God’s Presence Will Teach Us

For the last couple of years, I’ve been posting articles for an online school of the Spirit in three areas:  the Miracle Lifestyle (using the gifts of the Spirit outside the church), Prophetic Song, and Culture Shapers (prophetic inspiration in the arts).

Early in December I posted articles about a scavenger hunt in each of these three areas.  First I listed the things I was looking to experience, then I noticed I was treating the list as if they were mere goals I had set.  It became a to-do list.

After a while I realized this was missing the point.  It isn’t about setting goals and trying to make myself do them; if we position ourselves to allow the Holy Spirit to teach us, this means we must make room for His presence to guide us and instruct us.

He isn’t a hard taskmaster; instead, He’s meek and lowly in heart, and He will lead us to find rest for our souls.

I listed more items than I could finish in two months, but God isn’t impatient.  He convicted me to look back over the list and recall the moments when His presence drew near, and how He guided me, strengthened me, or taught me.  Here’s a short list.

Stay filled with the Spirit. I wrote about this a few weeks ago – see Testimony:  Spirit-Filled Living – and tasted a lifestyle in which the Holy Spirit was poised in my life, waiting for an opportunity to overflow with blessing.

Sometimes I let myself get too busy and started running in my own strength.  I learned it isn’t worth it.  It was amazing how little effort it took to get back into a place of overflow.  God is eager to make His presence felt in our lives.

Culture Shapers. Get my marketing together. This is the kind of work I hate:  learning to use new software programs, writing a bio, keeping up with paperwork.  But I love to write, to create new graphics, and to get new sounds out of my keyboard.  If I really want to get my art to the people God means for it to touch, I have to do the stuff on my desk.

I was complaining about the backlog on my desk and God challenged me with the words of Psalm 40:8 — “I delight to do Your will.”  This isn’t a verse I can fulfill in my own strength, but Christ in me can do it.  It’s making a huge difference.

Prophetic Song.  Get into the flow at home. Lately, I’ve felt very dry musically.  But because I’ve been seeking to stay so filled with the Spirit that I’m continually speaking to myself in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, prophetic song has come alive again in my personal devotions.

Miracle Lifestyle.  Get a word to myself every week, then act on it. As I soak, I quiet my heart, focus on Jesus, and look for the spontaneous flow of words.  In prayer times I speak the spontaneous flow as my prayer to the Father; in worship, I sing the spontaneous flow to God, and in ministry times I speak the spontaneous flow over people as a prophecy or as a prayer.  But in my private devotions I’ve been writing down the spontaneous flow – and then I try to follow through in the next few days with appropriate action.

I haven’t managed to do all of this every week, but I have received two life-changing revelations from God about (1) the fear of God and (2) a restful way to pray the prayer of faith.

Has the scavenger hunt been worthwhile? Yes. I have reached out to God for several new things in Him, and He has been faithful to touch me with His presence and to teach me to move in Him.  It isn’t because I’m great in any way; I’m not.  But He is, and He is faithful to fulfill His promises to us. Seek the manifest presence of God, and let God Himself teach you.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2010, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Outside The Church

Can we take the manifest presence of God outside the church?

Many of us have gotten the idea that the church can’t access God’s manifest presence without praise and worship.  After all, Psalm 22:22 says God inhabits the praises of His people.  So how can we expect the manifest presence of God to go with us outside the church if we don’t take a worship team with us?

But Jesus didn’t take a team of musicians with Him wherever He went. He could access God’s manifest presence in homes, on the streets, or in the synagogue.

We sometimes overlook the very simplest of Christian doctrines:  “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  Christ doesn’t just inhabit our worship services; He inhabits you.  And His indwelling presence is your hope of experiences in the glory of God.  His life in you can overflow and make the presence of God known and felt to the people around you.

I tasted this one day when I was a teenager, a senior in high school.  I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit that summer, and suddenly in the classroom (I was taking a test) I felt waves of the Holy Spirit sweeping over me.  Tears poured down my face and my whole body began to tingle.

I knew this visitation of the Holy Spirit was a gift of grace.  I hadn’t prayed for it, and wasn’t spiritual enough to believe this kind of thing could happen in my life.  But it was happening, and for the rest of the day I greeted my friends in the halls between classes, put one finger on their foreheads, and asked, “What do you feel?”

Repeatedly I watched their eyes grow large with wonder.  “What is that?” they would ask, and I would reply, “It’s the Holy Spirit – I’ll tell you more after class.”

So when the last bell rang I met my friends under the tree – that was our hangout in the schoolyard where we would wait for our rides home after school – and I began to tell them about Jesus.

