In the Old Testament, the Lord had a way of manifesting His presence. In fact, there are two outstanding ways. One was sovereign, and the other was at human initiative that his presence was manifested.
This gives us, of course, a perfect answer to what we’re looking for today. How much can we just expect God to do sovereignly? And how much is it up to us?
How much rests upon us to minister the presence and the blessing of the Lord to one another? Or is it something we all must just seek and wait and hope that God will decide to move on us sovereignly?
I’d like to say that before we get into the Scriptures here of the Old Testament, that I believe God is moving sovereignly. And I know that He’s moved on a lot of people’s hearts.
I know you’ve come into a great realization that God has something for you today, and you’re seeking for it, and the hunger is there.
And I know wherever I go, as it was in the days of the disciples. I am sent to reap where I have not sown. And I find I’m leading people into things that God has long since prepared their hearts to receive.
I do not discredit the sovereign moving of God and the fact that His Spirit is whispering and moving upon people everywhere over the whole face of the earth.
But there is another part of God’s moving that’s greatly neglected, and that’s what we can do concerning this. God has made Himself attainable and available and is greatly concerned about transmitting his own nature and his own self to us.
The attributes and the qualities, the nature of God is to be transmitted, and it’s to be communicated. We can take something from God and give it to somebody else.
You can go to God and draw. You’ll never exhaust Him. God is never a bit impoverished by anything you draw of Him. The fruit of the Spirit, the love, the joy, all that you draw, is an appropriation of something from God.
When you became a Christian, the righteousness that you received was an attribute of God. You put on His righteousness as a robe.
When you received eternal life, it was His life you received. It was God’s eternity that became a part of you, that you’d never die. He that believeth in me shall never die. God gives unto you eternal life. Now, that’s an attribute of God, isn’t it?
Whatever is born of God loves. Where did that love come from? That’s part of God’s nature, transmitted to you. God can take, just like you’d take a coat, and you’d put it on another person. God can take what He is and transmit it to you.
The whole object of this that God had in mind, was His predestined plan, that you’re going to be conformed to the image of His Son.
Whom He did foreknow them also; He did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son-Rom 8:29.
So, God is working to bring forth Christ in you, to bring forth an appropriation of His Spirit in you. Then we open our spirit, and we minister it to one another. We’re just drawing from Him and ministering it one to another.
The Lord promises His presence and His authority with His disciples to the end of the age. I know that what I do in ministry, is exceedingly wonderful. I stand in awe of it to think that I can believe that I can set my heart on God, and I can touch God, and I can bring a little of His glory and depart it upon a human vessel. That I can take of His fullness, and I can pour it into a vessel until it’s full to overflowing.
It wouldn’t be any good if I were trying to give something of myself to people, because that isn’t what I’m after, or what you’re after, or what God wants.
But if I can bring or take from the Lord and carry Him to you and bring Him forth to you, what a wonderful blessing that is.
In the Old Testament, the presence of the Lord was manifested in two ways. 1-that the children of Israel walking through the wilderness could look up and see a pillar of fire at night, where God had manifested His presence in their midst by a pillar of fire. Or by daytime it resembled a cloud.
Now that cloud would move. And they knew the Lord’s presence was there and the Lord was guiding them. And that was sovereign. They couldn’t do anything to make the cloud move or the pillar of fire move. That moved sovereignly at the will of God. And when it started to move in one day or a year, that’s how long they had stayed there, they then moved along with it.
But there were other situations that they faced in circumstances that though God led them by His presence, manifested by that pillar of fire, He also manifested His presence in what was known as the Ark of the Covenant or the Ark of His presence.
Now, the Ark of His presence was a way that He chose to manifest Himself in the midst of their tabernacle where they would worship God. But it didn’t end there. The priests were able to take staves and put it through the loops in the side of the ark of His presence and carry it on their shoulders.
They carried it when they went into battle. They carried it wherever they went. And what they were literally doing is that they carried the presence of the Lord into everything that they faced. They carried the presence of the Lord into every circumstance. They carried His power and His glory into everything that they did.
We read in Joshua the third chapter and the 13th verse. A beautiful story. When they came to the Jordan River to cross over into Canaan, it shall come to pass when the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, that the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off, even the waters that come down from above, and they shall stand in one heap.
Now, this is what happened. If you can picture it, they came to the Jordan River and they’re going to have to cross over. Now, the pillar of fire led them up to this point. I don’t know where the pillar fire ends or the glory cloud ends, but at that particular point, they are dependent upon this one means.
