Transcription
[Music] Great, great to be with you. And, uh, I, I heard I missed a fantastic session this morning. Had them all weeping, playing old songs. Oh, and, uh, the surprise is how many knew all the songs. I think that's awesome. And, uh, just great, Lynn. How are you? Good to see you there. We're having lunch together, are we? How awesome is that? Great.
Anyway, I want to, uh, just open up and just, I'm going to share some things that will help you, that have helped me. I come from a physics background, teaching background. So for me, I need to know how it works. If I don't know how it works and how to put it into practice, it isn't really very helpful. And, uh, so I found in being in church for, for many years, that I heard all sorts of things, but often people wouldn't tell how it, how you work. You know, how, how does that work? How do you operate that way? I would see ministers come and they would do things and, well, how does that happen? How, how do I move from here up to there? And, uh, I discovered that there were some practical keys you can learn on how to, uh, work with the Holy Spirit so that you increase the measure of his anointing around your life. Also discovered that there's an inner life you need as well.
And if you look at Jesus' ministry, you'll find an interesting thing. You can't see, it doesn't appear as though he's structured. It appears as though he's able to respond spontaneously, yet he's has a clear purpose of where he's going. And you see constantly him yielding and responding and working with the Holy Spirit. And, uh, that comes out of intimacy, comes out of time in his presence. So what I want to share with you today is, I want to share with you on engaging the presence of God. And I want to share with you some very practical things that will work. And I won't use a lot of scriptures on it. I'll just use a couple. And I know you'll be so familiar with them, but I want to talk with you how I've journeyed to put them into working in my life, because often we get to know the scriptures but don't know how to engage or use them to engage with God. So, uh, so let's just, I want to speak, speak about that.
So Father in heaven, we just thank you for, I thank you for every wonderful worker here. Everyone who sacrificed time, energy, effort, given their life to serve you. What wonderful people. Father, we just honor you this morning. And I ask, Lord, you'd just help us to learn and during the course of it, the keys would be unlocked in our heart that would help us in our engaging with you in a deeper and a deeper way. Amen.
Well, we're made for intimacy. We're made to be connected to God. Not just to talk one way to him and have nothing back. We're made for an intimate relationship. And intimate relationships have parts to them which are just spontaneous, like you just touch your spouse's hand, or you put your arm around her, or there's lots of little ways that intimacy is communicated in little small, uh, random things through the day. But then there's also times where we actually plan to have intimacy together, and that's a more structured kind of situation. You might have a meal, romantic time, and it leads through to intimacy. In other words, there's, there's a greater focus of time and attention on it. And I see very similar things in our relationship with God. We need to have structured time alone with him where we are intentional in our engaging with him and becoming intimate with him. And then throughout the day, there are moments that you can just touch his presence or talks. It's not one or the other. It's like a continuing flow of being able to be aware of his presence as you go through your day. And there's ways that you can learn to do that. And I have found that within just a couple of moments, I can quickly engage his presence, become aware of him, conscious of him. Most people live conscious of their problems, aches in their body, pressures around financial issues, their work, their ministry. That's what presses on you and you become conscious of it. We need to learn how to become conscious of the presence of God, aware of him, and able to engage him quite quickly. And I, I learned that there's, if you will put in the discipline and you put in the effort to establish breakthrough points in your life, it becomes very easy to access those points quickly in a moment of time. So most of us just, I, I found for many years, just struggle very, very much with the whole area of engaging with God. I would love the worship atmosphere of a meeting, but when it's, I'm home, what am I going to do there?
So let me share with you first of all, just what I would consider some heart attitudes that are foundational for deepening your intimacy with God. Number one, desire. Psalm 27 and verse 4, uh, and David writes. And now David is a king. He's a warrior king. He fights battles. He's the greatest king in Israel's history. And you would think, well, you know, one thing have I desired. Well, what's the king going to desire? Let's read that one. Okay. I want tanks and rocket launchers and guns. You know, we think it'd be something like that. In other words, great weapons of war. But he didn't ask for any of those things. He said, "This is one thing I have desired, one solitary thing. This is what I'll seek after. This is the pursuit of my life." So what is that? That I may dwell in the house of the Lord forever, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and inquire in his temple. So notice the expression of what motivated him to become a powerful person, encountering God, radically changing the nation, radically shifting worship in the nation. One desire. So in other words, he's driven by a passion, a consuming desire, and that desire is to engage the presence of God. One thing I desire, that I dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So he's referring, of course, to encountering God in the house of God. Uh, so he's in his period of time, God lived in a house. So therefore, descriptions of God always have to do with a house. But we live today, we are the house of God. So he said, to be, to dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and inquire in his temple. So what he's really saying is, I want to, this is my consuming and passionate desire, that I might live in intimacy with God, that I might encounter and experience his goodness, and I might commune and have fellowship and hear him talking with me. So that's kind of putting it. So you see this great warrior king, passion for God.
