 You have to understand your main three enemies are greed pride and lust When you give you overcome greed When you pray you overcome pride and when you fast you overcome lust And so actually Jesus corrected these three aspects because as a Christian when you begin to do these things What you're doing is you're not just becoming religious You are sowing into the a relationship with the Holy Spirit The Bible says where your treasure is there is your heart. Let me give you 21st century update of that Where you have your money There is your heart That means I can pray for many hours But if my money is not where my prayer is My heart is where my money is the Bible doesn't say where your prayer is there is your heart Bible doesn't even say where your fasting is there is your heart Where your money is there is your heart until my money shifts From the bank account to whatever Holy Spirit wants you to be Holy Spirit cannot have my heart if he doesn't have my money in the natural When you have a lot of money you are rich In the spiritual when you give It's when you become rich Prayer is the second thing that's very important How it strengthens our relationship with the Holy Spirit I've learned a very very important secret to prayer. It's so simple. It's unbelievably simple To have a great prayer life You have to have a holy life If you sin during the day You will not pray in the morning And if you pray good in the morning you will not sin during the day And both affect each other We cannot have a good prayer if we have a bad life And you cannot have a bad life if you have a good prayer We have to fast when Holy Spirit leads us to do so But the problem is there are times when the spirit doesn't lead You have to lead the spirit You have to fast why because your flesh Always is flesh And you can't afford there are times when Holy Spirit leads and those fast things when the Holy Spirit leads are so easy There are five days or seven days or three days or one day It's so much energy and when Holy Spirit doesn't lead you for a month not too fast That means you just have to pick up a bible and obey it You have to fast And to say to sow into the Holy Spirit will be equivalent as to say When you sow into a relationship with someone You do things so that your relationship can grow I've been married for three years and I've realized one thing about relationship For my relationship with my wife to live I and her need to die This is the only way our relationship will live and if we don't die and we hold on to our own ways guess who dies relationship That's why many marriages die because people refuse to The only way relationship can live Is when to die Jesus already did that now it's your part Jesus's death alone cannot make the relationship thrive It's when I that's why the fasting the prayer comes in I come and I said Jesus it's about Relationship and it's so much about this relationship. I am willing to turn my back toward everybody I want to point one more thing that helps us to grow in our relationship with the Holy Spirit And that thing is it's what we feed ourselves with and who we walk with See we have to understand something about spiritual hunger Natural hunger only comes when you don't eat Spiritual hunger comes when you do eat When you eat you become hungry spiritually When you don't eat You're not hungry spiritually People get closer to the Holy Spirit because of what they read What they listen to Who they watch And who they hang out with We have to be people who will allow other people Putting us closer to the Holy Spirit Do you remember the wise man in the bible the wise man the scripture says that they saw a star shining and what happened They followed a star until the star brought them to Jesus I remember being in Seattle and one Preacher accused me He said you guys are crazy about tipi josh You guys are always you know following It's either papillars and benihin always following those preachers And I said yeah we do And he said we should follow God And I was like and we follow him too I'm like we follow them Like wise men follow the star we don't worship stars But if there is a star that shines brighter I'm gonna follow it not so I can get to know the star so that the star can bring me to him The stars in the world are not shining The stars God raises up are shining And if you follow them They will bring you to an encounter We're not following the ministers whom God uses We're not worshiping stars. That's a sin We follow Because we're wise We know direction to the anointing of God direction to the Holy Spirit to know God more It's not by following Hollywood stars It's by following the men and women Elisha followed Elijah and the spirit didn't fall When he followed God Spirit fell when he loved and worshiped God and he says I will not leave you Elijah and the mantle fell on him Disciples didn't just lock themselves in the room They followed Jesus for three and a half years and the spirit came upon them Joshua follows moses 40 years in the wilderness and moses dies and the spirit comes upon him There's three levels of knowing Holy Spirit one is when he is with you He is with you to bring you to salvation Then Holy Spirit comes to live in us At salvation to produce character But then there's a third experience what the bible says he comes upon us To give us the power To do great things when he's in us. He was working inside of us But when he's upon us, he's working through us. What that means is there is a greater Relationship you and I can have with Holy Spirit Prayer is not to make me a religious person Fasting is not to make me very spiritual Giving is not so I can brag about it And following other preachers is not so I can be somebody's just disciple It's so all of that could push me to one thing So like a donkey I can be brought to Jesus and the Holy Spirit can sit on me And a city can be changed for the glory of God