Nobody was easy to convince, but everybody was interested.  This was something more than just a preacher telling them what they were doing wrong; they had encountered a God they could not explain.  Within a few weeks some were saved; others said they just couldn’t believe the gospel.  “Suit yourself,” I would answer, “but what did you feel when I touched you?  Explain that.”

They had no explanation.  I didn’t argue with them.  Somehow, several of them came to Christ in the next couple of years.  God didn’t use me in every step of their coming to Him, but I’m sure He used me that one day to let them know there is more to Him than the religious ideas and philosophies of man.

In the past few years, I’ve been seeing more and more of God’s presence touching people outside the church.  Sometimes it’s the gifts of the Spirit touching the unsaved. Sometimes it’s a dream or a vision.  Sometimes it’s simply by feeling His presence, which often manifests as a deep sense of unexplainable peace.

Something like this happened with Cornelius’s household.  First an angel visited Cornelius to arrange a divine appointment with Peter.  Then Peter tried to preach, but before he could have a proper altar call, the Holy Spirit was poured out on those who listened to his preaching.

We will see more and more of this kind of thing in coming years.  In a generation flooded with information, only the presence of God can cut through the flood of words and info as deep calls unto deep.  God wants to touch the deepest parts of this generation, and birth a new generation in His presence.

It starts with you.  Become someone who lives in the manifest presence of God.  He wants to use you as a spout where His glory can come out and touch people around you.  Christ in you is the key.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2010, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Promised: God’s Manifest Presence

Just before His crucifixion, Jesus taught the twelve to expect to live in God’s manifest presence.

I look back over forty years of Christian living and realize how much teaching I’ve heard that tells us how to live a Christian life when we don’t sense God’s presence.  These are great lessons, lessons we all need at one time or another.

But in our passion to teach the church to be faithful and consistent, we’ve overlooked something:  we have missed Jesus’ insistence that we can expect God’s manifest presence.  Without meaning to, we may have ended up teaching the opposite of what Jesus taught.  Here are His words:

“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”

Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?”

Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”  (John 14:21-23)

Notice that, like the teachers of today, Jesus speaks of our faithful obedience at all times.  If we love Him, we act on His words; and as the Father sees those acts of love, He and Jesus respond with love and Jesus promises to manifest Himself to us.

Judas didn’t understand.  “Why would You manifest Yourself to us, and not to the whole world?  Wouldn’t it make more sense if You showed Yourself to everybody, so they all would believe?”  It’s a question many of us have asked, but Jesus understood how God’s manifest presence works.  He reiterated the promise:  God’s manifest presence shows up in an atmosphere of love, love that causes people to act on His words.  God would like to manifest His presence to everybody, but He can do so only with those who love Him enough to act on His words.

But you and I can love Him enough that He will manifest His presence to us, and we can position ourselves where His manifest presence can spill over and touch others.  People have done this at various times in church history; we usually call it a revival or an outpouring.

Why is obedience so important?  When I first came to Christ, I thought it was a matter of being so righteous that God would decide to manifest His presence.  But Romans and Galatians make it clear that the only real righteousness happens by faith, which is always man’s response to God’s grace.  So I had to adapt myself to the idea that the obedience Jesus calls for is not the obedience of the law, as though we were trying to obey the law and earn a blessing.  He calls for the obedience of faith.

As I’ve wrestled with the promise of God’s manifest presence, I’ve come to understand that God graciously tells us how to find His manifest presence.  He isn’t telling us how to earn anything; He’s telling us things that help us find Him.  It’s as though God Himself has decided to play hide-and-seek with all humanity, but then He’s speaking clues to us all.  Those of us who love Him enough to listen and to act on what He says will find His manifest presence.

But it isn’t a matter of earning our way or being rewarded for our obedience.  It’s all by grace.

As I write it, this may all look very theoretical.  But I’ve found it to be a reality I can walk in.  If I make it a priority to listen to Him, and then if I act on what He says, I stumble into His manifest presence and get to see Him do surprising things – see a simple testimony I’ve written about what I saw God do last Sunday.

But I’m nothing special.  Jesus gave the recipe, and it works for all of us.  Are you hungry and thirsty for God?  He’s hungry and thirsty to manifest His presence in your life.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2010, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

A Higher Water Table

Psalm 1 says that if we meditate on the word of God, our leaf will be green even in time of drought.

I’ve lived long enough to have seen dry times and times when the Spirit of God was being poured out.  Some people are dry during the dry times; they are faithful, dutifully plodding on, but they are dry.  Others manage to find a flow of the Holy Spirit no matter how dry the season is.  What makes the difference?

As I’ve meditated on this psalm, it’s occurred to me that their roots that draw from an underground river.  There may be a drought, but they have found that the river of God is always flowing – sometimes aboveground, and sometimes deep down.  But their access to this underground river depends on their meditating on the word of God.

