The Presence!

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13).

The presence of God separates the believer from the infectious influences of the world! And the Presence in us that manifests throughout our day has a drawing effect on those around us. They notice something different about us. No other religion can do to a human what Christianity can. Christians in fellowship with God are bearers of the Presence!

Moses cried out to God when he came down from the top of Mount Sinai after he saw that the Israelites had sinned. He asked God not to remove His presence from the people. And notice why Moses asked this: Then he said to Him, if Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth.

The Presence is not a feeling or emotion. It produces feelings and emotions at times. But it’s much deeper than feeling. The Presence exudes from our human spirit and carefully guards us from the effects of the world and the enemy from without. And the Presence moves us away from the tendencies of the flesh and creates in us a hunger and drawing toward the Father.

Carefully guard the Presence! Don’t allow unconfessed sin to remain in your life. Sin dissipates the Presence! If you miss it in some way, immediately confess your sin and the Blood will cleanse you!

Be careful with your words, for strife filled words can grieve the Holy Spirit who bears this Presence within (see Ephesians 4:29-30).

Time spent daily in the Word, in praise and worship, and in prayer will increase the manifestations of His Presence in your life. I have found that praying in the spirit, because it builds up and edifies the human spirit, will increase the manifestation of the Presence. The tell-tale sign of the Presence in you is joy! In His Presence is fullness of joy, pleasures forevermore!

Walk in His Presence today! Court the Presence! Lift your voice in praise to the Holy One. Thank Him for all that He is. Worship Him. He inhabits praise with manifestations of His Presence. Create change in the atmosphere wherever you are today. Release the Presence!

The Power of Friendship

And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers (Acts 2:42).

The great strength of the early church is found in this verse. The Word was the center of their lifestyle. The believers prayed together and had close relationships with one another. This produced a unity that enabled the Holy Spirit to manifest in a very strong way among them.

Friendship is essential to unity in a group of believers. And in personal life, friendship can be a great strength. The Message Paraphrase of Proverbs 27:17 says it well: You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another.

Notice the strength of friendship mentioned in Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12: Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; but how can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Notice also that Jesus sent out teams of two to minister the power of the kingdom of God. There’s something about Christian fellowship that encourages and empowers us in a way that nothing else can.

When I began my walk with the Lord almost 31 years ago, it was the strength I found in friendship that kept me going. When I came to Jesus, I chose to separate myself from my buddies who wanted to “party.” God gave me new friends with godly ideals and values. We would get together weekly and talk about our walk with the Lord. We’d share our successes and failures. We would admit our weaknesses and talk about our challenges. And as one talked about his or her challenge, another brought a word of encouragement that helped.

That’s the strength found in friendship. That’s the sharpening that we all need! I am in the process of developing small groups that we will call friendship groups. These groups will meet at least every other week, and some groups may choose to meet more frequently. These groups are to be a vehicle for building strong friendship around the Word and around our relationship with the Lord.

If you’re a part of our church, I encourage you to become involved in these groups. You’ll find a great source for personal encouragement, and God may use you to be a blessing to others! The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary. He awakens me morning by morning, He awakens my ear to hear as the learned Isaiah 50:4).

Spiritual Hunger

Blessed Are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled (Matthew 5:6).

Our hungers define us. Hunger motivates. What we desire shows us what we really are within. Spiritually, hunger is the indicator of our spirituality. Physically, hunger is one of the signs of health and prolonged lack of hunger is an indicator of illness.

If we lack spiritual hunger, something has gone wrong! When my children were young, they sometimes came to the dinner table with no appetite. I learned to go check their rooms, and I would find candy wrappers in the trash! They were filled with the wrong food for health!

Too much occupation in leisure time with entertainment at the expense of spending time with the Lord can quench spiritual appetite and leave a believer unfulfilled and vulnerable to Satan’s assaults. The candy of the world must be guarded against or we may lose our zeal and passion for God.

Life has become so compacted with things to occupy us in so many ways that we must make God our first priority if we’re to survive spiritually! In the parable of the sower Jesus spoke of the cares of this life entering in and choking the word in us, making it ineffective. To maintain our spiritual lives, we must stay hungry spiritually. That means we must have a desire for spiritual things that is so strong with us that it moves us to make time for Jesus throughout our day.

Desire follows attention. You must devote time and attention to whatever you want to create a hunger for in your life. That means you must find a way to make sure your spiritual life is nurtured. A regular devotional time at the beginning of your day will start this process.

Maybe you seem to have no hunger or desire for God right now and you know you need to change. Let me offer the following suggestions. If you’ve been involved in sin of some kind, confess it to the Father in repentance. Sin quenches spiritual desire. Sin hardens the heart. Tell the Father what you’ve been doing, and make a consecration with His help to cease! If you’re sincere, the Spirit of God will enable you.

Then, ask the Father to create in you a hunger for Him and for the Word and for spiritual things in general. Ask Him to deal with anything that is encroaching on Him in your life, and make a change.

Finally, set you clock back early enough to spend some time, 10 to 15 minutes reading the Word when you first get up. And then spend a few minutes in real prayer, pouring your heart our to the Father to begin your day. Three to four week of this will start a new habit of putting spiritual things first in your day!

I’ll end with these quotes from Smith Wigglesworth:

Spiritual hunger is when nothing satisfies us as much as being near to God.

I’d rather have a man on my platform who is not Spirit-filled but hungry, than a person who is Spirit-filled and satisfied!

Worldliness is that which cools my affection towards God.

