesus, then we can be able to hear and recognize His voice. In the like manner, when we get familiar with the Holy Spirit, then we can hear and recognize His voice anytime anywhere he speaks to us. The Holy Spirit most times is speaking but because we are not familiar with him, we can’t recognize His voice. Take for example, if you are not familiar with me and my voice, and I happen to speak on radio as you tune on your Radio and find that I have already finished introducing my self. While you listen to me, you will be asking, but who is that person speaking. You can not be able to recognize my voice because you are not familiar with my voice. But if you know me, and are familiar with my voice, any time you tune your radio and hear me speak, then you can tell, oh that is Wilson speaking.
In the same manner, I pray we get to know the Holy Spirit more and we get familiar with His Voice, that whenever He speaks to us we can be able to hear and recognize Him speaking.
Jesus says, his sheep hear his voice, and they know it, and recognize it. So if we do not hear, know and recognize His voice, whose sheep are we then?
How many times have we hindered the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives by trying to use our own strength, abilities, skills, wisdom and experiences while neglecting to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, our helper. The struggles we have had in ministry is on trying to work for God while trusting on our own abilities, skills and experiences. Some times we see what looks like solutions that can help us solve things, but they can be wrong ways. The scripture says, “

Proverbs 14:12
There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.

And by doing this, we delay the involvement of the Holy Spirit in helping us. Until we come to the helplessness and realization that our abilities are not helping us, the Holy Spirit will watch us struggle. We need to cultivate the atmosphere of being able to listen to the directing and guiding voice of the Holy Spirit in our ministry and daily lives. When we learn to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, we are able to witness a mighty move of the Lord and ministry will not be much of a struggle. We struggle because we do not know what, how, and when, where. But when we hear the guiding voice of the Holy Spirit in our endeavors, we see ease in ministry. When we try to depend on our human abilities to do work of ministry, it is just a waste of time. Instead, we get frustrated over situations.

Learning to Obey the voice of the Holy Spirit
Hearing and receiving from the Holy Spirit is even more easier than to obey what He tells us to do because this one requires action. For example the Holy Spirit can clearly ask you to give a certain amount of money to where or to whom he shall instruct you and yet that is the same money you have planned for something else. Will you obey and give the money or you will keep it?
Secondly the Holy Spirit can ask you to give out your land to a specific individual or person. Will you give or not.
The Holy Spirit can ask you to go and preach where there is war, will you go or not.
Obeying the Holy Spirit some times is just against human logic. It may appear like foolishness, that is why there are few people who real obey the Holy Spirit. Obedience to the Holy Spirit is not easy, it costs. But if you are to be used by God and are willing to please God, then you must be able to pay the cost.
Some times it can cost your reputation, because some times in obeying the Holy Spirit people around you can view you as one who has lost His mind. Some times it costs you your relationships.
Sometimes in obeying the Holy Spirit it may seem to be contrary to the Word of God but you just have to obey. At the end of the day, what matters is what God has told you to do not what people will say.
For example, When God told Abraham to sacrifice his Son, it seemed so contrary to the Word of God, because God does not allow human sacrifice.
Another example is when God asked Isaiah to walk naked for three years, it real seemed contrary to the Word of God.
Another example we can still see is when God asked Ezekiel to eat human dung, it seemed contrary to the word of God.
God asked Elijah to be fed by Ravens, yet God had told the Israelites not to even touch Ravens because they were unclean.
God asked Hosea to marry the prostitute and in the Law, servants of God (the priests) were not supposed to marry prostitutes and divorced women.
So will you obey God when He askes you to do what seems contrary to His Word?

Note: You do not need any witness to speak to you in order to obey the Word that God has spoken or asked you to do).

Limitations to hearing and recei6from the Holy Spirit.
Human logic. Logic does not apply in the things of God
Common sense. Common sense does not agree with the Word of God. It is not a general rule that things happen like that. Spiritual things can not be understood by a carnal mind_ common sense.
Take the example of Moses, when he was told to speak to the rock he instead hit the rock because common sense had helped him develop his simple formula of hitting the rock just as God had instructed him earlier and water came out of the rock.

