Selah.

"And seek Him Himself"

Selah. Pause in his presence.

We need to do this. We spend too much time talking, thinking, figuring things out when if we'd just sit, we'd hear. If we'd sit, we'd know. Listening requires silence. Of thought, of speaking, of actions. In His presence is healing, and for this reason, we worship, to fill us with Him. In being filled, all those things that eat at us lift and fade away.

But we approach prayer as us to Him and worship as our praises for Him when it is even more His love expressed to us. That's why He comes to sit with us. Beside us. We must ditch the idea presence is an "it" or a thing. It isn't something visual or something we feel. The Spirit among us isn't a "move" nor a revival service. In fact, we need to, WE MUST get away from seeking the effect of Him and seek Him Himself. I don't enter the room to talk to my husband and rejoice in the place he's been sitting or the glass he left behind. That's what we are doing with the Holy Spirit. When I speak to my husband or my daughter, I'm seeking their reply. It is who they are to me that matters.

I made this analogy recently, but when I began to change my thinking on prayer and presence, the words of two people shifted my thinking. Prophet Lana Vawser always sits at the table to have "coffee with Jesus." She speaks to Him like He's seated there with her, giving a reply. I learned the same thought process from Minister Jesse Duplantis. He has even silly sounding conversations with Jesus. Some find this bizarre, but I said if He speaks to them in this way, then why not do the same? It isn't that I'm expecting to see Him in the chair at the table, but that in treating God like my Father who I can approach, like my family whom I adore, it altered our relationship for the better on a scale I did not expect.

Much is said of reverence, and I have plenty of that. But for many reverence means reluctance and a standoffishness that frankly keeps Him away. I don't want my loving Savior at a room's reach or even an arm's reach but right next to me. I hear Him now even when neither one of us is speaking, and that's the most amazing thing. Then, to find He's not judgmental. Like at all. No one in the church told me this. We expect Him to spend the entire time together criticizing us when He wants to laugh. You heard me. Jesus is the gentlest, most lighthearted person.

Person. Not a word which descends in your ear once in a while, nor that famed "move of God", nor any of the drawings of Him that I have seen. He is God and He is King, but He was an infant and a toddler and a young boy and a teen. And a man thirty-three and a third years old who died then three days later rose from the dead and showed Himself to His disciples, who loved Him as a Friend. So should we. And also Papa and Abba. They want to be known by us. Want to be loved just like you would if they sat at your table.

"Thou wilt reveal the path to life, to the full joy of thy presence, to the bliss of being close to thee for ever." (Psalm 16:11, Moffatt)

“May he remember every gift you have given him and celebrate every sacrifice of love you have shown him. Pause in his presence” (Psalms 20:3)

“Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” (John 15:15)

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com