Practicing His Presence

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Luke 10:38 Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.
39 And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet, and listened to his word.
40 But Martha was preoccupied with a lot of serving and came to Him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me.
41 And Jesus answered and said to her, Martha, Martha, you are wrapped up in many different cares and restless inside:
42 But only one thing is needed: and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her. [GBMV]

John 12:32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all [men] to me. [GBMV]

What is our highest calling and purpose in life? So many of us, we are wanting to find out what God’s purpose is for our life, what we are called to do, what we are supposed to devote most of our lives to do in working for the Lord. But how do we know what is important to the Lord? Now, I’d like to go back to an old creed.

I think it came from the Westminster Catechism or something they called it. In the early days, they laid out these statements and one of them was this, that man’s highest purpose and calling is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. You know that self-effort is built into human nature.

And we try to please the Lord with the things that we do. We think that doing the work of the ministry is a way of winning His favor. And so we make a lot of effort.

We prepare, perhaps by spending a long time studying, getting to know the word better, studying all the doctrines. But the greatest preparation actually to be used by the Lord comes when we spend time in His presence.

My Early Experiences in Ministry

Many years ago, when the call of God was still fresh in my life and I was very zealous for the Lord, I so wanted to just go into ministry.

I’d been in ministry in another country and we had to leave because of the political situation. And we came down here to South Africa and I no longer had a church. I no longer had a ministry position.

I had to just be an ordinary church member. And I so longed to get back to work for the Lord and to be involved full-time in ministering for Him. And as I waited on the Lord, I prepared my heart.

I’d hoped that they would give me an opportunity in the denomination that I’d been with, but they didn’t. They called somebody else instead and I was not given an opportunity. And so as I cried out to the Lord, the Lord told me the one day in very clear terms to leave that church and to leave behind possibly the only opportunity I may ever have to be recognized as a minister and to go back into ministry.

And so I now was without a church, without a ministry. Where do you start? Where do you start doing what you feel God’s called you to do? As I waited on the Lord for direction, I felt that I thought the Lord was telling me to go into full-time ministry on my own and to do it totally by faith and that He would open the way for me for ministry. And so the next big step that I took, which was rather drastic, is I resigned from my job and now I’d left my church and I’d left my job and I was at home, ready now to work for the Lord and to do the ministry that He’d called me to.

I was excited because I figured God was going to open the way for me, things were going to suddenly start to happen. People would come to me, I wasn’t sure whether I should advertise, whether I should start holding meetings, whether I should contact people that I knew. How do I go about the work of the ministry? I’m sitting here at home now, I’m not going to work and I’m not ministering, but yet this is supposed to be my job now.

So I said, Lord, what must I do first in ministry? And what He said to me startled me. He said, the first thing you must do is get to know me better. Okay, I figured I knew Him already, I heard His voice, I heard His call.

He taught me many things in the Word. He said, you don’t really know me and until you really know me, you’re not capable of doing the work of the ministry. Well, I kind of argued with the Lord, which is a bit stupid, but I was a bit arrogant and I said, Lord, doesn’t the Word say, if any man will not work, neither let him eat? So Lord, how can I expect You to provide my needs if I’m not working?

And He said to me, if you were working for an employer and your employer were to say to you, I want you to let go of the work that you’re doing and I want you to come and spend more time with me, does the employer not have that right? He said, well, I’m your employer now and I’m telling you, that’s what’s more important right now for me.

It’s not that you go out and do a whole lot of stuff in ministry or that you go and build anything, but that you get to know me better in a way that you’ve never known me before. Well, that was quite startling. I had all day free and so I had time to come into His presence.

I kind of started out by having, like you’d have three meals a day, I thought I’ll have three prayer times a day and just come into the Lord’s presence and I began to seek His face and, you know, the Lord began to reveal Himself to me. He began to speak to me in the Spirit, began to lead me into more of a prophetic realm of ministry, of revelation, of hearing from Him, of getting visions and seeing things. And if I’d never spent that time with Him, I would never ever have been able to succeed in the ministry that I did later or even that I’m doing now.

