Hosting the Presence

I uh in talking with uh Pastor Robert this last week, I um found out you guys have been doing a study on the presence of the Lord.

And uh of course he said I could talk about whatever is in my heart, which I always appreciate, but uh there's there's nothing that stirs me more than the privilege of being able to talk to people about the presence.

And one of the interesting things in Scripture about the presence of God is whenever in the Old Testament and oftentimes in the new, when the presence of the Lord is mentioned, the word for presence is actually face.

If you know anything about the subject of the face of God in Scripture, it is the sign of God's favor.

So when his face shines upon you.

If you remember the prayer, the priestly blessing that Aaron was to give over Israel every day, part of that blessing was the shining face of God the Father over his children.

Years ago, I wrote a book on the face-to-face with God.

And when I was doing uh writing that book, somebody came to me and they said they've they found that uh that there's a joy center in the brain that is actually trained and activated by the countenance of caregivers.

So the mom did that.

I mean, you know, when you're holding an infant, you make faces and say things you would never say to another human being, you know, noises and stuff.

And there's something in that process that actually activates joy in that child.

And if you think about it, it's the shining face of the father that teaches us real joy as well.

It's knowing that we are accepted, and not just accepted, but celebrated by a perfect father.

So when we talk about the presence of God, we're actually talking about the shining face of a perfect father aimed directly at you.

I remember a number of years ago, I made a discovery, so I announced it every week to our church for quite a while, that God is in a good mood.

It caught people off guard.

They didn't know that, but I have it on first hand authority that he is actually in a good mood.

He knows the end from the beginning, and it's so wonderful to be celebrated by such a perfect Father.

He gave us the Holy Spirit, God on earth.

The Holy Spirit is referred to as the down payment.

Down payment is here's a payment, there's more coming.

So the Holy Spirit is the down payment, which means there's more coming of the presence of the Lord.

Specifically, the Bible teaches that we are heirs of God.

I can't say I understand that.

That kind of hurts my brain to think about that, but God so freely and completely gives himself to us that we are called heirs of God.

You turn that around in Ephesians, and you find that God, what God gets out of all of this is he inherits us.

So he inherits us, and we inherit him.

You can tell how much God trusts you and trusts the work that he's done in you by what he has entrusted to you.

He's entrusted the Holy Spirit to you.

The reverence that the Father and the Son have for the Holy Spirit is really quite remarkable.

Jesus said you can blaspheme the Father, you can blaspheme the Son, but you can't blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

The point is, is here's this treasured one of heaven that God decided to put inside of you and me.

The Holy Spirit lives in every born-again believer.

He's in me, but he wants out.

He's in me, according to John 7.

He's in me as a river.

He's there to flow through me, to impact the world around me.

He's not in me as a lake.

He's a moving force, power of heaven itself, to flow through my life, through my actions, through my words, to impact and to change the geography around me.

I like to put it this way: the Holy Spirit is in me for my sake, but he comes upon me for yours.

Why don't you think about the difference?

Because what you and I have been given the privilege to do is to actually learn how to host the presence of God, to actually be the person that he rests upon.

He's in me to convict me, to guide me, to encourage me, to comfort me.

All of that.

We understand that part.

He's in us forever, will never leave us.

But there's something about when the presence of the Lord comes upon a person, that presence manifest upon a person is to change the circumstances around us.

You were born to invade the impossible.

You are alive with a God-given appetite to invade.

And if the appetite's not there, I personally think either disappointment or bad teaching kills the appetite for the impossible.

Because you and I, by nature, were designed to express the life of Christ towards some impossibility.

And I don't mean just the stuff that comes our way, because we've all got stuff.

We've all got issues and crises and challenges and problems.

I'm not just talking about that.

I'm talking about the appetite to look for problems, to look for the things that are impossible.

The appetite that says these things must bend their knee to the name Jesus through my lips.

God's given you that privilege, given me that privilege.

In fact, I think the absence of that is a sign of illness, the absence of that kind of an appetite.

That God has actually created us with the instinctive nature to look for things that must yield to the name of Jesus.

Many people don't pursue these things because they're afraid they'll be noticed or they're afraid that they'll get the credit or the attention.

It's a legitimate problem because nobody, you know, none of us are worthy of worship.

He said though, let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good works and glorify your Father.

So apparently it can be displayed in such a way that people realize, ah, he's not that good.

It must be God.

