Spiritual Gifts Outside The Sanctuary

Living as we are in a new community, JoAnn and I have been seeking to connect with our new neighbors and then to see what God will do from there.

Further, we are used to ministering the gifts of the Spirit together as we traveled together and preached in all sorts of churches all over the world.  But now that medical issues have made travel impossible, how do we start connecting with the strangers we meet in the normal day-to-day rhythm of our lives?

 

It has seemed to me, that this season of pruning has put us where many Christians live:  hungry to experience the flow of the Holy Spirit firsthand, but without the benefit of open doors that provide a platform for ministry. Here are a few ways God has led us to connect with strangers in restaurants, stores, and more.  And here are links to a few testimonies.

Catch someone doing something right, and comment on it.  This can be enough to start a flow of the Holy Spirit.

Notice something God has created in a person, and acknowledge it.  JoAnn and I had a divine appointment in a grocery store because I heard a clerk’s voice.  “Are you a preacher?”  I asked.  He sounded like he should be.

Pay attention to nudges of conviction when God highlights someone.  This is a call to see someone in the light of Christ crucified, buried, and risen.  What would this person look like if the cross of Christ had its perfect work in her or him?  Then, I begin to speak what flows from that glimpse of Jesus.

Sometimes, by simply abiding in Christ, it becomes easy to see what God designed in someone.  Then, at the very least, words of divine destiny are ready to flow.

Seeing people in the light of what God has created them for, causes us to love them.  And perfect love casts out fear.  A divine boldness, with rich sensitivity to their feelings and even more to God’s feelings towards them, causes self-consciousness and shyness to vanish. 

Read Psalm 139 aloud to God, and use it as a prayer outline.  It’s true for you and for everyone you will meet this week.  Pray accordingly.

Spend time soaking in God’s loving presence.  The more time we spend with Him, the more easily we fall into a flow of His grace and power when we meet people anywhere.

Testimonies below:

https://miraclelifestyle.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/using-my-prophetic-joke-about-almonds/  Sometimes, a joke can start the flow

https://miraclelifestyle.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/overflow-communion-glasses/  Divine appointments can begin with simple errands.

https://miraclelifestyle.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/lift-up-your-eyes/.  The flow may happen while doing mundane things at home, with people we already know.

 

 

https://miraclelifestyle.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/overflow-communion-glasses/  God often uses “butterfly nudges” to catch Margaret’s attention.  They are very subtle and easily missed, but expect Him to use them in yours.  He will help you discern the kingdom opportunities He sprinkles in your life.

https://miraclelifestyle.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/dinner-with-jesus/  It can take just a moment to say, “Would you like prayer?”  Your next encounter with God may be waiting for you to ask that simple question.

I list these testimonies so you’ll have several in one place, and can encourage your friends and family to expect God to do similar things in your own lives.  Go for it, and win glory for the name of Jesus!

Stan Smith  ::  © 2012, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com

The Language Of Conviction

Have you seen our 31-day devotional yet?  It’s still under construction, and its theme is “Learn To Hear From God.”  This article is a leftover snippet from the theme of week 3 — the language of conviction.  See the devotional at http://www.squidoo.com/31-day-devotional-learn-to-hear-from-god.  Here’s an article about the language of conviction:

Wisdom, conscience, and revelation are three very different aspects of hearing from God, but they are the result of our letting the Holy Spirit convict us.  We receive wisdom when He shows us how to do what’s right.  He awakens our conscience when He convicts us of things that are wrong.  We receive revelation when He begins to unfold the mystery of what Jesus has accomplished for us at the cross.

Conviction often comes to us without our hearing a word, but it awakens our faculties to hear from God fluently.

As the Holy Spirit awakens us to righteousness, we learn to receive wisdom from Him.  What is the right way to do something – to relate to a family member, to share Christ with a neighbor, to market a new product?  In the practical areas of life, the Holy Spirit’s convicting us about righteousness trains us to receive God-given words of wisdom that will direct us in areas in which we have no role models we can learn from.  God Himself becomes our role model.

As the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, it awakens our conscience to warn us when we are about to do something wrong.  This begins with matters that are morally wrong, but it begins to spread into other matters.  Just as we are about to sign a business contract, something deep down warns us, “This isn’t right.”  We don’t know why, and it can even embarrass us because our mind sees nothing wrong but our spirit says, “Don’t do it.”  Many people call this process “feeling a check in my spirit”.  Those who learn to pay attention to this work of the Holy Spirit will be supernaturally warned to avoid hidden traps.

