Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #212 Prayer and God's Presence: Taking Prayer Beyond a Mere Discipline

Transcript

#212 Prayer and God's Presence: Taking Prayer Beyond a Mere Discipline · The OneCry Podcast

• 0:02
  There's a very real difference in a person who is just trying to add prayer
• 0:08
  as one little side discipline of their life,
• 0:12
  and a person who wants to walk and talk with God all day long.
• 0:17
  Music.
• 0:19
  Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
• 0:25
  The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
• 0:35
  Welcome to the One Cry Podcast. We are so glad to welcome you one more time.
• 0:41
  And we're always thrilled when you tune in and either you're watching it by
• 0:48
  a video or you're listening to it.
• 0:51
  And we're just glad to have you. I'm Bill Elliff, and this is my dear buddy,
• 0:58
  Kyle Reno, and the infamous Mississippi Flash.
• 1:02
  Oh, come on. And so, Kyle, it's great to see you this morning.
• 1:07
  You too, bro. I'm excited about what we're going to lean into today. Well, me too.
• 1:11
  You know, Kyle, as you think about, I know you have admired and been influenced
• 1:18
  by a lot of men. And like me, some of them are alive and I can pick up the phone and call them.
• 1:26
  Some are alive and I couldn't get a hold of them if I tried.
• 1:30
  But many of them are are in heaven.
• 1:34
  And who are the men that are in heaven that you wish when you get to heaven?
• 1:40
  You say, man, I just sit down and have a long, good coffee with that guy.
• 1:46
  Yeah, I think about Andrew Murray, Christ in the School of Prayer is one of
• 1:51
  the first books I ever read, which is awesome.
• 1:54
  Of course, we talk about guys like this, George Mueller, many others that long
• 1:59
  obedience, specifically to prayer, heart for God, revival.
• 2:04
  So I think those two guys come to my mind when you initially ask the question.
• 2:08
  How about you? Well, I've got so
• 2:10
  many, but one of them, probably one of my favorite authors was A.W. Tozer.
• 2:19
  And, you know, some people just don't like reading Tozer. He's pretty mystical.
• 2:26
  He was a great student of the saints in past ages. And, um.
• 2:36
  But Tozer really ministers to me. And I tell you, I had an experience this week, Kyle.
• 2:43
  I was on a plane coming back from somewhere, and I had downloaded a book that I had never seen.
• 2:53
  It was a transcription of a sermon, really, that Tozer had done on Jacob's ladder from Genesis 28.
• 3:04
  And the title of the book, if our people would like to download it,
• 3:08
  is Going Higher with God in Prayer.
• 3:13
  And when I read that just the first chapter of that book is gold.
• 3:20
  And it says something, Kyle, that that I've been feeling and experiencing and
• 3:29
  kind of stepping into, I guess, over the last few years.
• 3:35
  And I just had never I just had never read anybody who had said that so clearly.
• 3:40
  And that's what we'd like to talk about a little bit today.
• 3:45
  And I've kind of broken it down. Now, I'm just going to unashamedly quote Tozer.
• 3:53
  He don't mind, bro. We're good.
• 3:55
  But I kind of broke it down into how I would categorize four or five statements
• 4:02
  that he made in this chapter in Going Higher.
• 4:06
  As he talked about Genesis 28, we know the story of Genesis 28,
• 4:10
  that Jacob was just going along and it was time for bed. And he put a rock down,
• 4:16
  which doesn't sound very exciting. And he laid down and he slept.
• 4:21
  And he had this dream.
• 4:24
  And let me just read from Genesis 28, 12.
• 4:28
  He said, Behold, there was a ladder that was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven.
• 4:35
  And the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
• 4:40
  And behold, the Lord stood above it. And so you get this picture,
• 4:45
  angels are going up and down this ladder, angels up and down this ladder,
• 4:49
  and God is at the top of this ladder, Jacob is at the bottom.
• 4:55
  And God speaks. And even though he's at the top of the ladder,
• 4:59
  Jacob can hear him in his dream.
