Maintaining Your Inner Life

None

Episode Transcript

(00:50):
This is Pastor Gale with Healing Begins. This is Michelle Hutchinson with the Mindset
Exchange podcast. So this morning,as you guys know, if you listen
to me, I'm up nice andlate in the morning, like four thirty
am. I'm kidding, that's notlate, that's really early. But this
morning God spoke to me in adream. And the Bible says in the

(01:11):
Book of Joels, in the lastdays, I will pour out my spirit
on awe flash your sons and yourdaughter's will prophesy, your young mental dream
dreams, and your old mental seavisions, and God talks about in the
last day, I'll pour out myspirit. Well, last night I went
to bed. I'm always asking Godto speak to me, and I had
a dream. I had a dreamI was headed towards the center of the

(01:34):
earth, and there was a coupleguiding me, and there was somebody with
me. A lady was with me, and we were guiding down towards the
center of the earth. And wecome to the center and I come to
a great, big open cavern.It was really beautiful. The cavern was
flooded with bright white light and therewas a pool in the middle of this
cavern. The water was just crystalclear, and I was up on this

(01:57):
cliff and so I had to climbeddown the cliff to get to the bottom.
And the person with me jumped offthe cliff and said, catch me
and I'll go what you know.And then we got to the bottom of
the cliff and we got down tothe bottom of this cavern and I said
to the couple that were guiding usdown, is this around the center of
the earth. And they said,yes, this is a center. Now

(02:17):
I noticed on the cavern walls therewas like red strips of this beautiful velvet,
like just bright red. And thenI noticed up on one of the
walls that looked like a harmless poodlethat was in a little cage and he
was yipping. He wanted attention,and so the person with me thought he

(02:38):
was kind of cute, so theylet him out of the out of his
cage, and then he began toeat all the red red velvet that was
on all over the walls. AndI'm like, oh, this is not
good. This is what he wants. He wants to eat up all the
red And then I woke up andI said, Lord, what is this
about? What are you saying tome? Well, so it says in

(03:00):
Solomon two fifteen, it is asmall foxes that spoil the vines. And
to me, the cavern represents ourinner life, and the pool of water
is out of our belly will flowrivers of living water. We're we're supposed
to be like, have that freshliving water of Jesus on the inside of
us. And the light is thelight of his presence. And the velvet

(03:23):
has to do with the blood ofJesus. But the yippie dog that looked
armless, to me, he representsthe things that can come at us to
hinder our inner life, to hinderour time with the Lord, whether it's
in the morning, afternoon, orevening, those things that come to spoil
the vines. Would you agree,Michelle, it doesn't always have to be

(03:45):
the big things. Yeah, Pastorgil, I think you know. Those
things that can spoil are numerous,right. They can be anything that becomes
a distraction and life from hearing thevoice of God and being so busy that

(04:08):
you can't stay faithful to what Godis speaking to you. There's so much
to talk about around this concept.Well, there is, because you see
the little dog look harmless, andhe kind of looked cute. What's the
harmer letting him out of his cage? Well, there was a lot of
harm when he got loose. Hewas just going after. He was eating

(04:29):
up the He was just chowing downon all the red, all the red,
beautiful red velvet strips that were alongthe cavern walls, even over the
ceiling. He was cruising and I'mlike, oh, this kid, this
dog is not good. He needsto be put back in his cage.
Are you saying that there might bethings that look good and exciting and feel
like promotions, but maybe they're adistraction. I am totally saying that when

(04:55):
you let them loose to eat upall your time, they gobble, They
don't just eat. I mean,he was going crazy. I don't know
if you ever seen a dog,if you've ever owned a dog and seen
a little dog go crazy, haveyou ever seen that? I have?
They get the zumis, yeah,then go really crazy, and the poodles
can just get over the top excited. You know, those little things that

(05:15):
come into our life from many differentdirections. You know, it's not always
the bad, it's not always thebad things that are the enemy of the
best. It's almost like the goodis the enemy of the best, because
there's a lot of good things thatthe enemy will try to throw at you
to distract you from where you're going. It makes me think about the scripture

(05:40):
First Corinthians thirteen. If I speakin the tongues of men and of angels
but have not love, I'm onlya resounding gong or clinging symbol. If
I have the gift of prophecy andcan faund them all mysteries and all knowledge,
and we go on and on aboutall of these things that can come
into our lives and what we canaccomplish. But if we're not resting ourselves

