We need to learn how to practice the presence of God, becoming aware of His Presence opens the door to experience the unseen realm.
We must start to let ourselves experience the joy of the Lord. We make a decision to rejoice, to be happy, to focus on the things that promote joy.
The value of his presence has to become a priority in our life.
We must let the goodness of God overmaster us.
The Bible says at his right hand are pleasures for ever more. When Adam was in Eden, he experienced delight. Eden meant delight or pleasure. The fall of Adam was a fall out of pleasure.
We have fallen out of pleasure, but Jesus planted us back in, back into pleasure, back into his divine essence, his divine nature where we became one spirit with him.
We enter his presence through pleasure. When we are happy in the Lord, our spirit becomes like his and attracts heaven, because he is the happiest person we will ever meet.
When we start opening to the joy of the lord by tuning into it, we enter into the mystic realm of ecstasy.
Pleasure is a gateway into the unseen realm of the kingdom.
Christ is the mystic secret; in him we live and move and have our being. We must make the choice to eat and feast on his presence and enjoy him. We need to build triggers into our lives that trigger joy. Something that will remind us of our times of greatest intimacy with the Lord.
The desire to be happy is God-given and should not be denied or resisted but directed to God for satisfaction. Everyone longs for happiness; we should never tell them to deny or repress that desire.
It is never a problem to want to be satisfied in him. The problem is being too easily satisfied.
So, when we worship, we need to feast. We need to drink of him, and we glorify him by drinking of him.
He is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him.
We feast on him, and his pleasure comes in us, his joy comes in us, his life comes in us.
He is glorified by me being full of him, by enjoying him and this is the mystery of God, he enjoys us.
We can move him; the mystics are the people that moved God, because they loved him. The biggest way you can love him is by receiving his love. to be infinitely happy. God is infinitely happy, and he has created us with a capacity for joy that we’ve not even experienced yet. our joy potential is expansive.
God wills that we should press on into his presence and live our whole life there. His presence is to be known in conscious experience.
It is more than a doctrine; it is life to be enjoyed every moment of every day. The presence of God is the central fact of Christianity.
We drink with joy from the well of salvation. You could put John on the Isle of Patmos and he was in ecstasy.
We can enjoy him at any moment, but we must do this thing called centering. We must be centered on our union with God. We are in him, and he is in us. We love him and he loves us. It is called Recollection, we re-collect him, and you got to build into your life ways that you remember him, triggers, worship music, etc.
We just turn our affections towards him again, and we remember him and enjoy him. There is a deep presence that comes and it comes through turning our heart towards him and drinking.
When we get a tiny bit of his presence, we draw on it we don’t ignore it, we draw on it, we pull on it, we enjoy it, we say keep coming. If it starts to ease we go Jesus I love you and we allow him to come and we make it our continual practice to turn our affections and our heart back towards him over and over again.
If we forget him for a couple of hours, we turn it back and say am sorry I love you, I forgot you, I enjoy you, come upon me. If our mind gets in the way, we say mind, you are a good servant but a poor master. I call you to come under my spirit and my spirit to sit over me and my spirit to govern.
We need to learn how to live out of our spirit and not our mind. It is called getting the protocol or the government of our house in order. If our mind is the primary driver it means that the government isn’t right in our house.
Our body, our temple is meant to be the temple of the Holy Spirit and our mind is meant to be the conduit through which our spirit interacts with the physical world. Because we’re a spirit being that has a body to interact with the passing scene.
Thank you, Lord, I honor my mind, thank you for my mind. Mind I say you are a good servant, but you are a poor master. In the name of Jesus, I command you to come under my spirit. I command my spirit to sit on the government of my mind, spirit take your rightful place in Jesus’ name.
He is glorified in our glory, he is glorified in our glory, he is glorified when we are glorious.
So centering is the first phase of engaging and it is getting rid of the distractions.
His presence comes when we are reading the Bible, when we are watching a godly movie, we might be listening to a worship song, we might be eating a delicious piece of food and that delight triggers us so that we become aware of the Lord. After a while, pleasure triggers us, pleasure is meant to trigger us, not efforts.
We drink from his pleasure; we drink from his joy. Joy is a trigger, hugging someone is a trigger. Eating is a trigger. Drinking is a trigger. Buying lovely clothes and going shopping is a trigger.
Sometimes God will not find us in our little prayer room, he will say go out into the garden, go take a walk.