I decided as a young man that I wanted to draw from this river, not having to depend on the spiritual season the church was in, but accessing an eternal flow of the Holy Spirit.

God has been faithful, but I’ve had to make an effort.  Sometimes I’ve had to stir myself to refocus my attention on the word of God.  And sometimes when I’ve ministered, it’s taken an effort to reach down into the deeps to connect with the river.  But God is faithful; the river is always flowing.

Lately He’s been challenging me to seek Him for a higher water table. Most of us have no reason to think about water tables, but farmers who depend on wells know that in time of drought, the springs dry up and only the deepest wells have water.  But if there have been a few years with more rainfall than average, the water table rises, all the wells are full, and springs pop up everywhere.

God is calling me to develop a devotional life that will raise my water table.  Psalm 1 tells us that by just meditating on the word of God, our roots will go deep and access the river of God even in a dry season.  But can we raise our water table?

I’ve been led to Ephesians 5:18-19, which has redefined my understanding of what it means to be Spirit-filled:

…be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord…

My Evangelical friends might be content to say they were filled with the Spirit when they were born again; I can agree with that.  My Charismatic friends might be content to say they were filled with the Spirit the day they first spoke in other tongues; I’ve been content with that for years.

But recently I’ve sensed God’s challenge that I seek such a fresh infilling of the Spirit that I overflow wherever I go, inside or outside the church.  The litmus test is this:  do I catch myself singing and making melody in my heart to the Lord?

I can make myself sing to God whenever I think of it, but making myself do it isn’t the same as having a spring pop up unexpectedly.

I can raise your water table by soaking, and I can raise it by getting into a spontaneous flow in worship.   I may or may not feel God’s manifest presence when I wait on God, but God sees me reaching for Him and He makes His presence felt whenever He chooses, whether in my prayer time or in a store as I talk to a clerk.

Psalm 1 says that if we meditate on the word of God we can put down roots that will access the river even in dry times.  Ephesians 5 says we can be so filled with the Spirit that we have a fountain of praise and worship bubbling up in our hearts.  It’s good to reach for His manifest presence in every way we can.

Stan Smith :: © 2009, GospelSmith :: www.GospelSmith.com

The Gift Of God’s Presence

It’s Christmastime, and though many of us chafe at the busyness and commercialism of the season, I think we all are glad that our whole society slows down to show honor and appreciation to friends and family for a few weeks.

There are ministry opportunities for those who will make time to seek out the people whose fractured family lives make Christmas a season of depression.  There are evangelistic opportunities, for while our culture is so secularized that many are saying “Happy Holidays” and scowl at those who say “Merry Christmas,” Jesus is on people’s minds and many will be introduced to Him in the next few weeks.

With that in mind, I want to unwrap the gift God gave us when He gave us His Son:

Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which is translated, “God with us.” (Matthew 2:23)

God with us.  One of the best things I’ve seen in the church in the last few years is that many of us are starting to build our lives around the gift of His presence.  And a lot of good things are happening there, but there is a complication:  God does such a good job of making himself look human that it isn’t always clear what’s of God and what’s of man.

God’s presence can look too human.

God is with us; Jesus came so we could live in the presence of God.  Sometimes we take it by faith, not worrying about the fact that we don’t feel His presence.  After all, we have covenant promises that He will never leave us nor forsake us. What more do we need?

Of course there were a few years when the presence of God tabernacled in a single human body.  Those who lived with Jesus saw great things as He forgave sin, set captives free, healed the sick, and did many wonderful works.

We often think they were a special generation, exempt from the laws of faith that we have to live by.  But I’m not sure it was any easier for them than it is for us.  I suspect they too were tempted to wonder if God was really with them because He looked too human.  He got tired and hungry and sat down by a well in Samaria; He fell asleep while they were in the boat battling a storm; it was maddening that it took him four days to respond to the call to minister to Lazarus.  Is this what God looks like?

The people I know who are accessing God’s manifest presence have some of the same questions.  We feel His presence and see God work, but we also have moments when it all looks so human that we wonder if God is really working in our lives at all.  Is it Him, or is it us?

Sometimes I’m asked to pray for someone.  Because I have a prophetic touch, I always like to pray first and then ask what their need is – often God speaks through me and addresses the need before I know what’s going on.  But whenever I minister I do my best to hear from God, I perceive a phrase or see a mental picture, and then have to ask myself, “Is this God, or is it me?”  I have to make a fresh choice every time, deciding to trust that God will honor His promise to feed His people.  His presence looks too human.

I travel and minister and do a lot of equipping, and I find that many people are already hearing from God.  It may be in words and it may be with non-verbals – dreams, visions, simply knowing something, feeling His presence, being moved with compassion – but we all face the same issue:  God’s presence looks too human.  Is it Him, or is it us?