They have instructions to go, but they can’t do it in themselves. So, the priests take the Ark of the Covenant or the Ark of His presence, and they carry it right down in the Jordan River.
Those old priests are standing knee-deep in that water. Does it say how deep? It says when the soles of the feet are in, that would be a little more water than just wet ground. You know what I mean? I mean, they’re in the water. And the bank of the Jordan is overflowing.
What do they do then? They just go right in there and they stand. They’re carrying the presence of the Lord right into the situation that seems like it could overwhelm them, that seems like it’s impossible. And as they stand there, God rolls back the Jordan and they go through on dry ground.
This is what God’s wanting us to do. He’s wanting us not to just pray and pray and pray about things. They could have stood there, and they’d still be standing by the Jordan praying, God roll back the Jordan.
No, they had to move into the situation, carrying God’s presence right into that situation. And when they carried the presence of the Lord into that situation, something happened.
Joshua 6:11 So he had the ark of the LORD surround the city, going around it once.
We get the idea that the children of Israel just marched around Jericho, and it fell. But this was not the thing. The instruction was the people were to follow the ark of God’s presence. God’s presence surrounded Jericho for seven days, and then that wall came down.
If those people had marched without carrying the presence of the Lord into that battle, into that problem, the wall would not have fallen. And some of us fail to really do that as we ought to. God tells us to carry the presence of the Lord with us.
And if you face a Jericho that you can’t overcome, the thing that you must do is carry the presence of the Lord around the situation, around the circumstance, around the problem, day after day after day. Just carry God’s presence into it. Just commit that thing wholly to the moving of God’s Spirit.
Carry the presence of the Lord into the situation. You have the initiative to do that.
You can reach in, and touch God and you can draw His love, His faith, and so forth, but God also makes it possible for you to draw His presence in a singular, special manifestation of it.
Now, let me explain something about the presence of the Lord, and then you’ll understand why God moves freely in a church service.
The more we understand about the Lord, the more easily we’ll move in real victory, because the Lord has a quality, both the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. All three of the Trinity have a quality about them that they are omniscient and omnipresent.
Now, no other person or individual or being has this. Lucifer has greatly desired it. And being what we call a free spirit; he is able to contact a person with almost a phenomenal rapidity and has an intelligence which is uncanny. He was once a great light bearer but after his fall, he became a lie and the father of it.
He has that phenomenal intelligence and planning, he can execute in his mind a plan because he knows that the minute that a child is born, what God has for that child, and he sets about a plan to work the downfall and destruction of that child. And yet he cannot be omnipresent as God can, an attribute he’d love to have. But he can only be in one place at one time, but he can move with such rapidity that perhaps in a split second he can move in so many, maybe in a thousand different areas.
Such wisdom and such a thing is almost beyond us to imagine for Lucifer. But think how much he’s limited. Think how greatly he’s limited because God can be everywhere. He can continually dwell in you. Satan can’t do that.
Lucifer can delegate demons to possess people, and they do, and they must be cast out, because they can only be one place at one time. That’s the nature of the angelic realm that fell, and to the angelic realm that did not fall. They can only be at one place at one time, and yet what phenomenal wisdom they do have and ability.
But the Holy Spirit can come in a unique way. He can permanently dwell, not come and go in some split-second action, but God can come and dwell in you by the Holy Spirit, by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Father Himself can come and take His abode in you.
You can be the temple of the living God in a special sense, and He can dwell with you from now on throughout all eternity. Isn’t that a fantastic ability that God has? Far transcending all of the amazing abilities Satan has, in as much as he doesn’t come to tempt you, he doesn’t have to delegate devils to possess you, he just comes and fills you. This is a good lesson on practical theology.
I want you to know how great God is. And I want you to get the devil shrunk down to his proper perspective. He may be great, but greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world.
We want to see this glorious, glorious, wonderful truth until we just begin to rejoice and praise the Lord. How great is the presence of God that is with us. And knowing that he is omnipresent all over the whole universe, yet he makes a special thing of possessing and indwelling the believer. Christ dwells in our hearts by faith. Oh, we’ve heard these things so much, but we don’t appreciate them. We don’t know what they mean.
We don’t understand the spirit realm to understand the Father, the Spirit of God, the Son. The Holy Spirit draws us, lives within us, and all of God’s people that have opened their hearts to him. He never leaves; we can tune into and focus of his presence because he is right there.
We can carry the ark of his presence. We can walk into the situation and carry the presence of the Lord into it.
What do I do when I lay my hands on people? What do you do? You are transmitting the presence of the Lord that is with you. Now, can this be neglected, minimized, or can it be cultivated, magnified?