We can be in our prayer room, but he will not meet you there in the way you want, but the moment you put that little trowel in the veggie patch it is like the heavens open.
He loves us having a life of happiness. We are not a slave we are a son. This life is meant to be enjoyed.
It is meant to be lovely friendships, lovely eating. It is lovely sitting in the park. It is lovely swimming. It is lovely going to the beach, walking up a mountain, enjoying the wind on your face. They are shadows of what heaven is like and they can all trigger you into the realm of the spirit where you begin to live in that.
I am drinking his divine essence and I am allowing the pleasure of it to be in me.
This may be offensive to the church. They are not used to people being overwhelmed for 10 hours. They are not used to meetings going on for three months because people can’t leave. They’re not used to body pile ups at the door where they are shaking hands.
When we’ve centered on God we are recollected to use an old mystic term. Now one of the biggest battles that you’ll have is that you feel you should be doing something.
Becoming a mystic is like to old friends sitting on a park bench who have known each other 50 years. You sit on that bench together, you love being together and you enjoy looking at the park, you don’t feel like you have to say anything.
The church has tried to rob you of that, it has tried to make you do something.
God wants to be wanted. He looks for love and he drinks that love and he drinks us, he enjoys it as much as we do. And he enjoys us enjoying him.
Jesus said I came that my joy would be in you and your joy would be complete and overflowing. If you can learn to practice what I’m saying, that’s the door.
I am teaching you something that has taken me years to understand. That’s the door to everything. Love, joy and peace, the fruit of the Spirit is the door to everything. You might want it more complicated than that, but it is not.
If you can practice the presence of God consciously, it is the beginning of the trance realms. Getting drunk in the Spirit leads somewhere. Some people get offended at the intoxication.
But as the intoxication gets stronger you get numb and you can sometimes go into a full trance where you can hardly move.
For some of the mystics of old they looked like they were dying. They will go so white and clammy. Sometimes people go into such heavy trances they would die and resurrect after the trance.
In church history they had a function in some monasteries where a person is called the recall. The job of the recall was the one that was not allowed to get drunk in the spirit. And the job of the recall was to watch over the rooms when everyone went into trances and ecstasies and when it was nearly time for them to go back to work, they would have to give them 15 minutes notice through either ringing a bell or shouting and they would have 15 minutes to come out of the trance God would let them come out.
Because when you are that deep into a trance you cannot just pull out. The bell did not pull them out, that is God recognizing authority and honor. And the recall’s job was to bring people out of ecstasy because it was time for something else.
Brother Laurence says this, simply present yourself to God, recall your attention gently to God, such perseverance will please him. I’ve given up all but my intercessory prayers to focus my attention on remaining in his holy presence.
What if you decided after today that you’re going to spend the rest of your life in the glory. If you have a single day where you cannot sense his presence, say to yourself I will not tolerate it any more.
God sometimes takes his presence off you, to see how many days you can go without it. He has done it to me and I’m ashamed to say sometimes I have gone days without it.
But I now refuse it because the value of his presence is getting higher and higher for me.
The church may never accept you, there is no point trading off your joy. don’t trade off the intoxication of his love, don’t trade off Mystic union to please them, they will never, no matter how much you play the game they will never accept you.
If you’re a mystic you’re going to be on the rhythm of heaven, you are going to be on the frequency of heaven, you will speak things that don’t make sense to them. You may not even find words for it, Paul said, “I hear things that are incomprehensible, that human language could not impart.
The mystics are terrible often at putting into language the romance and the connections and the joy and the ecstasy of loving God and being loved by God. They sometimes look like childish fools.
Now in the early stages you can be distracted easily but must persist. It is like you don’t want to talk any more, it just seems pointless, talking seems an effort.
If you can get into the prayer of, it is called the prayer of affection, because it’s not about your words, it is affection and that love I have made it my goal to stay in that for the rest of my life.
It is called the prayer of quiet. And the biggest battle that you’ll have is the thought- shouldn’t I be doing something. No, you shouldn’t be doing anything but that.
That is what the master wants, that is what you were made for. That’s what the master is looking for, to be loved, without revelation, without words, two hearts meeting as one. Sitting on that bench together then you have this thing where it gets stronger.