• 5:01
  And he says, I am the Lord, the God of your father, Abraham,
• 5:06
  the God of Isaac, and the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants.
• 5:11
  So what he's about to do is repeat the Abrahamic covenant.
• 5:15
  And he says, just like I promised to Abraham, just like I promised to Isaac.
• 5:21
  Now, Jacob, I'm promising to you that your seed is going to be a blessing to all generations.
• 5:27
  And I'm going to give you this land, which, by the way, here,
• 5:32
  three or four thousand years later, Israel is still on that land, miraculously.
• 5:39
  And so then he woke up. And here's the part I want you to see.
• 5:44
  Jacob woke up and he said, surely the Lord is in this place.
• 5:50
  And I didn't know it. And he was afraid and said, how awesome is this place?
• 5:57
  This is none other than the house of God. And this is the gate of heaven.
• 6:03
  Isn't that fascinating how he said that?
• 6:06
  And, of course, he named that place Bethel. It became the house of God and forever
• 6:11
  remembered as that. So here's just three or four statements.
• 6:17
  Tozer said that the most important aspect of the Christian life is prayer.
• 6:25
  When he said that, when he wrote that, I thought about that because I don't
• 6:31
  want to say there's a lot of aspects of the Christian life.
• 6:34
  So you could say, well, the most important aspect is faith. I think he's talking about faith.
• 6:40
  The most important means that we have that we are to be involved in is prayer.
• 6:49
  And I know Tozer would, I certainly would say, word-fed prayer.
• 6:54
  When I say prayer, I always think of just scripture and prayer as intertwined.
• 7:00
  So you can't pray without the scripture. You can't study the scripture without
• 7:05
  prayer. It's just our means of communing with God and him communing with us.
• 7:12
  And so he says this. Let me just read this quote.
• 7:17
  He said, the most important aspect of Christian life is prayer.
• 7:20
  It's the most potent weapon we have in the spiritual warfare before us in this world.
• 7:27
  Every Christian is defined by their prayer life. And if we're not living in
• 7:34
  prayer, we are not experiencing the life God has for us.
• 7:39
  It goes on to explain why that's true.
• 7:42
  And I would summarize this statement, and he uses the picture of Jacob to describe
• 7:47
  it, that prayer is ascending into the presence of God.
• 7:56
  You know, prayer is not, and this is what I'm learning, Kyle.
• 7:59
  Prayer is not just ritual. It's not just words.
• 8:03
  I've been through in my journey in my prayer life when prayer was just an add-on.
• 8:10
  It was just, well, I got to pray. I always felt guilty about it.
• 8:15
  Reading my Bible is far easier for me than praying.
• 8:20
  It's not an add-on. It's not a ritual. It's not even just a way to get things done.
• 8:26
  It's not just what you're supposed to do.
• 8:31
  Spirit-fed, Scripture-fed prayer
• 8:34
  is the gateway into the awareness and the reality of God's presence.
• 8:42
  Because prayer is communion with God. Now, Kyle, you and I know each other,
• 8:47
  and we know each other well.
• 8:49
  And the reason is, you know, there are a lot of guys I'd like to know,
• 8:52
  and I just don't have an opportunity.
• 8:54
  So, well, do you know this guy? No, I just don't know him.
• 8:58
  But you and I know each other really well, and I'm so grateful for that.
• 9:03
  But that happened because we worked together for many years.
• 9:08
  We had a thousand lunches at American Pie, and we prayed together a lot,
• 9:16
  and we were in a million meetings and elder gatherings and retreats and all
• 9:21
  that. We talked to each other.
• 9:24
  I know how you think. You know how I think. And so we have this blessed friendship and community.
• 9:33
  But it's only come through communication. So people say, well,
• 9:39
  I have a relationship with the Lord.
• 9:42
  Well, do you pray? Well, no, I don't pray. Do you read your Bible?
• 9:45
  No, I don't read my Bible.
• 9:46
  Well, then don't tell me that you really have a full relationship with the Lord,
• 9:53
  because a relationship is driven by communication, by communion.
