Do you know what I want most as a believer? More and more of the presence of God.
Of course, the day I stand before Jesus, I want Him to look at me with a smile and say, “Well done.” But while I’m still here on the earth, I want more and more of His presence. The Word of God clearly states that we are to seek the Lord with all our hearts—not half, not two-thirds, but with all our hearts.
Seeking God with our whole hearts requires time. The tangible presence of God is what we’re after in our walk with Him because the presence of the Lord Jesus nourishes, protects, strengthens and empowers our inner man. But it only becomes a reality when we spend time with Him. Time is the price we pay. God will not show up, His presence will not become tangible, if we do not set our hearts on giving Him our uninterrupted time.
Another key to unlocking the door to a life alive with God’s presence is placing your focus upon the Lord. We cannot have divine communion and human communion at the same time—we absolutely cannot. I cannot stress this enough—you cannot pollute the waters of communication with the Lord and expect to get a pure drink of His presence. He will not allow it. He wants your full and undivided attention, your whole heart. If something sidetracks you, He will hold back or pull away altogether, and regaining His trust will be very difficult.
God will not share His time. For example, you’re in the presence of God, and the phone rings, so you stop and answer it. The Lord will not manifest His presence if you answer that phone. The flow of communication will be disrupted by the interruption. He will hold back until you finish what you have to do or say, and you will have to make an effort to get back to the place where you were before you answered the phone. You will have wasted time by cutting the line of communication with God in favor of a line of communication with another human being.
Our God is a jealous God. He wants all the time that you put aside for Him. When you say to the Lord, “This is Your time,” He wants all of it. He wants every minute of it. Every second of it belongs to Him. He will not manifest His presence if someone knocks on the door and you answer it. The God we serve is jealous. You must stop the distractions that will steal your focus from seeking the Lord with your whole heart.
Spending at least an hour a day with the Lord builds your relationship. It’s like spending time with your spouse or a friend, whomever you build a relationship with. You get to know them more and more because you’re spending time together. When you’re trying to spend time with someone you love and that time gets interrupted by someone else, you get irritated because your alone time was cut short. You didn’t get to connect as deeply as you wanted. The same is true when your time alone with the Lord is chopped in two.
I cannot overstate how important it is to build upon this daily. I find that if I miss a day, I go backward; I’m not at the same place I was before I missed my time with Him. The more I spend time with Him, the quicker I get into His presence; the less I spend time with Him, the slower I get in.
Sometimes you miss your time with God because something comes up and your schedule changes that day—you’re traveling, or something distracts you. But you have to decide that nothing and no one will prevent you from having time with the Lord. I typically spend time with the Lord at 1:00 p.m., but if I miss that time, I’ll do it at night. God is not concerned that you missed a specific time. He is concerned that you missed the day. Don’t go to bed without giving the Lord the time that belongs to Him.
How to Spend Your Time With God
Once you decide to spend time each day in the presence of the Lord, you may wonder what you’re supposed to do during that time. Many people assume I spend the majority of that time praying. I spend much of my time waiting upon the Lord and worshipping. I wait upon the Lord to quicken me (Ps. 80:18). It might surprise you to read this, but I have come to believe that prayer in and of itself is not necessarily powerful. After all, religious people pray. Even well-meaning Christians try to put a spiritual label on things they are doing in the flesh, even spiritual practices such as prayer, fasting, and praise.
The problem is, there is no power in those things when they are done in the flesh. There is only power in the presence of Jesus. When we commune with the Lord, there is power. As we spend time with Jesus and He becomes real to us, there is real power.
There are two realms in which we operate: the realm of the flesh and the realm of the spirit. Only in the realm of the spirit will you see lasting results. There are no lasting results in the flesh; anything that seems like a result there is only temporary and will quickly disappear. What happens in the realm of the spirit is eternal. Second Corinthians 4:18 (NKJV) says, “while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
We are to walk in the Spirit. Galatians 5:25 makes this very clear: “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” In other words, we need to get in the Spirit and live there.