And of course, we’re hungry.  We don’t want it to be just us; we want God to do something transcendent in our lives, something that will open the heavens to us and give us an experience beyond ourselves.  But often He answers our prayer with a gentle nudge that we could easily overlook.  This is God?

Our encounters with God may seem as improbable as it must have seemed for the shepherds to have an angelic visitation instructing them to go to a stable and look for a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

Miracles happen in God’s presence.

I tasted this when I first started leading whole worship services with spontaneous prophetic songs.  After thirty or forty minutes of singing the new song, the presence of God was overwhelming.

It’s not that I’m a good worship leader; I’ve led plenty of services that never got off the ground.  But there seems to be a richer sense of God’s manifest presence reserved for those who worship spontaneously.  God inhabits the praises of His people, but the Hebrew word is tehillim, the spontaneous songs that overflow out of us.  I travel in ministry and visit a variety of churches, but I consistently find that the presence of God is the richest in the churches that take time to cultivate prophetic worship.

And things happen.  Often God releases songs of deliverance, and people get set free from depression or unforgiveness or addictions.  Sometimes they need a few minutes of personal ministry as someone speaks words of faith over them, but more is accomplished in a few minutes in God’s manifest presence than we would normally experience in weeks or even months otherwise.

Some of the strongest altar calls at Agape, our home church, happen when we’ve gotten into a flow of the Spirit in spontaneous worship.

We’ve seen it at the Healing Rooms in Santa Maria.  Before the ministry teams lay hands on people, they spend about an hour soaking in God’s presence – being still before God as worship music plays in the background, and being filled with God’s glory and love.  Then in the presence of God, miracles happen easily.  Check out the testimonies they’ve posted.

JoAnn and I are spending the next two months at Dunamis Resources in Las Vegas.  Last Friday night, after about an hour of worship that spent half or more of its time in spontaneous song, Dennis Walker took the microphone, began singing, and soon was calling out words of knowledge for healing.  Within minutes, people were bending and stretching to test themselves to see if they were healed.  Several said their pain had left them instantly.

The problem with ministry in God’s presence is that it’s too easy.  Shouldn’t I try to be the great man of God, laboring in faith and pressing through great spiritual opposition, acting on powerful principles that are too deep for most people to know?  Instead, in God’s presence I forget all about myself, I rest instead of working hard, and I never quite feel that I know what’s going on.

I preached in a church in Peru and then prayed for healing for the whole congregation.  A boy raised his hand and announced, “God put arches in my feet!”  His mother examined his feet and said, “He really does have arches now.  He didn’t have them before.  He’s had to wear special shoes…” They testified again on Sunday; he was still healed.

But I hadn’t done anything special.  It was too easy.  All I did was preach a few simple truths about Jesus and invite the people into God’s presence.  The presence of God did the work.

Accessing God’s presence.

Friday night, Dennis Walker taught that there are three ways to receive healing:  by standing in faith on God’s promises, by hearing an initiative from heaven, or by just getting into God’s presence.

All three of these ways are different aspects of connecting with Immanuel, God With Us.  The boy in Peru had his feet reshaped by getting into the presence of God.  Many of us have heard stories of people who have stood in faith and been healed – maybe it’s happened to you that way.  But after Dennis shared about three ways God heals, a first-time visitor at Dunamis shared his own testimony, and it was an example of healing by what Dennis calls the “initiatives of heaven.”

The man dreamed that his brother had cancer, that he went to pray for him at the hospital, that he got all the unbelievers out of the room, and then as he laid hands on his brother a flash of power shot down through his hands and his brother was healed.

Was God in the dream, or was it just him?  It seemed to be just him; his brother was in perfect health.  But within two weeks, cancer flared up and his brother was in the hospital, and they didn’t give him long to live.

The man went to the hospital and did what he saw in the dream.  His brother was healed instantly; they released him from the hospital, cancer free, five days later.

“That’s an example of the initiatives of heaven,” Dennis said.  “Whatever He says, do it.  You may hear His voice, or it can be any of the five spiritual senses He’s given you – you might see something or even smell something, using the spiritual sense of discernment.  But whatever you sense, act on it…”

Three ways:  standing in faith, responding to God’s initiatives, or simply getting into the manifest presence of God and reaching for miracles and transformation.  Really, they all come back to the same thing:  God is with us.  One way or another, He wants to make His presence tangible in our lives.

The Christmas Gift

So this Christmas, you already have a gift from God, and it doesn’t come with a tag saying “Do not open until Dec 25.”  You have the opportunity to be a doorway for God to pour more of His Son into the world through you.  If Christ lives in you, there’s more to you than eggnog and gift-wrapping.  The greatest gift is the presence of God – it’s His gift to you, and He’s sending you out with it to touch others.