• 10:00
  And so Tozer says this. He says, if I need to prop up my prayer life with worldly
• 10:05
  ideas and activities, I'm in trouble.
• 10:07
  I do not understand the real essence of prayer.
• 10:12
  Prayer is discovering the presence of God in a way we did not know it before.
• 10:20
  And we cannot truly pray without experiencing God.
• 10:25
  And let me mention a couple of scriptures, and then I want you to just react to that statement.
• 10:31
  I thought immediately of the most important verse that turned my praying around,
• 10:40
  my life of prayer around.
• 10:41
  And that's Matthew 6, 6, where Jesus says, when you pray, open the door and
• 10:50
  step in and then close the door and pray to your father who's in secret.
• 10:55
  So there's, I learned through that how to enter into the presence of God and
• 11:03
  just focus my attention on God and shut out everything else.
• 11:09
  That made my prayer...
• 11:12
  Praying for the first time, very experiential and very present-centered.
• 11:21
  There's another verse, Colossians 3, that says, therefore,
• 11:27
  it says, set your mind on the things above where Christ is seated at the right
• 11:33
  hand of God, because you've died and your life is hidden with Christ and God.
• 11:38
  And don't set your mind on the things of this world. So I realized that what
• 11:45
  my life is to be about is by entering into God's presence and keeping my eyes
• 11:52
  focused there and not here.
• 11:54
  What's the source of worry? It's when I get my eyes in the wrong place,
• 11:59
  start looking at the world, and I leave the presence of God.
• 12:04
  And prayer is just a gateway into that. And then I think of Psalm 24,
• 12:11
  where, you know, the psalmist said, who can ascend unto the hill of the Lord?
• 12:19
  And this is what Tozer is saying, is prayer is an ascent.
• 12:26
  How does that hit you as I'm talking about that? What's your mind?
• 12:31
  Yeah, I think what has helped shape my personal prayer life and see the others that have vibrant.
• 12:37
  Prayer lives, is at some point they have accepted the invitation to intimacy.
• 12:44
  You know, they have come to believe that prayer is not just something that we
• 12:49
  do. It's not just some obligation.
• 12:51
  It is obviously a command, and God commands because he wants what's best for us.
• 12:56
  But they have come to experience it as this invitation from their Father in
• 13:01
  Heaven saying, hey, open the door.
• 13:03
  Come in. Shut the door behind you.
• 13:06
  Let's be together let's not just fill the air with words,
• 13:11
  let's let you in this moment acknowledge
• 13:14
  my presence because I'm acknowledging yours because
• 13:18
  we're here so I think there has to be those moments where you break through
• 13:22
  in your prayer life and you've experienced it you sense that in seasons of prayer
• 13:27
  and fasting where all of a sudden your intimacy with God is experienced you're
• 13:32
  like oh I'm here I'm with the Lord And that's why fasting,
• 13:36
  one of the reasons why fasting is so dynamic, it's because we're letting go
• 13:43
  of some things in order to experience that.
• 13:47
  He says something else, and I want to summarize it.
• 13:50
  And like this, he says, using the metaphor of the ladder ascending,
• 13:56
  he says to ascend into the presence of God in prayer is to let go and leave
• 14:03
  the presence of the world.
• 14:05
  So, in other words, you can't ascend if you're holding on down here.
• 14:11
  If you're holding on to the world and you're, you know, I got to watch TV.
• 14:16
  I got to listen to this thing. I got to do my social media and I'm just sitting
• 14:20
  there and I'm just holding.
• 14:22
  Well, I'm not going up there to ascend into the presence of the Lord if I'm
• 14:27
  holding on, if I'm descending into the world.
• 14:32
  So this speaks of my relationship to sin, the level of my experience,
• 14:36
  the relationship of prayer to holiness.
• 14:40
  Listen, here's how Tozer says it. This is a quote. In the ascending stairs,
• 14:46
  he's talking about Jacob's ladder.
