Power for Life: Keys to a life marked by the presence of God Read online

  We can’t run from community; we have to embrace it. It’s what God uses to perfect us. Doesn’t that just make you happy? Well, it should. So, get happy and enjoy the journey. When you think someone else is a “fruit tester,” remember you may be the “fruit tester” for someone else!

  In Season and Out

  I asked God a question: “Why did You curse the fig tree even when it wasn’t the season for figs? How could You hold the tree accountable to produce fruit out of season?” It just didn’t seem fair to me. Then this scripture came to mind: “Be ready in season and out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2, NKJV).

  I realized that no matter what season it is, no matter what our circumstances are, no matter if it’s a good day or a bad day, Jesus wants us to be bearing fruit. It will not always be easy to bear good fruit. It requires a death to the desires of the flesh and to the self-life. But God wants us to be ready in season and out of season, and His Spirit gives us the power to do that.

  The awesome thing is that when God asks us to do something, it’s because He knows He has already made the provision for it! He never asks us to do something on our own without His help.

  Jesus is more concerned with our fruit than He is about our gifts or material success. This is revealed in Matthew 7:22–23, where those who operate in great gifts are told to depart from Jesus because He never really knew them. Their lack of fruit caused them to miss the most important thing: relationship with God and acceptance into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus also said in Matthew 21:43, “I tell you, for this reason the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce the fruits of it.” Fruit is on the top of God’s priority list for us.

  You Will Be Fruitful

  Joel prophesied, “Be not afraid, you wild beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness have sprung up and are green; the tree bears its fruit, and the fig tree and the vine yield their [full] strength” (Joel 2:22). As God continues to work in us, He will cause the wilderness places to become green pastures. He will cause dry, dead places to become alive. He will cause the tree, our lives, to bear fruit and the vine to have full strength. God gives us the strength to bear the fruit He desires us to have. He makes us strong in spirit. This is our destiny.

  My heartfelt prayer for you as you read this book is Colossians 1:10: “That you may walk (live and conduct yourselves) in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him and desiring to please Him in all things, bearing fruit in every good work and steadily growing and increasing in and by the knowledge of God [with fuller, deeper, and clearer insight, acquaintance, and recognition].”

  I believe this is the heartbeat of God found within these pages, that we will live in a way that pleases God. As we do, we will bear fruit as His magnificent power is displayed in and through our lives, and in the end we will have grown in our deep, intimate knowledge of God.

  PART I

  Plugging Into the Power Source

  CHAPTER 2

  The Power of Intimacy

  Hitting the Saturation Point

  WHEN GOD FIRST revealed Himself to my family and me, He showed Himself to be a God of miracles and power. I was fourteen years old at the time, and what a year it had been. God stepped into my life, and nothing would ever be the same again. I was raised Catholic. Our family went to church once or twice a year on Christmas and Easter. I used to love lighting the candles in church. The smell of the incense and the peaceful atmosphere were very inviting to me. I still have memories of the midnight mass at Saint Margaret’s, looking up into the windows near the ceiling of the church and seeing hundreds of lights flickering back at me as we stood there singing “Hallelujah,” holding our little white candles in the dark. I loved it.

  I remember asking my parents if we could go to church. For some reason, beyond the influence of man, I was always drawn to church and to spiritual things. I would love to get my hymnal and sing the songs aloud. There was a higher, unseen Force drawing me; I just didn’t know it. We were not a super-religious family. I believed in God and in Jesus, but I didn’t have a personal relationship with Him. I knew He was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, but I had not yet had my sins forgiven. To me, God was some distant Being floating in the universe somewhere.

  Then it happened, the night that would change my life forever. My mom had been sick for two years. She had spent thousands of dollars on hospital bills. She tried everything she could from modern medicine to homeopathic remedies to alternative spiritual healing techniques. But nothing worked. She only grew worse. I was twelve when she first became sick. Her sickness started with a weird dizzy feeling in her head, but it soon took over to the point where she had constant pins and needles throughout her arms and hands. She couldn’t walk straight and eventually had to just lie in bed. By the end of two years, she was bedridden. The doctors diagnosed her with everything in the book from a virus in her spine to a rare blood disorder to strange yeast infections to multiple sclerosis and more. But no matter what medicine she took, she only grew worse.

  I still have some of the pages from my journal as a child. “Dear God. I’m really worried about Mom. She is really sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. The doctors don’t either. Please help my mom. The medicine isn’t working. Nothing is. I don’t want her to die.” That was from November 9, 1986.

  Sometime later that year my grandmother invited her to a Catholic charismatic healing service where the priests were filled with the Holy Spirit. That night she was the worst she had ever been. But she was determined to get to that healing mass. She knew in her heart that God was her only hope. If He didn’t somehow intervene, her life was over. As she entered the church that night, she collapsed on the floor in the back of the sanctuary. With tears running down her face, she looked up and saw the cross. She prayed, “Jesus, tonight I am coming to You and You alone.” She made her way forward for prayer, and before the priest could even lay his hand on her, the power of the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. The force was so strong that she was knocked back through the air about ten feet across the altar.