Soon Christmas will be over and we’ll be looking ahead to 2010.  Let me challenge you to make it top priority to make room for more of God’s manifest presence in your life next year.  Don’t live a dry Christianity.  God’s gift to you is Immanuel, God With Us.  He wants His presence to make an impact in your life and in the lives of all you meet.

Open Heavens

A lot of prophetic people are teaching about the open heavens right now.  They tell of angelic encounters, seeing Jesus, encounters with the glory of God, and more.  Some of their testimonies stretch us as they tell of supernatural travel or of conversations with Christians who have already died.

In this short article I can’t hope to share every scripture that puts these experiences in a biblical context.  But I want to list three simple principles from the life and the words of Jesus and one from the book of Acts, to help us put open heaven experiences in perspective.

1. Jesus is the open heaven. He said so when He called Nathaniel as a disciple in John 1:51 — “hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”  In other words, Jesus Himself is Jacob’s ladder.

If this same Jesus lives in us, we can expect His presence in us to be Jacob’s ladder.  This not only gives us an open heaven, but makes us into an open heaven – a people who carry the connection between heaven and earth wherever we go.

2. Jesus lived in a constant flow of hearing the Father’s voice and seeing what He was doing. The fruit of the open heaven in Jesus’ life was the continual fellowship He had with the Father.  As He saw what the Father was doing, Jesus could do the works of God.  As He heard what the Father spoke, Jesus could speak with authority, not like the scribes.

The open heavens in Jesus’ life began when He was baptized in the Jordan.  When we follow Him in baptism, we enter into the power of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.  Many scriptures testify to the power of these classic gospel realities to transform our lives.  But for two thousand years, most of the church has overlooked the promises of an open heaven available to us while we live in this world.

3. Jesus took three men with Him when He talked with Moses and Elijah in the cloud of God’s glory, but the voice from heaven called the disciples’ attention to Jesus. There is a whole cast of characters in heaven, from God to angels to saints from other generations who have already left this world.  For a more complete list, read Hebrews 12:22-24.

As we experience the open heavens, we will have encounters with other heavenly characters besides God Himself.  This is normal.  This is what happened to Jesus when He took Peter, James, and John up to the mount of transfiguration.  A cloud of glory descended and Moses and Elijah talked with Jesus for a few moments.  Peter wanted to build three booths, but the voice of God from heaven established something once and for all:

“This is My Beloved Son; hear Him.”  Moses and Elijah have their place; angels have their place; saints from other generations have their place.  But Jesus is and must always be preeminent.

As we hear about open heaven experiences or have them ourselves, we need to be careful and faithful to stay focused on Jesus.

4. In the book of Acts, more open heaven encounters are listed than times of using the gift of prophecy. Frankly, I was surprised when I discovered this.  I was used to assuming the gift of prophecy was scriptural but open visions, encounters with angels, and appearances of Jesus were the exception.

One day I read the book of Acts and counted how many times it says someone prophesied, and how many times someone had an open heaven experience.  I challenge you to do the same.  I think you’ll see what I saw:  that open heaven experiences are part of the church’s inheritance, and we’ve been overlooking it.

We need the rock and we need the oil, but don’t forget Jacob’s ladder.  God wants to make it real in your life.

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

 

 

Buy Oil

There are many good things to say about the anointing, but I’m going to boil them down to a single thought:  the oil Jacob poured on the rock represented God’s manifest presence.  The house where God lives must be a house that makes room for His manifest presence.

As a teenager, a troubling question made its way around the churches:  if God withdrew His presence from the church, how many of us would know the difference?  And how many of us would continue doing what we’d always been doing, totally unaware that God Himself had left?

I didn’t know if I could answer the questions well, but I resolved early in my Christian life that I would build my own ministry on God’s manifest presence, in such a way that if He withdrew, I would be unable to continue.

In John 14:21-23, Jesus gave a simple recipe for His manifest presence:

“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me.  And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him…If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.

This isn’t a call to live under the law; it is a call to grace, which we enter into by repentance and faith.  And it is a call to intimacy, a life of hearing and responding to His voice.

In the beginning of my ministry, I didn’t know how to access the voice of God.  If He spoke, I was likely to mistake it for my own thoughts.  I missed a lot in my early days.

But I always looked for scriptures I could act on, and there are plenty.  I learned that a deep walk with God doesn’t consist in prowling around in the obscure passages of scripture; it consists in finding the simples commandments and acting on them.

They’re simple, but they aren’t necessarily easy.  Humble yourself.  Submit to God.  Serve one another.  Love one another.  In everything give thanks.  Pray without ceasing.  Whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord.

And I John 1:9 is one I’ve needed when I’ve sinned: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  It’s easy to say, “Yeah, yeah; I already know that.”  It’s better to take a few minutes to do it, and to do it as often as necessary.