The Lord showed me that what is far more important than what we do for Him is that we be in His presence, that we become like Him and that as we become filled with His presence and we go out and we take that presence with us out into this dark world, we will take the light to shine in the darkness, we will take His love where there is only hatred out there, we will take His life where death abounds in this world.

Mary and Martha

And so I want to speak today especially about the importance of learning to come into and practice His presence. In this passage that we looked at, we see two women who both loved the Lord and had committed themselves to Him.

It was Martha who was very capable, very skilled and carried a lot of responsibility and to her the priority was to get everything organized and running smoothly. She was running the home, she was entertaining, she was doing all the necessary stuff. If you like, she’s a picture of somebody who’s very actively involved in doing the work of the ministry.

What an awesome woman. Boy, the Lord must have been thrilled to have somebody like that, that was ready to drop everything for Him and work herself to the bone just to please Him. But then she had the sister who seemed to be a lazy bum.

While Martha was running around cleaning the house, preparing the meals, doing all the things getting it done, Mary just sat there. I can imagine Jesus sitting there in the living room and He’s talking and there’s Mary sitting at His feet, looking up at Him and smiling and saying, oh, oh, He’s wonderful. Give me more Lord, give me more.

I want to hear everything you have to say. She was just totally taken up with Jesus and wanting to be with Him, to be in His presence, to hear His words, to feel His presence, to be saturated with His love. But Martha wasn’t very happy about that because, you know what, she was doing all the work by herself.

She didn’t mind doing the work but, you know, it’s not fair if I have a sister there that could be helping me with the work and we can get the work done. Because what is important? The work of the ministry is important. God has called you to what? He’s called you to do the work of the ministry.

Well, what does that involve? There’s so many different ranges of ministry. We’ve been training fivefold ministries for years. You may have been called to a prophetic ministry, to an evangelistic ministry.

You may have been called to a teaching ministry. What is important? That you devote yourself continually and to your greatest ability to doing exactly what He has called you to do. At least that’s the way we think.

And sometimes we have a sense of guilt if we’ve been sitting for too long on our backsides and not doing anything. Well, you know, the Lord’s called me to minister so I should do something. We feel in bondage somehow.

We feel, you know, I really should be working for the Lord. Here I had packed up my job and left the church. Surely I should be devoting every day exclusively to doing the work that He called me to do.

That’s what Martha was trying to do. But Mary, she just wanted more of Him. She just wanted more of His presence.

She wanted more of His love. She wanted just to listen to His words and let them sink into her deep. And when Martha came and complained to Jesus and said, Hey Lord, tell Mary to help me a bit.

Jesus said, Martha, Martha, you are so, you’re so busy and frustrated and restless within. But you know what? Your sister’s chosen the better part. What she’s chosen is far more important.

Martha was giving priority to the work. Mary was giving priority to His presence. And this is what I want to show you very clearly today that you don’t get caught in the same syndrome.

Better To Be Than Do

You see, in God’s economy, it is better to be than to do. What you do for the Lord is not nearly as important as what you are in Him. And when you go out to minister, what you do in ministry is far less important than what you take with you and who you are when you stand up to minister.

Now, Martha and Mary were both committed to the Lord. They both loved the Lord and the Lord loved them as well. So Jesus wasn’t condemning Martha.

He was just saying, Martha, it’s great what you’re doing, but Martha, Mary is doing something that actually right now is of higher priority. And this is what the Lord showed me in those months when I waited on Him. He said, “Getting to know me and my presence and my anointing and my power is far greater than you standing up and preaching and teaching and counseling and doing all the work of the ministry.”

Because when you get to know Me and you go out there, you don’t take all your knowledge, you don’t take all your natural ability, you don’t take all your self-effort, but you take Me. And what is it that the people need? They need Him. They need Him.