  As she lay on the floor, she could feel what felt like tons of electricity flowing through her body. She thought she died and went to heaven. The priests helped her off the floor. She could still feel God’s power flowing through her. When she stood up, she noticed something. All the pain and sickness was gone from her body! Not only that, but she had given her heart completely to Jesus. In that moment she realized that Jesus was the only way to get to God. She had tried alternative healing methods that dabbled in Hinduism and Buddhist backgrounds, but they only made her worse. She even tried New Age healing techniques. It all failed her. In fact, the more she participated in things such as meditation and yoga, the sicker she became! God was making sure that she understood Jesus was the only way into true relationship with God. She was sincerely seeking to know the truth, and that night she found it!

  I still remember when my mom came walking through the front door of our house. She was bright and smiling. I hadn’t seen my mom smile in two years. “What happened?” I exclaimed. “You look so different!” She said, “Jesus healed me!”

  Here’s what I wrote in my journal right after, on January 27, 1987: “I am so happy Jesus healed my mom! He’s great!” What a change!

  That week my entire family came into a real and true relationship with God. I can remember sitting down with my mom as she shared with me about what Jesus did for us on the cross. Something strange happened on the inside of me. As she spoke to me about Jesus, a sudden awareness of my sins came over me, and I knew I needed forgiveness for them. No one told me I had sinned. I just knew it. We prayed together, and I asked Jesus to forgive me. A new chapter began in my life. I felt clean. Something changed inside of me. It was the beginning of a glorious relationship with God. No longer was He a distant force floating out in the universe somewhere. He had stepped down into my life. He was real!

  We soon joined a Full Gospel church that had solid teaching in t
he Word and lively praise and worship music. The first month of attendance, we all stood against the back wall, my brother and me with our hands in our pockets. It was all so new for us. After a few months something began to break through in my spirit. I found myself being drawn to the front row of the church! So one Sunday, without saying a word to my parents, I walked from the back row to the front row. As I closed my eyes and sang the songs, I could feel a sensation going over my entire body. God was filling me with His presence. It was glorious! God was so close. I could feel Him in me and all around me. His presence was overwhelming.

  Reaching the Saturation Point

  Each week in church I would close my eyes, lift my hands, and worship God. In those corporate church settings His manifest presence was so real to me. His presence would come like waves over my body. As time went on, I wanted more of God. I wanted to know His presence when I was alone! So I took my tape player (remember, this was 1988, and we didn’t have CDs or MP3s yet) and my favorite worship tape and would go into my room, close the door, and worship God for an hour every day in private. I would sing the same songs I had sung a hundred times before in church, but I felt nothing! I felt dry and distant from God. It was nothing like when I worshiped Him in church under the corporate atmosphere of His presence. But I was determined to connect with God.

  After about four months of pressing in and seeking God, it happened. I was singing a song I had sung a thousand times before, but this time something happened. I understand now that my spirit reached a saturation point. God’s Spirit overflowed from my spirit into my soul and body.

  It’s a picture frozen in time, a snapshot of glory imprinted in my memory. I was standing in the middle of my bedroom, a young fifteen-year-old boy, my eyes closed and hands lifted up. As I sang, heaven opened up over me. My entire room became filled with the manifest presence of God! My entire body was completely overcome by His presence. God stepped down into my little room. It was just He and I. He was already living in my spirit upon salvation, but now He was overflowing into my soul and body. He was filling all of me. It was a moment of spiritual breakthrough that would transform my personal intimacy with God.

  I grew throughout my teen years with the help of a youth group, and God continued to take me deeper and higher in Him. I began to learn a principle from the life of Jesus that would soon begin to release a supernatural power in and through my life. I had such a deep passion to pray and spend time with God. This drive did not come from any human source. It was divinely inspired from within. No one told me to pray. No one told me to worship. It came from the Holy Spirit inside of me.

  For years as a teenager and young adult in my twenties, my favorite thing to do was take my guitar and go off into a secluded place for hours and worship God. It was such a special time. This was where I learned to hear God’s voice in prophecy. I would go so deep in His presence that God would begin to sing songs back to me prophetically. I would sing spontaneous songs in the Spirit for hours as God revealed His heart to me.

  As I learned to live in God’s presence, I began to find that even when I was doing nonspiritual things, such as taking a walk or shopping at the supermarket, I would find God’s presence right there with me. At times His presence would wash over me in waves. Oh, to live constantly in His presence! This must be our highest pursuit in life.

