Have you noticed that the biggest factor in your walk with God is that you fail to wait on the Lord, you fail to read the Word and you fail to pray?
This is very common in most christians. But I can give you a key so that each day can be lived in the Spirit, and that day will see you walking along in at least a measure, if not all, of what God has for you.
Take five minutes—five minutes as soon as you’re wide awake. Five minutes won’t hurt you: you can brush your teeth in that time, but in five minutes you could do something that would help you all through that day.
Suppose you start out with a verse of Scripture, maybe something predetermined the night before, or planned for a whole week, so you don’t go leafing through the Bible.
The verse that you are going to use is priming the pump, so that you get the water started in the morning, so that you get the river of life flowing in you.
One verse of Scripture, then you pray and open your heart to the Lord very simply. Just a couple of minutes of prayer, and then you pause, and open your heart, “Lord, I open my heart to You to lead me today.” Then you wait on the Lord in stillness For a couple of minutes, to hear His voice, and maintain a listening heart all day, speak Lord your servant hearth.
This is the way you start. Now you may know that in the next ten minutes you’re going to come back and read the Word for half an hour.
You may be prepared to spend two hours in prayer; but on the other hand, the unexpected may come to wipe you out. Or, you may find that there’s a schedule to keep. If you have an appointment in the morning, you’ve got to move. But you’ve started something: now you won’t be going to the appointment or to school with self-condemnation, thinking, “I didn’t start right: I didn’t get to pray this morning. I didn’t wait on the Lord,” approaching the day with something less than faith.
You’ve taken five minutes and stirred yourself into the realm of the spirit. You have opened your spirit to God. when you wake up you may drink some coffee to help you wake up,You may do some exercises to help you get in shape, you may eat a healthy breakfast, but remember that your spirit has to wake up too, and your spirit has to be activated for the day.
Some people wake up physically, right away. Other people are slow to do it. But whether you wake up quick or late physically and mentally, you still can awaken yourself in your spirit by turning to the Word and prayer and communicating with the Lord. You’ve awakened your spirit to God and you’ve given your spirit something of the Word of God to reach into. Then it’s very easy the rest of the day to develop a hunger for intimacy with God.
You can take your Bible, a little sermon—something that you are going to read—with you to work, or wherever you are. Put it in with your lunch, if you take a lunch. Remember now, it is just as necessary to sustain your spirit as your body, so you take something to feed your spirit.
Make as much provision for it as you would to take a lunch or money to buy a lunch. In fact, you will find that you will be much better off if you feed your spirit first. Say, “Now that I’ve fed my spirit, I’m going to feed my body,” then eat your sandwich.
The trouble is, your spirit doesn’t always clamor for food like your stomach does. But it isn’t very long after you do this before your spirit becomes hungry because you are feeding it and letting it live.
Your spirit sometimes doesn’t come awake until you come to church and begin to worship. Why don’t you just worship a little bit in the morning, read the Word five or ten minutes?
You’ve started it, then your spirit is awake and it can begin to make its demands. It can begin to get the Word. This seems, to me, to be one of the simplest little keys there could ever be of walking with the Lord. “Awake thou, my spirit, and walk this day with the Lord.” That would be a good phrase to use. “Awake thou, my spirit! This day walk thou with the Lord.”
Command your spirit. Your will has a great deal to do with your spirit. The human will is perhaps more closely related to your spirit than it is to your soul or to your body.
Sometimes people set themselves to diet but can’t because they don’t have enough will power. The will is not that closely related to the physical processes and appetites, so they get wiped out.
But your will is very closely related to your spirit and you find that you can set your will, determine with real will power that you’re going to do certain things and your spirit will respond.
Command your spirit in the morning when you awaken, “You trust the Lord this day! Walk in this Word! Pray; seek the face of the Lord this day!” Five minutes, ten minutes at the most, is the minimum required and you’re ready to go.
Because your spirit is alive unto God and awakened, the rest of you awakens pretty fast. Have you noticed that after you come to church and start worshiping, although you may come very weary in body, you may be uptight emotionally, you may have a lot of problems, but when you start worshiping and your spirit starts communicating with the Lord, you will go home feeling great?