You see, until you can become more like Jesus, you’re not going to be very effective in ministry. Now, there’s been a modern trend in recent years that came out and it was a little saying that they eventually began to put on bangles and things that you’d put around your wrist and your neck. And it said, what would Jesus do? The idea was that wherever you go in life, whatever you do, you should ask yourself the question, if Jesus were here right now in my current circumstances, what would He do? And once I know what Jesus would do, that is the thing that I should do.

But you see, in the end, it becomes simply a performance. It’s not what Jesus would do. It would be who Jesus will be.

For who He is is far more important than what He does. You know, in the Old Testament, the God who manifested Himself to mankind and to Israel, His main characteristic was that He was a God who was there. He called Himself the I Am.

And the word Jehovah means I Am. The self-existent one. They added different titles to it.

Jehovah Rapha, I Am Your Healer. What He was was far more important because what He was automatically led to what He did. But you’ve got to start with being before you can do.

Jesus used the same term for Himself. And at one stage, He said, “Before Abraham was, I Am.” And they wanted to stone Him because He was claiming to be equal to God.

Jesus came to make that God known to us. He didn’t just come to tell us about the Father, but He literally came and represented the Father to the people. One day when Philip said to Him, Lord, please will you show us the Father? Jesus said, look here, Philip, look at me.

Have I been with you so long you still don’t know me? Look, Philip, here’s the Father right here. Look here. Right in me. Here is the Father. I came to present Him to the world.

Our Role To Present Jesus To The World

See, it is our role today to do the exact same thing that Jesus did.

It’s not to teach people about Jesus, but it’s to take Jesus to the people, to take His presence in the same way that He took the presence of His Father. We should be able to stand up as Jesus and say, do you want to see Jesus? Look right here. Look right here.

When Peter healed the man at the beautiful gate, the first thing he said to him was, look at us. We don’t have money, but what we do have, we’re going to give to you. They gave him Jesus.

That’s what they gave him. See, what do you have to give to people when you go out there, all highly qualified in your ministry training and your great knowledge of the Word and your great preaching and teaching capability? What you’re actually presenting is you. With Jesus’ help, of course.

Of course, I’m doing it with Jesus’ help. No, you’re not presenting Jesus. You’re presenting you.

Following Jesus’ Model

Big difference, isn’t it? So, folks, it’s important that we put His presence first. We must follow the model that He gave us. Not a model to copy, but we must become that same model.

And how do we do that? It starts by us fixing our gaze on Him first, being totally taken up with Him and with nothing else.

2 Corinthians 3:18 But all of us, with unveiled face [continually] looking at the reflection of the glory of the Lord, are [continually] changing [metamorphoo] into the same image from one [level of] glory into another [level of] glory, just like the glory that comes from the Spirit of the Lord. [GBMV]

You see, we are like glow-in-the-dark objects. I don’t know if you get these much these days, but I remember as a child, you’d buy these little necklaces and bangles and things that would glow in the dark. But the only way you could get them to glow in the dark was to go and lay them out in bright lights.

So, if you wanted your glow-in-the-dark stuff to really be bright at night when the lights went out, you’d go and leave them lying in the sun. And the bright lights and the radiance of the sun would go into those objects and they would absorb the light energy from the sun. So that when the light is removed, that light energy begins to now radiate outwards from them.

See, if you want to radiate His glory and His presence, you’re going to have to take time to spend in His presence. Not doing anything, not working, not making effort, but simply coming as through Mary, looking up at Him with admiration and thinking, Oh, I love you, Lord. Oh, I want more of what you have.

Oh, I want more of your love. You see, as you do that, all of the radiance of His glory begins to come into you. God’s plan for you as a believer is that you become like Jesus.

Romans 8:29 For those He knew ahead of time, he also decided ahead of time that they would be made into the same likeness as His Son, leading to Him becoming the first prototype amongst many of the same family line. [GBMV]

You see, folks, you are not called to work for Him. You’re actually called to let Him work through you.