As the Holy Spirit convicts us about judgment, He shows us what He has already judged when Jesus went to the cross.  We begin to see the heart of the gospel all over the scripture.  The Bible, which used to contain a huge assortment of truths, suddenly comes together in a large picture of Jesus.  The Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus grips us, and for many of us it becomes the foundation of a richly anointed flow of prophetic preaching, teaching, or ministry to individuals.  Specifically, it makes us adept at seeing Jesus wherever we go, which in itself is a way of hearing from God.

To summarize, the conviction of the Holy Spirit is the fear of God.  In the next few days, we’ll look at several Bible promises that link our hearing from God to our embracing the fear of God.  So if we want to hear from God, we need to cherish and be quick to respond to the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

 

by Stan Smith   :: © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com

Identify What You Learned

I was a young pastor in the first few years of ministry.  A visiting speaker came, an Englishman who had attended Smith Wigglesworth’s church years earlier, and my guest shared a principle he had learned about receiving revelation from God:

“I always take time to put the revelation into my own words,” he told me.  “I can leave it in the realm of my thoughts, and soon I’ve forgotten it.  But if I at least speak it back to God, the revelation becomes mine.”

It’s a simple thing thing to do, and over the years I‘ve found it very powerful.

Sometimes I speak revelations to God in prayer, as my friend suggested.  Sometimes I share them with my wife when we take a walk around the block.  Either way, the process of identifying the new things I’m learning and putting them into words helps fasten them in my heart.

So the assignment for you is this:  look back over what you’ve learned from the Online School Of The Spirit, and put those things into words by posting them as a comment on this blog.

But please keep them short – 200 words or less.

To give the flavor of what I’m looking for, I’m going to list two things God has taught me while I’ve been on a ministry trip in the Great Lakes area.

1.  II Chronicles 7:14 promises healing for our land. I attended a conference devoted to this verse; the theme was prayer for nations.

But the still small voice of God showed me another aspect of this passage.  If we liken ourselves to the Israelites in Bible days, the land was not just their nation; it was also their personal inheritance.

In my own life, there is a fulfillment of II Chronicles 7:14 waiting to happen as God brings greater wholeness to several areas of my own personal calling.

2.  God likes variety, and He likes it when I use a variety of disciplines in my prayer life. This is so obvious that I’m surprised it has taken me so long to see it – more than forty years as a Christian.

Sometimes I soak, asking Him for nothing.  Sometimes I use guitar or keyboard and seek Him by singing a new song to Him.  Sometimes I ask for things – He commands us to ask and to expect to receive.  Sometimes I use a passage of scripture as an outline.  And sometimes I simply pour out my heart, telling Him about my weaknesses and stresses and hopes and dreams.

Which is best?  I suddenly realized that it’s best to look to Him and see which way He would lead me to pray every day.

Simple, huh?  I’m not half as creative as God is, and yet I like variety at mealtime.  Could it be that He likes variety in our fellowship with Him?

These two examples will show how to write a short version of what God has taught you. I could stretch each to a full-fledged teaching, tying them in with a lot of scriptures and personal examples.  But I’m not trying to write a teaching right now; I’m simply identifying two lessons I’ve learned while on a trip.

Item #1 is 88 words long and item #2 is 163.  Aim to keep it short when you identify what God is showing you as you work through the Online School Of The Spirit.  The important thing is not that it be something new to everyone else; list whatever God shows you that is new to you.

The process of putting it into words will help anchor the lesson in your heart

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com

The Exchanged Life

Matthew 4:17 gives this summary of Jesus’ message:  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  This was the main thing He taught in his three and a half years of ministry.  But what is repentance?  Our culture and traditions can obscure what it really is.

In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, it means to turn.  The prophets often called the Israelites to turn away from serving idols and to turn towards serving God.

In the Greek New Testament, the word carries another nuance.  Metanoia literally means a change of mind.  It goes deeper than being just a superficial change of opinion; it is a deep change of attitude, and ultimately leads to a whole new world-view.

So Jesus taught us to turn towards God not just in our outward actions but also in the deepest places in our hearts and motives.  This is reflected in Paul’s words in Romans 12:2 –

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Our lives change as our minds are renewed or changed.

