Who can use it?
The materials are designed for individuals, small groups, or churches.
Individuals can use the materials in personal study.
Small groups can use the materials as an ingredient that will launch further discussion and prayer. The writings are short, and the audio recordings last 12-15 minutes -- short enough to leave a lot of time for you to take the materials wherever God is leading your group to go.
Churches can use the writings as bulletin inserts or as handouts on a literature table every week, to provide continuity as the church walks into new gifts together.
How does the school work?
The Online School Of The Spirit calls for you to take three actions every week: (1) to soak in God's presence 2-3 times a week, (2) to encourage 5 people every week, and (3) to keep a very brief journal of the actions you take and what God does.
As you take these three actions week by week, you can expect to grow in three ways: (1) to develop new gifts and skills, (2) to find new ministry opportunities, and (3) to experience an overflow of God's presence as He does things in your life that you can't do.
To help you facilitate these actions, we have posted dozens of articles on blogs in three topics: The Miracle Lifestyle, which focuses on God's pouring the gifts of the Holy Spirit through you, inside and outside the church; Prophetic Song, which focuses on how you can cultivate this intimate and Spirit-led style of worship; and Culture Shapers, a study of prophetic arts and how to be led by the Spirit in your work, your marketing, and your ministry.
The web pages for each of these subjects will provide more information about how the three weekly actions and the three ways to grow work in each area of study.
But the key word is action. If you want the Holy Spirit to teach you, don't just read and study. Start acting on the word of God, and He will teach you.
The rest of this article will tell you more about the three weekly actions and the three ways to grow; after that, visit the Getting Started page to begin.
ACTION 1 -- Soak in God's presence 2-3 times each week.
Soaking has gone by other names in other generations: waiting on God, tarrying before the Lord, and more. It is a form of prayer that does more listening than talking, that surrenders to God rather than trying to get Him to do something, and that simply becomes still in His presence.
It is the kind of prayer that doesn't try to force Him to speak about our agenda, but that invites Him to open His heart and talk about whatever He wants.
Many people use worship music in the background as they soak. You can use a CD player or an iPod, or you can attend a live soaking meeting where a worship team plays and sings while the congregation listens -- not so much to the music as to God Himself. People receive healings and deliverances while soaking; they see visions and hear God's voice; they quiet their hearts and focus on Jesus. Soaking can be a time of simply letting God love us.
Keep a Bible handy when you soak, or even several different translations. God will often use His written word to speak to you.
For more articles about soaking, follow the links on the Getting Started page.
ACTION 2 -- Encourage 5 people each week.
In John 14-16, Jesus identified the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete, sometimes translated as "Comforter" or "Helper" or "Encourager". To keep things simple, we have chosen the one word "encourage" to define the second action step in the Online School Of The Spirit.
Why do we encourage? Because if the Holy Spirit is the Encourager and we begin to go out of our way to encourage people, we are lining ourselves up with His motivation and making it likely that He will use us. But let's enlarge upon the word "encourage".
I Corinthians 14:3 says God gives the gift of prophecy to edify, exhort, and comfort people. Edifying is building people up; exhorting is stirring them up and getting them motivated; comforting is cheering people up when it's time to walk through a hard season in life.
Think of these three verbs -- edify, exhort, comfort -- as an expanded version of encouraging.
For an even larger expansion of what it means to encourage, turn to Luke 4:18-19, where Jesus declared His mission statement: to preach good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Then turn to Isaiah 61:1-3, the passage Jesus quoted, and notice the slightly different wording.
This is an even more expanded version of what the ministry of encouragement is all about.
If you commit yourself to the actions the Holy Spirit anointed Jesus to do, His anointing will begin to flow in your life in new ways. Simple, isn't it?
Again, go to the Getting Started page for links to a few articles that will get you started.
ACTION 3 -- Keep a journal.
Keep it short. The purpose of this course is not to get you to fill a notebook; it's to fill your life with Spirit-led happenings.
John ended his gospel by saying that if he had tried to write down all that Jesus did, the world would not be able to contain the books. This is equally true today. It takes time to bring out every detail of what God has done whenever He gives a revelation or answers a prayer or rekindles the fire in someone who was almost ready to give up.
So don't bog down in details. Your journal is for you, and it doesn't have to make sense to others. Keep it for two reasons only: (1) so you can keep up with whether you are doing the assignment every week, and (2) so you can look back over it every few months and see how much God has been doing in your life.
Here is what I wrote down about my soaking last Monday night:
Monday – soaked with no questions, but with an expectancy that God would speak. Had a thick sense of the fear of God. Heard a call into a deeper wealth of what it means to be a son of God.