• 14:49
  We need to understand that the closer we get to God, the farther away we are
• 14:55
  from the world. That's good. Beautiful statement.
• 14:58
  This is something many Christians do not understand and have not experienced.
• 15:02
  From God's perspective, true prayer can never mingle with the world.
• 15:09
  And the key to this is a complete separation between the world around me and my prayer experience.
• 15:17
  Jacob learned that if he was going to touch God, he needed to be set apart.
• 15:23
  So it's an amazing thought. And, you know, I just think about so many times
• 15:28
  when the Lord has said, you know, why don't you just pick up your Bible right now?
• 15:34
  And I've wanted to watch the news or something. And so I descend to the world
• 15:42
  and just listen to a bunch of senseless garbage that doesn't make any difference at all.
• 15:50
  And I miss the ascent into the presence of the one who sees all of time and eternity at a glance.
• 15:59
  So my holiness, Kyle, what do you think about this? that our holiness,
• 16:06
  our pursuit of holiness does make a difference in affecting our prayer life.
• 16:12
  Yeah, no doubt. Well, I think about it, just going back to even what you said
• 16:15
  before this thought, in my mind is, you know, the moment that,
• 16:20
  and I have this, a few prayer practices, you know, that I've cultivated over time.
• 16:25
  One of them, Katie and I, when you get this, Katie and I have five kids in the
• 16:29
  house, you know, like we're looking for breaks of space for sanity's sake, you know?
• 16:35
  Yeah, we'll often take walks together and we'll often encourage the other to
• 16:41
  go take a walk while the other watches the chaos.
• 16:43
  Right. But I found with Bill that when I go on a walk with just me and God is one thing.
• 16:50
  But the moment I take this phone with me, it's another thing.
• 16:53
  Well, it just is. I don't I don't care even if I go to walk knowing to pray.
• 16:59
  But if I have my phone with me, it's personal, I'm just distracted.
• 17:05
  I'm just easy. I'm anticipating distraction. I'm anticipating a text or update or something.
• 17:13
  But if I leave something, if I leave it behind, let me tell you what I anticipate. God. Wow.
• 17:20
  Because he's got it all. He's got my whole attention.
• 17:24
  I'm on this walk to be with you right now as the sun's going down.
• 17:29
  And I'm just recounting the day or what's in my heart and conversational and
• 17:35
  communing because I've spent time with you that morning and I've laid before you many things.
• 17:39
  But maybe I'm just unpacking at the end of the day, you know,
• 17:43
  just things that I'm coming to recognize or just being with him.
• 17:46
  And so it's an end. I do think to what you just said.
• 17:51
  Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? He has clean hands, pure heart.
• 17:57
  You know, that God's not playing games when we get there. Yeah.
• 18:02
  That God wants honest dialogue, you know, between.
• 18:06
  And so it would to come into God's presence and to pretend that there's not
• 18:12
  things that are captivating your heart that are unclean.
• 18:15
  You know, to not to come is God's God. God doesn't walk around.
• 18:20
  He's going like, hey, let's acknowledge what's going on right here.
• 18:24
  Because I want to transform.
• 18:26
  God's not there in that moment to shame you, but he's not going to leave us.
• 18:30
  And that's so you can't have intimacy. And I think that's why in the six movements
• 18:36
  that Jesus gives us in the Lord's Prayer, one of those is forgive me of my sins.
• 18:45
  Because we always have to deal with that. And there's always something like
• 18:51
  a good father that he looks at us and said, now, Bill, there's something here,
• 18:55
  you know, that I need to talk to you about. Right.
• 18:59
  And I want you to don't make excuses. Don't play games.
• 19:03
  I want you to deal with it. And I have to be a ready repenter.
• 19:07
  That's right. There's another component of this, Kyle.
• 19:10
  And that is, if we think of the ladder of ascending into the presence of the
• 19:14
  Lord or the door of entering into the presence of the Lord.
• 19:21
  That I don't come to the door. I don't start on the first rung of the ladder
• 19:27
  when I am distracted by sin.
