Practicing the presence of the Lord deepens your intimacy with Him. Spending time with God is fuel for the engine of your soul that drives you to know Him (hunger), to walk with Him (faith), and to worship Him (love).
As you give the Lord your time, the Holy Spirit captures you with His Word. You find that when you read the Word, it comes right off the pages and takes hold of your heart. You are drawn into it like never before. Your hunger and faith explode to new levels, and this explosion creates new levels of spiritual growth.
Because you give your time, the Holy Spirit uses His Word to draw you in. When that happens, it’s like an ignition that revs up your soul with combustible power. You are taken into a world you didn’t know existed. When you open your heart and open your Bible, you unlock the exciting new universe of God’s Word.
You can now go into deeper levels of the Word of God, as the Word of God begins to saturate you. His Word begins to cleanse your mind and purify your heart.
“…as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word …” (Eph. 5:25–26, NKJV).
When hunger, faith, and love begin to manifest in your life, they trigger the Word in you at a deeper level than before. That’s what Paul meant by “the power that worketh in us” (Eph. 3:20, KJV). It triggers the Word. The Word ignites communion and fellowship. In turn, communion ignites worship. The three ignitions of the Christian life are the Word, communion, and worship. Once they are activated, they intensify, being ignited by each other. This combustion begins a kind of chain reaction in your spirit, reigniting again and again as you remain in the presence of the Lord.
Amazing things happen when you move deeper in the Word. First, there is a quietness that invades and permeates you. It is a solemn, sacred experience. The abiding anointing stills the soul, while the empowering anointing stirs the soul. Second, moving deeper in the Word creates depth in your communion with the Lord. Third, worship erupts on a level you’ve never known before. Deep communion ignites dynamic, explosive worship!
When worship erupts, God’s presence manifests and becomes tangible to us. His dunamis power begins to work in us, bringing us to that place Paul talked about in Ephesians 3:20 when he said, “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” That tangible presence of the Lord begins to transform you into His image.
As you practice the presence, three things happen:
– God increases your hunger, faith, and love for Him.
– Power explodes in you, bringing you into the depths of the Word where the Lord reveals Himself to you.
– Dynamic worship in the Spirit ignites and brings the transformation of the Lord into your life. Now you are transformed from glory to glory. The transformation from your image into the Lord’s image begins at this point and will be complete when we see His precious face on that glorious day!
Developing deep fellowship with God is imperative, yet it seems so basic that many Christians overlook it. Please learn this: You cannot afford to neglect spending time with God. This is where you develop a deep fellowship with Him. It is essential because it builds a mighty foundation under you. When God begins to use you in your call to Christian ministry, that foundation of fellowship is your anchor. You are built upon the rock, Christ Jesus. You’re not built upon sinking sand. That daily time of deep fellowship is building your life on the Lord and His Word.
Eventually the Lord will begin to trust you with the empowering anointing for ministry. Because you’ve given Him your time and grown through divine Word revelations and intense worship, God’s presence is tangible in your life. That’s when God says, “I can trust you,” and He anoints you with the empowering anointing of Acts 1:8. Then the gifts of the Spirit come alive because of the empowering anointing upon your life.
Worship is so intense, it ignites the Word; then the Word ignites revelation and worship, and it just keeps going back and forth in a spiritual chain reaction. This chain reaction is what brings you into a place of total transformation where God begins to re-create your image into His.
The preceding was excerpted from chapter 5 of Benny Hinn’s book Mysteries of the Anointing (Charisma House, 2022). For more information or to order the book, please visit MyCharismaShop.com.
Pastor Benny Hinn is known around the globe as a noted evangelist, teacher and the author of best-selling books, including Good Morning, Holy Spirit; Prayer That Gets Results; Blood in the Sand; and Lamb of God. His television program, This Is Your Day, is among the world’s most-watched Christian programs, seen daily in 200 countries. His popular website and ministry app reach millions of people every single day in areas of the world that may not otherwise hear about the gospel. Through his ongoing multimedia outreach, Pastor Benny continues to take the message of God’s life-saving and miracle-working power around the globe, and to go “into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).
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