This blog post is somewhat of a follow up on the previous blog post: An Urgent Word: PUSHBACK!!!

I promised that my husband will share a bit of his experience with a “higher truth” namely how to cast the Lord’s presence on your problems or attacks until it is resolved in His presence.

This is that blog post. Over to Gideon:

Warning!
I want to issue a warning upfront: this isn’t a quick four-step process. You have to build up your spiritual capacity gradually. You have to put in the time to learn how to do this.

Although it’s a very simple process it isn’t necessarily easy. It’s simple to lift a heavy weight, but you need the capacity to do so.

This process takes time to learn. Please do not continue with the next step in this process if you haven’t built significant capacity with the previous steps.

Stage Zero, Building on the Right Foundation.
Make sure you know the presence of the right Jesus. Paul outlines the way of salvation in Romans 10. He says:

“How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? …”

~ Rom 10:14-15 NKJV

This is very important. My point in quoting this scripture is this: If you haven’t heard the right gospel, how then can you believe in the right Jesus? What do I mean?

Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 11:4 of the possibility of another Jesus being preached, which leads to receiving a different spirit and believing in a different gospel.

Many Christians today haven’t received the right or the full gospel. They are saved into a prosperity gospel, Santa Clause type Jesus that just want to bless them, make them happy and make their life work.

This is not the Jesus of the Bible that says: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me… (Mat 16:24)”. In the world you will have tribulation (Jo 16:33). And, through His Apostle Paul: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory (2 Co 4:17).

The following stages in this process are dangerous if you don’t know your Bible and don’t know the Jesus of the Bible.

If you are a new believer this process is not for you (yet). Please first take the time to get to know the Jesus of the Bible.

If you have been saved some time but you don’t know scripture well enough rather take the time to familiarise yourself with scripture before you continue.

First, Learn to Super Focus on the Lord’s Presence.
This stage presupposes that you know how to enter into God’s presence. Actually, we are already in His presence (Act 17:28; Rom 10:8; Eph 2:6). We just have to learn how to become consciously aware of His presence.

What works for you? Putting on worship music and singing along? Praying? Meditating on scripture? Use what already works for you and try to use it as a way to “get into” the Lord’s presence.

Use whatever works for you to become aware, but then learn how to stay in this atmosphere of awareness without the “props”.

How would that look? Say you are singing to a song. When you have become aware of His presence, slowly turn down the volume and just stay focused on Him. It helps to continue to say a few words of adoration to the Lord: “Lord Jesus, I love you. Lord, you are good. You are beautiful Lord….”

Now become silent, still keeping your focus and awareness on Him. Keep silently gazing at the Lord in adoration. Stretch yourself to keep doing this for longer periods at a time each time you practise this.

How to Overcome Distraction?
The best way to deal with distraction is to not give much attention to it. You have probably heard the example: “Don’t think of a pink elephant. What did you just think of? Yes, a pink elephant”.

The more you try to fight the distraction the more it will just absorb you. So, what do you do? You treat it as an old friend, that you are very comfortable with, coming to visit you.

You tell this “old friend” that they can sit next to you and chat away, but you are busy with something else and you are not going to give much attention to them. This sounds counter-intuitive, but what you are doing is, you are making “the issue” a non-issue.

What do I mean? You are treating the distraction as something small and insignificant. This causes it to lose its power. When you fight it, you are actually making it big and powerful in your mind. When you get comfortable with it, it becomes small in your mind and it releases you to focus on the Lord. It will still be there, but it won’t be an issue.

The more you train your mind this way, the less distraction there will be and the more you will be able to focus on the Lord in any situation regardless of distraction.

Second, Learn to Rest in and Enjoy the Lord’s Presence.
This sounds easier than it really is. There was a season in my life where my goal was to spend time with the Lord like this for three hours a day. After about six months of doing this, I only did the three hours successfully for about a handful of days.

During this time, I repeatedly heard the phrase: “learn to become a happy prisoner” in my spirit. This was probably the most important lesson the Lord taught me.

While you are resting in and enjoying the Lord’s presence, your flesh isn’t happy at all. There is such a paradox in this state of being.

Your spirit man is enjoying this so much and it feels like you want to explode from God’s fullness, love and joy. While at the same time your flesh is rebelling and objecting to every second it has to endure this torture.

Your flesh feels trapped. Imprisoned! It tries to convince you that this is a waste of time. It wants you to go and check your phone to see what time it is, if you haven’t received a message or if someone isn’t maybe “urgently” looking for you.

You have to essentially learn how to be happy on the one end while feeling trapped on the other end. You have to become a happy prisoner.

Third, Learn to Stay Longer and Abide in His Presence.
Most of what I said above also applies to this point. What I would add here is, now you should learn to stay aware during the whole day. It won’t necessarily be as intense as when you have your focused time with the Lord but you will still be aware of His presence.