Jesus talked about oil in the parable of the ten virgins – it’s in the first few lines of Matthew 25.  He told of ten virgins who needed oil in their lamps so they could participate in the part of the wedding that happened in the middle of the night.

I won’t try to explain the wedding customs in Jesus‘ day, but suffice it to say that His hearers found the story very believable.  The point was this:  five of the virgins were wise because they had bought oil during the day, and five were foolish because they had not.

It wasn’t a big purchase.  I’m guessing they needed to spend about as much as someone might spend for a flashlight battery today.

In more than forty years of following Jesus, I’ve seen that this parable holds a key for all of us.  It is impossible to pay a great price today to buy all the oil we’ll ever need.  But we can make a small transaction today, exchanging a few minutes here and a small effort there to invest in God’s manifest presence.

Small investments add up.

Don’t be fooled by get-rich-quick schemes.  See if you can find a small opportunity to buy oil before you go to bed tonight.  Look for another before lunch tomorrow.

Buy oil.  Small investments add up.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

The Rock Is A Person

The language of the rock, the oil, and the open heaven can be misleading.  Each is something we would be tempted to call “it”, but in each case we need to say “He”.  Seeing God as a person makes all the difference.

A few years ago I had an open heaven experience because I shifted from the language of “it” to the language of “He”.  Here’s what happened.

I was in a worship service and we had all gone sky high in spontaneous worship.  It became so intense that the worship leader took his hands off the keyboard and shrugged at another person on the worship team.  It wasn’t time for man to lead; God was leading for now.

The worship was intense and I was hungry, so I prayed the classic prayer, “More, Lord.”  It’s a good prayer, but on that day, my heart immediately corrected me: was I simply expecting God to double the voltage of His presence, as though He were a mere force field?

As soon as this thought flashed through my mind, I changed my prayer.  “Lord, make it more personal,” I prayed.

Instantly I saw Jesus standing in front of a stone wall and grinning at me.  As soon as our eyes met, He began to walk and I followed.  He took me up onto the porch of an apartment in a three-story brick building, opened the front door, and walked in…

I won’t write about the furnishings in the apartment or the three people who were sitting at the dining table.  Instead, this was a new beginning for me as God has led me into a season of open visions.

What is an open vision?  Contrast it with another kind of visions, the picture that flashes in your mind when you seek God’s wisdom.  Many visions are pictures like the still photos you would see in a photo album or on someone’s FaceBook page.

Some visions are like videos, complete with sound and motion.  But an open vision goes one step further, putting you in an interactive video in which you participate.  What you say or don’t say will affect the way the vision unfolds; so will what you do or don’t do.

It has been very humbling since then to have had more than my share of open visions.  Some have been scenes from the earth and some have been in heaven.  It’s humbling because it isn’t my gift or my anointing or my will that makes it happen; I get there by invitation only.  And a tone of the fear of God goes with these experiences, as they happen with the tacit understanding that I am there only by permission and not because I have somehow earned the right to be there.

Without exception, whenever I get into an open vision, it happens by relating to God as a person, not as an inanimate force field or a theological concept.  He is much more personal than you and I are.  Next to Him, we are the ones who are inanimate objects.

Why do I share about the open visions I have had?  Because God is giving these experiences to more and more of His people.  We are in a season when we are going to need profound God-encounters to equip us to shine brightly in a world that appears to be getting darker every day.

So whenever you consider the rock, think in terms of “He” and “Him” rather than “it.”  The same holds true for the oil; the Holy Spirit is a person.

In what everyone is calling the Information Age, this personal dimension is one of the great differences between God-given prophecy and the endless chatter of man.  That which is born of the Spirit is spirit; that which is born of the flesh is flesh.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

More Of The Rock

The rock is Jesus.  The rock is the foundation on which He builds His church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  Paul said no other foundation could be laid than that which was already set in place, Jesus Christ.

Many of us have allowed Jesus to be the foundation of our doctrine and have stopped there, but life is more than doctrine. Look at the words of Jesus in John 5:39-40 –

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.  But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.

Some of us know Jesus mentally because we have received Him as the foundation of our doctrine, but we hunger for something more intimate.  We need to let the scriptures bring us into the presence of Jesus so we can find life.

Some of us are hungry for His presence and try to bypass the scriptures.  We look to the signs and personal encounters with Him that come in visions and dreams.  Like the wise men who followed the star, we will find that these experiences can get us only so far before we need to consult the scripture to zero in on His presence.  The star got them to the right country, but only the scripture could get them to the right city.

As we seek more of Jesus, we will find that it takes the word and the Spirit working together to lead us into Him.

