We should be able to touch the Lord every time we come to church. It is ridiculous for you to come to church and fail to have a meeting with God. We need the kind of teaching that removes the tendency for us to get into a rut, lest worship become commonplace to us, and we cease to be impressed by the moving of the Spirit as we were at first when it was all so new and fresh.
A safe cracker knows what to do to have very sensitive fingers. He rubs his fingers on sandpaper until they are almost ready to bleed and the nerves are close to the surface. Then he starts working the safe.
God wants your spirit sanded down a little as you come before Him, so you can become very, very sensitive. Many things can crowd in until you become almost calloused. You no longer feel the worship or have the awareness of the presence of the Lord. You fail to focus everything you have on Him and soon it is easier to worship mechanically.
The first time you travel on a new freeway, you are aware of everything along that way—streets, the highway numbers, the various turns—but before very long something happens to you and you start doing it mechanically, by habit. The same thing can happen in our worship. God must take our spirits out of the rut until in worship we are overwhelmed with His presence.
You may say, “The Lord will have to come and meet us.” The Lord is in every service, but we may not be aware of it. He is right there. We don’t have to pray, “Please come here, Lord.” A worshiper draws nigh to the Lord, as we see in a familiar Scripture: Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4:8. Where is the initiative? God is saying to you by the Spirit, “It’s your move.”
“Well, I’m just sitting here waiting for the Lord to bless me, waiting for the Spirit to move me.” You make the first move.
Someone once asked Smith Wigglesworth, “How do you cast out devils so easily? When you see a demon-possessed or a demon-oppressed person, do you wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon you and then minister to him?” He said, “No, when I see the devil I start after him, and I figure that God will have to give me the anointing by the time I reach him.” He gave no quarter to the devil.
In a service Smith looked at a large ugly carbuncle on a man’s neck. He walked up and said, “Oh, that thing is of the devil.” He smote it with a real blow and God healed it completely. Nothing but smooth skin remained. It was more than a healing; it was a real miracle.
Shouldn’t we become more aggressive and focus everything we have upon the Lord? If you draw nigh to Him, He will draw nigh to you. Go after it. God will not let you down!
Our second Scripture is found in Proverbs 8:17: “I love those who love me; and those who diligently seek me will find me.”
This Scripture may seem to be contradictory, because in the first chapter of Proverbs God says that when people refuse His call and neglect His counsel, they will seek Him diligently and will never find Him (Proverbs 1:24, 25, 28).
This must be understood correctly.
While we were yet sinners and enemies, Christ died for us. As far as God’s love and provision are concerned, we cannot say that He waits to love us until we decide to love Him. If this were true, no one would ever find the Lord.
John says, “We love him, because he first loved us. I John 4:19. If He didn’t love us enough to beam His love toward us, we would never find created within us even a capacity to love Him. We love Him because He first loved us.
This principle applies in our relationships with other people too. We can develop a capacity to be outgoing, to love and to bless, and people will respond. Often they are waiting for us to make the first move.
God is saying, “I have all this love for you. I am ready to pour it upon you. I am ready to rain it upon you. I am only waiting for you to make the first move. I am waiting for you to draw nigh to Me. I have all of these blessings and provisions for you.”
There is something so beautiful when you learn to open up and love Him. When you come to worship the Lord, don’t do it mechanically. A walk with God is a love story and it ends as a love story in Revelation 19, 20, 21, and 22. What is it telling? The marriage of the Lamb and His Bride has come—the fulfillment of love in an intimate relationship.
God is speaking to us, and we are saying to the Lord, “Draw us, and we will run after Thee” (Song of Solomon 1:4). This is the cry of the Bride.
There must be a little initiative on your part. You make the first move. When you come to worship the Lord, don’t wait for an elder to minister to you or for the Lord to bless you in the service. You move into it.
Perhaps you are altogether too conservative in the way you approach your worship. I’m not saying that you must be loud and noisy, but lift up your heart with pure adoration to the Lord. Just stand and tell Him you love Him and watch what happens. You will have the greatest blessing of your life, and you will be able to say, “I always wanted God to meet me that way.”
I know how to have the Lord meet me. I go out to meet Him, perhaps in the deserted place, and I start worshiping Him. It seems as though it is right on schedule, that back in eternity He planned a certain day and hour to meet me.
I know the Spirit hovers over us and there is an initiative that comes from God, but what we are talking about is the initiative of worship that should rest upon us, the area where many are failing.
