Monthly Archives: December 2013

Daily Training Set #2

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Prayer, Training

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daily2The training set that you have been using last week is a basic practice that we shall build upon. So instead of thinking in terms of moving onto something else, what we want to do is to build upon the basic 4 things we have been practicing for the season, and going deeper, exploring and noting the movements of the Spirit in our souls. For this week, we’ll add some definition to the 4 things. Basically, I’ve laid out the basic sets from the last week, and added something.

A word about mornings

Each of us has a different time when we do our devotions and spiritual exercises. Whether you do your devotions in the morning or evening, or any other time for that matter, the morning is a crucial time at the beginning of all that will take place that day. Many people lose the day because they lose control of the morning. For many, the mornings are not the tranquil sacred place where we receive grace for the day. For many, the mornings are more more like a messy, tension-filled rush – a battlefield in which we have been acted upon by failing alarm clocks, underestimations of time required to do the things we need to do, people around us who don’t conform to our expectations, random occurrences, wakings on the wrong side of the bed, accelerated movements of the hands of the clock, overhanging troubles from the day before, and spiritual heaviness that comes with the day we are about to embark on. Losing the morning to common human dynamics often means losing the day. If we do not take control of the morning, much will be lost, and we will often start the day on the wrong footing. The fears, apprehensions and sinking feelings we wake up with will take control of us during the day if we do not take control of them by the Spirit.

That is why the psalmist proclaims, “Lord in the morning will I direct my prayers, and will look up” (Psalm 5:3). Whether you do your devotions in the morning or at any other time of the day, it’s important to actively begin the day in active prayer. The trajectory of our prayer in the spirit should be towards being taken over by the Spirit of God -where there is a change of heart, a change of sentiment – where even our mood and state of mind is lifted, charged and infused with God. That’s where in prayer, we move from expressing our own sentiments to praying the prayers of God (see previous blog post).

Training Set

  • 1. Whatever you are feeling, pray in the spirit (in tongues, or praising Him repetitively, focusing on inviting Him to be Lord) in a relaxed way for 20 minutes using the Spirit Tool. Go for longer if you like. But do this everyday. That will be our staple.  Pray towards the point where you feel that the distractions, concerns and depressing thoughts begin to fade, and God’s peace takes over. The Spirit Tool may help you identify some signs of His rising in you and your circumstances around you.

Praying unto being filled with the Spirit

If you have done this consistently last week, you will probably have experience a difference in your state of heart in the morning. There will have been some days in which you felt a change of heart, a strengthening, a liberty, and even a sense hope or faith rising. On some other days, you may have felt that the work of prayer had not been fully done.

As we enter more fully into our exercise in prayer, rather than just praying by the clock (20 mins), aim to pray till you feel the grip of God changing your heart. Keep that trajectory in mind as you now pray, not just for the 20 minutes, but towards that inner transformation of state of mind. It may take more than 20 minutes, but now you are going for something more – you’re going for God’s reign in your heart, mind and circumstances.

  • 2. During the day, be sensitive to times when you feel “off”, then find a space to pray back into orientation towards God. Keep drawing your attention back to His peace. What we are doing is to find a position of living from the presence of God. We are learning to find our way back to our dwelling place (where Jesus says “where I am there you will be also”) from places where we don’t feel at peace. Use your notebook to record how it goes.

As you continue the practice of praying back to His presence, note the things that set you off track, and resolve ways to avoid these traps and tricks of the Enemy. Often, noting these susceptible places will cause us to avoid situations when “defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory!” (Chesterton)

  • 3. Look out for opportunities for ministering to needs around you and for inviting people for Christmas. Pray in the spirit for them. Again, use your notebook to keep track of who you ministered to or interceded for.

Continue this practice of looking out for opportunities for ministering to needs. In this practice set, we are developing the innate ability to “see differently” – to discern the harvest. This takes practice. As Lee Strobel just tweeted, “Who can you invite to Christmas services at your church? Pray and then take a relational risk. People are open this season.”

  • 4. As you feel led, begin praying for your land, expecting God to put certain people on your heart. Begin interceding for people that keep coming up and note them in your notebook.

It would now be time to move from praying for them to inviting them for Christmas!

Giving up our own prayers; praying the prayers of God

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Holy Spirit, Prayer

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increase-decrease

One of the crucial things about growing in prayer and in the Spirit concerns moving from praying our own prayers to letting the Holy Spirit work through our spirit to intercede the prayers and workings of God through us. The difference is infinite.

While our prayers that originate from our own souls are received lovingly by God, that is not the essence of our call as priests. 1Cor. 2:10 tells us that the Spirit searches everything, even the deep things of God. The presence of the Spirit in us is not intended to actualize our own desires, ideas or prayers, but to glorify God, or to bring to the fore the works, the personality, and the heart of God. When the Spirit has His full effect, our prayer comes from a decreased I and an increased He (God). As John the Baptist declares, He must increase, and I decrease.

