Today I am sharing Part One of my Communion time with the Holy Spirit on becoming sensitive to the moving of the Holy Spirit.

Do you desire to become more sensitive to the moving of the Holy Spirit? Do you have a burning passion in your heart to walk in the miraculous and to experience the miracles, signs, and wonders demonstrated by the men and women of God in the Book of Acts?

If this is truly your desire, you must be willing to examine your heart, your understanding, and your willingness to yield to the leading and direction of the Holy Spirit. In John.3:8, Jesus says these words: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.

So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” The movement of the Holy Spirit cannot be confined to our established expectations, traditions, or preconceived ideas. Just as the wind blows where it wishes, the Holy Spirit moves according to His own will and purpose. Therefore, the question we must honestly ask ourselves is this: Are we willing to walk in step with the wind of the Holy Spirit, or are we so fixed in our own ways that we are unwilling to yield to His movement?

If we desire to become more sensitive to the Holy Spirit and participate in His miraculous works, we must be prepared to let go of whatever prevents us from recognising and responding to His leading. When Jesus spoke to Nicodemus in John.3, He was seeking to help him understand the movement and operation of the Kingdom of God.

Nicodemus, however, was struggling to comprehend the spiritual truth Jesus was communicating because he was confined by the words he believed he already understood and had studied from the law. Nicodemus recognised that the power of God was at work in Jesus, and he was attracted to what Jesus was demonstrating and wanted to understand what made His ministry different from the religious practices of that day.

Yet, despite his awareness of the Lord’s power, Nicodemus found it difficult to grasp the spiritual realities Jesus was revealing because his understanding was restricted by the traditions of the elders and the religious status quo. His experience demonstrates that possessing scriptural knowledge alone does not automatically make us sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

So even though we may know the words recorded in Scripture, attend religious gatherings, and be influential within our church communities, yet we will still struggle to recognise what the Holy Spirit is doing if we remain unwilling to move beyond our familiar traditions and allow His truth to transform our understanding and actions. We must therefore examine ourselves carefully to remove the hindrances in our hearts and minds, so we can respond favourably to the wind of the Holy Spirit.

Has our regular church attendance become a hiding place where we remain spiritually stagnant while assuming that we are doing well because we know what the Bible teaches and have influence within our church environment? We must never allow our religious familiarity to deceive us into believing that we are spiritually mature when we are in truth failing to respond to the present leading of the Holy Spirit. The Kingdom of God is not merely a collection of words we know or doctrines we can explain.

So we must be willing to receive the Holy Spirit’s instruction, by understanding His direction, and acting in obedience to His leading. The reality is that sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s leading and direction is essential to us living a blessed and fruitful life in the Kingdom of Jesus. This was part of what Nicodemus sensed as he observed Jesus from a distance.

He wanted to understand what Jesus was doing differently and how the power of God was being manifested through Him. This point makes it clear that our desire must go beyond us just knowing about the moving of the Holy Spirit, because we must become people who recognise His leading and are willing to follow whatever way He directs us to take.

Although Nicodemus did not immediately become an open follower of Jesus during his first encounter with Him, the subsequent scriptural narrative reveals that Jesus had profoundly affected his life. So as time passed by, Nicodemus began to speak up for Jesus among his peers and eventually participated in the burial of Jesus’s body.

In John.7:50 & 51, we read these words: “Nicodemus (he who came to Jesus by night, being one of them) said to them, 51‘Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?’” Nicodemus spoke up when Jesus was being discussed and challenged the unfairness of them judging Him without first hearing Him and understanding what He was doing.

His response shows that his encounter with Jesus had begun to influence his actions, even though his journey of life was unfolding progressively. Then, in John.19:39, we read these words: “And Nicodemus, who at first came to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds.” So Nicodemus, who initially approached Jesus at night, later came forward with a substantial quantity of myrrh and aloes to participate in preparing Jesus’ body for burial.

His good actions demonstrated the fact that his encounter with Jesus had made a lasting impression on him and he was no longer just merely an observer seeking to understand Jesus from a distance; but he was now publicly involved in honouring Jesus at a significant moment. From this lesson, I learnt a very salient lesson of truth from the Holy Spirit that when someone continues to appear in the scriptural narrative in connection with Jesus, we can observe the continuing significance of that person’s involvement in the unfolding story.

Their actions can provide lessons worth examining as we seek to grow in our relationship with the Lord. I have come to understand that we must be discerning about the examples we choose to follow. We should never build our understanding of spiritual growth on examples that the scriptural narrative does not present as models for the particular lesson we are seeking to learn.

Instead, we should pay attention to the people whose continuing involvement with Jesus reveals something valuable about their response to Him. Nicodemus reminds us of the fact of how a singular encounter with Jesus should never leave us unchanged, because as we continue our journey with the Lord, our understanding, convictions, courage, and actions should increasingly reflect the impact of that encounter.

In the name of Jesus Christ, I declare that I am becoming increasingly sensitive to the moving, leading, and direction of the Holy Spirit, and I will not be trapped by my religious traditions, spiritual complacency, or the assumption that studied knowledge alone is sufficient. My heart is open to the truth of God, and I am willing to follow wherever the Holy Spirit leads. I declare that every path of error I have walked is being exposed, and by the grace of God, I will repent, turn away from it, and return to the path of truth.

I will no longer allow worldly desires, presumptuous decisions, or the pressure of others to draw me into the place of compromising the truth. I declare that the Holy Spirit is training me to recognise His warnings and to respond to His instructions with humility and obedience.

I receive the grace to remain spiritually alert, watchful, prayerful, and steadfast in faith. My spiritual feet will be restrained from presumptuous sins, and I will not knowingly persist in a direction that the Lord has warned me against. So when correction comes, I will receive it, and when I need to turn back, I will return to the Lord; and when He directs me to move forward, I will obey in Jesus name. Amen.