Soaking in His Love
May 27, 2001
1. Over the past few week’s we’ve been looking at Paul’s deep passion to know Jesus
- I want to know Him…
- One thing I do, forgetting what is behind…
- 3:8 I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus
2. We’ve seen this in the life of David
- One thing I shall seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; to gaze upon His beauty and meditate in His temple.
- “When you said to me, “Seek my face”; with all my heart I said, “O Lord, Your face will I seek.”
- David not only had passion to know God but he understood that it was God’s passion to know Him… that God was, above anything else, calling David to seek His face in worship.
3. Looked at God’s warning to the Ephesian church in Rev. 2:1-7.
- Serving, sacrificial, persevering, discerning, wise, suffering church
- Seemed like the perfect church… influence by Paul, Timothy, and John (Mary died there)
- But in spite of these things… God had a serious problem… He didn’t need them to be a serving church… but was calling them to be a loving church.
- “I’ve called you to be lovers… but you’ve settled with being “workers”.
- And God would not allow them to go on just serving Him… He wanted their love… and so He tells them… “You have lost your first love” and you need to change this or else I will take your ministry away. For God, labor is no substitute for love.
- God knows that we can’t work our way into intimacy with Him… rather, it comes as we lay down our life and place ourselves in His loving presence.
- TEAM MISSION APPLICATION: Is your joy in LOVING Jesus or SERVING Jesus?
- I realized and continue to learn when to say “no” to the many things, which seem to require my time… and “yes” to the voice of my Father calling me to come away with Him and rest in the presence of Jesus.
4. This passion to know God and walk intimately with Him was shared by all those central people in Bible.
- Moses: After he led the Israelites out of captivity, he says, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you.”
- The Lord replies, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Then Moses says…
- “Now, Show me Your glory”
- While Moses had seen God’s glorious works, the glory he really longed for was God Himself. And what was God’s response to Moses’ heart to know Him more? A deeper perception of His abiding presence in Moses’ life. You see Moses felt He needed to climb the mountain to get to into God’s presence… but what God was saying now is that Moses could enter into the reality of His presence wherever he was.
- The important connection to make here is that we KNOW God and experience deeper intimacy in our relationship with Him to the degree that we rest in His presence.
5. Yet finding that rest is no small thing… we’re not a people who tends to rest well.
- By rest I’m not talking about ability to take naps… but a place of settledness where our hearts and minds are quieted in spite of the craziness of life.
- Yet so many things get in the way of that rest… things s/a
Busyness Hurts Stress from finances, work, or school
Struggles in relationships Undealt with sin. Tiredness Unforgiveness
- WHAT is in YOUR live that may be standing between you and experiencing deeper intimacy with the Father? Think of several things… perhaps during ministry time you’ll want to ask Him to help you with those things.
- You know, we don’t plan for our hearts to become distant because of these things… but in the midst of just living life, we can get so caught up in the doing that we forget to just “be” in His presence.
6. Bjorn… had a heart that melted toward God & loved His presence.
- I was challenged by Him and asked God to give me the same passion for His presence.
- I realized that I had b/c distant… looking back, I think the issues were tiredness. I asked God to stir in me a new hunger to know Him. “I thought you’d never ask!”
- And what I believe God began calling me to were times of “soaking prayer”. I didn’t call it that back then… but that’s what it was.
- God called me to that b/c He wanted access to me… so He could restore my strength, refresh my spirit, heal some hurts, and most of all, to lavish His love on me. 1John 3:1 says just this… that is it God’s desire to lavish His love on us.
7. What is soaking prayer?
- a time we set apart to simply “soak” in His presence, where we marinate in His love... so that His love and acceptance penetrates the deepest parts of who we are.
- Where we aren’t so much praying to God as we are posturing ourselves in such a way as to receive all that He has for us.
- Carol Arnott writes that soaking prayer opens up the heart and soul to Divine romance and intimacy.
