Power of His Presence: 4 Steps to Overflow with Supernatural Power
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23 NKJV).
There are four short keys that I believe will aid us in abiding in His presence, the first of which is living for His presence.
We must wake up every day and remember that this day has been given to us, above all things, to enjoy our God. No matter what task is standing before us, we must adjust our soul’s disposition to see that our first priority is to live for His presence. George Muller wrote, “The first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord.”
The second key is to live in His presence. We must consciously abide in that inner place where the Spirit’s presence is known and experienced. To do this, we must live a collected life. The major attack upon the abiding place is scatteredness. The devil knows that if he can scatter your soul, it will not be still enough to plug into the socket of life. It will remain too self-conscious to become God-conscious. Our job is to simply plug into the wall. God’s job is the infusion of power.
Infusion is when the properties of one become useful in another. It is when two different things become one. To live in His presence, we must remain settled in Him by worship and surrender. If we feel the scattering of the soul, we must turn within by worship and surrender till the soul is stilled and plugged into the infusion of His Spirit in our spirit—the residence of divine glory. Madame Guyon said, “When at any time the passions are turbulent, a gentle retreat inwards unto a Present God, easily deadens and pacifies them; and any other way of contending with them rather irritates than appeases them.”
The third key is to live around His presence. I suggest this to mean that we make every decision of our lives, moments, and days around the fact that we are living for, in, and by His presence. How many things that are eating our lives away on a daily basis would be set to the side if we looked at every decision in life from the desire to maximize our reception of God? This may strike you as a bit merciless, but it drives the point home with one hard wallop. Revivalist preacher Jonathan Edwards resolved to “never do anything [he] would be afraid to do if it were the last hour of [his] life.”
The fourth key is to live from His presence. Our counsel, words, preaching, life, and presence will carry life if they issue from a life that is living in the presence of God. We must remain in His presence, consciously and experientially, and allow everything that we are to flow from that river within. If we make Him our fountain, then He shall flow through every stream.
Because of God’s call upon my life to bring the Church into a deeper experience with the life of God, I am constantly criticized as a “sunshine and rainbows” preacher. Ministers who are older, wiser, and more constant in the faith than myself have come up to me and said, “There is coming a day when God will leave you to yourself and the enemy, and there you will find out what you are truly made of.” One older saint said to my father when they saw the burning love the Spirit poured out in my soul at the beginning, “He will come down with the rest of us after a while.” Perhaps they are right. At the time of this writing, I am thirty years in the Lord, and maybe I am too young and naïve to understand “abandonment” times. But all I know and preach is that He “prepare[s] a table before me in the presence of my enemies” (Psalm 23:5 NKJV).
No matter what surrounds me, I can have sweet communion with Him. If He had to leave me to test me, then that would mean that He was seeking to fashion me into something apart from Himself. If the gospel is that He would afterward abandon me to see if I can make it on the power of human resolve apart from dependency on Him, apart from His empowering presence, then it would not be a gospel of union with God.
I heard an old saint preach that if a Christian cannot find comfort in God in his darkest hour, then the gospel and the Spirit are a farce. I don’t buy it. I need Him and the sweet meals He prepares for me right in front of an enormous army of devils salivating for my soul.
He “anoint[s] my head with oil,” smearing His own substance upon me (Psalm 23:5 NKJV). The dripping of His oil and the fragrance of His ointment are continually upon us. Notice that the anointing follows the table; we eat of Him, receiving Him internally, and then He rests upon us externally. I once heard an amazing man of God say that the presence of the Lord is internal while the anointing of the Lord is external. David expounded upon this with the next statement, “My cup runs over” (Psalm 23:5 NKJV). When the presence of the Lord fills the inner man, it will begin to spill over and onto the outer man, just like a cup that is being filled when it overflows the sides and covers the outside. This Shepherd is so good! He lets us rest, drink, wash, eat, and then He overflows in us. The inflow creates overflow, which creates an outflow.