The Scriptures establish the principle of reciprocity. God says, “I love those who love Me; and those who diligently seek Me will find Me.” When you make a move, God will move accordingly because He is looking for you too.
The Father is seeking for worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. He is looking for them. That is why God says, “I am waiting for you to make the move, and I will respond to you in the same way that you respond to Me.”
With the merciful Thou wilt show Thyself merciful … with the froward Thou wilt show Thyself froward. Psalms 18:25, 26.
A person who is mean, arrogant, and unforgiving, will insist that God is mean and arrogant. When God deals with him, He exacts hard judgment on him. Hopefully such a person will realize one day that God has been using the same little yardstick on him that he has been using on other people. When you stand and pray, say, “Father, forgive us, as we also forgive.” With the same measure you mete, it will be measured to you again.
Come before the Lord with all your heart and God will bless you with all of His heart. He says, “In the day that you seek for Me with your whole heart, you will find Me” (Jeremiah 29:13).
If you go at it halfheartedly, hoping God has some blessing, or hoping maybe you can find something in the Word, that’s just about all you will get—a little blessing, a little thought or two.
Do you want a meeting with God? Go after it with all your heart and God will meet you that way. The key is found in the great commandment: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. Mark 12:30. Focus everything you have on worshiping the Lord.
Worshiping is not just singing in tune with everyone else and singing along in the Spirit, while you are thinking about doing the washing tomorrow and many other things.
Worship can be the most intense work you have ever done in your life, as you focus everything upon the Lord, determined to be a worshiper.
With the kind Thou dost show Thyself kind; with the blameless Thou dost show Thyself blameless; with the pure Thou dost show Thyself pure; And with the crooked Thou dost show Thyself astute. Psalms 18:25, 26.
When you have a revelation from the Lord, you will feel as if you are looking into a mirror because that same aspect of His nature will come through to you as you approach Him. Keep that in mind, and the next time you start yawning and worshiping in a ho-hum, halfhearted manner, remember that is exactly the way God will appear to you.
If you are indifferent about the Lord, you will swear that God is indifferent to your need too. But if you believe, and come saying, “Lord, I come seeking first Thy Kingdom,” God will say, “That’s good, son, because I am seeking first your welfare.”
“Well, isn’t that marvelous, Lord? We are both looking after the same thing. We are looking after each other’s interests, aren’t we?”
That is the way it should be in the Body. If you are thinking, “I’m just praying and working to get my place in the body so the people will recognize my ministry,” it will never happen.
But if you say, “I am so concerned that this brother come forth in his ministry,” God may anoint you with a prophet’s authority to help him. All the time you will be blessing him and helping him come into his ministry, and suddenly it will dawn upon you that God has made you a prophet while you were concerned about your brother. Be determined that you’re going to give, and that you are going to approach the Lord with a motivation that is absolutely right. Then He will meet you the same way.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Matthew 5:7. You may come before the Lord saying, “Lord, do you see these little faults of my brother? Do you see how these people have failed to walk before You? Lord, aren’t You going to judge them?” Then God will say, “Yes, and we’ll start with you!” Judge not lest ye be judged, for with the same judgment you mete, it will be measured to you again (Matthew 7:1, 2).
I have learned that when I am being pressured by demonic assault, there is a way I can speak judgement over it, but the most effective thing to do is to constantly stand before the Lord and worship and love Him. Then the initiative is taken from me to judge it and God begins to deal. He has been looking for worshipers too long to let one of them be harmed. There is a short market on good worshipers. They are very hard to find. When you start worshiping, God says, “That is what I have been looking for from eternity. I have to take care of that boy; He is Mine.
Perhaps you have not had the desires of your heart met because you were not delighting in the Lord.
We want to focus on Him and we want to live with an awareness of His presence. We want to constantly be aware that we are the Lord’s and say like David, “I have set the Lord always before me. I shall not be moved.”
O God, we will not be moved. We will be steadfast and immovable, abounding in the work of the Lord, if we just hold in our hearts the need to be a worshiper of the Lord.
Let Thy Spirit continually remind us that You want the whole heart, not half a heart. Let us not come before Thee in a manner that is objectionable.
We thank Thee for the level of worship we have, but we are aware that this truth comes to convict us afresh of how we have fallen short of being the perfect worshipers of the Lord.
Look upon all of us and according to the need that we have, meet us and bless us. As we draw nigh to Thee, we know that You will draw nigh to us. We love You, and we are going to express that love. We know You have loved us from the foundation of the world, but You are going to express that love to those who express their love to Thee. We say, “Jesus, we love You,” and we will know Your love in return.