(06:01):
in the presence of God, whichthen fills us with a love that's unattainable
in any other way, then we'rejust this clanging gong. Right, We're
just running to and fro, butwe're not really truly carrying the presence of
the Lord. And it's really whatcomes out of carrying his presence that brings

(06:27):
fruit, that brings good, thatbrings rest, that brings supernatural And so
I think about that scripture, andI also think about you know, you
and I were chatting a little bitbefore the podcast, and you were referencing
a scripture in the Gospels, youknow, where Jesus talks about all of

(06:49):
these things that we can accomplish,but then says, but I never knew
you. You know, what willthat look like when we go to heaven
and we are accountable for our lives? And he says, you were able
to do all of these things,But did I know you, Did I
have a relationship with you, didI spend time with you, did you

(07:11):
come to me? Did you dothe things that were dear to my heart?
That's in Contacts on Matthew twenty fourand twenty five where he talks about
in the last days, you knowyou're going to see wars, rumors of
wars, and blah blah, blahblah, and then he goes on,
I think it's in Matthew twenty fiveto talk about some parables. One was

(07:31):
the parable of the sheep of thegoats, and that's actually what we're talking
about right now, the parable ofthe sheep and the goats. And he
says, to the problem with thesheep and the goats is all the sheep
they all thought they were sheep.They didn't the ones that were there didn't
realize they were goats, and thenhe had to separate them. You have
the sheep on one side, youhave the goats on the other. And

(07:54):
he said to the goats, Iwas hungry. You did not feed me.
I was thirsty. You did notgive me to drink. And he
goes through all this litany with them, and then he said, I never
knew you. And they said,but Lord, but did we not prosy
in your name? And your namecasts out devils? And he said,
I don't know who you are.And then the sheep say, well,

(08:15):
when when did we do that?Lord? He said, when you did
it under the least of these,you did it under me. So Jesus
talked about visiting people in the hospital, feeding the sick, giving some of
the drink. He talked about goingto the jail. All those things were
the things that were meant a lotto Jesus said. What he was saying

(08:35):
to them is, not only didyou not do what was dear to my
heart, but more than that,you didn't maintain your inner life and have
that personal relationship with me. Themost important piece, yes, the most
important piece of the whole thing.And why because then we carry the nature
of God. When we rest andwe maintain our inner life and we spend

(09:00):
time with Him, then we wecarry ourselves as a reflection of Jesus,
and that is love. That isthe whole goal here, is that we
have relationship with Him and that weradiate the very nature of God. And

(09:20):
why are people attracted to us.It's not because we can speak a lot,
it's not because we have a goodprogram. But it's because of the
presence of God that radiates from usthat they get around that they sense that
They're like, I want some ofthat, right, That's why that is.
So we have to maintain our innerlife for that to happen. Yeah,

(09:41):
Pastor Gil, it makes me againgo back to that whole conversation of
the foxes and chasing, you know, the foxes, and really it reminds
me that when we maintain our innerlife and we learn to reflect the nature
of God, those things are veryimportant. But even more important is stealing

(10:03):
ourselves enough to hear the voice ofGod so that in the maintaining of His
nature, we also don't need anymore than what He has for us.
So we don't start chasing opportunities thatcome our way. But instead, we
walk in absolute purpose and discernment andunderstanding of what God has called us to

(10:26):
do for each of our own individuallives. And it's out of this understanding
and positioning that we find our identity, and we route our identity deeper and
deeper, and knowing who it isthat God has called us to be and
what it is that He has calledus to do. And so again,

(10:46):
then we stay true and faithful tospeaking what our Father speaks and going where
He sends us. It's a powerfulconcept, and it's a supernatural concept.
It's a concept of faith and deeptrust right well. And also when we
maintain our inner life, what happensis we began to minister out of the

(11:09):
overflow of our life, not outof the emptiness of our life. Yeah,
that's good. It's all about seein what I found. When I'm
maintaining my inner life. God speaksto me, gives me wisdom, he
gives me direction, he gives mea podcast idea, he gives me he
keeps me on the cutting edge ofthe kingdom. Yes he does, and

(11:33):
he keeps me ahead of the curve. Because one of the scriptures says when
God reveals things, he reveals itto his prophets. First. Now I'm
not saying I'm a prophet. I'mnot claiming that title. But as you
maintain your inner life, God willbegin to talk to you about what's on
his heart, what's important to him. And he is always ahead of the

