God is stirring up many hearts for a deep, penetrating meeting with Him. How quickly people can come into the presence of the Lord today! Because this is the great and marvelous day of the Parousia, it is much easier to break into the presence of the Lord than ever before.
When you read the history of the saints and note all of the things that took place then, you realize that they lived in a climate which made it difficult to break through to God. Those people sought and sought and sought, and then they sought some more. They spent a lifetime seeking to break through to what we can now attain in a short period of time.
Today we can move in things that those before us had to strive for years to accomplish. After a lifetime of service, they would have a meeting with the Lord. It was very common for people to spend several years seeking God before they received a blessing that people today can receive as a basic beginning of their walk with God.
Basically the Parousia means that the Lord’s presence is attainable and available now. All that is required is the faith on your part for awareness.
God can break through to you if you want Him to. If you seek God and believe that you can be aware, it will happen to you. Anyone, no matter how mixed up they are in their thinking or in their life, can break through to the Lord if they just seek Him with all of his heart.
The time element does not seem to be so important anymore, because these days are being shortened for the elect’s sake (Matthew 24:22). They are being shortened so that you can break through. Nevertheless, the intensity with which you seek God seems to be a more important ingredient than ever before. For this reason, the violent prayer and intercession have become so necessary. The closer we come to the presence of the Lord, the more we realize that “the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). You must have an explosive desire in your heart: if you want to, you can break through today.
A person never loses out by seeking God; but it may not be the breakthrough they wanted. In this day, however, you do not have to go into the inner chamber or out to the desert or say, “Lo, here; lo, there” (Matthew 24:23, 26). Instead, just open your heart to God where you are. He is right there. He rises like the dawn in your heart (II Peter 1:19). You can have a meeting with God any time, any place. You have the prerogative because it is now only a matter of awareness. It is simply a matter of ripping off the veil; He is nearer to you than you imagine. His presence is more real to you than you know.
Do not be satisfied just to see that a few people know the Lord and have had an initial meeting with Him. That kind of thinking which claims that only a few people can have a real meeting with the Lord belongs to religious Babylon. Everyone can! In Isaiah 54:13 God promised, “All your children will be taught of the Lord.” This promise we stand on for ourselves and for our children. Will you believe that? Already we have seen that under the anointing, our children are able to learn as they have never learned before. It is the time of His presence. It is time for us to open our hearts to believe that God will meet us. We have no need that God cannot meet.
Another thing that is changing is our motivation for seeking God. In earlier years people prayed and sought the Lord to solve problems, to heal an affliction, or to change a difficult circumstance. How many people would pray and seek God when they were in trouble! Perhaps you have been in that same position of seeking the Lord only when you were troubled. However, that should not be the basis of our seeking Him.
I think sometimes God is asking us, “Will you seek Me and refuse to be focused on your troubles? Will you love Me and focus on Me so much that you forget about your troubles and just seek My face?” In Jeremiah 29:13 the Lord said, “On the day that you seek for Me with your whole heart, you will find Me.” He did not say, “On the day that you are in such trouble that you squeal and cry for help, I will meet you.” Rather, He said, “The day that you seek Me with your whole heart…”
You will stand or fall in your walk with God according to the way you face this issue. Will you stop to analyze your problems and become engrossed in them? Or will you say, “I have a Word from the Lord to seek Him. There is an anointing for me to pursue after the will of God, and that is going to be uppermost in my mind.”
Can you remember saying in your heart . “If I ever get close enough to the Lord so that I can talk to Him face to face, I have a list of questions and I want to ask Him about the things that have bothered me.” So we seek the face of the Lord; and when His presence comes to us, we will be overwhelmed by it. You will have no questions. That is exactly the way Jesus said it would be: “In that day you will ask Me nothing” (John 16:23). Something of His presence satisfies and overwhelms all the questions and all the problems you have in your mind.
Perhaps you think, “Unless God meets this need and gives me an answer, I’m going to lose out with God. I must have an answer.” If you feel that way, just seek the Lord; and when you stand in His presence, see if you really feel like giving up. You do not need answers; you need the Lord. Even if all your problems were somehow magically solved today, the Lord would see to it that you had a fresh set of them before the week was over. The test is always to see whether or not you want to seek God first. Matthew 6:33 tells us, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you.” Everything you need will be added when you seek God first. Even though you have problems, you will be set.
Perhaps you feel that this truth applies to the pastors and other ministries, but not to you because you have too many problems and too much spiritual battle. That is not true. A pastor has more problems and more battle than you realize. The problems of each individual are also his problems, and on top of that he has some problems of his own. What makes him able to function under that pressure? What lifts him up and buoys him up above it?
Only one thing: he must put everything else aside and take time to seek the Lord. Is he evading his responsibility when he does this? Not at all. He realizes that the other ministries in the church are responsible, as well as each member of the Body; and he does not allow others to place upon him the responsibilities that they themselves should be carrying. Instead, he seeks the Lord. The worries and the cares will not bow him down if he follows the admonition, “Cast all your cares upon Him, because He cares for you” (I Peter 5:7).
The ministry is not to be self-destructive; rather, it is to be a stewardship that the Lord places upon a man so that he can faithfully minister God’s fullness to the people. Your pastor will weep over you and cry over you, but he should not worry about you. Philippians 4:6 tells us, Be anxious for nothing (the ministries are not to be anxious for you, nor you for the ministries), but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. When you do that, a peace that passes all human understanding will guard you (verse 7). There is only one way that things can turn out if we seek the Lord—we will be more than conquerors through Him (Romans 8:37).