Second thing I believe is crucial if we're going to build deep intimacy with God is a is a commitment. God does not form casual relationships. We live in a culture that has casual. Casual means if it suits me and I get something out of it, I'm into it. But if I'm not, if I don't get anything out of it or it doesn't work out, then I'm out. But God is not like that. God is a covenant God. He's, I'm a covenant-keeping God. So God's only way of relating to us is covenantally. So when you begin, what does that mean for me? Well, it's talking virtually like a marriage. So think about this in a marriage. Imagine a marriage where the husband said, "Man, I just so love you. This is wonderful. I really just enjoying us being married, but, you know, I got a couple of girlfriends and, uh, I want to be free next weekend to be out with them." Now, you can imagine when he comes back to his wife, the chilly reception. See, very choked. Now, why? Because he's violating the spirit of the marriage, the spirit of covenant. Or, or if the wife said, "Oh, honey, I love you. You're just such a wonderful husband, but, you know, this weekend I'll be away. I've got some old boyfriends and I'm going to be out with them." Well, he would be very jealous. That's why God's a jealous God. Jealousy is a strong passion about something that belongs to me is going somewhere else. So we tend to live in a world of casual relationships, but God is a covenant God. So there can't be that compromise around our life where we've got other lovers. He said, "If you're in love with the world and its values, you're an adulterer. You can't have that love passionately driving you and expect to walk in a place of intimacy with God. There has to be that process of becoming committed. He is the source of my life. He is the one that'll be the center of my attention. I make commitment to that."
I'm getting really quiet now, isn't it? In Luke 10 and verse 42, where, uh, Jesus is talking with, uh, Mary and Martha. And Mary is, uh, Mary and Martha are sisters, of course, you know the story very well. But they both welcome Jesus into the house. They're both believers in that sense. They welcome Jesus into the house, but one chose intimacy, one chose to engage, to listen, and to learn. Made a choice. The other one chose to be busy serving. Now, there's nothing wrong with serving. The problem was in her serving, what she did was she made a choice of wrong priorities. She put serving Jesus ahead of intimacy with him. Serving should flow out of the intimacy. That's when it carries the life. If it doesn't flow out of intimacy, it rapidly degenerates to what she became like, where she turns to Jesus and out of her heart she says it all. She's very ticked off with her sister. Very. "Jesus, can't you see I'm very busy here serving and I'm all alone? There's no one helping me. Notice, why don't you tell that sister of mine to help me?" Don't even use a name. They can see it's loaded with resentment. It's loaded with manipulation. It's loaded with self-pity. It's loaded with loneliness. And, and it pictures what service without intimacy becomes. And prayer then turns into trying to manipulate Jesus to make other people do what you want. Well, it's just her sister. She's got a name. Why don't you talk to Mary? Can you help and help? Why, why not do that? Rather than try to manipulate Jesus. And Jesus' response, "There's one thing is needed. One thing." And it's a choice. She chose, and I'm not going to take it away. So think about that for you. I know as leaders, we have many, many things pressing on our life, but one thing is needed. One thing, one thing. It's a choice. So your choices, how you've set up your diary, how you set up your finance, reveals your priority. You just got to make a decision that I will make it a priority. I will make the commitment to build with God, to build with him. Amen. It's a commit. There's a, see, no marriage can work without commitment to develop intimacy. It just becomes sterile. That's why you see so many marriages falling apart. Children have left home. The purpose of serving and con, and and keeping the home safe for the children to grow is now gone. And suddenly the couple look at one another, "What have we got?" They, they didn't notice that that intimacy disappeared. It was just not noticed because it was never made a priority. Other things, serving came in first. So that, so I found that when you look at natural things, there are very strong parallels that you can apply into the things of the spirit. So I see that desire, if there's no desire, there won't be an engagement and intimacy. If there's no commitment and choices to build, it'll never happen.
So with my own children, in order to build connection with them, because we had so many of them, um, I would make a date with them, and they would have an appointment with me. And people say, "That's weird, appointments with your kids." I said, "Yeah, because it's easier to tell someone, 'No, I'm sorry, I can't meet with you. I have an appointment already committed,' then it is to tell me, 'I'm meeting up with one of my kids.'" It's much harder as a pastor to say no when you say, "I'm just going to meet with my children." But my children are people too, and they need time, and and your commitment is shown by setting a priority somewhere. Anyway, that's another area altogether. But just these are some things. And so these, what I would call heart issues, that prepare you for intimacy. There must be desire. I must really want to engage God. Secondly, I must commit to the journey of building that relationship and making it a priority. And thirdly, I must believe that God is a rewarder if I will diligently seek him. You got to believe that if you will pursue, God will come and engage with you. And so there's a level of intimacy we can have with him. And then there's another, and another, that comes by pursuit. And it's that what comes by pursuit is what I want. So in Hebrews 11:6, "He that comes to God must believe he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who casually come to church." See, well, people want everything, but they don't want to pay the price for it. Relationships require an effort and a commitment. And we must, uh, believe that if we will persevere, God will come through.