Students of the Greek New Testament notice something else about Jesus’ command to repent:  He used a verb tense that indicates repentance is not just a one-shot deal, but a way of life.  As long as you live in this world, if you follow Jesus closely He will call you to change your mind every day.

In our earliest days as Christians, we turn from our sins to embrace the righteousness of God.  But sooner or later, we stop falling into the same temptations again and again.  At this point, our repentance takes on a new flavor, as Isaiah 55:8-9 says –

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.  “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.”

We continue to grow as we let God show us His ways, and we turn from our own ways to embrace His.

If you want to be in a school of the Holy Spirit, you have to be willing to embrace change.  Day by day, you will have to choose whether to walk in your ways or His.  Your ways may be blatantly sinful or they may seem right and reasonable to you – but as Isaiah declared, your ways are not His ways.  If you want to embrace His ways, you turn from your own.  This is what Jesus talked about when He called us to a lifestyle of repentance.

One of the first acts of repentance He calls us to is to invite Him into His heart so His life can flow through us.  His life within us will strengthen us to forsake our own ways and to embrace His.  But it isn’t just a first step, something we finish and never have to think about again.  It becomes a way of life, something we do daily.

He calls us to an exchanged life.  We lay down our lives and embrace His.

He calls us to a surrendered life.  All we want is His will.  We don’t use our prayer times to try to get God to do our will; we use them to exchange our will for His.

The soaking exercises – times of being still in His presence and listening for His voice – are times of putting our ways aside to embrace His.  They are times of repentance, maybe not as culture and tradition define the word, but certainly as Jesus used it, for they are times of changing our minds so we can embrace the kingdom of God.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com

Mutual Faith

Ministry is not just giving; it’s also receiving.  One of the ways God strengthens us is that He sends us to minister to people who turn around and minister back to us.  Romans 1:11-12 shows the principle:

For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established – that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.

This principle works several ways.

Sometimes God sends us to people who face challenges we might not wish to face ourselves.  Sometimes we end up feeling unworthy to minister to them.  Often it isn’t so much what we say or do that ministers; the fact that we cared enough to show up means more than we realize.

I felt very unworthy to minister when I was at a church in northern Israel.  This congregation had lost three of its members to suicide bombers.  What could I say to them?  I have never faced such pressures.  I was deeply challenged by the depth of their consecration.

They in turn were very grateful that our team of Americans had flown to Israel to pray for their nation in a 50-hour prayer meeting.

I have known Christians in India who have faced persecution; it was always a miracle that they had survived.  Who am I to minister to such people?  Yet such was their humility that they hung on my every word.

In England, I was asked to pray for a 5-year-old girl with a severe and unusual form of epilepsy.  She couldn’t walk, talk, or sit up.  She wasn’t potty trained.  She had to wear a helmet to protect herself from hitting her head.  I looked into her eyes and nobody was there.  Our little team began to pray.

Suddenly I saw Jesus.  (Even now, my eyes fill with tears as I write.)  He knelt in front of the girl and gently, ever so gently, laid His hands on her head.

A few weeks later I received an email reporting that she had received a significant measure of healing.  She was walking, talking, and potty trained; and by now she had been admitted to a special school.  I rejoice at what Jesus did for the girl and for her family.

But I would be a fool to claim I had given anything.  Quite the contrary; I too received richly because of the glimpse of Jesus I had.

I believe this was the principle Paul experienced.

It’s biblical to think more highly of others than ourselves, and God will often lead you to minister to people who (in your estimation) have much more stature than you have.  Don’t be afraid. Step up and do your part.

You don’t have to know more than the people you minister to.  You don’t have to be better or more spiritual than they are.

In Matthew 10:41-42, Jesus said, “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.  And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, assuredly, I say to you, he shall by no means lose his reward.”

Be one of the people who receives and encourages prophets and righteous men; be one who gives a cup of cold water to refresh a disciple.

There is no way to measure how much your giving will accomplish.  But again and again, you will marvel at how much God gives to you through those you bless.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com

Fine Tuning

Part of being in a school of the Spirit is reflective times, times when we spend time with God and ask Him to show us how to become more effective at what He has called us to do.

Jesus often took the twelve aside for times of fine tuning.  Sometimes He drew new insights out of them, as He did at Caesarea Philippi when He asked, “Who do men say that I am?…Who do you say I am?”  Sometimes He corrected them, as He did when they had been discussing among themselves who would be the greatest.  Sometimes He gave them revelation, as when He explained the parables to them.