So that's the invitation that we have, is to learn this lifestyle.

When I look at the life of Jesus, I uh I don't know what you do.

I get jealous.

I get jealous when I see the things that he did.

I and I understand that he's God, he's eternally God.

But when I see, I see, I hear him talk, he says, he says of himself, he says, the son of man can do nothing of himself.

He's referring to himself as the son of man.

Now I know he's the son of God, eternally God.

But he refers to himself in this earthly form as the son of man.

And he says, the son of man can do nothing of himself.

I looked at that word nothing in the Greek, and it actually means nothing.

He couldn't do, he couldn't do anything of himself.

So that tells us that he emptied himself in that sense, that he refused to do life in physical form as God, even though he's eternally God, he decided to live life in such a way that he could be followed by imperfect people.

You and me qualify for that one.

See, if he did all of his miracles as God, I'm still impressed, but I'm I'm a spectator.

I stand back, I applaud, I cheer, I go, that's the most amazing thing I've ever seen.

But when I see that he empties himself and he takes on human form and he faces all temptations such as we are, yet without sin, and then he becomes personally empowered by the Holy Spirit, and then he only does what he sees the Father do, he only says what he hears the Father say, then I realize he has just set an example that can be followed.

When I see that he walks on the water and he heals the sick and he casts out devils, he does all this stuff as a human being in right relationship with God, then I suddenly become discontent.

I suddenly can no longer stay in the condition I'm in.

I must pursue what has been held in front of me as an invitation by God Himself to follow His Son and to become like Him.

This is what I ache for.

This is what I will spend the rest of my lifetime pursuing, and I may never do it well.

You know, Jesus healed everyone who came to him, and I try.

He healed everyone the Father sent him to.

He didn't heal every sick person on the planet because the person at Gape Beautiful was there for a long time and was healed after the apostles came by.

So we we uh in Acts chapter 3.

Acts 3 · chapter mention

So we know he didn't heal everyone on the planet, but he healed everyone who came to him, number one, and number two, everyone the father directed him to.

So that's the only standard I'm willing to follow.

I won't blame the person I'm praying for.

I'm not gonna do guilt and shame myself, but this is what I will do is I will get into the secret place and cry out to God and say, God, you've got to do more with me.

Because that person traveled around the planet to come and to receive prayer.

They thought by coming here they would meet with you, and all they met was me.

And neither of us are impressed.

You've got to do something here so that when they come in your name, they actually encounter you.

And they leave with the same thing they would leave with if Jesus were standing in his shoes.

That's in the quiet place, that's in the secret place.

In the public place, you look for problems, you take risks.

There's an appetite to see these things that have exalted themselves against the name of the Lord Jesus, to watch them bow, to watch them bend their knee to the name Jesus through your lips and through mine.

This is what we were given a privilege for.

Jesus modeled something, He modeled what life could be like for any human being that had no sin and was completely empowered by the Holy Spirit.

No sin.

The first qualification is met if you're born again, because the blood of Jesus completely thoroughly deals not only with the record of sin, but the root system of sin.

It's broken.

The second thing is up to you and it's up to me.

It's how empowered, how filled with the Spirit of God am I willing to be.

If I were to take this bottle here, which I won't do for you now, but this is considered a full bottle.

But it's not really full because it's not overflowing.

The only time it's really full is when it's overflowing, because fullness is measured by overflow, not by what it contains.

And when you and I choose this lifestyle to live full of the Holy Spirit, it's measured in overflow.

It's the fact that things become alive around us because we are yielded vessels to this wonderful, glorious presence of God, the Holy Spirit, God on earth.

I look at Jesus' lifestyle, I see things that He that He did that are so, I don't know, they provoke me.

I don't know what they do for you.

I I see I see him walking through town to the crowded streets, and you know, everybody wants to get close to him.

Everybody wants to say, you know, I was there the day Jesus walked through town, and they want to hear the stories, they want to see the miracles.

And in the middle of this chaos that's surrounding him, a woman who's been sick for a long time, spent everything she had, pushes her way through the crowd.

She's not even supposed to be in public because of the nature of her illness.

And she reaches out and touches the edge of his garment, and Jesus stops, and he said, Who touched me?

I know you know the story, but think through this with me.

He's being bumped, he's got conversation going with all kinds of people, and yet he was aware when presence left him.

He wasn't aware of presence leaving him because it was now gone.