I remember I was in a meeting one time, and someone, a pastor, spoke to me. He's an Australian pastor, and he spoke, and something stood out. And he said, "If you knew by focusing on one thing, the rest of your life would change, would it not be worth focusing on that one thing?" And it hit me like that. And I thought, he's right. I need to focus on this block I have to intimacy with God until I break through. And so I did. I just cut down other things and made it the focus until I got the breakthrough. And once I got the breakthrough, I've carried that ever since. It was worth it. Only three weeks for a lifetime of carrying something in God. Work it out. Work it out. There's a price to pay. And I think sometimes it's because we don't know what to do. That's the problem. So, you know, I found you going, "Well, just pray, read your Bible. How do I pray? What do I do? How do I engage with God?"
So I want to share with you then, just some aspects of the process. So there's the heart issue of the desire for God, the commitment you make to build in this area. Now, as the church walks through transition, probably there's many aspects of it. But one thing that would be great is if, if all leaders made that decision, we will pursue and deepen our intimacy with God at this time. Then, then we're not so focused on the shifts and changes that take place. We're focused on God and what he's doing, and we can align with that. You know, as they made the transition across the Jordan, they sent the ark ahead, and they said, "Now keep your eyes on the ark. Keep your eyes on the Lord. Don't keep your eyes on all the the dramas of change. Keep your eyes fixed on God."
So let me share with you a couple of verses. They're well-known. You know them. But I want to just talk how you might put them. Give you some ways you might put them into practice in your life. You look in Psalm 100. Psalm 100. You know the scriptures, but let me just open up what I have found has been extremely helpful in applying this to actually experience God. So here it is in verse, uh, one: "Make a joyful shout to the Lord." That's not a quiet service, is it? Like a joyful, jubilant, victorious shout to the Lord. Some of you people, no, no. "All you lands." So come before the Lord with gladness. Don't come gladness. Come before his presence with singing. Well, you may not have a good voice, but he doesn't care. Don't use your bad voice. So don't worry. Just put the music up louder, you know, no one will hear. "Know that the Lord, he is God." See, "Enter his gates with thanksgiving. Enter his courts with praise. Be thankful. Bless his name, for the Lord is good." So there's a whole lot of things in there. I'm going to pick just the process and try and show you a few things in the process. So, of course, he's using the language of the Old Testament when God lived in a house, but it's talking about encountering the presence of God. And so it says there's some things God has set in place to encounter him. Well, you can have your own way of doing it, but I found that God says, "This is how you do it." So if he says how you do it, and David did it, I'd like to copy that.
Here's another addition to it in Psalm 95. Starts off the same way. "Oh, let us sing to the Lord. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Shout joyfully to him with psalms." I don't hear that in a lot of people's prayer times. Not much shouting and singing. It's actually very quiet. Perhaps that's connected to why no breakthroughs? Could be. Then it tells of the flow. It says, "Now come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our God, our maker. For he is our God. We are the people of his pasture, the sheep of his hand. Today, if you'll hear his voice, don't harden your heart." Now, you'll notice here that there is a journey. You, God is already, the Bible's very clear, we draw near to him, he draws near to us. So the initiative lies with us every time. And often, because the soul is caught up with emotions and struggles and things, we work and labor a bit and don't get very far and then get a bit disheartened. But you know, it tells us here how to do it. There's a journey. First of all, of gratitude and praise. And you know, you know, to shout takes a bit of effort. To mumble doesn't take any effort. But shouting, oh, releasing thanksgiving to God, that's a bit of effort in that. And you decide how much you put in. I know you can put it in because I've seen you when there's a match, you know, between New South Wales and Queensland. And I've watched and I've seen what people do. They don't sit quietly like this when that ball's going there and and and it's starting to come down, and suddenly everyone's on their feet. They shout, shout, shout, shout. I think, well, how can they make so much noise over a ball? And when they come to church, all shut down. What is that? Oh, that's a choice. That's a choice. It's a choice about what you let stir you. What if you let God stir your heart? And as you come here, excited to be in his presence? Well, that's a choice. That's a choice. And I've seen very quiet people get very excited at football games, start to yell. Even women, I've seen women in front of a television start yelling at the thing. What's that? Sometimes those WWF matches where they're into wrestling. You want something with a woman in the front row there, "Hey, kill him! Kill them!" You know, this one. Whoa. What happened? How come you can choose to turn it on and turn it off, but when it comes to God, we choose to have the switch low? Why is that? That's a choice. That's a choice. That's a choice.
So there's a flow there of entering of praising until the spirit of worship comes. Now, people, we get used to just having a service where we flow through an order of songs, rather than using songs until the spirit of worship comes on us. So in your personal time, if you will give yourself to praise, then the spirit of worship will come on you. And then, you know, it's changed because now God is starting to invade your space. He liked what you did. Hey, and, and I've started discovered that more and more that as I give myself into praise, I just stay there in that place until I feel the spirit of worship come on me. Now, there's a change. Worship is about intimacy. It's about love. Now, you'll be quieter, because there's been an offering given, which isn't always easy to do when you feel down. That's why it's called a sacrifice of praise. It's cost you something because you don't feel like it. Your body doesn't want the door to do it. See, you get pouty. "I didn't want to do it. You know, I'm such a God. It was a bad week anyway." You know, people get that sort of way, rather than actually just make the offering to God and praise until your body, soul, and spirit start to flow together. Then the spirit of worship comes on you. So because if we're going to engage with God, it has to be from our spirit. Our spirit must be flowing. See, God communes with us, spirit to spirit. So therefore, there's got to be a flow from our spirit. And that flow comes through your body and through your soul. So if your soul is out of sorts and distracted, there's no flow from your spirit in engaging God. If your body is tired and and protesting, "I'm hungry and tired. It's so hard. My knees aching, my back." That's what your body talks like, you know, and it's just, and, and then if you yield to the body's language, then you won't give anything much to God. So that it affects the flow from your spirit. So I've learned you can make some changes to that very, very quickly if you decide to. Is it worth it?
