Pursuing His presence

When I first became a Christian I realised that if I spent some time worshipping, then the atmosphere around me changed - I would start to sense the presence of the Lord. God took me out of work for three months and so I had the time to worship a lot, every day, and learnt that the more I did this the quicker I was entering His tangible presence - and that I was developing faith in that area to keep entering God's presence time and again.

I would start with thanksgiving, then I would move onto praise - praising Him for his attributes and power. Then after a while the anointing would change and I would worship - and the presence of God would really start to increase. I practised this for a long time until I started to feel God's presence continually. I believe that this is a key part of abiding in Christ.

At the time I had a major orphan spirit and therefore a major striving, performance-orientation problem. I was always trying to please God, and seeking Him from a place of lack, and this even affected my worship. I thought I had to worship a certain amount each day to 'earn' His presence.

Free Gift

Since then I have learnt that enjoying His presence is a free gift for everyone - purchased on the cross for us 2,000 years ago. I didn't need to perform for it. It is His good pleasure to give us the Kingdom. Just like we receive forgiveness as a free gift, so also we receive every other blessing as a free gift, including walking in His presence. The manifestations only increase when we worship because our faith starts activating what we already have by grace.

I have learnt that, whether we feel it or not, we are in His presence continually. The Bible tells us that we are seated in the Heavens with Christ, united in our spirits with Him. We are one with Christ! We are in Christ, and He is in us! Therefore, our spirit man is both on earth but also in heaven at the same time, in Christ - on that basis we are continually in the atmosphere of heaven whether we know it or not. We are always in the Glory.

Receiving these truths by faith helps one to walk in His presence continually.

Our calling as believers is to love Jesus with all of our hearts, and to walk with Him in relationship. I want to hear His voice, feel His presence, know His heart and see His face. Seeking the presence of the Lord is one aspect of loving and walking with Jesus.

Atmosphere Shifting

Once I learnt to walk in His presence continually, the Lord taught me how to shift atmospheres. I went to a park early one morning by myself and sat on a bench and sang over the park for about 40 mins. When I'd finished, the atmosphere over the side of the park I was in shifted - light and glory filled the park. It was incredible. I then met some friends and we did some prophetic evangelism in the area and it was so much easier to do because the atmosphere had already shifted.

Another time I was sent to work in an extremely difficult organisation. It was the hardest atmosphere I had ever experienced, with the most demoralised people I had ever met. The air was rock hard. But God reminded me of the ark of His presence - which had been captured by the Philistines and taken into their pagan temple which was used to worship their God Dagon. The next morning the priests came to the temple and Dagon had fallen on his face. They stood him up again. The next morning he had fallen down again and his head and hands had fallen off! Idols fall when His presence is brought into an area.

So the next day I went up to an empty meeting room and started praising Jesus and worshipping and exalting and giving Him high praise, until I felt something shift. It only took 30 mins. I then went downstairs to my desk, and an hour later I felt the atmosphere break and I got Holy Spirit laughter at my desk for a couple of hours. The next day someone came into the office and said that the atmosphere had changed. After that the other employees started being more sociable and friendly and the whole place opened up.

When we host and usher in the presence of God, we can powerfully affect the atmosphere around us.

The enemy has been disarmed!

The good news of the gospel includes Christ’s triumph over Satan at the cross.

“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”(Colossians 2:15)

How did Jesus disarm the powers and authorities? The previous verse says:

“And you ... He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:13-14)

The ‘handwriting of requirements’ against us was the law! As long as we were under the law, our relationship with God was based on our performance (rather than Christ’s). And because mankind fell short so often, the law became a curse to us.

While we were enslaved by the law, Satan (the accuser of the brethren) could accuse us day and night before God.

But Jesus came and smashed this arrangement! Jesus, the perfect lamb of God, came down to earth as a man and fulfilled the law in its entirety! Because of this, we have been freed from the law, and the sin which it empowered! We’ve been freed from having to perform for God!

We are now in Christ, and assume His righteousness. There is now no condemnation in Christ! We don’t need to earn brownie points from God. Our good works are now merely a response to His love revealed on the cross. We love because he first loved us. How sweet it is to have a relationship with the Father based on what Christ did for us, and not through our own works. We have nothing to prove. Jesus did it all!

