What is a meeting with the Lord? It is a coming together; encountering; joining. It is a joining of our spirit with His. It is experiencing a person’s presence. It is having a conversation. Ultimately it is a meeting face to face.
People do not need blessings, so that they just can feel good. They need to meet the Lord in a blessing. Every experience that we have with the Lord should introduce us to the Lord. It should be a meeting with God.
What is the point of divine healing if you don’t meet the Lord in it? Wouldn’t it be just as good to go to the doctor then, as long as you get well?
But if you happen to get a healing and you meet the Lord in it, you not only have the physical benefit, but you have the spiritual meeting with the Lord that is so very important.
That’s the same thing with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. People have an encounter with the Lord, where there is a manifestation of speaking in tongues.
When people are baptized with the Holy Spirit the first time, they usually talk about the manifestation, it is emphasized, people may say, oh, I talked in tongues for two hours or I fell under the power, or I did this or I did that. And when they talk like this, you can count on it that that particular experience was not what it should have been.
Technically, all the manifestations may have been there, but actually they didn’t meet God in the situation. And experience should always have this one thing, that you meet the Lord in it.
Now, even in spiritual battle, you should look for the presence of the Lord. I want to emphasize this. For instance, when the three Hebrew children, were thrown into the furnace. Now, those that threw the men were slain by the heat. If you remember, it killed them. But these three men were not only immune from the heat, but a fourth, like the Son of God, appeared walking with them there. Now this is an astonishing thing, which meant that in their experience and tribulation, they met the Lord.
Doesn’t the Lord say He’s a very present help in a time of need? And I think we make a big mistake if every time something happens, what we would term good or bad, we don’t look for a revelation of the Lord in it, a manifestation of the Lord, a meeting with the Lord.
After all, that’s the whole sum total of all of it, that you meet God in your troubles, you meet God in your tribulations, you meet God when you face some kind of a trouble.
You meet the Lord when you’re saved. It’s a meeting with God. Just as sure as Saul of Tarsus said, Who art thou, Lord? That’s the way we meet God. And the Lord says, it’s hard for you to kick against the pricks.
So, whenever the Lord chastens us, whenever we run into difficulties, we ought to look around and say, well, is the Lord in this? Now, we may see the devil’s hand in it, right? But don’t concentrate on the devil’s hand or the devil’s part. Look beyond to find the hand of God in the thing. When you find the hand of God and you see the Lord in it, then you come out all right.
Otherwise, even though you do survive the trouble and the problem, and the Lord does deliver you, it hasn’t accomplished any divine purpose. It hasn’t accomplished any purpose if you haven’t met the Lord in it. It’s just another experience. Do you follow me?
If you learn how to open your heart to the Lord, you’ll sense the presence of the Lord, and you’ll meet the Lord in the experience. If you don’t have a meeting with the Lord in the experience, then that experience has a way of being dissipated. It disappears.
I’ve seen people in churches say, oh, we had a wonderful worship service, there was a message in tongues and interpretation in the service. And so, you ask them, what was in the message? What did God say? I can’t remember it, but it was one in which the Lord spoke to us.
You see, they weren’t listening for the Lord, and they weren’t meeting the Lord. They were so occupied with the manifestations and the experiences that they missed the whole purpose of it.
Now, we don’t want to fall into the same rut. We don’t want to get to the place where we have blessings, but we don’t meet the Lord in it, then we don’t really learn to walk with God and commune with Him and worship the Lord.
To have a real meeting with the Lord, you ought to be able to spend the rest of the day worshiping the Lord and dwelling in the presence of the Lord and on the next day and the next day because you’ve met the Lord in the experience. And if you just had a blessing in it, the devil knows how to take care of that. He’ll hit you with a problem later and the blessing dissipates.
But if in the blessing you have met the Lord, the devil can’t take the blessing away from you. Remember that always. Being delivered from something is not just for the deliverance’s sake, it is so that youcan have a closer relationship with the Lord.
How many know that when you’re praying for deliverance, most of the time, the thing that you need was met because you were doing the will of God in the first place? True?
The three Hebrew children, did they get in that situation by disobedience or because they were actually doing the will of God?
It was because they were doing the will of God. Did Daniel get in the lion’s den because he was apostate or because he was true to the faith? He was true to the faith. Right?
Now, if that’s the case then if something like this comes you look for the Lord, because you’re in this situation because you followed the Lord. So, whether the devil’s an instrument in it or not. You look to meet God in the situation. Look to meet God in every experience and every blessing. May the Lord open our eyes to meet the Lord in everything that happens to us and if you look, you’ll find Him. If you listen, He’ll speak to you. And with all the blessing, get the one thing that the blessing is designed to do, it is to be a carrier to bring Christ more vividly and real to your heart and mind. Meet the Lord in every experience. Amen.