FELLOWSHIPPING WITH JESUS Pastor Sean Pinder It is time to fellowship with Jesus.

Do you know what I like about the Bible? The Bible says Abraham walked with God (Gen. 48:15). Some of you are going to get some revelation here today. Did you catch that? The Bible also talks about Noah and says that, Noah walked with God (Gen. 6:9). Why does the Bible say that? These men walked in the revelation that God was by their side 24/7. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, they knew God was with them. Some people do not realize that God is with them all the time. If you do not live with that awarenessthat God is with you all the timeyou will not be sensitive to the Holy Ghost. Are you hearing me? My wife can tell you; sometimes we will be sitting at the kitchen table. My wife can cook, I am telling you! She will have my good meal set up on the table and I will go to take a bite. Before I bite that spoon, I feel the Holy Ghost. WHOOSH! Like a breeze, He blows by, just tugging at my heart. Why does He do that right at the meal? Right when I am about to eat my favorite meal, He is pulling on me.

Why is He pulling on me? The Holy Ghost wants you to always be aware of Him and He always wants to be number one in your life. I say to my wife, Baby, I cant eat this meal right now. I have to put this thing in the fridge and eat it later; I have to go seek the Lord. Are you hearing me, Church? God is calling His people back into fellowship with Him. Abraham walked with God. Enoch walked with God. What does that mean? God is with you all the time. You do not always have to be locked up in a room to hear from the Holy Ghost. God is walking with you all the time. He is raising up a Presence-of-God generationa generation of people that live in His Presence. They are always aware of His Presence; at the drop of a hat, they are ready to go and seek God. They are ready to talk with Him and fellowship with Him, even if they have to pull their car over onto the side of the road. If they have to dry the tears from out of their eyes and just say, Lord, I love you, they will do it. This is what we are talking about today: fellowshipping with Jesus. This is what people are looking for. They want to come to church to visit, to meet, and to worship God. People are not saying, Give me three fast songs,

hurry up and get to the sermon, then hurry up and take up an offering. Take that stuff and throw it in the garbage; I am looking for Jesus! The people came to Philip and they said, Sir, we would see Jesus (John 12:21). We are not just coming to get some tradition. We are looking for Jesus. Lets go to Mark 3:13. And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him. Jesus made the call and the disciples came to Him. And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach (Mark 3:14). How many did He ordain? He ordained twelve. Why did He ordain them? Read the rest of it: That they should be with him You see that? The priority is set up straight here in the book of Mark. Before He called them to preach, before He called them to cast out devils, before He called them to lay hands on the sick, He ordained them that they should be with Him. Ministry comes later. That is why God ordains people. Preaching is secondary. He ordains you and separates you. The word ordain means to anoint; to appoint; to separate. Are you hearing me? He ordains people that they

might be with Him. He calls you to live a separate life so that He can have you and do what He wants to with you. He calls you so He can interrupt you any time He wants to. I remember, a few times, we were in Wal-Mart and I felt the Holy Ghost coming on me. I thought, You cant be serious, Lord! I said to my wife, Baby, pull this cart up. I hid behind the cart and I just bawled right there in the middle of Wal-Mart. The Holy Ghost does not care where you are; He is looking for true worshippers. So He ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach. Preaching comes later; being with Jesus comes first. Lets look at Matt. 11:28: Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Do you see the condition to get rest? He says, Come unto me Who can say, Man, Ive just been weary. The pressure has been high; Ive just been burdened down. I need some relief in my soul? Well, guess what He said? He said, Come unto me. As you spend time with Him and you fellowship with Him, He said, ye shall find rest unto your souls (Matt. 11:29). This is pretty simple. What else is He going to do? Look at verses 29 and 30:

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. I love this. He is calling the Church into fellowship with Him. He said, Come unto me. He said, Are you stressed? Are you tired? Are you worn out? Do you feel like giving up and like you cant handle it? He said, Come. Come spend time with me. I will take care of all of that stuff, but you have to come spend time with me. Are you listening, Church? This makes me hungry. I just want to shut down and go home right now and start praying. That is what this makes me want to do. You know, God is restoring hunger back into the Church. Do you know hunger is a sign of life? Matt. 5:6 says, Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Are you hungry for Him? When was the last time you got so hungry for Jesus that you could not eat that plate of food? When was the last time you got so hungry for Him that you had to just forget everything and just go run in the bush, or lock up in the car, or do something? You just had to find some time to be with Jesus. He is searching you out; He is stirring that hunger in you.

He is stirring you up. He is making you hungry. That hunger can get crowded out by so many other things that are really not so important. It is easy for that hunger to get crowded out, but He is restoring that hunger today. The devil has been trying to choke that hunger out of you. He has been trying to cloud your mind and your vision. He has been clustering you with everything he can so that you would lose your hunger for the things of God. However, the wind of the Holy Ghost is blowing in this place today. He is restoring, reviving, and renewing your hunger for the things of God. That is what He is doing today. You thought you sought after God before. You wait until after you read this chapter. This revelation is going to explode in your life. You will be walking down the street and talking to Him without any struggle. Without trying to pray, you will just pray. The Holy Ghost is here. He wants to fill you to overflowing. This is a refreshing time. This is a time when God told me, Just take time out today, son. Talk to my people. He just wants me to talk to you; He wants to have a good talk with you. He is making the call. He is saying, Are you tired? Are you worn out? Are you fighting depression, oppression, discourage-

ment, and feeling like you are worth nothing and like God cant use you? He says, Come. Come unto me. There is nothing that can be compared to His Presence. In thy presence is fulness of joy (Psalm 16:11). David said, As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God (Psalm 42:1). My soul thirsts and longs after the living God. Are you being refreshed by the anointing of the Holy Ghost? That is what we need. Look at John 7:37. These are really powerful Scriptures, amen? In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. I like what Jesus said in verse 37: If any man I like that. Black, white, yellow, short, tall, ugly, handsome, skinny, fatlisten to what He says to us. If any man thirst, let him do what? Let him come unto me, and drink. How in the world do you drink? You drink by fellowshipping with Jesus. You begin to tell Him, Lord, I love you. I appreciate you.

