This past July I wrote about a preacher in Tennessee, Darryl Mefford, who died very suddenly of a fast-moving Leukemia. It just came on him out of nowhere and that was it. He was only 39 years old and left behind two young girls and his wife.

Maybe because Darryl was born the same year I was, 1964, I think about him even though I never met him, never saw or heard him preach, and barely even knew of his existence until after his death.

I was recently listening to an old sermon he gave, available for downloading on the site www.rightdivider.com, and thought it was so on-the-money. There's also something so straightforward about his presentation. He's got a real soothing, non-judgmental manner that I think you can't help but enjoy listening to.

I admit I think to myself, "Wow, he obviously had so much potential and it was all cut short so young into his ministry."

Anyway, here's a portion of this particular sermon that I've simply retooled a little here and there:

"In my part of the country, folks all the time talk about 'God the Holy Spirit.' They say, 'I felt the Spirit of God. I just feel the Spirit of God all over me.'

And I heard that all my life growing up in church. After I got saved and started preaching, and learned the Word rightly divided, I found out there's a whole lot of things I'd been taught all my life that weren't right.

I started thinking, 'You know, there ain't one verse in the Bible that says anything about <feeling the Spirit of God.>'

I know a man can't physically feel the Spirit of God, in part, because of a verse in Judges 16:20. When Samson awoke from his sleep after Delilah had cut off his hair, it says, 'And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.'

When that Spirit came mightily upon Samson, it strengthened him in his flesh—he had physical strength. But when Samson awoke from that sleep, he didn't have any physical sensation that God had departed from him. He didn't know it; he didn't realize it.

That tells me you can't physically feel the Spirit of God. When people talk about feeling the Spirit of God—'they have joy in their heart'—there's no physical feeling.

People want to touch Him with their hands, they want sense Him with their eyes, taste Him. They want to use their five senses to have a relationship with God. Folks, you can't do it. Your senses as a human being, well, they're just dumb.

You can't, by your senses, detect God Almighty. You can't have a relationship with him based on your senses—based on you feeling or perceiving something. You have a relationship with God based on the issue of faith and faith is taking God at His Word.

And you'd be far better off to do that than to try and have a relationship with Him based on emotions and emotionalism.

I hear people say, 'Well, the Spirit of God, I can feel him run up my spine.' Well, no, that's a breeze blowing up your spine.

Preachers around here say, 'Well, I don't study to get a message. I believe God fills my mouth. I don't study a message—I get it from God.'

Well, I tell you, there ain't nobody today getting their messages from God. If they did, every word that came out of their mouth would be right; everything they said would be right. They wouldn't be wrong about anything, and you and I better listen to every single word they say. We better mark it down, follow it right to the letter.

Nobody today's getting their message from God. The day of direct revelation from God is over with. God communicates to you today through the words on the pages of His Book.

What do you think God would write down His Word for anyhow?

God has finished His Word; there is no direct revelation. I don't have a supernatural gift. I don't have a supernatural ability. God doesn't endow me with some special gift.

Ephesians 3:16 says we are 'to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.'

The Spirit of God still strengthens us today but it doesn't strengthen us physically like He did Samson.

He doesn't strengthen us physically like he did that lame man in Acts 3, despite the claims of all the 'healers' and 'faith workers.'

The sickness rate among Charismatics and Pentecostals is the same as it is among every other church or denomination. So tell me where's the profit in what they preach?

Where's the healing? Where's the miracles? It ain't there.

Paul prays in Col. 1:9 that 'ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,' but they turn their noses up at that. That's not good enough for them. They want to see something, touch something.

The church today is so much like it was at Corinth in Paul's day—teaching 'another Jesus' and 'another Spirit.'

God is strengthening us by His Spirit today in our inner man. God's not working in our flesh, He's working in our inner man. That's Christ Jesus living inside of you. That's the ministry of God the Holy Spirit today.