People don’t just naturally know how to live in the Spirit. They don’t know how to find their way to that secret place. The secret place is the world God wants us to live in. Psalm 91:1 (KJV) says, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” It doesn’t say, “He that visits the secret place.” That’s the problem. Too many people visit and then leave. Let’s take another look at this scriptural promise: “He that dwelleth in the secret place … shall abide.” That means it’s your address, your place of residence. It’s where you live.
The key is this: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isa. 40:31a). Waiting upon the Lord is the secret. Waiting upon the Lord is the bridge between the flesh and the Spirit.
How do we wait? The Bible says very clearly that we are to be still. God never said, “Be quiet,” because it’s not enough to just be quiet. He said, “Be still.” There’s a big difference. Quietness is soulish. Stillness is spiritual. If you allow it, quietness will lead you to stillness. When you are quiet long enough, God will bring stillness to your spirit man. Let God quicken you to stillness. The Holy Spirit manifests Himself when we are still. Stillness activates His power. Stillness releases His power in us. Stillness manifests the presence of God in us. Stillness leads us to a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the presence of the living God.
In Psalm 46:10, God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” He is saying, “Be still, and then you will know who I am.” He is saying, “Be still, and then you will know My presence.” We don’t know His presence because we do not want to be still. We think being still is hard because we have to sit there and do nothing. But we must change our thinking. We are not doing nothing because we are not waiting on nothing. We are waiting on the Lord. That’s not nothing; it’s a very important something. It’s an action, or rather, an act of faith. Waiting on the Lord requires you to believe that while it seems as if you are idle, you are not wasting time. In reality, you are actively communicating with the Lord.
Read this clearly: I am not saying you shouldn’t pray. The Bible says we can make our requests known. But there comes a time when we finish our prayer lists. What do most people do when they’re done asking God for things? They say amen and walk away. Imagine that—they are in active communication with the Creator of the universe, and they do all the talking and none of the listening! That is when they lose. That is the definition of visiting instead of dwelling. So when you finish your prayer list, be quiet long enough for God to quicken you, to ignite you.
When the Holy Spirit quickens you, He will bring you into the realm of the spirit. You cannot come in on your own just because you want to. You must be drawn in by the Holy Spirit. And how does it happen? “They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their [spiritual] strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles.” The moment your spirit strengthens, the Holy Spirit quickens you, and when He quickens you, He brings you in “with wings as eagles.”
Waiting upon the Lord disarms the flesh. It allows you time to forget about yourself and see Jesus. It dismantles the powers of sin. It gives you Holy Spirit strength in your inner man, and the flesh begins to lose its grip on your life. That is what Paul meant when he said, “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection” (1 Cor. 9:27a).
The minute you enter the realm of the spirit, something happens. Psalm 40:3a says, “He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God.” The realm of the spirit begins with a melody. You begin to sing songs in the Spirit. Now, you don’t have to have music to get into the Spirit, but it may help. There’s nothing wrong with playing worship music to change the atmosphere and keep you focused so you aren’t distracted by other things.
I like to play worship music as I wait upon the Lord. I find that the more often you connect with God, the less you need the music. Sometimes it can be a blockage because once you are in the flow, you don’t need anything from this earth. The only reason we need worship music is so we can calm our emotions, forget our troubles and unite with the Lord Jesus without distractions. But the moment the Holy Spirit quickens you, that is all you need. That’s when the Lord Jesus becomes real. The practice of the presence of the Lord begins when Jesus becomes more real to us than our problems, our families, our troubles and even more real than life itself. At that moment, it is all about Jesus.
The preceding is an excerpt from Benny Hinn’s Mysteries of the Anointing (Charisma House, 2022). For more information on Mysteries of the Anointing, check out MyCharismaShop.com. {eoa}
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