I’m going to say that again. You’re not called to work for Him. You are called to allow Him to work through you.

Now, He promised and He said that we would do even greater things than what He did. But it’s only going to take place via the Holy Spirit. He said, when I’m going to the Father, I’m coming back as the Comforter.

And now, because of the Holy Spirit, we can now do greater things than what He did. But in the same way that He did it through the indwelling Father and Holy Spirit, in the same way, we can only do it through His indwelling presence. You see, Jesus finished His work on Calvary.

We cannot add to that. There’s nothing that we can do to improve it. It’s a finished and complete work.

But Jesus’ work in this earth is not done yet. And He’s called us to become partners with Him in it. You know how He completes the work now? He does it Himself still, but He does it through you.

And that’s what ministry is about. It’s not about you doing everything, but about you allowing Him to do it through you. Now, there’s only one way that this can be accomplished, and that’s by His presence inside of you and working outwards through you.

Our ministry must never be a performance to win His favor or to win the favor of other people.

What His Presence Brings

Now, what does His presence bring for us? Okay, when you have His presence, you will not have to try to get the anointing. Oh, I wish I had more anointing.

Oh, Lord, give me more anointing. Oh, Lord, anoint me. Have you ever prayed that prayer? Jesus is the anointing, folks.

He is the anointed one, and He’s inside of you. And everything that He had when He walked this world is inside of you through His presence. If He’s not present, you’ve got nothing.

You’ve got nothing. Now, you don’t have to try and get the anointing because He is the anointing. You don’t have to try to get wisdom because He is wisdom.

You don’t have to try and get righteousness or sanctification or redemption. He is these things.

1 Corinthians 1:30 But through him you are in Christ Jesus, who through God is made to us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: [GBMV]

Jesus is made to us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Everything that you need is in Jesus. You need healing? It’s in Jesus. You need deliverance? It’s in Jesus. Where is Jesus? Wherever His presence is. Now, He’s present in you, but a lot of the time we’re not aware of it.

A lot of the time we’re not paying attention to it. Jesus was in the presence of the Father, but He still took time, often, to go and be alone in the presence of the Father. I mean, why should Jesus pray for goodness sakes? Jesus didn’t just go and pray and bring requests like we think of.

He went to spend time with His Father. He went to go spend time in the sun to charge up. So, the only way you can do this is to spend time in His presence and let that anointing presence saturate you.

Overcoming of Curses

Let it flow out from deep within through your spirit and your soul and your body. As you allow Him to do that, you will overcome curses. You’ll overwhelm every curse that the enemy’s brought against you, every sickness and disease, and every weakness of the flesh will have to bow to that glorious presence.

Every fear, every anxiety, every care, everything that’s plaguing you right now, His presence will just dispel that like light dispels the darkness. You don’t ever need to be afraid because when you’re in His presence, there’s nothing to fear. Fear cannot abide in His presence.

His presence brings life, and there’s a very special kind of life. The Greeks had a special word for it. It’s zoe life.

Now, we can get biological life. We can get psychological life, but zoe life means a complete and absolute life, and it’s based on the spiritual realm. With zoe life, you do not neecd to be afraid of death.

His Presence Brings Life

When you’re in His presence, only life exists, and life dispels all death. Just as light dispels darkness, as you continue in His presence, and when we come together, we come together in His presence, and we share His presence with one another, and then He will lift you up and meet every need. Why don’t you let Him cover you with His protection? Let Him heal you.

Let Him deliver you from all the things that you’re struggling with. Let Him remove every curse from you. Let Him remove every contamination that this world has brought upon you, and every negative influence from people that you met.

They’re all going to be dispelled. Where? In His presence. You see, your life is in His hands, hidden away with Him.

Your Life Is In His Hands

When you do that, you will come with clarity and faith and hope and assurance, and you will know that your life is in His hands, and that your life and His have been joined together as one. No longer two separate lives, but one life flowing together, yours and His flowing hand in hand. Now, if it were possible for His life to be extinguished, then it would be possible also for your life to be extinguished.