Physically, you’re rested. Mentally, you’re alert. Emotionally, everything is rather tranquil, or at least under control. You’ve done that, just by opening your spirit to the Lord. Your spirit affects every part of you, so if you start the day by activating your spirit toward God, you will find immediately—mentally, physically, every way—you’re all set to go after that day.
This only applies to spiritual beings; it only applies to people who love the Lord and they want to walk with God.
Observe the average family and you’ll get an idea why they don’t have a walk with God. They get up, maybe they read the newspaper, mumble around, fool away some time, then it’s rush, rush, rush.
With the tension and the pressure at that hour in the morning of trying to meet deadlines, when they finally get to work or wherever they are going, they are almost in a state of exhaustion. You see, they’ve done all of this just by pressure, not through their spirit.
But if they could open their spirit, it would be amazing how they could rush just as fast, work just as hard, meet just as many problems, and not seem all pressured in it, but just coast right through it efficiently and blessed.
Now, don’t forget the part of packing your spiritual lunch, something that you’re going to feed on. You’ve started your spirit, so now you begin to look for the coffee breaks for your spirit. You begin to wait for those moments, those little times to be alone. “Well,” you say, “I can’t be alone at school or at the office, with everybody around.” There’s always that opportunity when you get the coffee break, a little rest period, the rest room, or when you get any time during the day where you can stop. It is surprising how you can meditate at a stop light. Nothing in the world can interrupt you until they start honking behind you!
It’s almost like a thing of spiritual isometrics, because already you have started; you are beginning to look for places to make that contact with God, times in which you can almost dial out the conscious level and reach through to that sweet fellowship with the Lord in your spirit.
Isometrics is motionless exercise—you strain against an immovable object and it is beneficial for the muscle tone of your whole body. Suppose you do the same thing spiritually?
Would you like to know how to let your faith grow?
Would you like to know how to begin to exercise yourself spiritually and really grow?
Spirits don’t have muscles; they move entirely through authority, not through muscles. The physical man moves through muscles, but the spiritual man moves through the authority and as he submits to the Lord, he moves into greater authority.
Everybody should have their little isometric spiritual list. Would you like to know how to make a list of spiritual isometrics, so that through the day you can begin to test yourself or exercise on them and find that spiritually you begin to grow? It’s very simple: only one little principle to follow.
Make a list ahead of time, carry it in a notebook, write it on a little three by five inch card: or, if you have a good memory, remember it. But on this list, you list the impossible things, things that you have not been able to believe for—for the church, for the pastor, for yourself—some circumstance or problem that to you seems impossible. You could list something that you want for yourself, in this walk with God, that you’ve never been able to have. All of these are possibilities.
It would even be better to stay away from yourself and stop and think, “Now who is the most impossible character in the church? Who is the most difficult one to help?” Then you write down what they need, as far as you can understand it. You may have five or six things, maybe more. But don’t get too many; just tackle the hard ones.
And every time you have a break, worship the Lord and then get some Scripture, some promise , and say, “Lord, I’m going to believe for this.” You set your heart to believe it and exercise it, and you’re claiming it. You’re straining at the immovable object according to your spirit, and it’s surprising how your spirit keeps drawing from the Lord, appropriating it, and the impossible is done.
I’m giving you keys on how to walk with the Lord, how to be a spiritual individual. Write down the Scripture that you started out with in the morning on a three by five inch filing card, with the reference on the other side. You’re going to memorize both of them during the course of the day. You have started out to open your spirit up to God through that verse. All day long stand on that promise and pray over it and meditate on it.
Paul wrote to Timothy and told him to remember the prophecies over him that by them he might war a good warfare. If you’d like to war a really good warfare, make a little summary of what God has said about you.
Sometimes just a few words will remind you: “I’m going to be a handmaiden of the Lord.” “I’m going to be a prophet (or a prophetess) of the Lord.” “I’m going to have discerning of spirits,” “I’m going to prophesy”, or just write “prophesy,” or whatever it is you are to do or be. Jot down also the prophecies.
Then whenever you have a free minute, do what Paul told Timothy, “Meditate on these things; give yourself wholly to them and your profiting will appear to all.”
Make a business of being spiritual, and every time you get the chance, turn your eye away from the passing sceen. Look back to that which is important, the prophecy over you, the Scripture, the verse of Scripture, and reach into the Lord. Don’t say, “Forget that! I pray whenever I feel like it.” When you don’t have a plan or have a simple course of action, you say you will, but you don’t do it.
