A Place of Intimacy Through Worship

This is an important time for the Body of Christ--a season in which the Lord is calling us closer into His Presence. He is directing us to step into a place of trusting Him where we have to put down what we think is right in order to pick up what He says is right, let go of our sense of comfort and security for His leadership and direction, and lay aside our best intentions in order to receive His perfect plans. It's a vital time of maturity for each one of us. To cross this line will cost us everything we are in the flesh, but what we gain through obedience is everything He is in us.

So what is stopping you from trusting, believing, and following the Lord to this new place of intimacy? Is it the war that stands between you and your next level of fellowship with the Father? Listen to what Joshua told the men of Israel after they entered into the Promised Land: Fear not, nor be dismayed, [only] be strong and of good courage (Joshua 10:25).

To possess their inheritance, the children of Israel had to do more than cross the waters of the Jordan. They had to face and conquer the enemies within their land of promise.

Like the Israelites, we, too, have crossed over into our season of offensive warfare. And I know from personal experience that being a part of this message of fellowship and contending for the Lord's revival makes us a threat to Satan. That is why the devil is increasing his pressures against us as we diligently seek the Lord, why our flesh is fighting with our spirit man to regain control in our life, and why every stronghold being torn down in our soul feels like a sentence of death. But we must not be dismayed. Our Father is not afraid of war, and He has never lost a battle.

Think about this for a moment: If you knew God had placed the necks of all your enemies under your feet, is there anything you would let stop you from following His plans for your life and enjoying a deeper relationship with Him? Well, the truth is: He has done just that.

And [Jesus] said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

Luke 10:18,19

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

Romans 8:1,2

Jesus never backed down from the enemy because He knew that the devil's plans, His own flesh, and His soul had absolutely no dominion over Him. That is how we are to live in the world today. We rule and reign with His authority and stand in His place of victory.

This year the Lord is giving us the same instructions He gave to His people in Joshua's day: Be strong and of good courage! Now is the time for us to tell our circumstances, flesh, and emotions that they do not affect our obedience to the Lord. We can trust our Father in the fight. He will never leave or abandon us.

On January 8, 2014, a prophetic word came forth at the end of one of our services that I want to share with you:

There's been a spirit assigned to us to discourage you, to make it hard to even muster up enough strength to believe that you are an overcomer. And when you feel that depression and that--I will just describe how I have been feeling: It's been hard to muster up the strength to keep pressing in. That is a spirit that is trying to lie to us.

Notice that the Lord did not say this spirit assigned to discourage us would come one time and then leave us alone forever. No, the enemy knows we are in an important time of transformation, a season of selling out to the Lord and surrendering to the process of mortification so we can walk as mature sons and daughters of the Kingdom. Satan is afraid of what will happen when we cross the line of total trust and obedience to our Father, so he uses external pressures, people, and our own desires to try to disrupt our fellowship with Him.

However, please listen to the rest of the exhortation from January 8^th:

Father, I receive Your strength. You are my Strength, and yes, I can do what You have asked me to do. That thing in front of me, that direction in front of each of us that You have given to us specifically, yes, we can do that, because You are our Strength.

In this time of change, it is so important that we allow our Father to become our Strength, and one of the most effective ways I know to trade our weaknesses for His strength is by actively fellowshipping with Him in praise and worship.

When the Lord first began teaching me about the foundational key of worship, He gave me a vision of a rock landing in a pond. From the point where the rock landed, one ripple after another spread out until there wasn't one nook or cranny in the entire pond that escaped the ripples. I asked the Lord, "What does this mean?"

The Lord answered, "This is how it starts. When you begin to worship Me, first I begin to fill your spirit with a tangible awareness of My Presence. As you continue to worship, those ripples will eventually be pushed from behind by other ripples until your soul and your physical senses become baptized with My Presence. Finally, the ripples of My Presence will flow out from you to saturate the geographical location you live and work in."

Around the time of this vision, I had been reading about some of history's great men and women of God. It didn't take me long to realize that what God was teaching me on the nature of worship--the process by which His Presence flows out from man's spirit to his soul to his physical surroundings just like ripples spreading in a pond--was the same process that occurred in the life of Smith Wigglesworth, a nineteenth and twentieth century evangelist.

I couldn't get over the testimonies that came out of Smith's life and ministry simply because he walked in such close fellowship with God. This man's spirit, soul, and the very atmosphere around him were continually filled with God's Presence, so much so that people couldn't walk past him without sensing Jesus. Many people would break down, repent, and receive salvation right on the spot, not because he shared the Gospel with them, but because of the life of Christ that poured out of his being. This was a man whose life belonged wholly unto God, and he learned to stay in continual communication with the Father through a lifestyle of worship and prayer.