You understand the Holy Spirit was given to him without measure.

So it's not it's not that I had something and now it's gone.

It wasn't that.

It was the Spirit of God was resting upon him, and he recognized the flow of anointing, of presence into somebody's body, and he stopped.

He said, Who touched me?

Disciples said, Everybody's touching you.

He ignored them, which he did quite often.

He ignored them and turned and saw the woman and said, Your faith has healed you.

She was completely restored.

Here's the thing that I have an appetite for: to live so conscious of the person of the Holy Spirit that you can tell when there's a draw made on what you carry.

See, the Holy Spirit is in you, but he's in you for your sake.

He rests upon you for everybody around you.

He's in me for my sake, he's upon me for yours.

When the Spirit of God manifests himself upon his people, it's because he has assigned us into a situation where an impossibility must bow.

I want to stir up, provoke, cultivate appetite for that today.

I believe that you and I are going to see things in the days directly ahead that we've only dreamed of, and perhaps some things we've never even dreamed of.

Things where we see the Lord use us.

I don't know.

I grew up at a time when I thought it was just, you know, the significant, you know, the big name people that God would use, and I just didn't qualify.

I remember reading about all these heroes of the faith, and I didn't have any of their encounters, any of their experiences.

And I always thought it was just for the specialist.

And the Lord has made it very clear that the specialist equips the rest of us so that as John Wimber would say, everybody gets to play.

Everybody gets to be involved.

So this that I want to talk to you about today is this presence of the Lord that is in every person and why he's there.

He's there to comfort and encourage, but he's also there for the invasion into the impossible.

Why?

Because the kingdoms of this world are becoming the kingdom of our God.

He gave us a mission, and I hope that you see this clearly.

The backbone of why we are left on planet earth is found in what is referred to as the Lord's Prayer.

It's not really the Lord's Prayer because in it is the confession of sin and he didn't have any sin.

But in that prayer is, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

He didn't give us that assignment to keep us busy.

He wasn't trying to think of some nice Christian activities to keep us occupied so that we'd just stay busy and not be tempted, not fall into sin.

He gave us a military assignment because of his intention to demonstrate his goodness, his presence, his glory, his purposes into the earth so that all could taste and see that the Lord is good.

Taste and see.

Taste what you'll experience, you'll perceive.

You'll taste, and then you'll see.

The goodness of God is beyond anything we could possibly imagine.

I don't think it's possible to exaggerate his goodness.

It's beyond anything we can wrap our head around.

But it's not bigger than what we can experience.

So I see Jesus as the woman touches his garment.

I see Paul as in Acts 19, where they would take pieces of cloth from his body and they would send it to a sick person, a diseased person, and that person would be healed or delivered.

I see Peter's shadow.

They would line people up who were diseased in the streets as he would walk by and they would be healed.

I hope you ache for that.

I hope you hunger for that.

I hope that I hope that the cry of your heart, like mine, would be that God would do something so significant that as he rests upon you, everybody around you is impacted by that presence.

How is it a shadow can heal anyone?

There's no substance to a shadow.

Your shadow will always release whatever overshadows you.

Whatever you give place to.

Think about this.

This world is filled with a lot of good things, but a lot of crazy stuff, too.

This world is filled with so much unbelief and so much chaos and so much animosity, you know, towards the things of God.

This world is filled with a lot of fear, a lot of tension, a lot of strife.

Heaven is filled with absolute perfect confidence in God.

There's not even shadows there, light is shining everywhere at once.

So there's heaven is filled with this absolute delight and confidence in God.

And you and I will always, in our countenance, reflect the nature of the world we are most aware of.

If we live overwhelmed by the difficulties of this world, we will project that.

If we live with our souls anchored in the reality of God's presence, in the reality of his promises, you and I will always release that into the world around us.

Your shadow will always release whatever overshadows you.

I look at these stories and it just makes me hungry that God would do something significant in that way in my life.

And I pray that today for each one of us.

Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Mark chapter 1.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

I want to read a portion of scripture here about the baptism of Jesus.

The water baptism of Jesus is uh is a stunning account to me.

John is preaching and he's telling people about the one who's going to follow him, who's he's not even worthy to untie his shoes.

And he announces, you know, I baptized in water for repentance, and he baptizes in the Holy Spirit in fire.

And then he looks and he sees Jesus.

And he stops.

He says, Look, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Jesus walks up to him.