• 19:32
  You know what I'm saying? So sin keeps me from prayer.
• 19:37
  I think when I'm sinful and I have said, I'm going to go walk and meet with the Lord.
• 19:43
  God doesn't, I don't want to say doesn't care, But he doesn't want sin to keep
• 19:51
  me from coming into that's exactly
• 19:54
  where I need to go into his presence to deal with it appropriately.
• 19:59
  But but sin, you know, I think it was Moody that said sin keeps me.
• 20:06
  He was talking about the scripture.
• 20:08
  Sin keeps me from the book and the book keeps me from sin.
• 20:11
  Yeah. Yeah. But it just I just don't go there.
• 20:14
  Yeah. Right. So I think I'm just eating in my mind. The Lord's saying,
• 20:19
  come here. And as you come, we're going to get you clean.
• 20:22
  Yeah, I'm changing, transforming you.
• 20:27
  You're going to fix it all outside the room, but I'm inviting you in to my presence
• 20:32
  that I might transform you in ways that you need. But you've got to be honest.
• 20:36
  That's our approach in honesty helps bring about that transformation.
• 20:41
  OK, here's another statement. Yeah.
• 20:45
  He says, you just, this is my statement, you cannot just add prayer.
• 20:50
  You must ascend to it. And he says this, too many Christians have the idea they
• 20:56
  can get away with just adding prayer to their normal daily routines.
• 21:00
  It's not the truth, but a lie from the enemy. Prayer is not something we add.
• 21:05
  Rather, it is something we ascend to.
• 21:07
  It's something we enter into, I would say. And it goes on to say this latter
• 21:13
  ascension speaks to the fact that there are various levels of prayer.
• 21:18
  As I mature in my Christian experience, I'm also developing in my prayer ability,
• 21:23
  my ability to leave the world behind and to enter into the presence of God.
• 21:28
  It's not something that comes overnight.
• 21:31
  And I would say not something that comes easily because the enemy,
• 21:35
  of course, wants to keep us. It's not something that just happens.
• 21:40
  It's proactive on our part as Christians. We must turn our backs on the world
• 21:45
  and put our focus on the God of heaven.
• 21:48
  And I guess this whole thing, Kyle, is what I'm seeing, and this sounds so bizarre,
• 21:57
  but I've been saying lately, prayer is the Christian life.
• 22:03
  I mean, I don't know how other to say it because prayer.
• 22:10
  It's just walking with God. And that's why he says, I want you to pray without ceasing.
• 22:16
  He's saying, I want you to walk with me. And if you're walking with me and you're
• 22:20
  aware of me, we're going to talk.
• 22:22
  I'm going to talk to you. You're going to talk to me. That's prayer.
• 22:27
  And I know there are disciplines where we make lists and we go through in the
• 22:32
  morning, maybe as a reminder to pray for things, which is a great thing to do
• 22:37
  and a healthy thing to do.
• 22:38
  But the real essence is just walking and talking with God all day long.
• 22:46
  One final thing that he says, and let me just talk for a minute about it and then see what you think.
• 22:55
  Prayer is not only ascending, he says, but it is also God descending with his presence. Yeah.
• 23:05
  Now, you got to don't strain the metaphor, you know, we know that God is present
• 23:10
  in us and his Holy Spirit lives in us. So he never leaves.
• 23:14
  But the conscious awareness of his presence. Right. We don't have most of the time.
• 23:20
  Right. Jacob was just walking along and who knows if he was even aware of the
• 23:26
  presence of God. But after this experience, he said, how awesome is this place?
• 23:33
  This is none other than the household of God.
• 23:36
  And and and then he says it like this. Not only did the ladder go up, it also came down.
• 23:43
  The ladder going up means that we can leave the world and enter into the presence of God.
• 23:49
  The ladder coming down means that God can come down into our presence.
• 23:54
  And I think of into my office, office, he can come into the pulpit,
• 24:01
  he can come into my home, he can come into a conversation around the table at lunch.
• 24:09
  I'm praying. This is why Jacob said.