Lord, you are my everything. The Holy Ghost begins to descend; the power of God begins to descend. The Holy Ghost begins to fill you up to the brim. He begins to satisfy that longing that is in your soul. That is how you drinkyou drink by coming to Jesus. Do you ever walk into your prayer closet empty but walk out satisfied? That is because you have been drinking; that is how you drink. You drink by fellowshipping with Jesus. Any time your soul is getting thirsty and hungry, that just means you need to intensify your fellowship with Jesus. You do not necessarily have to be locked up in a room. You can fellowship with Him wherever you are. The Bible says Abraham walked with God. It was a daily thing. It was an hourly thing. Are you hearing me? He lived in the awareness of the Presence of God; that God was with him. God wants to talk to you today. Can you feel God is pulling on you? That is what He wants; He wants to have you all to Himself. He does not want to share you with all these different distractions. Listen to this. He said, If any man thirst, let him come I love it. Let him come. Just let him come to me. See, the Pharisees

were offering all this ritualistic stuff and all this tradition and Jesus knew it was not satisfying the longing that was in the hearts of these people. There were people from every nation at this feast, and Jesus saw and recognized that their needs were not being met. He recognized that they were doing all this ritualistic stuff, but it was not satisfying their hearts. So the Bible says, In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried The word cried means with longing; with passion; with intensity; with a yearning. He said, If any man thirst, let him come. The Pharisees are not satisfying you. All they are doing is laying a bunch of legalistic laws on you that are separating you and driving you out of the Presence of God. Jesus said, Come to me. Come. This is where true satisfaction comes from: Come to me. Jesus said, I want to satisfy these people, but the Pharisees were standing in the way of the Lord. The Pharisees were standing in Gods way. The Holy Ghost could not move. Jesus healed somebody on the Sabbath and they were ready to crucify Him. Are you hearing me? The people were starving to death. That is why He said to them, I am

the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst (John 6:35). Here is that Word again: If any man hunger, let him come to me. He that eats of this bread shall never hunger. He that drinks of this Living Water shall never thirst. It is not about a denomination. It is not about a church. It is about Jesus! He is calling the Church back to spending time with Him. The saints of old knew how to tarry. I used to go to prayer meetings with my mom; my mom was a preacher. They would hang out from nine in the morning until five in the evening, and I thought, These people are crazy! I had my little nice haircut and they messed it right up because they would daub all kinds of olive oil down on my head. I thought, God, deliver me from these people! I did not understand what they were doing; I thought they were nuts! They rolled over, they spit, they hollered, they shook on the ground. I thought, My God, there are lots of fits in this place! But now I understand. My eyes have opened. You know, we used to be embarrassed at our mom in church. I hid behind the pew, thinking, Oh no, not now,

Mom! Please! Dont do it! The Holy Ghost would get to moving, and I would think, Oh God, any second shes about to flip out! POW! It happened! My mom was on the ground, rolling over again. I would say to my brothers, Why does she do this to us? My little friends were on the side of me there, laughing. Ha ha, your mom is down! I thought, Ooh! And, every Sunday, the Spirit would move, and POW! Mom was gone! But something happened to me. I catch myself sometimes when I watch a videotape of myself preaching. I think, Oh, God! Youve got Mama Disease now! You are doing the same thing. It is the Holy Ghost. It is not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts (Zech. 4:6). It is by the anointing of the Holy Ghost. That is what churches need. They need the Holy Ghost. God wants to move in His churches again, but some denominations have so many stinking laws over the people that the people cannot even enjoy the Presence of God. If the Holy Ghost gets to moving, they say, Oh, somebody from headquarters has to come down to check it out and see whats going on. We do not have a headquarters over us. There is only one Headquarters, and

it is the Kingdom of God and Jesus Christ is King. God wants His people to be free. Are you hearing me? In the book of the Song of Solomon, the woman represents the Church. She said, The watchmen that go about the city found me (Song. 3:3). (The watchmen are symbolic of the pastors.) She said, to [the watchmen] I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? Do you know what the watchmen told her? They said, We have not seen Him. They represent the pastors and the woman represents the Church in the Song of Solomon. They said, We havent seen Him. How can they show you how to come into the Presence of God when they themselves do not even know how? Do you know what the woman said? She said: It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. (Song. 3:4) You have to get over some religious leaders to find the anointing and the power of the Holy Ghost. God wants to move in every

church in America. He wants to move. Let Him move. He wants to so fill you until you are out of yourself and in the Holy Ghost. That is what He wants. He wants to have His people all to Himself. He wants to be able to interrupt the pastors sermon any time He wants to. That is what I call church.