(11:56):
curve. He is way ahead.So when God keeps us ahead of the
curve. I remember one time whenthe Lord told me to do something,
and I told him he was crazy, and then he said, if you
will do this, it will amountainthis and the thing that he told me
to do, I'm not going togo into it, but it amounted to

(12:18):
twenty thousand dollars and it first Ihad an argument with the Lord because I
thought the Lord was a little bitridiculous to what he was asking. But
as you maintain the inner life,he will guide you. He will direct
you, and he will keep youon a sure footing a piece. You
will keep your foot on the solidrock and the firm foundation. Yes,

(12:43):
that's been my experience too. Sothe idea here is that we know who
we belong to, and in thatknowing, we center ourselves every day by
stealing ourselves, by knowing what trulymatters which is the voice of God and
our relationship with him first, andout of that relationship flows the heart of

(13:07):
God for people, for our identity, for our purpose. And they were
not caught up on the distractions ofwhat a title might bring, or what
a position might bring, or whatan opportunity might bring. But we're so
hyper focused on the voice of Godthat we maintain the nature of God.

(13:28):
We maintained the direction that He sendsus. And then that equates to walking
in the supernatural, living by faith, and watching the impossible become possible.
You remember Samson, I mean,I don't remember s but I remember the
story when he got really mad onetime he caught a bunch of foxes and

(13:52):
he tied their tails together. Heput torches on them, and he let
them loosen. What happened to theharbors They got burn'd get burned. And
what will happen is little foxes willwind up burning up your harvest's good.
They will. They will run toand fro because if you let if you
let a little fox go a tirefire on his tail, he's gonna run,

(14:13):
and he's gonna run all the waythrough the wheat fields, all the
way through the cordon fields. It'sgonna burn everything down. And that's really
what the little foxes wind up doingif we don't maintain the inner life.
The Bible talks about clouds without rain, right, and so we can become
like a cloud that looks like rain, but we give no rain. We

(14:33):
you know, Moses said it best. The next to is thirty three when
he says to the Lord, ifyour presence does not go with us,
do not send us up from here. And when I think of a man
that was dedicated to the presence andhis inner life, it was Moses.
He was always going in the tentof meeting to speak to God, and
he spoke to God face to face. He went up on the mountain.

(14:54):
I wonder what it was like onMoss Sinai when he got the Ten commandments.
Can you a man imagine being inthe glory cloud up there with the
Lord. And then I think aboutanother man in the Bible, Enoch.
He walked with God and then hewas so righteous that one day he stepped
from this life into the next life. Now I read the Book of Enoch,

(15:15):
and I'm probably not everybody did this, but it talks about the life
of Enoch which is very interesting.He didn't have a Bible like we had,
and he walked so closely with theLord. He attended his inner life
so well that God just took himhome to be with him in heaven.
It's amazing. That's cool. Yeah, it's a testament to what can happen

(15:37):
when we still ourselves in the presenceof the Lord every day, and then
we begin to focus on what he'sspeaking to us and how we're positioning our
hearts. So the scriptures are highlyimportant to keep us in alignment. But
also knowing God intimately in our relationshipwith him is what evolves us into our

(16:03):
calling. But I'll tell you it'seasy to get distracted and not even know
it. Right. We call itchasing squirrels. Chasing squirrels. If you
ever take a dog off, ifyou ever ever have like a beagle dog,
and all of a sudden a squirreltakes off, I hope you have
a whole of least because he's goingto go right after that squirrel. He's
a chase that. But I thinkin our Christian ee world, in our

(16:27):
charismatic Christian world, there are somany squirrels and people will say, oh,
this is of God, or thisopportunity is of God, right,
and so it's our responsibility to startour inner life. So we know what
opportunities are of God for us andfor the track that God has us on

(16:48):
individually. So I was taken theother day that living in America is a
dangerous place. You might say,well, we got it good in America.
That yeah, that's exactly right.We do have it really well.
There are dangerous sparts of America.But let me share with you what I
mean by dangerous. What I meanis if you come to live in America,

(17:10):
there's a really big danger to yourspiritual life, to your walk with
the Lord. You can become mecentered and you centered and things centered.
So when I go abroad to themission field, everything revolves around the church,
Everything revolves around Jesus, everything revolvesaround knowing Him. In those other
countries because they're really dependent on Him, they don't have what we have.