• 24:13
  This is Tozer. Surely the Lord is in this place.
• 24:17
  And I did not know it. Once again, he began to understand and know the presence of God.
• 24:23
  His life was about to change more than he ever understood before.
• 24:28
  And the Jacob we see after this is different.
• 24:33
  After Jacob had this dream of the ladder, he said, this is none other than the house of God.
• 24:39
  And this is the gate of heaven.
• 24:42
  I've been to the gate of heaven. And we see, you know, what's interesting is
• 24:46
  we see God at the top of the ladder.
• 24:48
  But we see God communing with Jacob and meeting with Jacob at the bottom of the ladder.
• 24:55
  This is what Jacob now understood, that prayer is the gateway to heaven.
• 25:00
  Prayer is the thing that gets us to where God wants us to be so that he can
• 25:04
  work in our lives as he wants to.
• 25:07
  Well, I don't know if that hits you like it hits me, but I'm just seeing so
• 25:15
  the comprehensiveness of prayer, just the fullness of prayer.
• 25:22
  It's just walking with God through the day.
• 25:27
  A pastor called me this week and said, hey, I need some tips on how to pray.
• 25:33
  And I just wanted to say to him, walk with God.
• 25:37
  Mm hmm. Just walk with God all day and talk to him all day about everything.
• 25:43
  Talk to him about what you're thinking. Talk to him about what you're seeing.
• 25:46
  Say, Lord, I'm about to open my mouth and talk to this person.
• 25:50
  Would you would you just give me what to say?
• 25:53
  You're just conversing with him all day long.
• 25:56
  And I think if a person there's a very real difference in a person who is just
• 26:02
  trying to add prayer as one little side discipline of their life.
• 26:08
  And a person who wants to walk and talk with God all day long.
• 26:15
  Yeah, I mean, I'm just one. You got to know your own bent and your personality,
• 26:21
  how you approach things.
• 26:22
  And I think, you know me, Bill, I think some of this is how God made me in his
• 26:28
  image and people that help shape that. I'm a practitioner.
• 26:34
  I gravitate toward things in disciplines. and
• 26:38
  things and that's a bold coach kind of guy you know
• 26:41
  but and and those things can be to
• 26:44
  my advantage in some things uh but can also be the to the detriment of relationship
• 26:50
  wow yeah and so i think i i honestly as i'm sitting here i've said this about
• 26:56
  prayer i think we and i agree with
• 26:59
  spiritual disciplines and like the the understanding of those yeah totally.
• 27:05
  Eli Whitney, everybody's ever wrote on it. Love those things, right?
• 27:08
  I think the word hurts us sometimes because that thought around that is it becomes
• 27:16
  dogmatic and almost so structured.
• 27:20
  Instead of saying that even the discipline of prayer,
• 27:24
  setting aside time, finding patterns to pray, all those things is is for the
• 27:29
  in the hope of in faith toward the relational reality that I know that I know
• 27:37
  God and God knows me. Those are called the experience.
• 27:40
  Yeah, right. Experience of one thing between, you know, I'm going through I'm
• 27:45
  checking the list off. Yeah, right. Pharisees did this.
• 27:48
  Yeah, right. But then Jesus was standing right there in their midst,
• 27:52
  and they didn't experience him.
• 27:54
  You know, here's the woman reaching out and grabbing his robe,
• 27:59
  and she experienced Christ and his presence and his power.
• 28:04
  And here are these Pharisees who had memorized the Old Testament,
• 28:08
  you know, many of them. But they didn't experience him.
• 28:11
  Yeah. And there's a real difference.
• 28:14
  I think to get to the heart of it, the essence of prayer, is that God has given
• 28:19
  us this opportunity to commune with him, have conversations,
• 28:22
  and yes, set up structures and things to help.
• 28:25
  Like you would set a date night with your wife, like you would communicate every day with your wife.
• 28:29
  That's a great illustration. Yeah. All those things help you get to what?
• 28:34
  Intimacy. Because that's what your goal here is closeness. Yeah.
