Fellowshipping With The Holy Spirit Part 1 by Pastor Philip Olubakin: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

"There is no pit too deep that I cannot pull you out of," is how one particular word came through prayer, echoing Psalm 40:1-2: "I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay." A pit can be financial depth, marital stagnation, or a health crisis; miry clay describes the kind of trouble a person cannot climb out of alone, where struggling to escape only pulls them in deeper. That kind of situation genuinely requires being lifted out, not merely encouraged to try harder.

The Most Overlooked Person in the Trinity

The theme at the center of this teaching is simple: the Holy Spirit is eager to fellowship, to walk with, to actually relate to a person, not merely to be discussed in theory. He is arguably the most overlooked person in the Trinity; far more is said about the Father and about Jesus than about the Spirit, even though this present era is specifically his, and everything meaningful happening in the church and in the world now happens by him.

John 14:16 promises "another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever." To abide means to stay, not to visit occasionally. This marks a real difference from the Old Testament pattern, where the Spirit came upon people rather than living within them, and could depart, which is why David pleaded in Psalm 51, "take not thy holy spirit from me." Under the New Testament, that fear no longer applies; the Spirit lives inside the believer permanently and does not leave in low or difficult moments. If anything, those are the moments he is closest, since it is only by remaining that he is able to hear a person's cry for help at all.

A Friend Who Stays

The Holy Spirit is not reluctant to relate personally; a season of deep isolation after conversion, when almost no one in a new church community was willing to get close due to a difficult family background, led to a simple, honest prayer: "Holy Spirit, nobody wants to talk to me. Will you be my friend?" The answer came quietly but certainly: yes. Matthew 27:50-51 records that when Jesus died, the veil in the temple, over twenty feet tall, tore from top to bottom, not bottom to top, meaning no human hand could have done it. God himself tore down the barrier that had kept people at a distance from his presence, because he was finished hiding from his own children. John 7:37 records Jesus crying out that anyone who thirsts may come; access to that same Spirit is no longer restricted to priests or a chosen few. 2 Corinthians 13:14 distinguishes "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God" from something else entirely, "the fellowship of the Holy Ghost," described elsewhere as sweet, a relationship rather than a formula.

A Jealous Love

James 4:5 says plainly, "the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy," meaning the Spirit within a believer yearns jealously for that person's attention. That attention is often given everywhere else first: to a phone first thing in the morning, to work, to entertainment, to everything except a few unhurried minutes with him. Overfamiliarity is one of the quiet enemies of this relationship, the same way a couple who once noticed every detail about each other early in a marriage can drift into barely noticing each other at all years later. The Spirit is described as a jealous lover who intensely desires more and more closeness, not because he is needy, but because that closeness is the entire point of the relationship.

Every Area, Not Just the Spiritual One

This interest is not limited to prayer and worship; it extends to how a person treats others, spends money, and reacts when wronged. When Saul pursued David and David cut off a piece of his robe, the Spirit's concern was not primarily what Saul had done, since that could not be controlled, but what David did in response, since that could be. The same principle applies broadly: a person cannot control how they are treated, but they remain responsible for how they respond, and that response is exactly what the Spirit is most interested in shaping.

John 21:4-11 tells of the disciples, after the resurrection, back in their boats fishing and catching nothing, until Jesus, unrecognized on the shore, told them to cast their net on the other side. The resulting catch, a hundred and fifty-three large fish, was too heavy to draw in easily, yet the net did not break. God is not interested in wasting provision; the size of what he releases next is often scaled to what was done with the last provision given, which raises a fair question for anyone waiting on a breakthrough: what happened to the last resource, however small, that was already entrusted?

Fellowship With God Shapes Fellowship With People

Malachi 2:13-14 describes people weeping and groaning at the altar, wondering why their worship goes unaccepted, and God's answer is direct: because they have been unfaithful to the spouse they made vows to in their youth, though that spouse remained faithful to them. A person's walk with God is never actually separate from how they treat the people closest to them; someone can pray for hours and still nurse quiet resentment the entire time.

Early in ministry, this played out personally: repeated multi-day prayer retreats taken without much consideration for a spouse left at home, framed internally as simply pursuing God, while a wife wondered privately what kind of marriage this really was. On one such retreat, the inward prompting was unmistakable and specific: "Where is your wife? Go back to her." The return home, earlier than expected, was met with quiet relief rather than confusion, because she had already been praying the same request. A marriage that struggles is not made noble by calling the neglect "ministry" or "passion for God"; a genuine relationship with the Holy Spirit does not excuse neglect of the people closest to a person, it corrects it. Fellowship with the Spirit, taken seriously, has no roped-off areas, no part of a life, a marriage, a bank account, or a relationship, that gets to remain off limits to his involvement.