 Is the Holy Spirit comfortable taking up residence in you? Does the Holy Spirit feel at home in you? Or does He take up residence and you go, okay, Holy Spirit, you can't have this, you can't have that, you can't go there, you can't touch that. And the things that you're putting before your eyes, are they breaking His heart? The things you're listening to, are they breaking His heart? What you see and what you hear, do those things remind the Holy Spirit of things that break His heart? The question is, how do you host the Holy Spirit? Is He at home in you? There's this philosophy in the world called moral relativism. And that philosophy can be summarized in this phrase, to each His own. So this person believes this, that person believes that, I believe this, to each His own. You believe what you believe, I'll believe what I believe. The problem with that, is that only works so long as each doesn't actually believe His own, because eventually there's going to be some contradiction. But that's how the world lives, in the irrational, in the illogical. Everyone just believe what you want to believe, you have your truth, I have my truth, there's no such thing as the truth. That's moral relativism. And that is a mindset in the world. Now as Christians, we understand that the word of God is truth. As believers, we know that we take the word of God as the final authority. Now here's what's interesting. Is that the church has its own version of moral relativism. The church has its own version of the phrase, to each His own. You see in the church world, we don't say to each His own. In the church world, we don't say, well there are many truths. What do we say in the church world? What do Christians say? We say, well I'm not convicted about it. Well that's your conviction, but these are my convictions. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Since when was it about your convictions? Since when was it about your standard? Should not we live by the Holy Spirit's convictions? And would the Holy Spirit set different standards for individuals when it comes to basic holiness? That's something to think about. You see, if you want to be a friend of the Holy Spirit, if you want to stand out, if you want to have that uniqueness about you, you have to learn to live at a higher standard. Amen. You can't do what unbelievers do. You can't even do what some Christians do. I'm not saying you have to do these things to be saved. Sure, if you're truly saved, you'll want to live holy. But you know there are some things that you won't be able to do, some places you won't be able to go, some things you won't be able to watch. You know there's things that I won't watch, that some Christians are perfectly fine with. That's not me slamming other Christians. I'm in no way better than other believers. We are all sinners saved by grace. But maybe, just maybe, God's calling you to a higher standard, because that's what it takes. You see, when you get saved, you lose your unsaved friends. But when you start to walk in friendship with the Holy Spirit, you begin to lose your lukewarm friends too. They begin to tell you things like, oh, you take it too seriously. You're taking that too far. Well, you've got to live a little. Well, and I understand some people are really weird, and they get really strange, and it's not really the Holy Spirit talking to them. You can't even have a normal conversation with them about how they're doing that day. I'm not talking about weird people. I'm talking about holy people. I'm talking about people who understand that they're going to have to raise the standard of their living. That they're not going to spend hours on Netflix. They're not going to spend hours on social media. They're not going to allow certain things that are distracting and secular. You're just going to have to live at a higher standard. Is it worth it? Absolutely. No sin is worth the anointing on your life. No compromise is worth the sweet presence of the Holy Spirit himself. You can't replace that. You can't replace it, and you have to learn to protect that anointing, protect that relationship with the Holy Spirit. That's how you have to live. Not in paranoia, not in fear, not in legalism, not in superstition and all these rules and regulations, but simply out of love for the Spirit. You carry that relationship with the Holy Spirit and you guard it. You protect it. You don't let anyone... That is my friendship with the Holy Spirit. If it hurts him, I won't do it. If it makes him even slightly uncomfortable, I move it out of my life immediately. I don't want it. I just want him. So, you want to make the Holy Spirit at home in you. Here's how to host His presence. Number one, avoid the demonic. This should be simple enough. I remember one time I was ministering in the Midwest and I think it was a youth service. I don't quite remember. But I do remember pooling up to the service and noticing that there was some spiritual warfare in the atmosphere. I just knew there was going to be some resistance. So I get into the service. I'm standing there in the front row, ready to preach. The worship is continuing. And suddenly out of the blue, I sense this almost like a brushing across the back of my neck. And I got chills all over my body. Like a brushing across the back of my neck and I got chills all over my body. It wasn't a physical brushing, but in the spirit I can sense something here. And there was something very ugly, very dark right behind me, right over my right shoulder. And I just sense this heaviness. I turned around and I'm looking behind me and there's this guy dressed in all black. He's got these thick, like those things, like those plugs that they do in the ears where they extend them. We look like, almost like, it almost looked like his ears were made of Play-Doh. Like it was stretched out all big. He had a lip piercing, a nose piercing. He had tattoos all over. He's wearing all these black clothes and he's carrying a satanic Bible. I turned to look at him and he's got his eyes locked right on me. And he's looking at me and he just had this weird grin on his face. He grinned at me and just starts nodding his head. Like, yeah, it's me that you're feeling. So I said, okay, that's fine. I get on the platform. I began. I said, everybody take three minutes, pray in the Holy Ghost. Boy, that guy, you could see his whole demeanor shift. He was very uncomfortable in that atmosphere and he ended up leaving the service. But the point is, the demonic and the spiritual clash, don't allow the demonic in your life to any degree. Not even a little bit. This doesn't mean you go avoiding people who need deliverance and freedom. No, God sends you to them to drive out demons. You need to do