So you notice then, "Come, worship and bow down." So then the time of intimacy, at a time often of tears, of just being in his presence and enjoying him, and staying in worship until we begin to commune with him and hear his voice. There's no relationship works if it's all one-sided. You'd all imagine a marriage. She does all the talking. I've seen men like that. Or could be the other way around, of course. Not picking on anyone here. Could be the husband. He's just go, go, go, and look, she's breathing down like that. That's no relationship. It's a flowing exchange like that. So God wants us into the flowing exchange. Question is, just how to get there.
So let me give you now, how, how to use these things. Uh, you know the scriptures easily, but the dilemma I always found was, how do I apply it so it works in my life? So the first thing is the use of music. The use of music is an amazing asset to encountering God. It's the language of the soul. It's the language of heaven. And interesting, God said, "I will raise up again the tabernacle of David." He likes it loud and worshipy and noisy. And you know, obviously 120 trumpets making a blast, everyone's singing and shouting, and God comes. He likes it. He likes it. See. So, so I found music helps, but you got to choose the right kind of music and know how to use it. Now, I was interested to hear this morning that as Mark played the old songs, some of the people, "Jesus." Now, what was all that about? Well, actually, it's really simple. When you have a song that is connected to an experience with God, it becomes a part of who you are. And then when that song is played, they're playing my song. Jesus. You know, so most of us came in in some period of time when there were certain songs, and those songs that we came in on, that's the one that switches our bell. See, it is at the moment it's played because your inner man has been programmed. You've had an encounter with God. Encounters with God mark our DNA. They alter us. And so then I have learned that certain songs will affect me in different ways. So I choose songs that will, a praise song, I'll choose a song that will make my body want to move around. Oh, hallelujah. I want that kind of song. And not every kind. And it will focus on Jesus and on how great he is, how good he is. So you just want something that gets you moving. And now put some headphones on, and now you're in a world of your own. Lock the door, headphones on, you can't even hear yourself sing. No matter what anyone else is singing, just you go for it. It'll probably sound terrible for anyone outside, but for you, oh, glory to God, we're into it. See, so I found that really helpful. And, and now I just play the one song that that helps me get in a flow of moving. You know, the moment I'm using Hezekiah Walker's "Every Every Praises to Our God." Oh, my, you can't get into that. He's just into it. There's a groove with it. See. So I like that because what happens as I move my body, I start to feel my spirit flow. It's about giving everything to him, you know, everything. And, and so it helps if you train your body to respond to music you're using the music. So I found a lot of songs don't work at all. They're too wordy and they're too complicated. They're great for musicians to sell albums, but I want songs to help me worship. It's just that's the difference. I don't mind the other, and I listen to those. But to engage God, I want the song firstly that will cause me to feel stirred. Oh, "Every Praises to Our God." Oh, you're my savior, my. The words of it, I just love it. They just stir my whole inner man to just praise him and praise him. I just keep going until I feel the spirit of worship come. Then I'll change the song. At the moment, I'm using a different song. It's the one from, I think, from Bethel. "Our Father in Heaven." And because I've been focusing on building intimacy with the Father. So you want to choose the right song. And they need to be simple. You having to remember all the words? Huh? There's no intimacy in marriage works like that. "Now, what do I have to do next? And what, what comes next?" What doesn't work like that, you know? Got to be easy. Got to be really easy, you know. Think about that. Not too deeply. We just stay focused on the B. So I want a song that's only got probably one or two lines. That's about it. So I don't have to use my mind. I can use my spirit. If you use your mind, you go out of your spirit into your head. But if you just know the song, then you can flow from your spirit. So I, I found that that one helped me. And the reason it helps me, I didn't even know it until I went to a meeting. I was speaking on the Father's love in China, and they played that song, and thought, "It's a bit slow." And I thought, "Well, actually, it's on the theme. Why don't we just get him to keep playing it?" And we kept playing it, and God came. Now, for me, whenever I play that song, that encounter I had with God is renewed, uh, because I associate the experience with God with the song. And so the moment I start to flow into that, I can feel the tears and the consciousness of the Father, because I had an experience like that. What if you've never had that experience? Well, choose one that will work for you. Choose one that stirs your heart and just provides a simple expression of love and adoration. It's got to be quite simple, and you choose a song like that. So just, you use what works for you. And, uh, that's why you find as we shared before, for people who heard some of the old songs, immediately something comes back to you. What comes back to you? You connect your experience with God with the song. So when someone plays the song, suddenly the emotions of that experience come back up again.
