Soaking in HIS Presence

Thursday evenings 7:30 till ? usually about an hour.

•  Soaking prayer is simply positioning yourself to express your love to God. It is not intercession. It is not coming to God with a list of needs. It is the act of entering into the presence of God to experience His love — and then allowing the love of God through the Holy Spirit to revolutionize your love for Him.

  We play background music while we rest in His presence.

Intimacy in the Presence of God

Yet so many times when we come before the Lord in prayer we do so with our list of things that we want or need. Often we are the ones doing all the talking. But God wants to have communion with us, which is a two-way conversation.

“There must be time for Him, just to love Him and to have Him love us,” says Carol Arnott, “no other agendas, no shopping list or prayer requests. “We need to put loving Him first, because only as we are filled with His love do we have love to give away.”

“One of my pet peeves is seeing the way some people react when God’s presence comes strongly in a meeting. It is as though they can’t seem to stay and rest in that presence. They receive prayer and within five to ten minutes, they are on their way. God wants so much more than a five-minute fling.”

The Bible says “We have not because we ask not.” So asking is not a bad thing; it’s Scriptural. But there is much more to prayer than just asking.

Jesus taught his disciples to, “keep on asking, and you will receive…” But we often forget the next part of that passage where Jesus also said “keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:9, NLT)

We understand the ‘asking’ part of this portion of Scripture. So what are we to be ‘seeking’, and what is on the other side of the door on which we are ‘knocking’?

David gives us the answer to this question when he declares,

When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ My heart said to You, ‘Your face, LORD, I will seek.’ (Psalm 27:8, NKJV)

When we seek the Lord through soaking prayer, we are asking for the Holy Spirit to come and manifest His presence to us. Jesus taught that we can and should ask for the Holy Spirit to be a reality in our lives:

If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him! (Luke 11:11-13, NKJV, italics added)

When we are born again, the Holy Spirit comes and lives on the inside of us. However, we can also ask for an experiential manifestation of His holy presence in prayer. When we ask for the Holy Spirit, we receive the Holy Spirit!

Prayer is the key. Intimacy comes from relationship. One of the best ways to have intimacy with God is to spend quality time soaking in His presence.

Isaiah 64:4 says God “…acts for the one who waits for Him.” The Amplified version states, “God … who works and shows Himself active on behalf of him who earnestly waits for Him.” In other words, God is waiting on us to wait on Him.