Saint Thomas said this, the soul loves and is loved in return, she seeks and is sought, she holds, and herself is held, she clasps and is closely embraced, and by the bonds of love she unites herself with God, one with one, alone with him. At this point something begins to happen. This is something that you feel.
When you start praying it is like your thoughts are racing back and forth, maybe thinking about shopping, the car.
As his presence increases and gets stronger your thoughts narrow .You are thinking about loads of stuff at first and then it is like the presence got stronger and your thoughts slow down, this is like the prayer of quite or affection. So your enjoying God, your mind is not racing, the presence has got stronger, you don’t want to move you don’t want to talk, you’re enjoying him, now if you stay there, that’s a wonderful place, but I tell you what happens is this. As you learn to practice this, you come into an overflow called full union.
Where it is like the cups not half full, it starts to overflow so you go from recollection or centering or vocal prayer and you come into the prayer of quiet or the prayer of affection.
This is where you’re loving and being loved and then you come into full union where the cup starts to be so full of God that your mind starts to race again but your mind is not racing with earthly thoughts you are starting to see God.
So you start out not seeing anything, you’re not really getting anything, you are just enjoying God, but then suddenly as you’re enjoying him you have one drink too many and you begin to get filled with God and you go into union and then you go into ecstasy.
In union now, you’re beginning to see God but you can still pull out of it. You’re beginning to get Revelations, but someone could still pull out of it, but you’re full. The glass isn’t half full. your full of God and suddenly you went from being silent, two people on the park bench, to the other person on the park bench grabbing the park and pulling the curtain and the parks gone and now you are seeing God, you are seeing heaven, you’re seeing the realms of glory, you’re seeing his divine nature, the divine influence. Or you are thrust into his divine essence, and you are swallowed up by God and you are overwhelmed.
Small keys open big doors and, in those moments, you will learn more than years of study.
How many of you want to be taught in the spirit? You want to preach messages you didn’t hear from Bill Johnson you didn’t hear of Rick Joiner or some other teacher.
You were taught by God in the spirit, you were in ecstasy because of God, you were practicing his presence and suddenly it was like you were kissing him and you were enjoying him, and he swallowed you up and you expanded.
The presence is getting stronger and then you can’t do anything about it and then it gets really strong. Now we enter into ecstasy or a rapture. It is a violent invasion. Some called it a storm of love; it is a storm of love.
You’ve gone from gently enjoying God which is where I want to live. Let me just say that if he never raptures me again, I am okay, this is such bliss, the prayer of affection. I just want to be known and know him intimately.
I want His presence, every day I want his presence, when I wake up I want him, I want to walk with him, love him, I want to eat, feast and live and breathe and enjoy him, day and night, night and day. I am my beloveds and he is mine.
When John said I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, he was wrapped in spirit. Paul put it like this, I know a man 14 years ago that was seized by Christ swept into an ecstasy, he was hijacked into paradise. God does hijackings, and I want to warn you, if you live in this, you can go into an ecstasy at any time.
Teresa of Avila, had walked with the Lord but she didn’t even start practicing this until her 40s, so it is not even about age. She would sometimes get these ecstasies that were so incomprehensible, her body would be lifted off the floor and she could feel it coming on. She once warned the sisters, she said we got visiting nuns coming I’m afraid that I will go into a rapture. I don’t want people to know what happens to me. If I go into a rapture, you guys have got to help me.
So these visiting nuns come and she feels it come on, it’s too late, because once you have seen Jesus on the cross, you’ve enjoyed communion, you have opened a door, and it’s like you fall into a trance.
They said I fell into a trance, it is like I ate communion and then it just came upon me. Joseph of Cupertino would eat communion and float off the ground for two hours a day.
Loads of the mystics would have the same experiences, their faces would shimmer, the lights would come, sparks would come, sometimes when you’re in rapture, lights would emanate from their being.
Some people like Joseph of Cupertino, Catherine of Siena, had fragrances all the time. If they were here now, we would have smelt them before we saw them. Everything they touch would have that smell on it and they lived out of this, but they were misunderstood. Some people thought they would damned, some people thought they were weird, sometimes people tried to burn them when they were in rapture to wake them up, but they couldn’t even bring them around because they were seized by Christ. But in moments they would learn incomprehensible mysteries.
Teresa of Avila’s said this, God ravishes the soul wholly unto himself as one who is his very own bride and shows her some small part of the kingdom she has won.
Lord I just ask that you would intoxicate us with your love