So, in Ephesians, we read to be filled with the Spirit of God. To be filled with all the fullness of God, it’s one thing to have His presence there, it’s another thing to draw and believe and appropriate it until His presence just fills you, and in a special way.
In other words, I’m trying to tell you that at your initiative there can be even more of a concentration of His presence than there is now. As a Spirit-filled believer in whom the Spirit of God dwells, that Spirit can dwell there in greater fullness. With greater focus, with greater manifestation. And God can just dwell in you until he just fills you and fills you and fills you and fills you.
And isn’t that the key to ministry? We follow on to know the Lord, and he comes unto us as the rain, and he fills us to overflowing, and the blessing becomes so great.
The day will come that this remnant of God will do mighty signs and wonders. Greater works than these shall you do, the Lord said. And Daniel’s prophesied that in the end time, they that do know their God would be strong and do exploits.
Let me tell you, it isn’t teaching about gifts. It isn’t an emphasis on certain spiritual things alone that count. It’s a fact that you appropriate the presence of the Lord. You appropriate the Lord.
You invite him in. You draw him in. You stand with an open spirit, drawing in his fullness, being filled with the Spirit.
That’s why we’re trying to get the walls down and get you to worship and get the Spirit of the Lord a moving upon you. There is a reason for it, this is the most serious thing in the world.
Joel says in this last day, there’s going to be deliverance in the remnant whom the Lord God shall call. In a day when the world really needs it, there’s going to be something concentrated within a remnant within this company that God is raising up, filled with the Spirit of God, manifesting the presence of God in a world of darkness. Who can stand against that? Who can defeat it?
In Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, and in the remnant whom the Lord God shall call.
We open our heart. Lord, fill me. Lord, fill me. Lord, fill me. We draw his presence when we worship. We just open our heart; we do not want anything in our temple that is displeasing to the Lord. So that there’ll be no reason why he can’t dwell in us with a greater measure of his fullness. We want nothing in us to quench the Spirit, nothing to grieve the Spirit, nothing to hold back the tremendous flow of his Spirit, no quality of unbelief that limits the Lord.
One day the king is going to sit upon the throne, and then all the nations will be gathered before him. And he’s going to say, there’s a great blessing for you, because I was hungry and you fed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was imprisoned and you visited me. When did I do this, Lord? In as much as you ministered unto the least of these, my brethren, I was there. I was imprisoned in that man. And you opened the door, and you opened his spirit up and you removed the walls and let me move in that man’s life. He was hungry and you ministered a word to him. He was naked and you clothed him with the attributes of God. You came and you brought Jesus, so that he was real to him. And as much as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.
Don’t you want to minister like this? Isn’t that the purpose of the body ministry? We’re ministering to the Jesus in one another. We’re strengthening that presence. We’re drawing more of Him so we can minister more of Him.
And in the midst of the battle your brother and sister faces, we put that arc of His presence on our shoulders like the priesthood. We carry that electrifying glory of God’s presence, the presence of the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings, and we carry it right into that problem our brother or sister has.
And the victory is His. The victory is His. Oh, how we must open up for this fullness. Oh, how we must open up and invite him in and say, Lord, I know you’re here, but I want you to be here more so. I want you to fill me to overflowing. I want to be so full that I’ll just radiate it forth to everyone.
Now, this has been just another message to give you the scriptural, spiritual picture of what you’re doing.
And if you come into the service and say, well, I can’t understand it, here they are, they lay hands on one another, they bless one another, and they go through different things. What are they doing? Oh, don’t you understand? We poor human beings, we stand in the way of our own light. We stand in the way of the blessing that we should have. We limp along in the Kingdom of God instead of moving out as the army of the Lord in this day, don’t we? Do you?
We’re anything but what God really wants us to be. What are we going to do about it? Very simple. We’re going to bless each other. We’re going to get you open to God. We’re going to get this thing moving. There’s no reason why you can’t move into the greatest flow of the Spirit of the Lord. You can draw him. The thing that the Lord’s always honored is that people would have faith to draw from him. He honors the initiative of faith.
A woman with an issue for a blood, a hemorrhaging for 12 years, if I can but touch him, if I can but touch him, that’s it, if I can touch him. Well, don’t you think he’s willing? Oh, he’s willing. Draw, draw, draw. Bring it into yourself.
Occasionally, we have to teach our people how to do things, and then we must teach them to do it without having to be motivated. You know what I mean? Because the next thing you know, they come in, and people are just drawing and blessing. I say, now do it with your hands down by your side. They have to learn how to really open their spirit and do it. But some of the motions that you go through now are just to help you temporarily. We’re going to start in right now to help you to get into it every way we can.