So our inner man works off repetition. You can't make spiritual things turn on and off like a light. Men may turn on and off like a light, but women do not. So in intimacy with God, we have to learn to cultivate our inner life. And it takes time because you're distracted, you got all sorts of other things going on in your mind. So it takes time to do that. So number one, use methods. Number two, make sure you activate your spirit. If communion with God is spirit to spirit, you have to stir your spirit. And God has given you a gift to do that called speaking in tongues. "He that prays in an unknown tongue," 1 Corinthians 14:14, "my spirit is praying." Shakab. And when you pray in an unknown tongue, the Holy Ghost is giving you the language. Your spirit is starting to become energy. Well, that's if you properly pray in tongues. Don't mumble in tongues. Pray. It's a gift for purposes. One of the purposes is to energize your spirit man so you become conscious of God. So it's a powerful gift, but you, you have to give yourself to practicing until your spirit is trained to flow with the spirit of God. And so a lot of people just get stuck in their soul and in their reserves. And they don't pray very strongly. And so they pray enough to annoy them, but not enough to get any benefit. What I might have been there, I've done all of these things and then got bored and thought, "What the heck?" You know, how's this going to work? But I learned now. So when I'm playing those songs, I may sing the song, but most of the time I'm praying strongly in tongues with it, and using the song to stir my soul and body and get my body moving, soul focused on the Lord, while my spirit is becoming highly energized. That's why the spirit of worship comes. Every part's engaged. Otherwise, you're praying and then you're distracted everywhere. See, so you, you activate your spirit. And, uh, I have found that when your spirit becomes energized, your head becomes clear, and you start to receive revelation. "Says the spirit of man is the lamp or the candle of the Lord, lightening up the innermost parts." When you pray strongly in tongues and begin to energize, your whole body starts to get full of life, and you might start your prayer time and you're quite dull and down, but after a little while, the energy that's starting to flow. I sometimes come home and I, I can't sleep. I've got so much energy flowing inside. The spirit man stirred. You have a spirit, and it can be built and stirred, and praying in tongues is the gift God gave you to do it.
Now, then, there's a third key that will help. So all of these are just parts of it. Now, just catch the principle of it, and then figure out what works for you. See, don't try to have some legalistic, "This is what you do," but just catch the spirit of it, and then work with yourself to find what it'll take to shift you a bit. Hey, just move from, no matter where you are, just move from where you are. Shift, and you'll find as you shift, you'll like it. You want to shift a bit more. You'd start to get a momentum going of change in your prayer life and change in your encounters with God.
Now, here's another problem, and this one's quite easily solved, and I discovered it very accidentally. So again, since we've been talking a little bit about marriage, we'll go back again. So a couple are having intimacy, and then she just takes out her cell phone and, "Hello?" What's going on? All connection breaks like that. Suddenly, all the intimate moment is gone for one reason: distraction. Just got caught somewhere. Have you been with someone when they were smiling and looking at you, and then they suddenly, you know, Elvis left the room? Don't say they're double-tasking. They're not. There's no such thing. Your brain actually is on one, then it stops that and starts this, then it stops that, starts this, then no multitasking. You're either here or there. So in intimacy, you need to be with the person. Now, to be with the person, you have to engage with your mind. If your mind is distracted, the flow of your spirit stops. Now, all of you really knew that. But I'll just tell you how you knew it. How many have been like this? You've been in a situation where there's been someone you're talking with, and they're listening. That means they've focused their attention on hearing what you have to say. And as they're focusing attention, you feel the draw, and then their eyes glaze a little, and they left the room again, and you feel it change because the flow from your spirit is now no longer happening. Everyone has experienced that, but not stopped to think what goes on. It's as simple as this: where you focus your attention, your spirit and heart will open up to. If you change your attention, your spirit and heart will go that place. So if you're going to engage with God, somehow we need to be able to keep our mind fixed on him. Now, of course, it says when you pray in tongues, your mind is unfruitful. Your understanding is unfruitful. So your mind is all over the place. That's why you get people, and they're praying in tongues like this, and inside, what's going on? "Oh, I'm getting a bit hungry. We want to go get for lunch today." Now, that looks like it's being intimate. I love, looks good. But when go from God's point of view, there's nobody home. Just a body standing there blabbing, but there's no connectedness. You went away. And of course, if your mind has gone away to food, your body then starts, "Well, I'm really hungry." You know, and so you're in your, in your mind, in your body, you're not connecting with God. So the, the key to connection or engagement with God is focused attention. And I have found without focused intention, your times of intimacy do not go very deep.