  It was on my first missions trip to Mexico as a teenager that I learned what it meant to be completely saturated and possessed by God. One night I was on the roof of the orphanage where we were working. As a small group of us worshiped God, I began to pray, “Holy Spirit, I want You to possess every fiber of my being. I want every molecule and cell in my body filled with You.” As I prayed this, suddenly the manifest presence of God filled every single part of me. It was as if every molecule in my body was electrified with His presence. In that moment, He had all of me—spirit, soul, and body. It was glorious!

  As I studied the Bible, I learned that there was such a deep desire in the heart of Jesus to be in relationship and fellowship with His heavenly Father that His lifestyle reflected His passion. From the time He was a child, Jesus could be found in the temple. He even scared His parents one day when they couldn’t find Him because He was in the temple having a deep discussion with the adult teachers over Scripture. His level of understanding amazed the people (Luke 2:44–52).

  Jesus was drawn into intimacy with God from a very early age. The same was true for His cousin, John the Baptist. John was a prophetic voice being raised up and prepared by God for a very special purpose. The Bible says in Luke 1:80 concerning John, “And the little boy grew and became strong in spirit; and he was in the deserts (wilderness) until the day of his appearing to Israel [the commencement of his public ministry].”

  John was drawn into intimacy with God during his years of preparation and was separated from the voices of this world so he could clearly hear the voice of God. He had an important call and destiny to fulfill. He couldn’t fulfill His mandate unless he was alone with God.

  As an adult Jesus’s lifestyle also continued to reflect a walk of intimacy with God. Before important decisions He would spend much time alone with God, such as when He was to gather the original twelve disciples around Himself. He spent the entire night in prayer (Luke 6:12–13). Out of this place of intimacy His steps were divinely ordered, and the first twelve disciples found their way to Jesus.

  Cultivating a Lifestyle of Prayer and Intimacy With God

  Jesus set a perfect example and model for us to follow. He showed us what it is to truly walk in supernatural power. He also showed us His source. Jesus was continually being moved with compassion and faith, releasing supernatural virtue everywhere He went. All around Him the sick were being healed and oppressed people being set free. The blind were receiving their sight, the lame were walking, the deaf were hearing, and even the dead were being raised back to life. Now that’s supernatural power!

  We know Jesus received this power after His forty days in the wilderness. He went in filled with the Spirit, but after a time of testing, He came out under the power of the Spirit (Luke 4:1–2, 13–14). But it didn’t end there. Throughout His earthly ministry Jesus was continually withdrawing from the crowds to be alone with God. As He poured out God’s power to help people, He was continually being filled Himself. This was the secret to His sustained, unlimited power.

  In many portions of Scripture you will see a direct connection between Jesus’s secret prayer life and His public display of power. When Jesus taught us how to pray, in Matthew 6:6, He told us to go into a private place and pray to our Father in secret. God who sees in secret will reward us in the open.

  A father in the faith, Lou Engle, once shared with me, “Matt, what you do in secret will one day be put on the stage of history.” He was telling me how important my private life was before God. How I lived in secret would impact my public ministry. My private prayer life would have a tremendous impact on how God used me publicly. The same is true for all of us.

  Kathryn Kuhlman, a woman who moved in tremendous power from God to heal the sick, once shared, “The greatest power that God has given to any individual is the power of prayer.”1

  Another great healing minister, Smith Wigglesworth, said, “I never get out of bed in the morning without having communion with God in the Spirit.”2 He also said, “I don’t often spend more than half an hour in prayer at one time, but I never go more than half an hour without praying.”3 Prayer was a lifestyle for him.

  An example of Jesus’s walk of intimacy and power with God can be seen in Mark 1:32–42. After a night of healing and setting many people free, Jesus went out in the morning before the sun even rose to a deserted place to be alone in prayer. Right after that time of prayer, again He traveled and continued to preach and set more people free. In this instance He also healed a man of leprosy. We see a pattern. Prayer, power, prayer. The power of God will be sandwiched in between our prayer life.

  It’s a lifestyle. Sometimes Jesus prayed at night
. At other times it was in the morning. Since Jesus had to be ready at any moment to minister into a situation, I believe He cultivated a habit of continual communion with God. He had His times of consecrated prayer, but His spirit was always listening for God’s voice and guidance. Your relationship with God and times of prayer cannot be put into a box, religious formula, or pattern. Here’s a good rule of thumb. Find time to be alone with God in between the times He pours His power through you. Seek to always cultivate His abiding presence in your life. Prayer will become as natural as breathing.

  Secret Conversation With God

  I love what Brother Lawrence, a lay brother of the Carmelite monastery in Paris in the 1600s, had to say about this.

  I have quitted all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges me. And I make it my business only to persevere in His holy presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to God, which I may call an actual presence of God; or, to speak better, an habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with God... .

  In continuing the practice of conversing with God throughout each day, and quickly seeking His forgiveness when I fell or strayed, His presence has become as easy and natural to me now as it once was difficult to attain....

  The time of business...does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament....

  There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. Those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it.4