When God prays through us, we are taken up by One far greater and more powerful than ourselves.

For those who came for last Saturday’s prayer, we experienced a little of that phenomenon. And it is this particular critical point that we shall be working on. It has to do with praying until a point comes when we are taken over by God’s heart and mind. When that happens, we feel like we are in the grip of someone other than ourselves. Some of those present last week commented that it took about 40 minutes for that fading out of self and the “grip of God” to take effect.

As we praised and worshiped God, we were giving up our own thoughts, desires, hopes for something to happen, and just releasing ourselves to wholeheartedly praise Him in a sustained way. The tendency for our thoughts to lunge out to the future (e.g., what will all this praising do for me?) was being counteracted by staying in the present to just wholeheartedly praise and worship God. That in itself is a battle that involves giving up our practical utilitarianism for personal benefit, and giving it all to God. Praise and worship wholeheartedly and sustainedly practiced mortifies the flesh and self, and takes away the Enemy’s ground for attack on our souls.

At a certain point, we experienced to some extent, a cessation of human mental activity, and the filling up of a different presence – the presence of God’s prevailing prayer. We felt a poignancy in what was being prayed and uttered, and a quiet that was discernably filled with presence. Some would have experienced more than others, but I think, that was roughly the movement that was taking place during that time of prayer.

This is not something we can engineer or will into being. It comes only by grace. It’s totally a work of God, and He expects us to wait on Him until we are “endued with power from on high.” That’s what makes abiding so powerful. Abiding involves making submissive and attentive space for all that it takes for God to do what we cannot do for ourselves. And when we experience His coming, we feel more alive, more hopeful, more inspired, more at peace (Cf. the VCF Spirit Tool).

In waiting on Him, we do experience a certain uncomfortability with being with God. This sometimes comes from feeling the silence of God and the restlessness of our own souls. It is this awkwardness that we want to intentionally work through. Without that, our prayers do not rise above the level of just being present to our own thoughts and desires. But He promises to answer us and show us great and mighty things that we’ve not known. It is this point of departure from our own prayers that we are shooting for as we ask God in our training, to lead us into His presence.

As you do your sets, you may want to incorporate this into your prayer in the spirit. Pray toward this as much as you are able, and if you can, pray into this. It is often in this “zone” that God reveals people that He is directing us to and giving us a burden for. Here He increases our faith and power as His word begins to gain force in us. We will be training our spirits to function more and more from this zone.

The Church that God Leads

06 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by in Church

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shepherd-sheep-12

It has been very encouraging to see the Lord moving the hearts of VCFers to respond to the call for training to be harvesters and to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a precious time that God has given us as a church to prepare ourselves for the days to come.

God is preparing us

As you may know, we believe that God’s agenda and priorities for us as a church are shaped by what He is preparing us for. The future will require a certain quality of disciple that God, in His foreknowledge, is preparing. We don’t have to know what the future holds, but we can rest assured that in the present time, God will be preparing us, if we have ears to hear. What an amazing thought – that God is preparing us for action that can only be brought about by what God is doing in us right now! It will be unique, but will require diligence, time, commitment, growth in the Spirit, and unity of heart and purpose.

Implications for the church

This has serious implications for the corporate nature of church. Instead of seeing church as a group of people who engage in a smorgasbord of activities in which each of us contributes or volunteers our gifts to things that are important to us during our spare time – a bit like weekend warriors, we see a totally different picture. We see the church as among other things, an army that moves in rank, with each person being trained, moving in sync with each other, understanding what God is saying to us as a body, being in fellowship in a deep way, and most importantly, understanding our mission. This understanding is to be to such a sharp degree that we know our distinct call in a way that is as much generic to the Body of Christ, as it is different from those who are not called to this particular body. There is a specific way in which God is leading, training and preparing us for the role that he has for us. Understanding what God has not called us to is an important aspect of knowing what He has called us to.

Psalm 80 tells us that God leads us like a shepherd and shines forth from between the cherubim. This means that He leads us stage by stage in our development. Like a good shepherd, He is nuanced in the way He focuses on certain things at one time, and not on others. Then in the next stage of our journey, He may lead us into things that He previously did not permit us to engage in. That is because our learning of Him is led, and in real time. If we can understand this, we will find our time in VCF will begin to be very meaningful. We are not just learning and applying all the values that we see in scripture in a wooden way, and all at once. No, we are being led, fed, shepherded and built up in stages by Someone. Line on line, precept upon precept.

Under His tutelage

This means that there may be times in which people may ask why we are not doing this or engaging in that issue or imperative. It’s because our priority is to follow His leading, and to be under His tutelage. For example, we have for many years, not felt led to focus on spiritual warfare, even though we know it’s crucial role in ministry. We have had to be built up to it, so that our discernment, strength and spiritual maturity was ready for it. I believe that it is the Holy Spirit who has been leading us. Today, I believe that it is time for us to pick up the heavier weapons of our warfare in a way we have not done so up to now.

To be continued…