So how do you focus your attention? That's a good question, isn't it? How do you stop your mind going everywhere? Well, it has to be trained. And so, well, how do you train it? Well, I have found the thing that helped me to train my mind is called meditation. Meditation. In fact, in in Ephesians, uh, 1 and verse 18, it says, uh, he praying that the eyes of our understanding will be open. And that word understanding is the word dionia, meaning deep thoughts or imagination. So think about it. If God talks with you, he does it with dreams and visions in your imagination. Think about that. Think about sin being conceived. Jesus said, "If you look on a woman to lust after her, sin conceives in your heart immediately. You have committed adultery." So sin is a spiritual thing. And it's conceived by two things coming together: desire and imagination. So to look after a woman with lust after her is to begin to imagine doing evil. And if you join to that with desire, sin conceives. So something spiritual happens within you. If you misuse your imagination and desire. So that tells us also the other side is true as well, that if I couple my imagination with desire, I can experience and open up to God, and that process is called meditation. There are many aspects to it. This is what I've discovered with it, and, uh, meditation using your imagination. Now, coming from a science background, I had the kind of thinking, well, if you're imagining it, it isn't real. I had to get over that and realize that actually I need to harness this faculty, because if God is going to give me visions, that's where I'll see them, in my imagination. I'll see them in that part of me. Like if you close your eyes for a moment and thought about your bedroom, you could just see everything in there because you've been there so often. So your imagination takes you to places you've been. Your imagin. You could imagine, uh, what it would be like to sit down and eat. Oh, oh, I see it now. Lovely roast dinner. Oh, my. And you start to, your body will actually respond because your imagination is starting to cause your whole inner being to align to that. So what if we were to take the word of God and begin to take what the word describes of Jesus, and then begin to try and imagine what that would look like and feel like to be engaging that revelation of him in the Bible? It's written for a reason, and one of the reasons is for us to have encounters.
So when I was trying to renew my mind, I, I was struggling with a root of rejection. So I never felt acceptable or good enough. And it was a real struggle in connecting with God. So I spent every day, and I took Psalm 23, memorized it. For many, Psalm 23 is just what you read at a funeral. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." And listen, it's not that at all. You know, nothing like that. David, his whole occupation initially was a shepherd. And he's saying, "How can I tell you what intimacy with God looks like? I know I'll use my occupation to describe it. God Almighty is my personal friend who cares for me, because the word shepherd is a friend." And then he goes through describing how that friend interacts with him. It's all about his relationship with God coming out of how he lived his life. So what I did was, I thought, well, I memorized it, because if you're having to use your mind too much to remember something, you can't meditate. It's best if you just reme, memorize the scripture. And so what I did was, we had to me. Now, imagine if you were meeting your friend, what would, what, when you meet friends, what are they like? See, "The Lord is my shepherd." The word shepherd is friend, personal companion, and associate. So if you meet a friend somewhere, and they're a long-standing, committed friend, when you meet them, what do they respond to you like? You know, they're not like that. "Hey, great to see you." I, I go to the airport. "Hey, this goblin and he's pass." "Great to see you." You know, you can see it in the eyes and the countenance and the body. So I just found it helpful to take, if the Lord is my shepherd, then he's happy to see me. He's my friend. I began to meditate every day after praying in the spirit. I continue to pray in the spirit, and I begin to focus my attention. Jesus is my friend. His eyes are gentle and compassionate and see into me completely. And he doesn't reject me in any way. His countenance is smiling. His hands are open. I can see the marks and the scars of the cross, of the of the nails. And I feel him welcoming me. Now, I just meditate on it every day, day after day. And how did I feel? I felt silly. I thought, "This is just nonsense." But I decided I would, well, anything's better than what I've been doing. So this, I'm going to persevere with this. And I persevered with it, and persevered with it, and persevered with it. And I thought, "Well, I'm praying in the spirit, I'm meditating on Jesus. This got to be good." And then one day, one day, suddenly it was no longer I was priming the pump with my imagination. Suddenly the Holy Spirit flooded me with the love of Jesus. I encountered him. I began to weep and weep and weep. I just couldn't stay out of his presence. Just the weeping out of, "He is my friend." It moved from the information to the revelation, from the head to the heart.
Now, if I tell people, "Do, do you know Jesus loves you?" "Yeah, yeah. I've been in church. I know the verses." "Let me tell you the verses." "God so loved the world." They can tell you. I say, "Well, do you feel loved and embraced by him when you're in his presence?" "Uh, well, that's really can't answer that, because that's not how they're feeling, not what they're experiencing." So it's a relationship involves experiences together, not just information about the person. It's actually experiencing one another. And so this is what I found after that. I, I had a bit of problems, really. I didn't realize what had happened to me. I just meditated till I got this breakthrough. I cried. Thought, "What a great experience with God." I got up the next day, it was exactly the same. He was there immediately. And so I just kept going. If you have an encounter with the Lord, keep going back to the encounter, because it's a track or a path that's built into your life, into his presence. So I would find I would go to church on Sunday, and I'd smile and put my hand out, just like Pastor Mark does. "Hey, how are you?" People would cry. I thought, "What happened? What, what happened?" And it happened so frequently, and I thought, "Wait a minute, something's going on here." And I realized I was carrying an encounter with God. And it would touch people. The moment I look in their eyes and smile and say, "How are you?" they would feel what I had felt in my prayer time. And, uh, when I would pray for people, I just tried it out a couple of times. Thought, "Wow, that's interesting." So I, I said to people, "Do you like me to pray for you?" And they'd say, "Yeah, yes." I just take their hand. I wouldn't pray for them. I just pray the 23rd Psalm. "Lord, you're my shepherd and friend." And wait. They go like that. In other words, meditation in the scripture enabled me to come into encounter with him and formed a pathway of access that I can come into every time. And so when I come to pray for people, I just get them to focus their attention on Jesus, and I go back to where I've encountered him in prayer, and there's a flow of his presence. See, so engaging him will totally shift all your ministry. It'll take the pressure out of the ministry, because the ministry then becomes about directing people to attend to focus their attention on Jesus with expectation. And you also do the same. You set your attention on him. And as you begin to experience him, then you can move in whatever way or power or whatever, because you're engaging the source, not trying to do stuff. It's a big difference trying to, trying to do stuff, you know, than just being able to relax in his presence and then bring his presence to others. That's what Jesus did. He brought the presence everywhere he went. He was a carrier of presence. And you can carry that presence. So meditation is power.