Live in the expectation of breaking through. Refuse to be limited in the present or the future by what has happened in the past. It does not matter what you have experienced or how terrible a sinner you used to be. What you were does not limit what you are going to become. What happened yesterday does not prohibit or in any way limit a miracle this instant. Learn to live with that moment-by-moment expectation that God is going to break through upon you, because you are breaking through to Him. That is the key to growth.
Do not look upon yourself as a nothing. When God called Gideon to deliver His people, Gideon protested, “My family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.” Nevertheless, the Lord called him a mighty man of valor and won a great victory through him (Judges 6).
What you are or what you have been does not limit what God will do through you, if you can just believe it. Let God condition you for miracles, signs, and wonders. Let Him further condition you to break through to exploits. Do not become limited in your mind because God once dealt with you in a way that seemed to restrict you and keep you in a corner. It was only so that He could teach you His ways. There is nothing to prevent you from breaking through to the Lord now.
Are you moving in God? No doubt you could be moving more under His anointing. Is the call of God resting upon your life? Then you must be reconditioned in your thinking. Get rid of the limitation on your perception and believe that God can do something to you. He can meet you. You can break through to a real walk with Him.
Do not stand behind the lines praying for the release of the firstfruits apostolic ministry and thus excuse yourself for any withdrawal in your own life. That is a destructive attitude. Get into the release yourself! Your intercession is neither acceptable nor effective if it is a prayer of desperation in which you feel that you are in a corner. If you have accepted that you are nowhere, you cannot effectively reach down to pull up someone else. Instead, you must be on the top step of the ladder reaching up while you are pushing the firstfruits through. How can you do that? By having a greater awareness of the Lord.
We are in the beginning days of the Parousia—the presence of the Lord—and all we have to do is to become more aware of it. The Lord is more available now than He has ever been in the history of the world. You can break through to His presence more easily now than ever before. You do not have to fast and pray in order to have a meeting with God. In fact, it is sometimes more effective to have a meeting with the Lord first, and then fast afterwards. Sometimes we get into the Kingdom backwards; we seem to back into the things of the Lord. Why? Because with all of our aggressiveness, we still could have a martyr complex, saying, “Let God slay me here. I’m seeking God.” Do not do that! Do not make seeking God a religious exercise in your spirit. Instead, believe that God is available to you now and that you can touch Him.
Mark 5:25–34 records the story of the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. She had spent everything she had on physicians, but she was no better; she was worse. That woman had a good objective when the Lord passed by. She knew that if she could touch Him, she would be healed. According to the flesh, she did not have a chance of getting through to Him. The Word tells how the people were crowding and pressing against Jesus. She was feeble, anemic, and sick; yet she squeezed through the crowd and touched the hem of His garment. Immediately she was healed. Jesus, sensing that power had gone out of Him, asked, “Who touched Me?” It was one of the most amazing questions of all time. Peter was quick to point out that everyone was pressing in, but Jesus knew that someone had touched Him. The awareness was not born in Christ; the awareness was born in that woman’s heart. She knew what would happen if she touched Him.
Are you touching Him now? Will you walk away from this message without having touched Him? Or will you walk away saying, “I have met God. He touched me. I touched Him. Something happened.” Do you have problems? Forget them. Touch Him instead. Reach Him. He is here. He is present. It is the time of the Parousia, and He is not beyond arm’s reach. The hem of His garment is closer to you than you realize. You can touch it right now.
Are you burdened for the ministries? Then touch Him and draw for them. They draw for you, too. Do not feel that the Lord is unattainable. Hebrews 4:15 tells us, “We do not have a high priest who cannot be touched by the feeling of our infirmities.” Have you made a list of your problems and needs? Cross them all out and write down one proposition instead: “That I might know Him, and the power of His resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). Everything else is found in that.
Pray a prayer for those who are bitter because of what they have experienced, for those who have almost conditioned themselves to failure as far as a relationship with God is concerned. If you are one of those who has never had much from God, and you feel that you never can, throw off that insidious unbelief. Rebuke the lie that says you can’t, and trust the Lord instead. Get rid of that bitterness. You can have a meeting with God that would have taken those who have gone before you many years to attain.
Do you believe that eventually you can become a prophet of God? In the past it took years to make a prophet. Elisha served Elijah many years before he could make a simple request: “I want a double portion” (II Kings 2:9). Yet the day finally came when that was available and attainable. It does not take as long in this day. You do not need to hang onto the coattails of an apostolic ministry for years before you can move. If you believe, you can walk in every gift he has, because it is available. It is no longer a matter of one man or even of a company of men. It is a matter of His presence which hovers over us.
It does not matter if you are guilty or unclean; reach into God for His righteousness. If you are sick and weak, reach in for healing. If you are discouraged, get comfort from the Lord. Let the Lord lift you up and make your feet stand on the high place (Psalm 18:33).
God is bringing a new day to us. Where we have become conditioned to limitations and to the rattle of chains, God is proclaiming release to the captives and comfort to all those who mourn in Zion (Isaiah 61:1–2). Where we have previously accepted a plane of living with unfulfilled prayers and prophecies, God is now exploding faith in our hearts. He is ripping off the veil so that we can behold Him and be changed into the same image, from glory to glory (II Corinthians 3:14, 18).
Do not be sidetracked into thinking that you must follow a routine and ritual of spending a certain number of hours waiting on the Lord. Just hunger after Him. Reach into Him in every way you can. Do not be ashamed of the hunger you have for Him. Do not be ashamed to cry and break before Him. Do not doubt for a minute that He is right there, listening. He loves you and is very close to you. Long for Him and watch Him break through to you.