But while your life is hidden in Him, your life cannot be extinguished, because He cannot be extinguished. I want you to see the privileged place that we have when we come into His presence. You need to learn to hide in Him.

Let your life be so wrapped up in Him, and hidden in His presence, so that you can be safe from everything that the enemy can try to bring against you. It’s only when we allow the enemy an entrance that he has a right. But when we are filled with His presence, we are covered by a shield of protection.

You Will Radiate His Presence

And when you spend time in His presence, you’ll be like that glow-in-the-dark stuff. You will begin to radiate His presence. So when you go out into the world, what’s going to happen? You are going to display His presence.

How? Just stand there and let it radiate from you. Nothing to do, just be. Not much easier than rushing around trying to work so hard.

I know. People will notice it. They’ll be drawn to you.

They’ll be attracted not to you, but to His presence in you. Somehow they’ll want to get close to you so they can pick up a bit of that and try and suck it out of you. You might feel like you’re getting swamped, and you didn’t even do anything.

Enjoying His Presence

You didn’t need to, because what you have, the whole world needs, there is nothing like His presence. Do you know what? He wants us to enjoy His presence. That’s a very pleasurable experience.

Life takes on a new meaning because the scripture says in His presence is fullness of joy, joy that will fully satisfy. At His right hand, there are pleasures that last forever. There’s no fun thing in this world that can come even close to comparing with the fun experience that we have in His presence.

You will never be bored not knowing what to do with yourself, because when you’re in His presence, there’ll always be activity of things taking place all around you. You know why? Because you’ve become a partner with Him in His work, and He is not static. He is not stationary.

He is working continuously. The moment you become part of that, He begins to use you to continue His work, and He will work through you. Actually, the only effort that you will need to make is to say, “Here I am, Lord.”

Go for it, Lord. Here I am. This body is yours.

What do you want this body to do today, Lord? And He does all the work. He does all the work. I’ve seen people struggle with the work of the ministry.

Man, it’s so tough. It’s such hard work doing the work of the ministry. I’m sure it’s very hard if Jesus is not doing it.

That’s your trouble. You thought you had to do it. You thought you had to do it for Him.

You don’t have to do it for Him. He wants to do it through you. Make sure you get that right.

Just let it flow out from you. Let it radiate. And then as you go out into this world, you go out aware of the fact that you are taking His presence with you.

When you meet people, you smile at them. You pour out His love towards them. Well, our tendency is to be choosy about who we do that with, you know.

With some people, we feel, “I don’t like that person. I don’t like his looks. I don’t like his behavior. I don’t like anything about him. I’m not really in the mood for pouring out love to that person.”

See, His love is unconditional.

Thank the Lord it doesn’t depend on your love. If it depended on my love, I would fail every time because I tend to be a bit choosy at times. I tend to be a bit fussy about who I hang around with.

I tend to be a bit fussy about who I open my heart to. Jesus didn’t. Jesus mixed with everybody, the high ups, the low downs, and the in-betweens.

Going Out Into The World

So you go out with His presence. You just pour His love out to everybody that you meet. It doesn’t matter what they look like.

It doesn’t matter how they act. And the moment you do that, you’ll see change beginning to take place in them. Do you know what? You haven’t made a lot of effort yet in ministry.

All you’ve done is presented Him and His love. Until that light that’s in you begins to get out, the fire that’s in you begins to ignite others. And before you know, there’s a whole crowd of people all on fire and shining brightly with that light.

Sickness and disease will have to flee. Poverty will have to flee. Conflict and strife will have to flee because none of these things can abide in His presence.

Protection From Evil

Even when you go to sleep at night, you go to sleep in His presence. And He’s watching over you. You are surrounded by His presence and no evil can befall you.

As the scripture says, no plague can come near your dwelling place. You can sleep contented and in peace knowing He’s in control. What if Satan tries to get in while I’m asleep? Shoot your biggest shot, devil.