So I meditated on the 23rd Psalm. Then I started to meditate more recently on, I've done meditate on the cross. Walked to Jesus with, walked to the cross with him. Stood there. Took time. The thing is not to hurry. You can't force your inner man into loving relationship. It's, you cultivate and sow into your spirit. So by dwelling and meditating, and I remember coming and just meditating on the cross, just starting to look at the ground and just see and use your imagination to picture what all the details that aren't there. You know, like the blood all around on the ground, and then the blood running down the cross, then the feet with the nails. You see, I found just as I focused on the various aspects, and finally focused on his eyes, I started to encounter how deep his love is, and how there's nothing we've done that could remove us from that love. But you see, this comes by revelation, not just by memorizing the scriptures. The first place to start, agreeing with it is the second, but meditating helps shift it to become an encounter for you. And once you've encountered, you can keep going back there easily.
So more recently, I've been looking at, um, Luke 15:20, the verse where it says in the prodigal son, "He arose and he went to his father. And while he was yet a long way off, his father saw him, was moved with compassion, ran to him, and hugged him, and embraced him, and kissed him, then covered him and restored him to sonship and authority, and put shoes of freedom on his feet." So I've taken time to meditate in that until I encountered God as a loving Father, and just wept and wept and wept, experiencing him. See, so all of the other stuff is about the intimacy part, preparing for intimacy. Now, of course, once you've engaged and encountered God, it's quite easy to go back there. And then you can just, just through the day, you can stop. You begin to start to thank the Lord. You let you connect with your spirit. You begin to free your spirit and praying in tongues, and then you meditate, and of course, your whole inner man starts to refocus on him again, and suddenly experience him. So about takes me about, you know, a minute, two minutes now, sometimes just immediately. So you train your inner man so encounters and ex, and relationship becomes easier and easier and easier. Are there some?
Tricky times. Yes, there are. When I'm under pressure, there's a turmoil in the soul. It can take quite a lot more praise to shift and align my inner man so I can get intimate again. So these are some things.
Then the, the, the last one, then perhaps, will is communing with him. Communing with him. Now, communing with him means you're talking, and then he's talking, and you're listening. You're talking, and then he's talking back to you again. So how, what can you do that would help you in that? Well, here's a simple thing I have found. I found journaling has been probably one of the greatest helps me to do this. It tells us in, in the, in the Old Testament that David got all the plans were given to him by the Holy Ghost in writing. So as he wrote, the anointing of the spirit came on him and guided him in what he wrote. In other words, he was just yielding to the spirit of God.
So I've learned in journaling now, and I've developed that. I tried it a bit and didn't feel much in it, but now I'm, I do it regularly, and now I've come to love my father talking to me. I want to hear what he has to say. And if I go a day without that, I'm a bit, I need to hear father again. So I found I just usually write a prayer or just talk to him or ask him something, then worship for a little bit, and then write. Now, you don't write, try and work something out of your head. You just, from your spirit, you just begin to flow. And he usually starts, "On my son, I love you." I just get flowing like that and just keep writing and writing and writing and writing right till something stops, and just pray and worship again, maybe a little bit more, then stop and read it. And of course, what you find is he will speak specifically and directly. He'll speak in encouragement. He'll speak correction. He'll speak what he would direction. There's, there's just such a flow comes after you've started to have that. You're experiencing, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but every word proceeding from the mouth of God." God is feeding me. God is talking to me. And you begin to get into a flow where you're interacting with him, and he's communing with you. And I found it helpful to write it because then you can go back and look at it again. So initially, I would highlight directives where God has spoken to me, "Do this or this." So I could go back and look at it. Did I do it? Because in Mark 4:24, it says, "He that ears to hear." In other words, if you hear and put into practice what God is saying, more will be given. So one key to the flow of more revelation is responding to what you are getting. Other words, if you listen to him and do something about it, you'll get more. If you don't, what you seem to have, you soon lose it. In other words, you think you're doing all right with God, but actually, you're not. So that's why I ask people, "What does God spoke to you about this week? And how have you been responding?" It just keeps everyone current in God. Everyone's gone all quiet. So focus your. So, so, so do that.