We’re sometimes tempted to think He was cross or angry with the disciples, as our own teachers have sometimes been with us.  But we need to remember the way He describes His teaching ministry in Matthew 11:28-30:

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

He is gentle and lowly in heart, even when He upbraids us.  We can safely trust ourselves to Him.

James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”  Notice again that we see the same gentleness in God’s character.  But now James adds that we can take the initiative to ask God for wisdom.

Your soaking times can be times of letting Jesus take you aside to fine tune you.
Ask Him about your various encounters with people as you seek to encourage them.  Ask what you can do differently, and how you can be more effective.

Sometimes He gives me a bit of revelation as an answer.  He may direct us to scripture that explains something we’ve experienced.

Sometimes He lets us look into the hearts of those we already know.  This isn’t for the sake of exposing or embar-rassing them, but it serves to awaken our compassion towards them.  These insights may sometimes rebuke our judgmentalism.

Sometimes He bypasses words and simply bathes us in the convicting influence of the Holy Spirit.  This is the fear of the Lord, the beginning of wisdom.  It tunes our hearts to resonate with His holiness.

And sometimes He simply moves us with compassion, bathing us in His love and purifying our motives.  These moments don’t necessarily teach us anything we don’t already know, but they cause us to know Him.

Your fine tuning doesn’t always have to look back on the past.  You can prepare for ministry encounters by spending time with Him.  He knows who you will meet and what He plans to do, so He knows how to prepare your heart to make the most of the encounter.

My own ministry is prophetic, and I find He is interested in more than just the accuracy of the words I release in His name.  He cares about the look on my face and the tone of voice I use – they all need to reflect His heart, not mine.

Sometimes He wants to speak gently and lovingly, sometimes with power and confidence, sometimes with brokenness and humility.  I might go to Him and seek a word, and then I might be content if He were to give me a scripture to share.  But it’s good to linger in His presence to get the right tone, so the word truly sounds like Him.
This is what fine tuning is all about.  Look back on how you’ve tried to minister and ask God to teach you.  Look ahead to future ministry encounters and ask Him to prepare your heart.  He wants to do both.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com

Believing Into Christ

“Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  These words describe a lifestyle based not on the limited resources of man, but the unlimited resources of God. But how do we access these divine resources?

John 3:16, possibly the best known verse of the Bible, tells us how:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

A Bible scholar pointed out a nugget he found in the Greek text of the passage:  we believe into Christ, not just in Him.  In other words, believing is the way we find access to His resources.

The first resource is the gift of eternal life.  But then we learn to access the many resources of Christ in us, the hope of glory…

What do we receive when we receive Jesus?  We might ask Him to come into our hearts, but the wording of John 3:16 says we believe our way “into Him”.  Is it us in Christ, or Christ in us?

It turns out that these are two different ways of saying the same thing.  In both cases, we end up with a miracle lifestyle:  our own personalities are intact, yet we also draw from a personality other than our own, Jesus Himself.  And His life in us both saves and empowers us.

Our nature may be to fall into temptation; His is to walk in righteousness.  Our nature may be agitation and panic; His is peace.  Our nature may be to be easily offended; His is perfect love.  He saves us from the worst in ourselves.

But He also empowers us.  If we pray out of our own resources, we have to pray what we know.  But if we pray out of the resources of Christ in us, we can pray prophetic prayers based on what He knows, and our prayers will touch needs we know nothing about.  Or if we speak from our own resources, our words will be just as intelligent as we are.  If we speak from the resources of Christ in us, an intelligence greater than our own will direct our words.

Perhaps you feel you don’t have the gifts of healing or of working miracles.  Christ in you does.  You may not have a track record yet of moving in these gifts, but He does.  He has worked through other people who are just as ordinary as you think you are.  He can work through you too.

As the Greek text of John 3:16 notes, we believe our way into receiving the gift of Jesus Himself.  We live in Him and He lives in us – all by faith.

Once you ask Him into your heart, it’s worthwhile to take time to linger in His presence and meditate on the promises He has given us.  He promises to be with you and to live in you and to work through you.  Take time to meditate on these things, doing nothing more than simply believing that God will do what He has promised.

This is a good way to spend some of your soaking times which are part of the assignment for the online school of the Spirit.

