We're talking about, communion with the Lord, and specifically we're talking about
prayer. And are there any protocols?
I mean I've heard people give different like step by step processes.
Sometimes it's a real clever alliteration. We've heard, you know, people use the
Lord's Prayer, or something from the Psalms, you know, "Coming to enter His gates with
thanksgiving, exhorts with praise." Is there -- is there something that you use
as sort of a -- a step by step protocol when you come before the Lord, "I do this, and
then this and then this," or is it always just spontaneous?
No it's -- there's always the same thing. It's spontaneous but at the same time there's
always the same things. For instance I'll go into the closet and the
disposition of relaxing is very important to be because it testified to the Lord.
That there's nothing I can do to affect anything. It is so often might and power that obstructs
spirit, but it's not by might, nor is it by power but by His spirit.
Prayer is the same. All the workings of God are this way.
And so I'll go in and I'll sit down and relax, push everything away.
I'm not here for any other reason than just to be with You.
Many times it is our agenda that blocks our experience of God.
And often it's, it's our remembrance of yesterday and our anticipation of tomorrow that block
our experience of God today. "The scatteredness of the soul blocks the
gates into the sweetness of the Lord. So all those things have to be addressed.
I'll sit down, I'll relax and make sure that I'm there for that one reason: just to be
with Him. And how do you do that?
You like talk to yourself? Yeah, I'll do it right now.
I mean like I'll sit down just like this and I'll just clear my mind by just looking at
Him: "Lord, I give You all my attention." And once I sense that all my attention is
there and not scattered I'll just begin to worship, "Lord, I worship You, and I give
you -- I give you praise, Lord." And even now I sense the sweetness of His
peace, and I resign myself to that peace, and just stay there until He leads by inclination
of some kind. He'll lead by vision, dream, vision or sight
of some kind, spiritual site. Or the scriptures, He'll lead me to a subject;
He'll give me some type of directive where He wants me to go.
And if I don't get anything I don't do anything. I just -- I'm okay with the nothingness of
God. And I had to make that okay because the natural
man is not that way. And when you say nothingness what do you mean?
Nothing's happening, according to the natural man.
No activity on the outside. Yeah, according to the naturalness of man
nothing is taking place right now. And it's highly offensive to Him, you know.
To -- to the natural man? To the natural man.
He's highly offended. He's like, "You're not doing anything right
now." You know, it's Martha: she yells at Mary.
She -- Mary never antagonized Martha; Martha antagonized Mary.
You know, she couldn't understand the significance of what she was doing: "You're doing nothing
right now." "You know, I'm doing all this stuff, and she's
left me to do all this stuff by myself." But the Mary disposition is just gazing and
listening. I love what you said one time when we asked
you about prayer. You said, "Prayer is much more about me listening
to Him than He listening to me." You know, and Witness Li said, "When you come
out of prayer say not what have I said to God but what has God said to me."
And it's wonderful that that's the way it is because it's so easy.
So I'll just sit and rest, listen, wait for a directive.
It's that simple. And that's the protocol for me.
Relax and worship, worship being the adoration of the soul, you know, "I look to you, Jesus."
So relax. Relax.
Worship. Worship.
And then is that it? And resign to His presence.
Just resign. Because as you're worshiping His presence
will come, I promise. It's just His promise.
And then you just drink. Then you just drink until there's a directive.
And after the directive comes you have to --
What do you mean -- what do you mean a directive? A directive: He'll show you where He wants
you to go, what He wants -- So He may lay something on your heart to specifically
address? Yeah, you'll have a desire -- He leads by
delight. So you have an incredible desire to look at
Psalms, or your specific thing that God has put on you to read or -- you know, whatever
it is. Sometimes people have a specific schedule
in reading that God has given to them, like He wants them reading Proverbs every morning.
So then you'll know it's time because you'll have a desire to go into the scriptures.
Or a directive, heart: "I want you to look at the heart."
So then you look at the scriptures -- I'll read the scriptures about the heart.
Or you'll have a vision, you know, "I see hay, I see hay right now."
So you begin to look into what hay would represent in the scriptures or whatever.
He'll give some type of a directive. And it will be by delight or vision of some
kind. Or hearing?
Or hearing, you'll hear something specifically from the Lord.
To me hearing and seeing after very, very similar because you don't really hear or see
regardless their perceptions. You'll perceive, may it be hearing, may it
be seeing; you'll have a spiritual perception. I think this is important because when you
say vision a lot of people immediately think an open vision where something plays out in
front of you like a movie. Right.
That's not necessarily what you mean. No, I've had that before though; I've had
one of those in my whole life. Yeah, but that's -- that's not usually the
way that it happens, right? Right, it came by trance, too.
That kind of vision came by trance. I was tranced; I was gone, you know.
It's like Brian Guerin says, "It's the Novocain for God to deliver something to you."
You're Novocain. That's an unusual experience.
That's unusual for me. There's some people that have it quite common
because that's their call. They're seers.
Brian Guerin is a seer, and that's how God speak to Him, many times.
But when you're talking about a vision in prayer --?
A vision in prayer for me most of the time is a mental sight that came from somewhere
else. I didn't conjure, I didn't pull it; it came.
You know, Quatch Min Ni said that, "There are evil thoughts and thoughts of evil, where
thoughts of evil grasp at your mind, evil thoughts you grasp for."
And in the same way visions are like that too.
Some people have visions where they're grasping for something, and that's not from the Lord.
You know, visions that grasp you, grab you, that's,
This is one way that I -- that I kind of help people understand: I'll tell them, "Imagine
right now a red and white beach ball." Close your eyes and look at it.
And turn it and see it, just see how the pattern converges and everything.
Do you see it? And when they can see it, like clearly, so
that's -- that's what it looks like when the Lord shows you something.
That's great, right. And the reason I like to explain that is because
people say, "Oh, well that happens to me all the time when I pray."
Maybe they didn't even know that they were having what you're calling a vision.
But the Lord often uses those things to lead and direct and sometimes profound revelation
comes through that, right? Yeah, so let me just throw in a checkpoint
here. Something that happened to me: I was seeing
constantly and writing it out and I was getting incredible messages specifically from the
Lord directive-wise, like things that I was supposed to do, dates and all that kind of
stuff. It got to the point where I started to look
for those things. And when I began to look for them I was having
a hard time experiencing the Lord. Because I was looking so much.
I wasn't relaxing; I was looking for something. And because of it, it obstructed my sweet
exchange with the Lord. And so finally when I did break into sweetness
He showed me a vision. And the vision was an eye on top of a pedestal.
And as I began to look at it the Lord spoke to me and said, "You have, you have worshipped
seeing. Stop it." Wow.
You know what I mean? So nothing can trump the presence --
It's coming to Him for something other than Him.
Yes, it's coming to Him for something other than Him.
On the back of my union book I put, "If you come to Him for something other than Him you
will miss Him." And you may get the thing that you want but
who wants something other than Jesus? You know, I'm not just after His hands; you're
not just after His hands, we want Him, His face.
We want to lay our head on His chest and feel that, the beating of His heart on our ears,
you know what I mean? Yeah.