However, as remarkable as Smith Wigglesworth was, the place of intimacy he walked in with the Lord is not reserved for "special people" or limited to certain callings. The truth is that our Father is longing for fellowship, for each one of us to share with Him from our heart how much we love Him and what He means to us. When we reach out to God in worship, we begin a free exchange of our love for His. We step over into the realm of the spirit, into a place of intimacy that allows Him to show us who He is and who we are in Him. This is a place of refuge--a place where authority flows. As God's children, we can learn to enter and abide in this place, but there are obstacles we must conquer first.

The moment we begin to praise and worship, hindrances will appear from two different sides. On one side, the devil will set up camp and try to lead us away from our times of worship with lies and unbelief. He'll attack our mind and emotions with thoughts like, You're just wasting your time here. Absolutely nothing is happening. God isn't listening to you anyway! He'll even arrange circumstances and people in our life to keep us too busy or stressed out to want to spend time with God.

Then, just about the time we take authority over the devil and run him off in Jesus' Name, our soul pops up on the other side. We start to feel like it takes all our effort to remain faithful to our times of worship. We have to drag our mind, will, intellect, and emotions kicking and screaming into the Presence of God, and in our soul's desperate attempts to escape submission, it'll buffet us with excuses, justifying why we need to do something--anything--else besides worship. But it's not the devil or our soulish desires that interests our Father. He wants to know if we will continue to fellowship with Him despite the battles we'll go through to stay in there and worship.

When everything in the natural provides an ironclad case proving you have more important things to do, when your soul gives you one hundred and one reasonable arguments to do something else, and it feels like every devil in hell has been sent to create an uninspiring atmosphere around you, yet you refuse to stop magnifying God's goodness--that's when you take your greatest step forward into a faith that says neither Satan, nor your circumstances, nor your own carnality can create a gap between you and God. When you cross over that line in your times of worship, where nothing has the power to make you quit, you're on your way to walking in the manifested truths you've been fellowshipping with your Father about.

In this season of selling out to God, it's more important than ever before that we utilize all the keys we have been taught in order to forge ahead on this path with Him. This is a path of victory and grace that will challenge everything in us that does not believe whom He has made us to be. It is a path that requires us to heed His instructions--to pray much, meditate much, fast much, and worship much.

If you haven't made your journey into worship, let me encourage you today to take this next step of obedience. Adding this foundational key to your daily life won't stop trials from coming, but the joy of being in close fellowship with the Lord will become your strength.

To begin with, you might start out by dedicating most of your fellowship time with the Lord to worship, at least until you break through some of the initial opposition that can come against you. Remember, during the times when the devil and your soul are fighting you the most, that is when you are moving into new realms of intimacy with the Lord. Just don't quit.

You may also come across times in your worship where you feel as dry as desert sand and it seems as though God's Presence is nowhere to be found. But don't stop worshiping. These are the times when your spirit is getting built up past whatever it is in your soul that doesn't like being in His Presence very much. You will build yourself up above the hindrances and He will come to you in glorious fellowship.

When I first reported to my little prayer closet, wanting to learn more about worship, I did everything I could to stop my time with God from becoming just "lip service." I knew how easy it would be to sit there saying "I love You, Father" while the rest of me was worrying about a problem from yesterday or coming up with tomorrow's grocery list. Yet, even with the very best of my intentions, God only knows how many times I had to go retrieve my wandering mind and tell it, "You're in the Presence of the King and you will pay attention!" I struggled mightily with the short attention span of my soul in those early days. Every time my mind started to wander down the street, I'd have to stop and bring it back to the task at hand and make it pay attention. Day after day, week after week, over and over again, I pulled my thoughts back to worship, and little by little, my mind began to wear itself out and submitted to the process.

I eventually learned to gather all my senses together and pour my whole being into every statement of worship: "I glorify You, Father. I magnify You. You are my Strong Tower. You are my Strength. I love You, Lord. I worship You."

God takes great pleasure in your times of fellowship with Him. He is not concerned with how well you dress up your statements of love; He only cares about how much you mean what you are saying. You'll learn to abide in a whole new level of intimacy with your Father, and one day you'll wonder in amazement, How could I have ever worried about that, God? How could I have not known the truth of who You are? You are my Healer! You are my Provider! You are my Strength!

            I guarantee that nothing in your life will remain the same. God's Presence will flow out of you everywhere you go, saturating people with His love, and charging atmospheres with faith. Make your decision to draw closer to your Father today. Worship will change you.

 

- Dave Roberson