Anybody can buy a set of dumbbells or a bar-bell set and do a few exercises, to build their muscles, but you have to discipline yourself to work out certain muscles on certain days.
Now the same thing is true in the spirit. If you say, “Well, I’ll do it when the mood hits me,” you’ll never do it. But set yourself to do certain little things systematically every day. You have your promises, you’ve started yourself off for the day, you have a prophecy, you have a little resume of who you are in Christ, you have some spiritual isometrics, impossible things that you’re testing your faith on.
Now this will help you develop one deep underlying feeling in your spirit that will get you away from the deadliness of saying, “Well, I’m going to start walking with the Lord tomorrow. Next week, things are going to change, Instead of that, think, “Oh, I contacted the Lord! I’m started. “It took only five minutes, you’ve started and you’re working at it all day. All day long, you’ve got the good little feeling “I am walking with God!
And in that little prayer in the morning, you could say one thing, “This day, today, Lord, I open my spirit up that I’ll be a participating member of the body of Christ.
Whatever is happening in the church—if there’s anybody under a burden, Lord, just lay it on me and let me pray with them, too.” Suddenly, you will sense the Body. You’ll come to the church, to the house of God and look around thinking, “Isn’t it wonderful? This is what I’m part of. I’m living in it; I’m walking in it, every single day.
You can be out in the business world so much, that before you realize it, you’ve adjusted yourself to its thinking. If you’re in a world of red, after awhile you’re not aware of red. If you’re in a world of blue, after awhile you’re not aware of blue.
But if you keep coming back to the spiritual world, you will always see the contrast. Your discernment will be ten times sharper; you’ll quickly sense what is wrong. If you don’t, you get so swallowed up with the thing that it has overwhelmed you and you miss seeing; you don’t have the sense of contrast between the spiritual things and the things that are not of God.
It will keep a business woman or man really sharp, if they keep going to the Spirit. This will help anyone who might be snowed under in their desire to conform to the business world. They get trapped. They get taken in, they become oppressed.
Constantly going back and forth through the realm of spirit keeps you from becoming a business man during the day and a man of God and a family man at night. It keeps the whole thing in balance.
As you are praying and remembering promises that have come over people, write them down and your faith becomes definite. God didn’t say, “Keep on praying and lots of things are just bound to happen.” He said, “Whatsoever you ask.” Writing out, “this is what I believe for that person; this is what God said,” makes it definite.
“Whosoever” boils down to a specific individual. “Whatsoever you shall ask” boils down to a specific promise. Sometimes it’s good not to be praying about everything. Pray about a few things; pray about the things that will move mountains.
You can be bogged down in tedious detail. Did you ever notice that a service becomes unspiritual where you throw it open to a lot of prayer requests? Why? The people have lost their focus.
They’re not tackling the things that count, but are just praying about little things here and there. It’s just like buckshot, scattered all over everywhere and it isn’t doing anything. But when you get right down in your prayers, aim at something that is really important. Ask yourself, “What’s the most important prayer that I could make in this church? What’s the impossible thing to believe for?” And stay with it. It’s like the old kingpin, you hit that and everything else falls.
“First thing in the morning, take a little step.” Not a big one, take a little step. That makes you a self-starter, just a little Scripture that starts you, just a little prayer. “Well, I have to get things going, get the kids off to school, then I’ll settle down and I’m going to pray an hour.” How many times has that backfired? So take a little step and start yourself in the spirit and you can ward off everything else, the inertia, becoming self-centered. Take one little step.
Have you ever heard someone say, “Boy, have I had a big Thanksgiving dinner! I’m not going to eat anything for a week.” Probably before sundown you were back at the table for more, because you started something in motion.
This is very important: start out with a thought in the conscious mind that opens the spirit. By repetition of this promise and prophecy through the day, the thought becomes an attitude.
Attitudes are in the subconscious as well as the conscious. By repetition the thought becomes an attitude. You want to get to the place where you don’t have to stop and think when you are under pressure, “Well, how do I react?” You react according to the attitude of heart which is one of faith.
You have the Scripture, you have the prophecy. By constant repetition, that thought becomes an attitude. You don’t work at that very many times until your spirit, in every situation, will respond right.