(17:33):
But when you come to America,you have all the best of the best
of the best. It's true.Actually we know in the field of neuroscience
that it's really our culture in Americais destructive in many ways to the brain
structure. We have so much competitionhere, which does exactly what you're talking

(17:55):
about, versus when you're in athird world country and the competition is not
because they live communal and they careabout one another and they care about sharing
resources, and then the focus becomesabout Jesus and the direction he gives for
their lives or for the simple andtheir brains don't engage in so much distraction

(18:22):
that they're not relational. Yeah,that's exactly true. One time I asked
the apostle Wolf for Dilbert. He'sover the fifty four churches in Honduras.
I said, what is the differencebetween Honduras and America. He goes,
simply simply this and Honduras, hesaid, faith is our currency. Faith

(18:45):
is our currency. They use thecurrency of heaven to get things. Here,
we have our own currency. Wedo pretty good. We got things
you don't really need. The Lordlike, we like what they do over
there. But on the other hand, when I'm over there, when I
come home, it's hard to adjustto back home because I see the difference,

(19:06):
and I'm like, Lord, thankyou for letting me go to the
mission field. I need to gothere at least twice a year. Why
to keep me on tracked when Ineed to be, to keep my senses
where they need to be, tokeep my spiritual walk where it needs to
be. So I know that whilewe wind up here, we got people
out there that are trying to dotheir best to tend their inner life.

(19:29):
Hey, we don't know where you'reat today. Maybe you're in your car,
in your house, maybe you're farming. I don't know, because there's
so many people that listen to thischannel now from forty nine nations, close
to a thousand cities across the US. So I know that you are when
we're speaking, we're speaking to oneperson because you got us queued up on

(19:49):
your headset or on your phone andyou're listening, and we're glad you're there.
We want to say a prayer thatthe glory of God in the presence
of Jesus, would invade your innerlife in that personal time of the Lord.
Michelle, you want to start outpraying, sure, Father, I
ask you to just flood the heartand mind of every listener today and in

(20:15):
the days and weeks to come,that you would begin to teach them and
school them how to walk even deeperin the stilling of their hearts and their
minds and the knowing of your goodnessand in the understanding of faith. I
asked that you would teach them moreand more open up revelatory understanding about the

(20:40):
inner life and what it looks liketo still their hearts and to discern your
voice for what it is that you'vecalled them to do. And Father,
I ask for supernatural rest over everylistener, that they would have faith enough
to know that when they position themselvesin rest and in trust, that you

(21:02):
will bring the outcome, that youwill bring the fruit, and that fruit
will be abundant, and it willbe exactly what it is that you have
called them to do and exactly howit is that their relationship with you is
designed to look. And so wespeak this inner stealing and inner relationship and

(21:26):
glory presence over each listener. Lord, we just give you praise because you
are good, and you desire usto have a vibrant inner life with you.
You desire us to have that closenessyou said in your word, come
near to God, and I'll comenear to you. So Lord, I

(21:47):
pray that you would come near tothose that are listening today. Well,
this is Gail, what healing Begins, And this is Michelle with the Mindset
Exchange. Hey, aren't you gladwe're on here together. We're gonna do
more podcasts together. And she's gother podcast, we got ours, and
we're gonna join to put out alot of really great podcasts for you to

(22:11):
listen to in the future, becausewe know that people are hungry and people
are searching. So I just wantto say, May the Lord bless you,
May he keep you, May heshine his light upon you, May
he be gracious to you, Mayhe turn his face toward you, and
may he give you peace. Youknow he said Isaiah twenty six three.

(22:36):
I will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind has stayed on me because
he trusts in you. Well,the Lord bless you. Have a great
day. Bye bye. Healing Beginsis brought to you by Spiritual Care Consultants,

(24:04):
located in Hastings, Michigan. Atthe Healing Center, we see children
and adults at no cost. Wedo virtual and in person sessions. We
invite you to learn more about usby going to www dot Spiritual Care Consultants
dot com. We also value yourfeedback and would like to hear from you.

(24:25):
You can email me at Gail Galeat Spiritual Care Consultants dot com.
We would like to invite you andyour family and friends to go and listen
to the past programs by going towood Radio dot com then click on podcast,
then look for Healing Begins and clickon that. Thank you so much

(24:48):
for being a faithful supporter. MayGod bless you, keep you, cause
us face to shine upon you andgive you peace. Thank you for listening.