Key Brief 9: Communion or Fellowship with the Holy Spirit

What I call Communion, or using the Greek, koinonia, but which Jesus just calls having fellowship with him in spirit, is not prophecy.

When you prophesy you see a vision or hear God speak to you like he’s dictating a message, usually one to deliver publicly or at least to someone else. “Thus saith the Lord …” and yes, he even begins his messages with this pretext often. “I have a message for the church, ‘Thus saith the Lord, “You must stop using facebook during the service!!”’” or whatever message he wants you to tell the people. He actually speaks that way sometimes. But Communion is not like this.

Instead of God giving you a clear message to deliver to someone else, he’s just spending time talking with You. It’s faster, more personal, less ‘official,’ so also more private, and while you can write things down he shows you or tells you during this time, it’s not usually meant to be shared with the public so he tells you things only you would understand, he shows you things you cannot even explain!

Sometimes you just see Jesus on a garden bench, wearing casual clothing, enjoying the flowers and you see yourself sitting next to him and you just talk about life for twenty minutes. But the level of interaction between your heart and the Holy Spirit, who lives inside those who love him, can also at times run so very deep—it can be so very intimate it is communication that often runs deeper than words, especially human words, deeper than your understanding can reach. And so there are times you can just feel his presence, you start to cry, you see light, you feel his love, you cry more, you see colors not even shapes but Glory!, and you feel his arm holding you, but finally look up … and its been two hours! God communicates in ways humans have not even discovered yet. He can speak a novel in one second, he can impart himself to you as you see him, he can do spirit surgery, an impartation, travel with you in space or time, impart direct understanding of any topic even a new language, give you a new invention people can’t even understand the science behind yet, or impart the ability to play an instrument you never even tried before … he can give you a direct divine download of ANY knowledge, idea or wisdom, in less than one second. He INVENTED communication and so the range of experiences you can have when your heart is finally bared open to the Holy Spirit without reservation is mind boggling.

So when people ‘journal’ or write a prayer journal, or if they do soaking prayer, this is often exactly what they are doing—interacting consciously and purposefully with the Holy Spirit. One preacher even has four keys to follow step by step to get your heart focused on the Lord and open to visions. But we try to jump right in the deep end and not spend time wading in the shallows.

You see, the Lord did not teach me to communicate with him using those other introductory ways, but they all do reach a certain audience and make sense to certain people. But what I found is that if we can encourage open interaction, not just waiting to hear him speak or waiting for a picture passively, but by encouraging people to SEEK HIM actively and engage with him directly and dynamically, often with direct and maybe painful questions about Who he is, Who we are, and if my life is so hard, how can you really say you love me? Do you really love me? By helping steer the interaction into a very personal encounter as soon as possible we have found several wonderful results.

First, the key issue we face is how open our hearts are to him. Do we trust him? Are we far away in heart? As a man thinks in his heart SO IS HE. He will not give us an exam of doctrines to get into heaven but will see whether Jesus abides within us or not; he will determine whether we have learned to love or not. He will not ask us to quote three random chapters from the book of Jeremiah, or take a multiple choice quiz of bible trivia.

So by leading people to directly engage Jesus in this very personal way, in spirit, we get to the very root of the nature of our relationship with him instantly. This solves many deep-rooted personal obstacles and issues hidden in our hearts, paving the way for inner healing, deliverance, enlightenment and a healthy relationship with Jesus in spirit and in truth–then he decides to just take people to see heaven, or Washington D.C. inside the White House, or the Red Sea Crossing as it was happening in real time … the Holy Spirit is not bound by time or place, and when you are IN HIM he just decides it’s time for a field trip! And brings people to see the Throne, their mansions in heaven, famous events, the past, present and yes the future as well.

So leading people into direct meaningful interpersonal conversation with Jesus helps to clear away decades of disappointments, false ideas, confusion and blocks preventing us from having deep true intimacy with him. We become able to encounter his love more directly. This in turn leads us to more and more meaningful interactions with him in spirit, more, better, deeper, faster. By spending meaningful time beholding the Lord in spirit we basically grow up into maturity very quickly, we are thus transformed very quickly into the image we are beholding, from Glory to glory.

So what I call Communion is enjoying spiritual fellowship with the Holy Spirit. It is not about your spiritual condition or based on your doctrine or your personal emotional state. You don’t need a spiritual gift or have a certain kind of calling. I’ve seen Jesus talk to people openly in this way who were in every conceivable spiritual condition you can name. God is omnipresent as well, and has a well recorded Biblical habit of talking to objects, planets, stars, the weather, angels, Satan … and even his saints a few times. He talks to people who don’t serve him, who claim he does not exist, who deny he is Lord, and who worship other gods. This is all in the Bible itself. The point is he MADE humanity. He MADE every human individually and takes a personal interest in their lives no matter what stage of development or disaster they are in. And well, he just really likes people, and really, really enjoys talking with them like two close friends would. So if you are alive you can hear God’s voice. If you have a spirit, you can hear God’s voice. That’s just the way he made you. And when it comes right down to it, it’s really just that simple. It’s really just a matter of if you want to spend time in fellowship with him in the Holy Spirit.

So yes, I’ll share a few tips and tricks, a few examples and a few verses, but ultimately being able to hear God speak to you in two-way dialog, and to spend meaningful time fellowshipping with him in spirit is just a matter of your choice. Do you want to open your heart and talk with God? You can! It’s just a matter of your choice. It’s ultimately just up to you.