In manifestation we have great experiences. In hiddenness we learn deep truths; God withdraws from our emotions to teach us faith.
Feeling the manifest presence of God is called manifestation. Sometimes we don’t feel the presence of God, this is called hiddenness.
Proverbs 3: 5-trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
The Holy Spirit is teaching us two things in life: firstly, how to trust the Lord, and secondly, how to be trustworthy ourselves.
Firstly then, we are learning that every situation is about trust. Because we are in Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit, it is our normal, instinctive, intuitive desire and response to want to trust the Lord.
It is vital that we take time to acknowledge the Lord in all of life’s events, prior to making decisions. This cannot just be a superficial look at who he is for us.
Acknowledgement is a key part of finding and living in the will of God for each set of circumstances. Any decision made without the due process of acknowledgement and thanksgiving, may well prove to be worthless.
God must be acknowledged in every situation in a thorough manner before the Holy Spirit. Everything the father does in our lives is for the purpose primarily of building a relationship with us. Heaven works on a relational paradigm into which the Lord introduces service, ministry, gift and function. His prime purpose is love, oneness and friendship, that we might be conformed to his image, through entering into a oneness with him.
The world works on a functional paradigm where the primary purpose is task oriented, purpose driven towards job completion. In the world, we primarily function together and have left over time for relationships. In the Kingdom, relationships are a key part of everything we do.
When we acknowledge the place that God has in our hearts, we are more able to hear his voice and know his mind. Time spent in waiting on the Lord (in focused listening and meditation) will enable us to see his presence and his hand in things. Having a passion for rejoicing and thanksgiving gives us access to a higher dimension of peace and rest where we are lifted up to recognize a different perspective. Trust is easier the higher up we go in the affections of the father.
This is fellowship. Acknowledgement is a key part of our fellowship. We get to confess and declare who God is for us. We worship our testimony back to him. We love, adore and give thanks for who he is! We rejoice in him. It is so wonderful to rejoice, to speak out to him of our pleasure in who he is. To rejoice is to be passionately outspoken in our praise. It is not casual, nor matter of fact. It is focused, intentional and highly personal. The more we get into the face (presence) of God in our worship, the more of him is personally available to us when we come to ask, seek, and knock.
This type of rejoicing is standard worship for a life in the Spirit. Without it, our mind has no defense against anxiety. The situation will overwhelm us unless we become consumed by who God is for us. Rejoicing produces such an amazing sense of well-being that trust becomes the consequence of confidence.
Trust is a byproduct of rejoicing. As we give thanks, we experience God’s presence. Trust comes with him because he is eminently trustworthy. Trust is not something I have to call up in myself. It is massively provoked in me by God’s presence. As I rejoice, he fills all in all with himself. He generates trust in me by his beauty, his integrity, his very nature.
It is the nature of God to believe. Why do we make faith such an issue? God is a believer, and since we are in him it is normal for us also.
The reason we have difficulties with faith is because we are not being overwhelmed by his presence. Faith works by love, so instead of trying to believe, we focus on how much God loves us and we love him back with all our heart. Loving him with all our heart takes practice, we have to love him with all our thoughts, we have to intensify our emotions through our focus upon him. There must be intensity, force, strength, concentration, power in our love for him. And we have to love him with our will, this means we love him by our actions, how we live, we intensely focus on living by every word he reveals to us. We acknowledge him in everything we do, with a conscious awareness that we are obeying the Lord. In this way of obedience, we are literally partaking of his very substance and nature. Our obedience is not mechanical, but a participation in the nature of God.
The practice of a lifestyle of rejoicing is an incredible aid to faith. The truth is that faith and worry cannot inhabit the same space at the same time. One of them has to go, and we get to choose. Likewise with trust and anxiety, they are mutually incompatible, and only one can be chosen. It is the same with power and being fearful; one robs the other of life and expression.
But the only way we can choose trust, faith, and power is through being aware of the presence of God and this is where worship and praise and joy come in. We can do all things through Christ, but we have to be aware of him, his presence inside and outside of us.
We can choose the negative option by default. Simply put, not choosing positively puts us in the category of a victim. We are overcome rather than being more than conquerors.
In all the circumstances of life, the father is teaching us how to relate to him by rejoicing, praying and giving thanks. These all lead to trust in the nature of God and faith in the operation of God on our behalf.
We trust him by not being worried, anxious, or fearful. When we speak out our trust, our spirit pushes away the negative.
It is time for the people of God to expel fear forever and learn to live in the love of God. When fear grips our hearts, negative faith (unbelief) rules our minds. Negative faith occurs when we believe that nothing is going to change. We are stuck with how things are now, or we believe that we will never be any good.
We can have more faith that we won’t make it than in the love of God to enable us to succeed by the power of the Holy Spirit.
There are two ways to trust God, because we all have two relationships with him. The first is vertical, in which we relate to God one-on-one. We access all that he is and can do, personally. The second is horizontal, in which we can access the father through the relationships that he has strategically placed around us. My favorite comments to friends and family when we are talking about issues of faith is, you can borrow mine, if they are expressing a lack. The idea that we can be wholly redeemed without relational involvement with brothers and sisters in the Lord is quite odd.
Friends and family are a crucial part of our discipling and our development. There are times when God chooses to come to us through our friends. He did that for David with Jonathan. The father has chosen for us to have spiritual friends in order for us to come into a different reality.
When God moves us into a high place in the Spirit, he uses friends to ground that spiritual growth in the natural, in the reality of living. If it works in the Spirit, it must be outworked in life.
When God shows us our weakness, it is our dear ones who get to be part of our training in discipleship. To stand with a friend when you are in need is a beautiful experience.
I can never understand how the church can walk away from people when God is dealing with their sin, learned behavior and wrong thought processes. We need people the most when we are being adjusted. I thank God that I have people around me who love me enough to stand with me when God is dealing with issues in my life.
This is perhaps the main difference between leaders who are fathers and those who are merely Pharisees. Fathers are essentially redemptive. They are not embarrassed by sin or the shortcomings of people or their spiritual sons. They see everyone through the lens of the father looking at Jesus. They point people to their freedom.