Jesus says, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  Have you ever come to Him when you were overwhelmed with work and cares and found a tangible sense of rest in His presence?

Psalm 16 says that in the presence of the Lord is life forevermore, and pleasures at His right hand.  Have you ever sensed the inrush of life that happens when you get into His presence?  Have you found the pleasures at His right hand?  We can acknowledge these truths as part of our sound doctrine, but we can also experience them.

Psalm 23 says the Lord our Shepherd prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies.  Have you ever been surrounded with enemies and impossibilities, only to find that before the Lord took care of your battle for you he sat down with you and shared a picnic lunch with you in perfect peace, as though no battle were raging?

These are just three samples of what might happen if we search the scriptures and let them bring us to Jesus.

As a young man, I learned to find Jesus on every page of the Bible.  He’s there; the Spirit of prophecy who inspired the scripture is the testimony of Jesus.  I find Him in the symbolism, the allegories, the prayers and prophecies, and of course in the passages that directly describe Him.

I’ve learned to look past the deeds the Bible records and to look into His heart.  What kind of God cares enough about the crowd who listened to His words that He goes on to multiply loaves and fishes so He can feed them?  What kind of God then carefully gathers the leftovers so they won’t go to waste?  His thoughts and motives must be very different from ours.

Lately I’ve been noticing that as I read the Bible I’m walking down memory lane with Him.  This passage reminds me of an impossible prayer He answered; that passage reminds me of a visitation in which He taught me something about prophecy; yet another reminds me of a miraculous healing I got to participate in.

How many experiences with God are anchored in your Bible?  The text is there in black and white, but His works in us are the illustrations, and the pictures are in vivid color.

As you get more of the Rock in your life, God will fill your Bible with  illustrations.  Get the illustrated version.  This is the abundant life Jesus promised.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Prophetic Mission: What Should Prophecy Add To The Church?

It’s one of the beloved scenes from the book of Genesis: Jacob’s wilderness dream of a ladder between heaven and earth.  He woke up and poured oil on the stone he had used as a pillow, and then named the place Bethel, the house of God.

Jacob’s story shows three things God wants in His dwelling place:  Jesus is the rock; the Holy Spirit is the oil; and the open heaven is our access to Him and His to us.  Wherever we might want to make God feel at home – in our personal lives, our ministries, our churches – we need to make sure these three ingredients are in place.

And while these ingredients are relevant to every Christian and every ministry, they are central to the call and the anointing of prophets.  Any of us who relate to prophetic ministry in any way, whether by giving or receiving prophecy, can use Jacob’s story to help us stay on track.

Are we getting it right?  The rock, the oil, and the open heaven all show us what prophetic ministry is meant to accomplish.

The Rock:  Jesus Himself

I don’t have to go through the many scriptures that liken Jesus to a rock. Any chain reference Bible or concordance can lead you to them.  But one key principle about prophetic ministry is so simple and basic we tend to think we have outgrown it:  “The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.”  (Revelation 19:10)

Don’t get me wrong.  Not every prophecy will focus on Jesus.  God is free to speak about anything that affects us.  The prophets in scripture gave battle plans, told how to access divine prosperity, and gave direction in times of national crisis.  The list could go on and on, but anything that mattered to His people was something God might speak about through His prophets.

Some therefore have said that the testimony of Jesus is the testimony given by Jesus, the words He is speaking about current events.

If we read nothing but the Old Testament, we will find plenty of evidence that this is what prophecy is all about. We see prophecies that came to pass sometimes in their own generation and sometimes a century or two later.

But when we read the New Testament, we see prophecies that had one meaning when the prophets had given them and another higher meaning when Jesus came to fulfill them.  We see that many prophecies has two or more fulfillments:  a historical fulfillment in their own day, another fulfillment in the ministry of Jesus, and sometimes yet one more fulfillment in our own lives as Christ lives in us.

We see these levels of prophecy in the life of David.  He often consulted the prophets to find out whether God wanted him to fight a battle or not, but few of these prophets’ words were recorded in scripture.  David’s Psalms were recorded instead, and astonishingly many of them give a clear portrait of Jesus.

The testimony of Jesus is more than just what He tells us about the next election or the next earthquake.  It is a revelation of Him, an opportunity to know Him better.  This is what prophecy is meant to give us.

Do you know Jesus better because of your connection with prophetic ministry?  If so, you’re getting it right; if not, somebody is missing the point – either the voice that speaks prophecy or the ear that hears it.

The Oil:  The Supernatural Presence Of The Holy Spirit

Many scriptures use oil as a symbol of the Holy Spirit.  The Bible uses other symbols as well:  wind, fire, rain, rivers. If God wants to live in a house built on the rock, He also wants to live somewhere anointed with the oil of His Spirit.  His house must be a place where His Spirit can move.