• 28:38
  I mean, it's the things that I learned so many of these things from you.
• 28:41
  It's the good morning, Lord. You know, like your eyes open to the reality of
• 28:47
  God, you know, and foster that, you know, I don't I don't get out of bed most mornings.
• 28:54
  And until I have communed with the Lord in such a way that, hey,
• 28:59
  I know that I need you today.
• 29:00
  I know that I need the armor of God today. I know I need the fullness of the spirit today.
• 29:05
  And those things or patterns help me cultivate that relationship.
• 29:11
  You know, I had, Lord, I just want you to know I need you.
• 29:14
  And before I step foot out of this bed today, I need you.
• 29:19
  Well, I could just go on about this for about three more hours.
• 29:24
  Yeah, no doubt. And benefit from it.
• 29:29
  But we want to pray. And Kyle, I wonder if I could just lead our people into
• 29:36
  just a moment of entering into the presence of the Lord.
• 29:40
  So wherever you are, you may be in your car or on a walk or whatever.
• 29:46
  I wonder if you would, using this picture of ascending, using the picture of Matthew 6,
• 29:55
  of opening the door and then just stepping in to the foyer of heaven and turning
• 30:04
  around and just shutting the door.
• 30:07
  And the reason that picture is so powerful is it's shutting the door on all the distractions.
• 30:14
  Shutting the door on what happened yesterday, shutting the door on what's going
• 30:19
  to happen later today, shutting the door on your phone, your task,
• 30:26
  and then turning and just looking at the throne of heaven.
• 30:34
  And it's just so I'm always astounded by the fact that I get to stand in the
• 30:42
  presence of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
• 30:47
  And for a moment, I wonder if you would just look at him and just worship him.
• 30:54
  Just worship him. Oh, Father, you're so beautiful. You're so mighty.
• 31:02
  You are the King of kings and the Lord of lords. You are the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
• 31:09
  And seated at his right hand is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One.
• 31:18
  And just look at him for a moment and give him thanks for what he's done.
• 31:26
  And here in the throne room also is the Holy Spirit.
• 31:31
  And just think of what the Spirit has done for you.
• 31:35
  He was the agent that showed you Jesus, that revealed him.
• 31:41
  You couldn't possibly understand about Jesus and your sin and need and his power
• 31:49
  to save unless the Holy Spirit had opened your eyes and regenerated you and
• 31:57
  given you faith to believe.
• 31:58
  All of that was his work.
• 32:03
  He convicts us of sin and righteousness and judgment. He is our teacher.
• 32:09
  He teaches us and leads us in all things.
• 32:15
  So, Father, we worship you this morning, and we don't come as a duty.
• 32:21
  We don't come because we have to come.
• 32:24
  We come because of the joy of being in your presence, that you are standing
• 32:32
  at the top of the ladder, and you are calling us up to go higher.
• 32:37
  And, Lord, we want to let go of the world behind us. We just want to let it go. It's so worthless.
• 32:43
  Or there's just so much trash and garbage in the devil's influence.
• 32:50
  Lord, we just want to let go of the world, not in terms of our ministry and
• 32:55
  our calling to the world, but in terms of a love for the world and the things
• 33:01
  of this world. Lord, we just gladly release that.
• 33:05
  And we want to ascend and move into your presence.
• 33:10
  And I pray for all of us who are praying right now that, Lord,
• 33:16
  we would have deeper and deeper experiences of your presence because everything
• 33:21
  flows from the presence of the Lord.
• 33:25
  If we have you and your fullness, we have everything.
• 33:29
  So, Lord, we love you, and we want to learn more about walking with you through
• 33:36
  spirit-led, scripture-fed prayer.
• 33:42
  And so take us there in the coming days, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
• 33:49
  Well, Bill, thanks, man, for leading us into that truth and reading that great
• 33:53
  book from Tozer to our OneCry audience. man.
• 33:57
  We are honored to have a few minutes with you. As always, if it was an encouragement to.
• 34:01
  Music.