And then when the people come in, we want them to sense nothing but the power and presence of Jesus Christ coming forth from you. And when you pray and when you bless, a simple little gesture of blessing, I want it to have that kick of a Missouri mule, something that’s going to bless them. People must meet God.
In the early church, they carried the presence of the Lord. They had a promise from God, you go and preach, and lo, I’m with you always. All authority in heaven and earth is with me. And they went everywhere preaching the word, and the Lord worked with them. The Lord was present. What happened?
Very few sermons were ever ended. Stephen got rocked to sleep, carried away in the arms of Jesus.
Peter was interrupted in the middle of his sermon. Men and brothers, what do we do to be saved? Oh! How’d you like to have people break up your sermons? Thousands of them. What do we do? What do we do? Come on, tell us what to do. No more preaching. Just tell us what we have to do. Hello.
How many of the sermons in the book of Acts were ever finished? Riots, everything else, dragging Paul out of Lystra and leaving him for dead. Unfinished sermon. Pretty soon he comes alive, goes and comforts the brethren, goes on to the next place rejoicing.
They carried the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ everywhere. And when they saw him, they took knowledge that they’d been with Jesus. They were carrying that ark of the holy presence of God and of their Savior everywhere they went. And that’s what we want to see done. That’s what we’re going to see done. And that’s why we’re opening our spirits and we’re getting blessed.
And so, the people get so blessed, they lose their equilibrium, their balance. That’s all right. We don’t care. I’ve seen a lot of noisy services, so I’m not impressed by that. The only thing that impresses me is how much of the Lord is in it.
Now, what are we going to do today? Let me ask you a simple question. What do you want? Do you want to open up your spirit so that a gift of the Spirit can begin to work? Perhaps very soon there could be prophecy or revelation or impartation to you so that you can start prophesying? Would you like that?
There are many people that the beginning of discerning your spirits is there. It’d be very easy to bring that forth. But I’m not interested in just the mechanics of gifts working. I want to see the concentration of Jesus in your heart. I want you to draw and bless and bless and bless, because that’s what you’re doing.
What does the word glory mean anyway? The glory of God is the manifestation of God, isn’t it? So, the glory we want is we’re just carrying His presence, carrying His presence right into one another’s lives.
This is what the whole world ought to hear. All of God’s people ought to hear this because we need to carry this thing and bless one another. You know, I think we could go into a period of worship and blessing and just praising the Lord and drawing from the Lord and then minister to a few that need special help as they show up and just turn this service loose into the most organized, disorganized seeking of the Lord. Something that is really free, something that’s open because there’s such an openness to God that there would be the restraint of reverence, the restraint of the awe of God, he gives you, and there would be all the freedom that an aggressive, hungry faith that you have would give you in reaching out and just laying hold upon all the blessings that you can. I think something wonderful is going to happen.
The reason I say it is that I can’t talk. It’s already happening to me, and I know every time the Lord gave me a word that as I went out to do His will, He would always give me more than I would receive more than I gave and there would be a meeting with the Lord.
I can sense it. I can sense the crown of glory around my head. I know what the Lord’s going to do. I know He’s going to come and minister to me, and He’s going to be more present with me after this service than He ever has been before. Amen.
Little by little, line upon line, precept to form precept. Oh, we’re going to move Him. Hallelujah. Oh, Jesus, we’re hungry for you. Lord, we’re hungry. We’re hungry for that Spirit to come in fullness, to be filled with all the fullness of God, to be filled with the Spirit, and then hear the sounds and the hymns and spiritual songs coming forth out of the fullness of a people that God has just indwelt.
He’s manifested ever more of His presence, more and more of it, until He just lives and moves and breathes in the people. This is the answer. This is the answer. Manifestations out of fullness, cups running over, the men and women singing, the Lord shining forth in His glory in His presence in the midst of the house of the Lord.
And as Paul said, think of it, we have this treasure in earthen vessels. That the excellency and the power may be of God and not of ourselves. It’s God that’s coming forth. We’re nothing and He’s everything.
More of my spirit must be open. Every barrier, every restraint that’s in me, Lord, I want it to go. And I want this flow to come. I want to have an open spirit to draw from my brother and sister and to give to my brother and sister until we’re a saturated people with God. Saturated with God. Hallelujah. It’s the mighty beginning to rest on you as it is on me. I think if we stand and we just break forth into worship; I don’t think we need any guidance further. I think that we’re ready to break forth.