Here is what I wrote down about a ministry encounter that happened on Wednesday night (my wife is JoAnn, but I've changed the name of the person I ministered to):
Wednesday – Applebees with Sherry. She and JoAnn did most of the talking, but when Sherry told about her bout with pneumonia, I had a word for her and gave it.
I could have written much more in my journal, but this is just enough that I'll be able to look at it in a few months and remember the rest of the story.
More about your journal on the Getting Started page.
GROWTH PRINCIPLE 1 -- Enlarge your gift-mix.
Over the years, much of the teaching I heard encouraged a dull, plodding faithfulness to God. "Find out what your gift is, and use it faithfully. Don't try to be what you're not; be content with the gift God has given you, however small it may seem."
Have you heard this kind of teaching? In a way, it almost sounds right.
But God so loved the world that He gave us His Son -- this is the gift God has given you, and when you received Jesus you received it all. It will take a lifetime in this world and the next to explore all you received when you received Him.
I have respected my teachers and done my best to act on their words, but I could never believe that my gift was helps or servanthood or giving or church-planting or worship-leading or preaching or prophesying or healing. My gift is bigger and so is yours; God has given us Jesus. We mustn't insult Him by selling Him short.
This is why Paul told the Corinthians to covet the best gifts -- desire to prophesy -- you all may prophesy one by one. This is why Mark's gospel ends with miraculous signs to be done by those who believe. This is why Jesus imparted power to the twelve, then the seventy, and later to the 120 in the upper room on the day of Pentecost. This is why the book of Acts is filled with miracle stories, miracles wrought by the followers of Jesus.
Notice that the book is called "Acts" -- not "Studies" or "Meditations" or "Sermons". We need to study and meditate and listen to the preaching and teaching of God's word, but the Holy Spirit begins to move when we begin to act on what God is saying.
Therefore, as you act on His word and receive the main gift -- Jesus -- you can expect the little gifts to flow through you. In John 14:12, Jesus said it this way: "He who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to my Father."
The Getting Started page will steer you to blog articles about hearing God's voice; hearing from Him will steer you into whatever new gifts He wants to pour through you.
GROWTH PRINCIPLE 2 -- Find new places to minister.
Some of us will find -- or have already found -- ministry opportunities in our home churches: the youth group, the men's or women's group, a home Bible study, a team that does evangelistic outreaches, a worship team. Some of us are involved in a regional 24/7 prayer ministry or in healing rooms.
But what about daily life? How might your family life change if one of the five people you encourage was your spouse or your child? How would your workplace change if you began to encourage people at work -- not necessarily "witness" to them, trying to explain the whole plan of redemption whether they want to hear it or not, but simply a few gracious words that would convey God's love to them.
You don't have to be religious about it. Simply share the goodness and love of God.
Sometimes when you soak, God will call your attention to people: send an email to Bill, strike up a conversation with the usher at church, pray for the next door neighbor's healing and tell him you're praying for him. Follow through with action, and the works of God will begin to happen in your life.
Even if you are very shy, God will help you find easy ways to encourage people. As you do what is easy, your comfort zone will slowly grow. Soon you'll find yourself having the nerve to do things you wouldn't have done a few months earlier. But you'll do them well, with grace and Christlike sensitivity, because it is God who grew you into new gifts.
The Getting Started page will lead you to articles that have easy ways to begin.
GROWTH PRINCIPLE 3 -- Experience an overflow of God's Spirit.
What do I mean by "overflow"? I mean the moments when God surprises us by doing more than we expect.
Maybe you've gone to church when you didn't feel like going, and you felt God's presence richly during worship -- this is overflow. Maybe you've had a discipline of Bible reading and day after day the words seemed to go in one eye and out the other; then one day God poured out revelation in His word -- this is overflow.
What could be simpler than to share a scripture with a friend? Yet God may lead you to do so, and to your surprise the scripture will turn out to be a specific word from God that answers the question your friend had prayed about earlier in the day. This is overflow.
You can set aside a few minutes to soak, lie in bed with worship music playing, and fall asleep -- and while you sleep, God speaks to you in a dream. This is overflow.
You can pray with a friend at the altar at church and when you're done, you find a small crowd has formed, all wanting you to pray -- they've sensed that God is using your prayers. This is overflow.
The list can go on and on, but the Getting Started page will direct you to a few articles about overflow.
This stuff works.
It's worked in my own life, and I've seen it work in the lives of others. Want to get involved? It can happen in your life too. It's just a matter of Getting Started and sticking with it.