So Eric, as we are talking about the inner life and about prayer, how do you deal
with things like doubt, or fear? I'm talking about spiritual things now that
arise in your heart while you pray. Maybe it's conviction of sin or whatever.
Yeah. These things that, that tend to rise to the
surface when we begin to touch spiritual things. How do you deal with them?
Well for me everything is begins and ends, with adoration.
If I enter Him through adoration I remain in Him through adoration.
So if I, I notice fear, anxieties coming up in my heart, then I know what I need to do.
I, I'm looking somewhere other than Him. Fear is giving attention to something other
than Him. Anxiety is giving attention something other
than Him. So I recognize when those feelings come, that
there -- there are feelings internally that come from the kingdom, and there are feeling
internally that come from being apart from the kingdom.
And these doubt, fear, these things, they have to do with not being connected to that
great rule on the inside of me. So I recognize somewhere He's not sitting
on the throne. Somewhere I've taken back something from Him.
So I choose right here, right now, to turn my attention to You and worship.
Worship has a way of destroying worry. Worship has a way of destroying the scatteredness
of the mind, you know. So worship really is the submission of the
mind, you know? It's giving everything over to God.
So how do I deal with these things that pop up constantly, or even constant temptation?
You know, constantly going to Him, constantly looking to Him, Jesus says, "He who comes
to me --" and the tense that He uses is keeps on coming.
We live coming unto Jesus. Our life of rest, which is a life free from
worry, a life free from anxiety, is a life of continually coming unto Jesus.
A life that has full -- it is full of doubt and full of anxiety, is a life that does not
consistently come unto Jesus. Jesus is the answer, period.
And what does that mean? Not just knowing about Jesus, but the living
individual that we live by. He is -- He's the source of life and He is
the answer to all the questions of life. And what does that specifically mean?
It means His presence and His person. Now you used a word that I love that you used
was "adoration". Yes.
But then you -- later on you used the word "worship".
Right. I understand you to mean those things are
synonymous. But I love the way that you use adoration
instead of worship because a lot of times when people hear "worship" they immediately
think music, they think of worship service, they think a band.
And when you say "adoration" it's a distinction. It says, "This is not about music, this is
not even about necessarily what word you're saying, this is a posture of the heart."
Is that correct? Oh definitely.
You see, the first mention of worship in the scripture is Abraham.
It's the first time we see worship. And the law first mentioned in the scriptures
is, "This is what worship is." We see it first in Abraham's life.
There was no song, no tambourine, no drums, no ibo, there was nothing there.
It was literally just offering up the thing that was most precious to him.
It was the surrender of himself to God: "Lord, do you want me to slay my son?"
"I will go to the heights and do it." "I give you all that I am."
And that's what worship truly is, adoration truly is.
Now, worship as music as a means by which we can express our affection to God, but to
confine worship to music is to enter a real, a real deception.
We don't need music. Music can be a means to be used, but adoration
in and of itself is simply defined by what we see in Abraham, and later defined by Paul.
It is your reasonable living sacrifice. It's laying your life down.
It is, "Lord, here I am, I give you all that I am."
Yeah, and it's a posture of the heart, not necessarily -- I'm making this distinction
for the person that's watching. Yeah, sure.
You're not necessarily saying that you've got to go out and obey and do something to
prove adoration. That would be the natural outflow.
Right. But in prayer the posture of your heart is
one that lays everything down, one of surrender and one of total focus on, on the presence
of the Lord. Yes, yes, the internal disposition of laying
everything at His feet. And that, you're saying, is the key to overcoming
fear, doubt, guilt, you know, all these things that may arise.
Yeah, see he's so bright that when you look at Him you can't see anything else.
When you enter into the cloud -- I once was coming to prayer here -- at 5:00 in the morning
I was driving through this city, and I -- there was such a big cloud on I-4 that when I actually
got into the cloud on I-4 I forgot that I was even in a city.
If the, if I didn't enter -- if I didn't see the city before I went into the cloud I would
have never known I was in a city because the cloud had shrouded the city.
And that's exactly what it's like going into the cloud.
Going into the glory of God, going into the face of the Lord, His presence, He blinds
you to all those things so that you can go to places of the world that is scary.
You can go into situations in this life that are harsh and still be victorious, not just
make it through, but actually be victorious by the, the brightness of His face or the
shrouding of His cloud. So at the rest of being redundant, if a person
says, "Look, when I go into prayer is starts out great and then I start wondering if I'm
really saved, and I start remembering things that I did a long time ago, and I, I suffer
with these things." "And it's a constant torment to me."
"What is the problem and how do we fix it?" Yeah, you just described self-consciousness.
And self-consciousness is removing your attention away from God at some point, somewhere this
is where the issue was. You turned your attention away from Him; you
started thinking about yourself, your sins. And look to Him, give Him all your attention.
The moment we look at ourselves we are no longer blinded by the brightness.
We actually see, with great clarity, all the problems.
But when we will look to Him, and give Him all of our attention that's when the brightness
blinds us. The radiance of the face of the Son of God
is all that a man needs in this life. May that look to Him actually become the same,
may become radiant, yeah.