Numbers 20:8,10-11
[8]“Get Aaron’s rod; then you and Aaron must summon the people. As they watch, speak to that rock over there and tell it to pour out its water! You will give them water from a rock, enough for all the people and all their cattle!”
[10]then Moses and Aaron summoned the people to come and gather at the rock; and he said to them, “Listen, you rebels! Must we bring you water from this rock?”
[11]Then Moses lifted the rod and struck the rock twice, and water gushed out; and the people and their cattle drank.

Moses is told to speak to the rock and was given the words to say. He was told to speak to rock saying, “You rock, pour out your water.” But he did not hear the instruction, instead the word he spoke was, “Listen, you rebels! Must we bring you water from this rock?”. Next Moses was told to speak to the rock, but because he had developed his formula which he built on his first success in Exodus 17:5-6 of striking the rock, instead of speaking to the rock, “Moses lifted the rod and struck the rock twice.”
In this first case Moses obeyed, because the Lord had told him to strike the rock.

Exodus 17:(5-6) Then Jehovah said to Moses, “Take the elders of Israel with you and lead the people out to Mount Horeb. I will meet you there at the rock. Strike it with your rod—the same one you struck the Nile with—and water will come pouring out, enough for everyone!” Moses did as he was told, and the water gushed out!.

In the first case Moses was told to strike the rock which he obeyed. But he made that a formula of getting water out of the rock. He puts now trust in his staff instead of God. That is why in the second case when God told him to speak to the rock, he remembers the formula of the staff and strikes the rock. Forgetting that God had changed the approach. We must be sensitive to understand where the Spirit of God is moving and we move in that direction, if not we shall turn to formulas.
Being used of God is not formula. In order for the Holy Spirit to use you, it is not formula, it is sensitivity to the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit. If you fail to get sensitive to the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit, you are in trouble. I repeat, it is not Formula, but sensitivity.
This prayer is the prayer of deliverance from formulas when you reach in a place or handling a situation.

“Holy Spirit, what do you want done here. And how do you want it done.
Holy Spirit, what do you want done in this situation. And how do you want it done.”

There are many examples that we can see on being sensitive to the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The best of all examples is how Jesus was sensitive to the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was not about formula, it was about sensitivity! And this is what made him a successful minister.
In John 5:30 Jesus says, “I can do nothing on my own initiative. Just as I hear, I judge, and my judgement is just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the One who sent me.” NET.
Jesus handles the same situation in different people using different approaches.

The first situation was blindness.
In the first case, he healed the blind person by spitting on the eyes of the blind man and then touching his eyes, Mark 8:22-25. Because that was the instruction he heard that time from the Father.
In the second case of blindness, he spits on the ground, makes mud and smears on the eyes of the blind man, then sends him to wash in the pool and the blind man’s eyes were opened, John 9:6-7.

In the third case, he touched their eyes and the blind men’s eyes were healed and they began seeing, Matthew 9:27-30. In this second case, the instruction was different from what he heard from the first case. It was sensitivity not formula. So he says, whatsoever I hear my Father say, so I do. So what he heard is what he did.

The second case that Jesus handled using different approaches is leprosy. Because he received or heard different instructions from the Father but handling the same problem.
When the leper came to Jesus in the crowd, he said to Jesus, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean”. He stretched out his hand and touched him saying, “I am willing. Be clean!” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Matthew 8:2-3.
Then in the second case, when ten lepers came to him, he changed the approach, telling them to go the priests and be examined and while they were walking they got cleansed of leprosy. Luke 17:11-14. He gave them that instruction, because that was what he heard from the Father.

Moses failed because he was not sensitive to the Orders and instructions from above. God does not use or repeat the same thing in handling the same situation. When the children of Israel were crossing the water bodies, during Moses and Joshua’s times, God used different methods. During Moses’s time, it was lifting up the staff, but during Joshua’s time, it was stepping in the water.

Learn to be sensitive to the Voice and guidance of the Holy Spirit in your Christian walk, and in your Christian service. Remember, It is not Formula but sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.