He had to be one of the most frightening moments of anybody's life.

The Lamb of God, the perfect one, walks up to John and asks John to baptize him.

John needs the baptism Jesus offers, but couldn't have it because it was after John's life and ministry.

It was after the death and resurrection of Christ.

And that was the Holy Spirit baptism.

So he comes to John and he says, John, permit it right now.

Would you baptize me?

And it's awkward to baptize the one who is perfect into a baptism of repentance.

But it shows that Jesus really is the ultimate intercessor to stand in our shoes, if you will, and represent us in that water baptism, to intercede on our behalf.

John knew he wasn't qualified to baptize the Son of God.

But sometimes when you're willing to do what you're not qualified to do, that's what qualifies you.

And so he baptized in this passage, verses 9 and 10 of Mark chapter 1.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

And immediately coming up from the water, he saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove.

John's Gospel adds a phrase when it says the Holy Spirit came upon him in the form of a dove, says, and remained.

I love that phrase because it implies that, well, doves are skittish.

They are easily frightened, easily spooked.

And Jesus lived in such a way that nothing ever caused that dove, if you will, to leave him.

That dove represented the Holy Spirit that rested upon him.

If in the natural I had a dove sitting on my shoulder and I was walking around this room, how how would I move about this room if I if I didn't want to frighten him?

The most common answer, of course, is carefully.

But I'd rather describe it this way: every step is with the dove in mind.

Every movement is to protect and celebrate what I value most, and that is the Spirit of God who rests upon me.

Jesus was baptized in water, and in Luke's gospel it emphasizes this.

He came up out of the water, and from that point on, we see him moving in power.

He went into the wilderness, there was a great trial there.

He came out with the power of the Spirit of God.

The point is this Jesus came to earth sent by the Father, having been commissioned by him, and that was where he came with authority.

But how many of you know we need authority and power?

Where did he get power?

He got power in the encounter.

And it's the same for you and me.

We walk in authority to the degree we've said yes to the primary mission of God for your life and for mine.

We say yes, then we are commissioned into the mission of God, and that's where authority is lived out.

But the second element is the issue of power.

And Jesus himself, while he came commissioned by the Father, he still needed the encounter with the Spirit of God to walk in great power.

And so do you, and so do I.

The continuous, ongoing encounter with the Lord.

And as we wrap it up in a few minutes, I'm going to pray that the Lord would actually set you up, would set me up for increased encounters with him, that we might even more effectively walk in power and demonstrate who he is to this world around us that is hurting so much.

And Jesus carries every answer.

And that Spirit of God lives in you and me and longs to be expressed to bring healing and order to the world around us.

When he said, pray like this, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

It wasn't to keep us busy.

It wasn't just to keep us in Christian activity.

He was actually giving us an assignment, a commission to see the kingdoms of this world yield and become an expression of the kingdom of God.

It's a very practical plan from his point of view.

And it's your prayer and it's mine.

Prayers to be followed by actions.

Jesus in this prayer says, excuse me, not this prayer, this water baptism experience.

It says that when he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens parting.

And that that word parting sounds like a real gentle moving of clouds, but it's actually a very violent term.

It's a word that is used in Matthew chapter 27 to describe the veil in the temple that was torn from top to bottom when Jesus died.

Matthew 27 · chapter mention

If you remember at the death of Christ, the veil in the temple, that veil they say was four to six inches thick.

And it was torn from God's end towards man.

It tore at the death of Christ.

But in the same verse, it describes the rocks around Jerusalem that were split in half.

So if you can imagine the tearing of a veil in a temple and the tearing of rocks, that's the word used to describe the parting of clouds.

Because you remember the devil himself is called the prince and the power of the air.

That which covers the earth with darkness.

When the Spirit of God was released upon Jesus, that veil or that cloud was violently ripped open so that the Spirit of God could come freely upon Jesus and then upon you and upon me.

The picture's incredible.

You and I live under an open heaven.

We live under an open heaven.

It's the inheritance you have as a believer.

And it's not because you and I are so wonderful, so perfect, and so great.

It has nothing to do with that.

It's entirely grace.

It's the design of God that the Father, it says, longs for fellowship with the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

So think of it this way: the Father in heaven longs for fellowship with the Spirit who is in you.

What demonic power can block the fellowship between the Father and the Spirit?

Not possible.

It's not going to happen.

Not going to happen.

And so what you have over you is literally an open heaven.