Perhaps more than any other ministry, prophets are people of the Spirit.  Pastors can chatter amiably with people to make them feel at home; prophets don’t want to talk until they have a word from God to deliver.  Teachers can teach anything they find in scripture, but prophets have to hear it from God before they’re ready to stand in front of people and speak it.  Prophets can’t bear to function without the fresh touch of the Holy Spirit.

But sometimes the prophets get so busy we start taking shortcuts.  Sometimes we become so zealous to help the whole church take its first steps in the prophetic that we dumb things down to an intellectual level.  Or rather than taking time to hear something fresh from God, we present something that was fresh long ago when God gave it, but like yesterday’s uncollected manna it has now bred worms and begun to stink.

I’m not pointing the finger at others here.  This is a temptation I face myself.  I continually have to remind myself to slow down and take time to receive something fresh from God.  And I have to treat my intellectual resources with the utmost suspicion; it’s too easy to fall back on knowledge rather than trusting God for something the flesh can’t produce.

Human intelligence can never substitute for the Spirit of God.  Human study and education can never approximate the touch of the Holy Spirit.  Scripture makes it clear:  the natural mind of man fights against the things of the Spirit.

Some have taught that the left-brain dominance of our culture has made us allergic to the things of the Spirit and a right-brain dominance would cure the problem.  But the Bible doesn’t say the left side of your brain fights the things of the Spirit and the right side doesn’t; it says the whole mind is at war with the Spirit.

Those of us who teach have tried to identify principles that will help us line up with the Holy Spirit.  I’ve done it myself.  Some teachings have been better than others, and some students have grasped the material better than others.

But increasingly, I am meeting people who are trying to get into the things of the Spirit by human understanding.  We have gone into the depths of symbolism, finding that a dream about this symbolizes that.  We have gone into deep research into history so we can identify how God wants us to pray and strategize.  We have worked out the numerical significance of the notes we play in prophetic song and created a mysticism of sound.

Don’t get me wrong.  There is a right way to use these bits of knowledge.  But let’s be careful not to begin in the Spirit and end in the intellect of the flesh.

Ask yourself:  has my connection with prophetic ministry made me more dependent on Him and less dependent on my own intellect, or has it been the other way around?  God’s house isn’t the stone with Jacob’s head on it, sound asleep.  It’s the rock anointed with the oil of the Holy Spirit.

The Open Heavens

The open heavens are too big a subject for this short article, but this ingredient is all-important if we want to make God feel at home.  On our end it means we have access to the things of heaven; on God’s end, it means He has access to the earth through us.

Jesus is Jacob’s ladder.  He came right out and said so in the last line of John 1.  Then in John 3, Jesus said He had come down from heaven and was still in heaven, while He stood in the dark and talked to Nicodemus in Jerusalem.  He was in both worlds at once, heaven and earth.

Does Jesus live in you?  If so, you are an open heaven too.  Hebrews 12:22 says you are now in the heavenly Jerusalem; Ephesians 2:2 says you are seated in heaven right now; Colossians 3:1-3 says your life is hid with Christ in God, and it is your responsibility to seek the things which are above.

We can’t afford to neglect God’s gracious gift of the open heavens.  His dwelling place is the intersection of heaven and earth, and that is what He has called you to be.

Again, more than any other ministry, prophets are preoccupied with the open heavens.  Some preach and prophesy about it.  Some report encounters with angels, with the visible glory of God, or of visions of Jesus.  Some bring us into prophetic worship and an opening of the heavens over the whole congregation, and the whole church gets to taste more of the glory of God than they thought they would ever get to access.

Ask yourself:  do the prophets bring a sense of heaven and earth joining together, or is everything locked in the earth?  If the prophets are saying it correctly and if their hearers are hearing correctly, the message is to change our thinking, because the kingdom of heaven is at hand – not far away, but close enough to touch.

The Prophetic Church.

I’ve said these three ingredients characterize the house where God feels at home, and that in a special way prophets are called to help the church realign itself with these three key ingredients.  But this ministry isn’t reserved for the prophets alone, for Acts 2:17-21 Peter made it clear that the whole church is meant to be prophetic:

‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams.  And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall prophesy.  I will show wonders in heaven above And signs in the earth beneath: Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.  The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD.  And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved.’

What is this outpouring of the prophetic Spirit for?  So all of us, by the Spirit of prophecy, can have firsthand revelation of our Rock, Jesus Himself.  So all of us can prophesy and see dreams and visions, experiencing the oil of the Spirit as a supernatural flow of His presence and power.  So all of us can experience the open heavens, seeing the wonders that are going on there.

This is what prophecy is for:  more of Jesus, more of the Holy Spirit, and more of heaven on earth.  Accept nothing less.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com