- For me, soaking prayer means that I would get into my office at night, often after Joyce and the kids are asleep, turn off the lights, put on an instrumental, lay on the floor, and just receive from the Father. I try to do this at least a few times a week for about an hour or so... of course, the longer you marinate… the better it gets! Of course, we want walk in God’s presence every day… interacting and listening to Him all the time. But I tend to look at soaking prayer as a time set apart to go deeper.
- While there are no hard and fast rules regarding soaking prayer, there are several “steps” that we’ll generally walk through in order for us to really enter into that place of “soaking in His presence”
8. Fixing our hearts toward the Lord -1-
- As we posture ourselves to receive from the Lord, we need to ask the Spirit to help us turn our gaze (as David puts it) on the Lord. This is so important, especially for those more driven “type A” personalities, the idea of resting and soaking in God’s presence may seem all the more difficult. Soaking seems to fly in the face of the goal oriented, results driven person.
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- We’ve said that there are so many competing distractions. God doesn’t want us to sweep them under the table but to bring them to Him… accept His promise… “COME TO ME all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”
- Heb 4:10 says that if we want to enter into God’s rest, it means resting from works.
- Whether you need help focusing your attn away from daily grind, cleansing from sin, or healing from those struggles you’re facing, the Spirit is ready to give you that same rest He offered Moses. We can “caste our anxieties on Him” as Peter says in 1 Ptr 5:7, “because He cares for us”.
- There will be times when you’ll purpose to spend some time in soaking prayer, but the distractions continue to keep pulling you away. The more you suppress, the more you b/c preoccupied. Just ask God’s help in letting them go… asking Him to bring peace and stillness to our noisy hearts. THIS IS NOT SO EASY
- But by recognizing that it isn’t easy, a deeper sense of dependency on the Father is built, which, even though we didn’t have the kind of time we were hoping for, it is still a significant step in knowing Him more intimately.
- Bottom-line, when we don’t let those “so-called” setbacks discourage us from trying again, you’ll find that when the weight of the tyranny of the urgent presses in, you will increasingly find your response to be one of falling back on the Lord… waiting on Him as He takes those burdens and brings you into His rest.
- As we learn to rest in God’s presence, we enter into a grace-filled place where we learn to release our own will and flow into the will of the Father.
9. The second “phase”, if you will, has been called by Teresa of Avila the “prayer of the quiet”.
- Having to a large degree put away the distractions of life, we b/c quieted in our hearts… and that stillness allows us to listen to the things God has to say to us… and allows us to simply bask in His presence and love.
- It is in this phase that I often ask the Spirit to give me a deeper hunger for Jesus… though never leaving that place of listening.
10. The final aspect of soaking prayer is “spiritual deepening”
- More so that the prayer of the quiet, this phase is completely initiated by the Spirit… where we might get connect to the Lord, on a far more profound and deep level. It’s not a place we bring ourselves, nor is it a place the Father will always choose to take us.
- But it would be in this “phase” where the Father chooses to overwhelm us with His peace and love… where we would tend to receive more visions and clearer words from the Lord… where that 45 minute soaking time turns into hours.
11. Must overemphasize that our goal through “soaking prayer” should never be prompted by anything other than a heart to know Him more… and a simple desire to “BE” with our daddy.
- never to seek spiritual ecstasy or any particular kind of experience or manifestation… though we might have a powerful experience and God may chose to manifest… but it isn’t our motivation.
- Sole purpose is to be with God… giving Him access to all we are, the way a child would plop themselves on their daddy’s lap.
- A time and place where your worship can be expressed more deeply, adoring Him, while waiting patiently and humbly for His voice, taking in His perfect love.
12. This all starts with a desire to know Him more. If that is the cry in your heart… even if you feel as though you just can’t seem to get your spiritual life together, know that God will respond… and just as He did with Moses, He will lead you into His presence and into His rest.
So, where do we go from here?
- I want to challenge you all, to set apart one hour this week… we’ll call it a date night with God… where you can spend time soaking in His presence.
- To give you a clearer sense of what I am speaking about, let’s have a mini-soaking time now.