So what I found out is I've had to make the transition from writing it to just trying to do it on an iPad because I found I can then categorize, just break it down and highlight things and, and make points. This is what God is telling me about. These are the directives he's giving. This is what he wants me to do. It's easy to track it, and I can go back and look straight away. Did I do this, this, and this? Once in a while, I'll just summarize. What has God been speaking to me about? It's easy to do on a computer if you use computers. Otherwise, just write, fill up your books and whatever, but use a highlighter to highlight it. Communing and engaging God. How awesome is that? So then it changes the whole thing about prophesying and about moving with God and things like that because now what you're doing is encouraging someone to reach out to God, open their heart to him, and you are doing the same thing. And of course, if you've trained yourself, you just get your attention off the person and their needs and straight on, "Father, what are you doing? Just help me see what you're doing." And then you flow. It's much easier that way. So I found it shifted ministry, made ministry without the stress and strain a lot of people associated with it because it's now a flow.
So when I'm ministering last night, I, I, I've learned to observe what is the spirit of God doing. And I noticed as I was going along, I found when I tried just release the presence of God or power of God, a lot of people were locked up. And so I had to stop and notice what is not working as well as what is working. So then I realized, oh, people need a word of encouragement. I need to move or stretch out for words of knowledge and prophetic words. This is what I did. So I started praying, I could see, "Hey, wait a minute. This is something's happening here." And just begin to flip into another mode of listening. So as I come along, listen, and just say what I'm hearing God saying. Now, if you've been journaling, that's not a hard job because you're doing it every day. You're practicing before you ever get to be with people. Then it's just, "Oh, Father, okay, what is it?" And that's how it works. It's all out of intimacy. It's all out of your personal life with God. Personal life with God. Personal life with God. What you do that activates your spirit and causes you come in encounters with God. So, well, why don't you make a change? If what you're doing is not working as well as you'd like, just change. Do something you haven't been doing before. Just do something different. "Well, I've always done it this way." No, no, no, no. Do something different. Get a pair of headphones. Find a song that really you like. It may be an old one. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant which one it is. It's what it does to help you engage God. That's it. You use the song. You use it to help you engage with God. Amen.
Why don't we just stand to our feet? I want us to lead, just to lead us in just strong praying. Get perhaps the worship team to come up again. We'll finish with a final song. But I'd like all of us to begin to just stir our inner man until you feel the freedom come as you begin to give God your very best. You know, it says, "Shout unto clap your hands all you people." Now shout unto God with a voice of jubilant victory. You say, "Well, I don't feel like doing that. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I want to go home." Now listen, don't be like that. Offer the sacrifice of praise, even the fruit of your lips giving thanks to his name. When you pray in tongues, you're blessing him and thanking him, just like it says to do. So I'm going to count to three. I want us all to clap and shout to the Lord with triumph. One, two, three. Hallelujah.
Lord. Hallelujah. Lord. We honor you. We bless you. We praise you. We thank you. What an amazing God. What a mighty God. Hallelujah. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you for your mercies. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you, Father. Gentlemen, how good is our God? How good is our God? How good is our God? How good is our God? Oh, you're a good God. You're a merciful God. You're a generous father. How we love you and honor you. Thank you, Lord.
Just close your eyes. Spirit of God, just come on everyone now. How we love you. How we just love you, Father. So when I do the prodigal son, I'm the son. Coming to a father. It says the father ran to him. Can you picture God running to you because you're precious? He loves you. The son smelt of pigs, and his life was shattered. His clothes and everything about him was defiled and unclean. But that didn't concern his father. He was concerned about his son. He put his arms around his son. Many of us have never had a father hug us or ever say he loved us. But as you meditate, the Holy Spirit can make very real, "My father loves me." What would that be like for you? What would it feel like? Allow your imagination to put yourself where the Bible says this is what God is like, father. He began to kiss him with great affection. He hugged him tight. He could tell that he was dirty and uncovered. So he covered him with the best robe. Imagine being covered with the very best robe. But what about my mistakes and failures? "I'm not concerned about those. I'm concerned about you." Intimacy means you come under his covering. Because he's so kind, you want to repent. And then the ring. The ring means the authority to represent your father, to speak on his behalf and minister to people. If you've lost it, he freely gives it back. You have authority in the shoes of sonship. Freedom to be a son in the house. Well, you could take quite a bit of time to meditate until you start to become aware. My father loves me. I'm precious to him. As you experience his love, you start to become aware of where your heart has been hurt and broken. You see, you need to forgive, need to let go of things. As I journaled, I was quite agitated about a certain situation, and father said, "It's not your business. It's not your responsibility. Bless him. Forgive him. You focus on the things I want to do in your life." Father, let peace come on this house, especially during the time of transition. We release your peace into the house. We release a fresh awareness and revelation of your loving presence. We call forth the greatest season in this church's history. We call forth a fresh season of encounter of your presence that gives rest and joy. I pray for every leader here that their own life and relationship with you will deepen. And Jesus, we give you all the honor. You're our elder brother who perfectly represents our father. And we give you the honor and glory if you've paid the price for all of this to happen. Amen. God bless you. God bless you.