A mistake we make in our relationship with the Lord is to compartmentalise our lives. When we stand up from our time with the Lord in the mornings it’s like we make a mental switch: “Lord, your time is up, now it’s my time”. We don’t consciously say this but this is actually the attitude of our hearts.

This is our flesh trying to gain control again. To escape its prison. You don’t have to let your flesh out! Learn to keep this awareness during your day. A great resource to gain inspiration and to learn how to do this is a book by Brother Lawrence: “The Practice of the Presence of God.”

Fourth, Learn to Cast His Presence unto a Situation.
Now finally the last stage in this process. If you have learned to cultivate an awareness of God’s presence in your daily life, then you can start learning how to cast His presence.

What is casting His presence? His presence is like light flooding your heart. You can now learn how to reflect His light unto a situation. There are two ways of doing this.

Communing His presence.
The first way is to commune His presence. Communing is deeper than communication. Communication is done with words; communing is done as a spiritual transfer.

2 Corinthians 13:14 speak of “the communion of the Holy Spirit”. This is to fellowship with the Lord: to draw from the Lord’s presence through the person of the Holy Spirit. It’s what you have learned to do so far. To sit, receive and enjoy an infilling of God’s presence.

Now you simply commune His presence (the flowing river of the Holy Spirit) to someone or something else. Send it in in a direction. How do you do this? This is covered further down under the heading “The Key of Faith and Prayer”.

Taking your Situation into His Presence.
The second way is to take your situation into the Lord’s presence. In the Old Testament, we have a wonderful symbol pointing to this principle. The Priestly Breastplate.

The high priest would wear this breastplate when he enters God’s presence once a year to make intercession for the children of Israel on the day of atonement.

This breastplate had twelve stones on, representing the twelve tribes of Israel. He was symbolically carrying Israel on his heart before the Lord.

This is the highest form of intercession. It is interesting, my wife is now busy reading the book “Rees Howells: Intercessor”. These are basically the same principles the Lord has taught him.

He speaks of abiding for someone else. It’s literally like you are spending time on behalf of someone else while the Lord’s presence starts working in their lives.

There is no concept of time and space in the spirit realm. When you hold someone or some situation in your heart before the Lord like this, His presence is literally cast over that person or situation.

My wife mentioned how she was struggling with an attack in the previous blog post. I must admit I don’t use this as often as I probably should. But I have learned a valuable lesson.

Charmaine was struggling with this attack on her mind for a few days. I assumed that she is as “proficient” in this as I am and I just told her what to do. She was still struggling a bit, so I decided to just do it on her behalf.

It wasn’t 10min when she looked at me and asked: “What did you just do, I felt it lift”. I’m being vulnerable by writing about this. I have never really taught on this subject, publicly, but I believe it’s time for the body to start moving in these higher truths.

So here is exactly what I did, and what went on in my heart as I did it:

I held Charmaine’s mind in the Lord’s presence. I pressed in deeper so that I could sense in the Lord’s presence by the unveiling and exposing power of His presence what the cause of the problem was. This is not always necessary.

Most often than not The Lord’s presence will just dissolve or resolve the issue. Where His light is, darkness must flee. Where His healing power is present, heartbreak or physical sickness gets minister to.

The Lord and His presence in the situation are in total control. Your job is just to hold the situation there by your intercession.

This is on a need to know bases. If the Lord needs you to know something, He will let you know. If you need to repent for something, His light will show it to you. If you have to pray something specific, His light will reveal it to you. But most of the time the Lord just needs you to hold this situation in His presence so that His glory can work on the situation until it is resolved.

The Key of Faith and Prayer
So, to put a finer point on it. How exactly do you do this? Simply by faith and prayer. What does that mean?

In the Greek, the word prayer when broken down actually means, desire towards. To pray means to put your desire towards God. You do all this by desiring it from Him in prayer. His presence (Holy Spirit) might communicate a stop or go ahead in your heart. Listen to these promptings. Don’t do things that you can’t feel God’s peace on.

This once again presupposes that You are familiar with the awareness of His presence. The presence of the Jesus of the Bible. He will not lead you into things contrary to His Word.

In all this we need faith. Faith is not something you work up. It’s to simply trust God, to do what He says He will do and to believe that He is who He says He is in His word.

In closing. If you are looking for additional resources that can help you go deeper with the Lord, I suggest you read three books. I suggest you read them together. It is “Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ” by Jeanne Guyon; “The Normal Christian Life” by Watchman Nee and “The Practice of the Presence of God” by Brother Lawrence.

Most people miss the depth and richest in “The Normal Christian Life” because they read it to gain head knowledge rather than to gain experiential knowledge. Therefore, I suggest you read “The Normal Christian Life” in the way and “spirit” of “Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ”.

When read and applied correctly “The Normal Christian Life” will help you overcome most issues in your life. “The Practice of the Presence of God”, serves as both motivation and practical tips on your journey.

May you grow deeper in the Lord.

Gideon