I have Him surrounding me with His presence. And when I wake up in the morning, He’s there. When I get up and get ready for my day, He’s there.

He Is Your Partner

When I step out, wherever I go, whatever I do, whatever my daily activity is, He’s right there with me in all of it. Wherever you go, whoever you speak to, He’s part of that. You’re never alone, ever.

Never. Because He’s your partner. He’s with you no matter where you go.

And when you do this, an assurance will rise up in you that you have nothing to fear. Nothing can go wrong while you’re in His presence because He’ll watch over you and protect you. He’ll dispel every work of darkness that comes against you, even when you’re not aware of it.

He’s aware of it and He’ll block it. These are all the things, folks, that should be normal for a child of God. They are what Jesus came to give us.

They are what the spiritual life is about. They are what being a Christian is about. But you know what? Most of God’s children are not even aware of His presence.

Well, He’s there. He’s everywhere, isn’t He? How far do I need to go to look for His presence? Let me tell you where’s a good place to start. Go stand in front of a mirror and look into your eyes and know that in there, deep inside of you, as a believer, He’s there.

Faith, Hope And Love Are The Result

His presence is there. It’s with you all the time. And when you will allow His presence to flow out and you’ll make it part of your daily life, what’s going to spring out of you are the three powerful forces of the Spirit, which are faith and hope and love.

They flow from you in abundance and consistently and they will help you build what Jesus called the abundant life. So, folks, there’ll be no more striving, no more Martha-ism. Learn to be Mary.

Learn to be Mary and in time, you’ll rise up and you’ll still do the Martha thing, but you’ll do it with the right attitude, the right motive. See, nothing wrong with what Martha did. It was her motive and her emphasis that was wrong.

Start like Mary, just being in His presence, not trying to do anything, but just listen, listen and take it all in. Then say, okay, Lord, now I’m ready. What do you want to do from here? Then you will rise up in Him.

But first, you will learn to rest in His presence and you will learn to enjoy His presence and you will learn to live the kind of life that He designed for you, a life that’s filled with joy and fun things. Nothing wrong with having fun, but often we turn to the world for fun, not realizing that the greatest fun actually can take place in His presence. I hope I’ve convinced you that getting to know Him better and spending more time in His presence is going to be of great advantage to you.

Lord willing, I will be sharing more on the subject as we continue in this new series and we’ll approach it from so many different angles. I’d like to show you how you can practically go ahead, the things that you can do to ensure that you become more aware of His presence and now you can begin to experience the wonders of His presence. One of the things that will happen is you’re going to fall in love with Jesus.

You know, when you fall in love with somebody, you know what’s the most wonderful thing in this world? It’s just being with them. You don’t even need to say anything. You see these couples deeply in love.

They just hold each other and stare into each other’s eyes. You don’t even need to say anything. It doesn’t need to be said.

The love is there. Why don’t you let Jesus draw you into that kind of loving relationship where He’s with you all the time. When you go out there and you face the dogs and the devils and everything that’s attacking you, the world system that’s out to destroy you, all the spirits of infirmity that try to attack your body, the evil powers that try to rob you of financial blessing, take His presence with you and let Him just bring that flood of glory.

It’s going to bring to you everything you could ever desire in this world. There is nothing greater than His presence and you should give it your priority now find out how to experience more of that presence. Father, I thank you for your word.

I gave it as you gave it to me and I ask you to challenge your people and to stir up in them a deep desire to come into that closer relationship with you and to know you personally and to know your presence in their life, in every single area of their life. Lord, I know that you are waiting and willing to come in and so I ask you now to reveal yourself to even those that are listening to this message right now. Reveal yourself, manifest your presence, let them sense the beauty of it.

So your whole body rises up in the magnificence of your presence and takes this world by storm and shines the light to dispel all the darkness to make even this earth a place like heaven simply because you’re there, Lord. Because where you are there is heaven. Hallelujah.

Thank you, Jesus. Amen.