But if you’ve never received Jesus as your Lord and Savior and have never asked Him to live in you, pray this prayer from the heart to begin a new life in Him:

Lord Jesus!  I call upon your name for salvation.  I believe you went to the cross for me to put an end to the guilt and the power of my sins.  I believe you rose from the dead so You could come and live your perfect and powerful life in me.  I invite you to come into my heart now.  Teach me Your ways.  Lord, I believe that with this simple prayer my eternal life has begun.  Amen.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com

How To Give A Testimony

In my seventeen years as a pastor, I always made testimonies a part of each church service.  This gave everyone a chance to participate; it built an atmosphere of faith; it enabled me to take the pulse of the church.

But testimony times didn’t always go smoothly. Sometimes it reminded me more of “show-and-tell” in first grade:  we told something that had happened or something we had seen on TV, but we didn’t really glorify God.  So here are a few things I learned the hard way about testimonies.

What a testimony is, and what it isn’t. In a court of law, a witness is expected to tell what he or she saw and heard.  It doesn’t work to tell something secondhand; this is ruled out as hearsay.

Acts 1:8 says Jesus pours out His Spirit upon us so we can be His witnesses – that is, we will have firsthand experiences in God, and then we will tell about them. If we see but don’t tell, we aren’t witnesses.  And if we try to tell what we didn’t see or hear ourselves, our testimony is hearsay.

Many of us have a testimony of how we came to Christ, but it tells what happened many years ago.  As we cultivate a lifestyle of being led by the Spirit, we will have fresh testimonies – something that has happened within the last week.

What has God done in your life this week?

Three parts of your story. Usually, your story will have three parts:  the problem, how God stepped in, and what is different now that He did.   This is true for the testimony of how we came to Christ, but these three parts likewise describe other testimonies:  how God provided us a job, how He healed us, or how He set us free from an addictive sin.

1)  The problem.  Tell about the problem to make it clear what God has saved you from.  Some of your hearers will be going through similar problems.

But avoid telling so much that your testimony sounds like a soap opera.  You don’t have to tell every detail.  And if part of your story may embarrass friends or family members, be sensitive to their feelings and don’t tell that part of the story.

2) God’s part. You may have received instantly, or it may have been a process.  You may have had a dramatic encounter with God, or you may have prayed about a problem every day for a month and God didn’t seem to be answering, and then one day you realized the problem was gone.

Don’t make it more dramatic than it really was.   Trust God to write the right story in your life.  Whether your testimony reflects a miracle or a process, either way it exhibits God’s faithfulness.

Glorify God.  If you made mistakes along the way, tell about them.  Some people’s testimonies tell more about “my unwavering faith” and “my obedience” than about God’s goodness.  Jesus poured out His Spirit to make us witnesses who tell about Him, not about ourselves.

3)  What’s different.  It may be that God has changed your life, or you may tell the story of how He answered your prayer for someone else.  Either way, tell what you have seen and heard.

Some stories aren’t finished yet, and it’s okay to say so.  But if things are different than they were, you have a story to tell.  When you have an opportunity, tell it.

Finally, most of us aren’t skillful speakers. The first few times we share a testimony, we probably won’t do a perfect job.  But keep at it.  The story of how God has changed your life will change the lives of others.

Stan Smith  ::  ©2007, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.gospelsmith.com

You Can Hear From God

I have had a prophetic ministry for many years, and sometimes people have asked me how I hear from God.  I’ve tried to tell them, but haven’t always succeeded.

Then I was at a conference and someone shared the teachings of Mark Virkler and what he calls the four keys to hearing God’s voice.  I recognized them as the disciplines I had developed in my own life as I minister prophetically.  Here are “the four keys.”

1)  Quiet your heart. Rest in Him.  Let the peace of God fill you.  The voice of God often comes to us as a subtle impression; a quiet heart will be sensitive enough to hear.

2)  Focus on Jesus. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you where Jesus is right now, and what He is doing.  Or take scripture that tells about Jesus, and meditate on it.

3)  Listen for a spontaneous flow of words. Your own thoughts will go in a line from one thing to another, but when God speaks it will come from another angle.  It’s like a conversation with anyone else – their words almost seem to interrupt your own train of thought.

4)  Write it down. This is what Mark Virkler teaches; as people write down what they believe they are hearing, they can test it as they submit their journals to elders who can help them discern the voice of God.