that. But what actually begins to happen here is you begin to recognize demonic things and you avoid your participation in demonic things. Number two, you want to host the presence of the Holy Spirit. Minimize the secular. Now, the secular is more subtle than the satanic. Let me say that again. The secular is more subtle than the satanic. Certain things diminish the power of God on your life. There are certain things that cause your faith to be stifled. Think about in Mark chapter 5 verse 40, where Jesus goes to the home of Jairus and he goes to raise the little girl from the dead and people in the building in the house start to laugh at him. What does he do? He throws them out. He removes them from his life. There may be a point where you have to start disconnecting from secular people who have too much of an influence on your life. I sense a strong anointing on that. There's someone watching me. You know that people who are secular are influencing in your life. And I'm not talking about quarantining the gospel and never reaching another lost soul. Again, we're in the world, not of the world. We participate in conversations and interactions with people who are of the world, of course. But I'm talking about giving someone a place in your life where they have influence. The Holy Spirit will not share influence. Let me say that again. The Holy Spirit will not share influence. He will remove people from your life who are influencing you in the opposite direction you should go. That's a fact. The Holy Spirit, James says, is jealous over you. So there will be some things that are secular in your life that the Holy Spirit will minimize that influence. Now, again, we can't be completely detached from the world. Some people say, well, I don't go to this business because they believe in that, or I don't go here because they believe in that. Do you realize that everything in this world has touched something unclean? That everything in this world can be connected to some type of demonic or sinful agenda, just a reality. So I'm talking about not participating. I'm talking about minimizing the influence of the secular in your life. Now, there was this service that I was administering at in Southern California, and man, the prophetic was so strong. I started seeing in the prophetic, this only happened to me like two or three times. I was actually able to hear. You may call me crazy. I was able to hear the thoughts going on in people's heads, and I was calling it out through the prophetic. I can't turn that on and off at will. It should be kind of cool, but it's only happened a couple of times. In almost 20 years of ministry, I think maybe three times I've had it to where I could hear in the spirit so clearly, and man, the prophetic anointing came on me so strong. And I say prophetic anointing, not that there's an actual literal prophetic anointing. It's one anointing, and the prophetic expression was stirred by that anointing. So I'm walking around the service, and I'm calling people out, pulling them out of their seats, saying, you're going through this, this, this, and this, and very specific things about their lives. And so I'm in this flow. I'm enjoying it. I felt like I was in a whole different world. And this girl comes into the service, walks in from the back door, walks down the side aisle, moves across the front row, and sits down right in front of me. And then she gets on her phone. I watched her because she was so distracting about it. I watched her come in and sit down, and the moment she did, it lifted from off of me. And I literally, this is what I did. I had the microphone in my hand. I watched her. She sits down. I go, well, church. I sensed it lift. I'm released to the Lord. I'm going to turn it over now. And I handed the microphone over to the pastor because this girl walked in and just sat down, decided to be a distraction to everyone. She's a young teenager. Now I didn't call her out. I didn't get the conversation with her. I just knew that because of the distraction, I was pulled away from it. So I don't even necessarily say it was the girl's fault, but I had become focused on her because she distracted me, and I lost sight that pinpointed sight in the spirit. I lost it for that moment because of the secular. Did she do anything sinful? No. Was she practicing witchcraft? No. Did she do something blatantly obviously wrong? No. It was just a secular distraction. Sometimes I really do believe that the mundane world itself is an insult to the glory of God. So number one, avoid the demonic. Number two, minimize the secular. Number three, subject the flesh. 1 Corinthians 9, 27, I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should do. Otherwise, now this is Paul the apostle writing this. Get this. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others, I myself might be disqualified. Whoa! That Paul the apostle would write that? That's how much of an enemy the flesh is. You see, you can cast devils out, and you can be free of the demonic by giving your heart to Jesus being filled with the Holy Spirit. Here's the problem with you. You can't cast you out of you. You're stuck with you until the day of redemption, until the day we receive our glorified bodies. You can't cast you out of you. The flesh does not come and go. The flesh shrinks and grows. It grows stronger and weaker depending upon how you interact with it. Now, there was this one time when I prayed for this woman who got healed. I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I'm praying with her, believing for her miracles. She gets healed. And she says, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I said, you're welcome. I'm half asleep. She walks away. And as she's walking away, I realize, oh, she thanked me, not the Holy Spirit, not the Lord. So, you may call me religious, but these are the types of things you have to do. This is the standard. I ran after her and I said, ma'am, I don't want to sound rude and I'm not trying to correct you just for fun. I said, but I need to make it clear to you. I did not heal you. Jesus healed you and he's the only one who deserves the glory. So, I'm doing all this. I think it's like this intense moment. She goes, oh, yeah, I know. Thank you. Thank you. And she just keeps walking away. To her, it was just probably something weird that I did. But to me, it was a check in my heart and the Holy Spirit revealed to me, that's how it begins. That's how it begins. Wow. Little by little. Little things we don't allow ourselves to correct. So, you want the Holy Spirit to fill that home in you. Number one, avoid the demonic. Number two, minimize the secular. Number three, subject the flesh. 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