So when Satan comes to accuse – his mouth is SHUT! He can’t say anything to us. His weapon of accusation has been stripped from him. He is powerless to condemn. He has been disarmed! When he came to tempt Jesus, he found nothing in Him, and now that we are in Christ, he can find nothing in us!

We are no longer under the power of the enemy, law, sin or death. Death has been swallowed up in victory.

Authority Reclaimed

After dying for us, Christ rose from the dead and sat down at the right hand of the Father.

“He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things in subjection under His feet.” (Ephesians 1v20-23)

The enemy is under his feet! Crushed beneath those sandals!

But there’s more: God has also raised us up in Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly places! (Ephesians 2v6). Therefore, any time we bump into the enemy we are looking down on him from our throne! We are peering down at his bald spot.

Victory is hard-wired into our new creation DNA.

In Christ, we have authority over the enemy. The original authority that God gave Adam in the garden, and which was lost to the enemy at the fall, was reclaimed by Christ at His resurrection, and He then passed this authority back to those who are His.

The enemy has nothing on a Christian! We can turn our backs on him in rest, knowing that we are covered, just like Smith Wigglesworth did when the devil appeared to him in his room. “Oh, its only you” he is reported to have said, turning over in his bed and going back to sleep.

Nothing can pluck us from our Father’s hand! (John 10v29) Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. What joy there is in this. Let us rest in the finished works of the cross, assured of our triumphant union with Christ.

Humility - a beautiful thing

Humility is an attractive quality.

True humility involves a total surrender to God. It is rooted in a deep, deep confidence in God - in His authority and in His thoughts towards us. It is a place of trust. It's knowing that Christ himself is our reward.

Humility allows a person to be themselves and walk in their God given identity. False humility is based on shame and hiddenness.

I asked the Lord about humility and he told me that it was like a sword - I got the word 'Excalibur'. I looked up Excalibur and read that it was the sword that King Arthur used, and that when he used it, he could never be defeated in battle. As long as you walk in humility, you can never be defeated.

'God gives grace to the humble but resists the proud' (James 4v6).

The opposite of humility is pride. I sometimes wonder how often Christians or ministries are resisted by God (but mistake this resistence for the enemy) due to pride.

A common manifestation of pride is self-pity, a dangerous trap for a Christian to fall into. Self-pity can rob a person's perspective, their joy and ultimately their destiny. If you are trapped in self-pity it is very difficult for other Christians to reach you. It is a self-made prison with a key on the inside of the cell.

Self-pity closes the door on grace. I've had to struggle against self-pity due to some recent personal events. But I've learnt to push out of it fast. The best way I know of doing this is thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving open the gates of the Kingdom within us. The power of thanksgiving is that it comes from a position of humility. As we start to give God thanks then the gates of grace open for us. Even five minutes of thanksgiving can be extremely powerful!

Watcher angels

Occasionally I have sensed an angel standing near to me in a church service. But a while ago I saw a spirit-being with my natural eye walk down the stairs of a house I was staying in. It was a shadowy figure which had the outline of a human being. I assumed it was a demon. A couple of others in the house saw it also. No big deal.

Months later I was in a homegroup with a prophetic minister in the States and she told us that she had seen exactly the same thing in her house, but that the Lord had revealed to her that they were ‘watchers’.

I'd never heard of these before. Yet watchers appear to be a certain class of angel. They are mentioned in the book of Daniel.

In Daniel 4, king Nebuchadnezzar tells Daniel about a dream. The king had seen "a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven." This "watcher" had proclaimed "a decision" that had been made:

Daniel 4:17: "This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men."

Daniel interprets the dream to the king, explaining to him that because of his pride, he will have to live for seven years with the animals.

The passage suggests that watchers carry some authority.

Watchers are also mentioned in the Book of Enoch as a group of angels that God had commissioned to watch over the earth. The Book then goes onto say that 200 of them fell and rebelled against God.

Outside the Book Enoch, there are scant other references to this class of angel.

So I believe that I may well have seen a watcher angel. Why the Lord opened my eyes to this I have yet to find out.