I’m only satisfied with the dissatisfaction that must be satisfied over and over again.

Praise Power

Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vines; Though the labor of the olive may fail, And the fields yield no food; Though the flock may be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls — Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer's feet, And He will make me walk on my high hills (Habakkuk 3:17-19).

Praise is the language of faith. When life turns sour, turn up the praise! James tells us to count it all joy when hard times arrive. Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice!

Praise brings a manifestation of the presence of God that will give inward strength and that will attack the problem and bring a solution. Enemy armies had surrounded the people of God in 2 Chronicles 20. King Jehosophat and the people began to seek the Lord.

Through the prophet God told them that He would fight their battle for them. All they needed to do was to send the praisers to the front line of the battle and God would do t he fighting for them.

They obeyed and the praisers began to sing Praise the Lord for His mercy endures forever. As they sang, the presence and power of God manifested and the enemy were slain before they could lift a sword!

God will undertake to bring you out of the hard place if you will choose to put on the garment of praise. There is no feeling in this, it’s a total act of faith! When your flesh is screaming at you and the problems pile up, the best thing to do is to praise. Paul and Silas were set free from prison because they chose to pray and to sing praises to God while sitting in a dungeon.

Stop the complaining and begin to praise God in the troubles of life. God is not partial. He helped His Old Covenant people and fought for them. He will do the same for you!

A New Strength

He gives power to the tired and worn out, and strength to the weak. Even the youths shall be exhausted, and the young men will all give up. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:29-31-The Living Bible).

Here’s an interesting way to look at a familiar passage. In my Companion Study Bible there is a note by this verse that calls this a Katabasis, which is a going or marching down, a retreat, or a gradual descent.

Here in Isaiah, notice that as the believer waits on the Lord he moves from flying to running to walking. In our walk with God, at first we are doing what seems natural, which is relying on our own wits and strength. But as we grow in God, and learn what it means to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, we learn to relinquish the control of life and its circumstances into His hands. We learn to seek God and roll the care of every circumstance onto Him.

Instead of flying in our own strength, we learn to slow down and move into a strength that surpasses our own, and we begin to run. Little by little as we learn that Father knows best, we lesson our striving and begin to enter into the rest of God, the rest of faith. We then begin to walk.

The fast pace become an easy stroll with respect to energy expended. As we wait on the Lord and in prayer and faith place every circumstance of life in His hands, we begin to live in the power of His might! We don’t become as weary as we did before. We go farther with greater energy reserves. And it becomes with us as it did with John the Baptist, He must increase, but I must decrease.

Take time to build God’s strength in you today by waiting on the Lord. You’ll accomplish more, and you’ll walk in a state called rest as the Father works through you with His power. This is the way He created you to live!

Words

Let no foul or polluting language, nor evil word nor unwholesome or worthless talk ever come out of your mouth, but only such speech as is good and beneficial to the spiritual progress of others, as is fitting to the need and the occasion, that it may be a blessing and give grace (God's favor) to those who hear it. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God [do not offend or vex or sadden Him], by Whom you were sealed (marked, branded as God's own, secured) for the day of redemption (of final deliverance through Christ from evil and the consequences of sin) (Ephesians 4:29-30).

Words are the most powerful force in your life! God used words to create natural things from spiritual things. Your words create things. James tells us that words determine the course of our lives from the cradle to the grave. In the same way that a bridle governs the movements of a horse, and a rudder controls the path of the ship, so our words direct us.

Don’t say a thing unless you want it to come to pass. Be careful to say what you really believe, for words are meant to move us in their direction.

Words can vilify, defame, and wound or they can bless, mend, and heal. Our words have a huge impact on others. We can inspire or de-motivate with a simple comment. The adage sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me is just not true! It takes so much longer to heal from the wounds inflicted with an offensive, hurtful comment than from a physical abrasion.

Make a decision to never use your words to bring harm. Don’t repeat the scandal of the hour. Keep your words positive and winsome. Be a creator of blessing, cheer, and encouragement. One sentence spoken to a person can change their whole day.

Remember that you are a creator today. You’re creating an environment everywhere you go with words. The Lord God has given Me The tongue of the learned, That I should know how to speak A word in season to him who is weary (Isaiah 50:4).

Love

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death (1 John 3:14).
The first fruit of the recreated human spirit is love. God is love and when the Holy Spirit comes into our bodies in the New Birth, He pours this love into our spirits. Jesus said that it is by this love that all will know that we belong to Him. We should put this love on everyday so that when others see us, it is the first thing that they recognize.
This love nature mellows out the harshness in us and causes us to become patient, kind, caring, honest, real, joy filled, hopeful, believing, and mannerly. This nature will lead you away from the scandal of the hour, and will lead you to believe the best of every person. This love nature will cause you to live above strife and petty differences. It will cause you to overlook the wrongs committed against you, and will lead you to treat the offending person as though they had never done wrong.
This love natue will lead you to love the unlovely, to do good thing to the person who is offensive and harsh, and will move you to prayer for those who seek to take advantage of you.
The Father planned for this nature to take us over. He planned for us to be so consummed with it that it overwhelms the flesh weakness in us.
This love nature remains buried within us until we meditate in the Word and enlighten our minds that it's in us. Take time every to meditate in 1 Corinthians 13, and to remind your intellect that love is to rule today. Little by little this love nature will grow until its roots will creep into every nook and cranny of your life. You'll find yourself making adjustments again and again. Take time to let this love loose in you today!