I have used these four keys a little differently.  When I am asked to minister to a stranger, I begin by quieting my heart.  I shut out the items on my to-do list that clamor for my attention.  Often I speak a silent prayer: “Lord Jesus, where are You right now?”  And as often as not, a fragment of scripture comes to mind.  So I speak or pray that scripture over the person, and a flow of words follows.  I am often surprised at what comes out of my mouth; sometimes I learn from it.

The assignments in this online school of the Spirit call for you to spend time soaking.  Many people play worship music in the background as they soak, though silence can work just as well.  But soaking is a time to quiet our hearts before God, avoiding even our spiritual agitation as we prepare our hearts to listen to Him.  Focus on Jesus and let words flow spontaneously.

How do you know if you are really hearing from God? It’s healthy to remember we all can make mistakes.  But it’s safe to act on what you’re hearing if (1) it’s biblical, (2) it helps you fulfill God’s commandments to love Him and to love people, and (3) even if you’ve made a mistake in your hearing, it won’t do much harm.

But if you think God is telling you to change your lifestyle radically, write it down and get counsel from mature Christians who can help you discern if you are hearing clearly.   God Himself commands you to “prove all things and hold fast that which is good.”

Here are a few things I have heard as I have listened for the voice of God this week:  share Psalm 103 with someone who needs healing, pray for a waitress, pray for a few people I met at a conference, send an email to a pastor I met this week, design some new graphics for my website.

None of these things will cost much if I have made a mistake in my hearing.  Most of them give me an opportunity to share the love of God with people.  This is the kind of thing we need to listen for.

We’ll go into each of the four keys in the future. Meanwhile, you will find many free resources and some for sale on Mark Virkler’s website – www.cluonline.com.

Soaking

Soaking is the practice of getting still before the Lord, often with worship music playing in the background, to linger in His presence with no other prayer agenda than to be with Him.  It is a style of prayer that focuses on intimacy rather than action, on being rather than doing.  Here are a few characteristics of soaking.

1)  Listening. As we soak, we spend more time listening than speaking.  Isaiah 55:8 tells why –

For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.

It would be tragic to approach Almighty God every day in prayer, year after year, without somehow letting Him lift us from the narrowness of our own thoughts and into the greatness of His.  So we take time to listen.

2)  Surrender. Soaking is a process of laying down our thoughts to embrace His.  It is a prayer that focuses not on asking, but on beholding.  It sets us up for a lifestyle – thought, word, and deed – built on who He is.

It is a form of repentance, or as the Greek word metanoia can be translated, “a change of mind.”  As we soak, we put our hearts on the altar before God, trusting Him to reshape us as a potter shapes the clay.  Slowly but surely, His presence changes the way we think.  And we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.

3)  Abiding. Jesus told us how to be fruitful:  by abiding in Him, and letting His words abide in us.  Soaking is a proactive time of abiding, a time spent simply being with Jesus.

Jesus said that when we abide in Him, we will bear “fruit that remains.”  So often, our quick successes crumble.  But the abiding life will produce fruit that will stand in eternity.  Nothing we do is more efficient than to linger in God’s presence.

4)  First love. The difference between Saul and David was their approach to God.  Saul was content to meet the prophet Samuel from time to time and to receive a touch from God.  His spiritual life went from one event to another.

David by contrast longed for an ongoing lifestyle with God.  He brought the Ark to Jerusalem, where he lived; he worshiped continually; he provided for a team of worshipers to serve in the Temple round the clock, day in and day out.  David said it this way in Psalm 27:4 –

One thing have I desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.

This was the heart of David, the man after God’s own heart.  And it is the essence of what soaking is all about:  taking time to behold the beauty of the Lord.

5)  Enlarged capacity. Soaking will change us, enlarging our capacity for God – our ability to hear from Him, our ability to fulfill our responsibilities in a right spirit, our ability to perceive God-given opportunities.

I keep meeting people who have found a new richness and power in spiritual gifts through soaking.  Others are stumbling into a new sense of an open heaven.  Experiences that have been uncommon in the last 2000 years of church history are becoming more and more commonplace in the church today.

As we spend time soaking in God’s presence, perhaps people will see in us what Acts 4:13 says they saw in the apostles:  “They realized they had been with Jesus.”

Stan Smith  ::  ©2007, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.gospelsmith.com