Now we pray for this for our cities, our nation.

The open heaven is where there's just such a liberty and a freedom.

You can hardly tell the difference between the natural and the supernatural.

It's a beautiful combination that we see in God's heart for us to experience in this lifetime.

It's the kind of thing you see and you realize when people get healed by shadows.

I've seen people healed by shadows.

I've seen them healed by touching the clothing, by sending the piece of cloth somewhere, by making the decree, the declaration.

It's little moments where God gives us a taste of what a true, full, open heaven looks like over a region.

I believe it's the heart of God for you, for me.

I believe it's the heart of God for Dallas, for Texas, for the United States.

I believe God has a heart to see his presence and power so manifest and so demonstrated that people live in the atmosphere of heaven on earth.

It's not a theory, it's not nice, cute words to keep us occupied mentally.

It is the affection of God to intersect the two so that one has influence over the other.

That's the heart of God for you.

That's the heart of God for me.

And I see this term, the heavens parting, this violent action.

Most closed heavens for the believers between the ears.

It's the way we think.

When you see a problem in your neighborhood or in your city, and you personalize that, that you live under a closed heaven, you're empowering something that's a lie.

When you believe a lie, you empower the liar.

My encouragement to you today is to take time to recognize the gift that's been given to you called Holy Spirit.

And I don't mean for ministry.

I I love to see him work in power.

I love I love to hear the inspired prophetic songs and all the things that he does.

I I love all of it.

But I'm talking now one-on-one when there's no ministry to be involved.

That's where I want to know him.

I don't want to know him so that he'll use me.

I want to know him so that I'll know him.

And whatever he does with that relationship is entirely up to you.

I don't I don't care.

I don't care if the name's in the headlights or spotlights or never heard of again.

Makes no difference to me.

I just want to know him because I have the greatest privilege ever offered to a person in history, and that is to come and to know God.

So here's this Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit who knows the ways of the Father.

He searches the secret, the deep things that are in the heart of the Father.

The Father has thought about you since before conception.

And the Holy Spirit searches those thoughts to reveal them to you at the right time.

And every one of those thoughts is for your welfare, not your calamity.

Every one of those thoughts delight his heart over you and why he made you.

This notion that we live in a punished climate, that we live in this darkness and the world around us is oppressing us is absolutely nonsense.

Absolute nonsense.

All you do is say, Jesus.

All you do is lift your hands and give thanks.

Just moments of turning on a light and darkness flees.

Redirecting my heart.

When I go to sleep at night, I turn my heart towards the Holy Spirit.

Not to pray, because I I want to sleep.

I don't want to pray.

I don't want to pray for anybody.

When I'm ready to go to sleep, I want to go to sleep.

I'm not there to worship and sing songs.

You can do that.

When I get into bed, I want to go to sleep.

So, but this is what I do.

I turn my affection towards Him so that as I go off to sleep, I literally I'm engaged.

I'm I'm in I'm embracing, if you will, the presence of God, the face of God over my life.

And in that context, I like to go to sleep.

You'll have a better day if you have a better night.

Why don't you stand?

I want to pray for you.

I want to pray as though this were some kind of a commissioning service.

I feel like I mean this is such an amazing ministry, such an amazing church.

I'm not sure if you know how amazing you are.

But also feel like it's a powder keg.

It's about to if you think it's exploded now, wait.

I I feel like the Lord is going to release something beyond what any of us have ever seen.

Yeah, shadows need to heal again.

Water longs to be walked on.

Diseases are waiting to hear the name Jesus through your lips.

The impossible situations, broken homes, bankrupt businesses.

They're just waiting for a kingdom-oriented person who knows their God to step into the middle of a situation and say, not on my shift.

Not on my shift.

Put your hands in front of you.

I just want to pray for divine encounters and a real sense of commissioning.

Father, I'm so glad.

I'm so glad that you let us come together today, that you let me be a part of this great church's celebration.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Father, put a mark on each person.

Let each person be marked by the presence of the Spirit of God.

In a way that's new, a way that's deeper and more profound.

Demonstrate your purity, demonstrate your power.

Let this city, let this nation feel the effect of what's being released over this house in these days.

Set people up for divine encounters, middle of the day, middle of the night.

Set us up for an increased encounter with you.

And then we pray that prayer.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Your kingdom become manifest here as it is there.

I pray all of this for the honor of the name Jesus.

Amen.