This is what happens when you begin to pray consistently, you begin to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit with confidence and clarity.
You begin to draw closer to him. You’re more familiar with the way he speaks.
You’re more familiar with his likes and dislikes.
You draw closer to him as a friend, as a guide, as a comforter, as a teacher watch this.
This is what the Bible says in Matthew chapter six verse six.
But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you and pray to your father in private, then your father who sees everything will reward you.
So here Jesus is talking about the discipline of removing outer distraction, removing the exterior, removing those things which would pull you from his presence.
Of course, we do this to make sure that we’re praying with proper motives so that we’re not doing it to receive the praise of man, but rather the affirmation of other God.
And we go away privately also that we might do away with exterior distractions to get away from the noise.
This must become an implemented discipline in the life of every believer.
Every believer must come to this place of consistent, faithful, deep prayer.
When you begin to do this, there are things that develop in you that are very difficult to explain unless you’ve experienced them yourself.
You see we as the Children of God are called to be beings of light, reflections of who He is.
We are not the source of that light, but we ought to be reflections of that light.
We must day by day, moment by moment, become more and more like Jesus. We are of God.
We are his Children. We belong to him. We are of the kingdom of Heaven.
We are heavenly beings, not earthly beings. We are heavenly beings having an earthly experience, not earthly beings.
Looking for a heavenly one. We are of the kingdom of heaven. We are citizens of heaven.
Christ is in power and authority. We are in Christ.
And so we as believers ought to be taking on his character and nature.
And this is what begins to develop when you become closer to the Holy Spirit through prayer.
And when I say closer to the Holy Spirit, I don’t mean that literally, I use that in terms of describing your awareness of who he is, your awareness of his nearness because you can’t get any closer than within you.
He dwells within you. He doesn’t abandon you.
He abides faithfully and in doing that, he changes your nature and to experience the power of that transformation, to experience the fullness of what he offers as that abiding presence on your life.
You must learn to be aware of what he’s doing and then surrender to what he is doing in your life.
He sanctifies you day by day.
And this is one of the powerful works of prayer, especially if you practice this in private, especially if you implement this as a daily faithful discipline, you begin to connect with that spirit nature within you and the exterior begins to lose its power.
Now watch this. When you begin to seek the Lord like this, the flesh begins to lose its power.
Those cravings for sinful things begin to weaken those desires for habitual sins begin to weaken.
In fact, you can come to the place where what once drew you begins to disgust you.
What once tempted you will begin to repulse you.
You have your nature so transformed that you become like Him, his desires become your desires, his presence marks your life and everywhere you go, you take the atmosphere of heaven with you.
That’s being a carrier of the glory of God, walking into rooms and changing the atmosphere.
You do this and you don’t have to go seeking encounters, you live an encounter, you don’t have to go seeking atmospheres, you become an atmosphere, you become a carrier of the glory, a host of the holy Spirit’s presence.
This is what happens when you pray faithfully.
But one of the elements of prayer is this shutting away of the exterior.
And the reason we do this, in part, this is not the only reason we do this, but in part is so that we can silence the other voices that speak self speaks, that’s your flesh, your own desires, your own, will, your own emotions, your own inclinations, your own upbringing, everything about you speaks and that is self.
Then there’s the satanic, we know this is everything that contradicts God’s word.
There is the secular, this is everything that contradicts God’s nature. But then there’s the spirit.
And when you go away to that quiet place and this is difficult for some, you put that phone away, you shut the laptop, you tell everyone in your home.
Listen, I love you is what I tell people, I love you.
But you have to give me this block of time.
I cannot be disturbed for this block of time and then use that block of time to spend time with him.
Shut off the TV, shut off the tablet, shut the laptop, turn off the phone, stop taking calls, stop returning texts, get rid of all the screens.
In fact, even your, your watch, if you have a device that’s on your wrist, get rid of all the screens, get rid of all the distractions.
And then once you silence the exterior, now you go into that private place and, and you’ve, you’ve, you’ve actually done a good portion of the battle.
You’ve actually already had victory over a good portion of the enemy.
And this is to silence those distractions which would pull you from prayer. And then comes the difficult part.
Watch this now, silence and stillness, silence and stillness.
Silence is the putting away of outer distraction, but stillness is the quieting of the soul.
Oh, here is where we have trouble.
You ever notice that the moment you begin to pray that suddenly you’re bombarded with thoughts, distracting you from prayer.
Many of us blame the enemy. It’s more often than your flesh.
Suddenly, when you begin to pray, you’re thinking about the bills, you’re thinking about your marriage, you’re thinking about the kids, you’re thinking about your fears.
Your what ifs you’re wondering about the future? Perhaps you’re thinking about a project.
You’re working on a test, you have to take some task lists that you must complete and you begin to have all these inner stirrings, this inner chaos I call it.
And it’s more than just concerns with everyday life. Like what will I eat? What will I wear?
Where will I go? How will I work?
It also becomes that inner chaos of mind and emotion where you begin now to attack yourself by doing the work of the enemy for him and accusing yourself.
You start to remember suddenly all of your past, all of the things you did wrong and then you start to lie to yourself and you start to allow the enemy to lie to you.
And then you agree with those lies and you come into partnership with those lies.
And now suddenly you’re believing that God doesn’t want to hear from you.
Suddenly you’re believing that you have some ladder to climb that every misdeed took you down this ladder.
And that only good deeds can bring you back to him when all he’s looking for is a broken spirit and a contrite heart and you can leave that past behind.
But it’s difficult to do when you’re thinking about your past mistakes.
It seems to me that people have more trouble for giving themselves than they do others.
And so that could be one of the weights that you carry as you approach the Holy Spirit in prayer, you can begin to have stirrings of anger, maybe ways that you were offended, bitterness begins to seep in bitterness can destroy your prayer life because now you can’t even pray because the Holy Spirit is saying the whole time, get it right.
Get it right. Get it right. Get it right.
You can’t even close your eyes for a moment of silence because the moment that you do all of that comes to the surface and now you’re faced with having to forgive and you can’t do it.
So bitterness begins to destroy prayer, imper motives, begin to destroy prayer.
And that’s what I call inner chaos.
All of those stirrings about life, about self, about your relationship with God about your theological questions.
Many people struggle with that too.
They, they, they can’t even pray because they want all their questions answered about everything before they can focus on the Lord.
And that’s another attack of the enemy. That’s another inclination of the flesh to fight you.
Why does the flesh fight you so hard? Well, because it’s in prayer that the flesh dies.
That’s why the flesh squirms so much when you pray.
that’s why when you go to pray, suddenly you feel these urges to get out of there, my friend, that’s not a demon, that’s you.
That’s the flesh and the flesh knows that when you begin to seek the Lord, that it begins to weaken and the flesh begins to lose its power over your life.
And that’s the stirrings of the flesh. How do you silence those?
The Bible says in Psalm 46 10, be still and know that I am God stillness precedes revelation.
This stillness is confidence in God. This stillness is focus on God.
This stillness is trust in his power and his plan.
So silence and stillness, you put away the outer, the exterior by removing all of the natural distractions and this inner chaos, which by the way, many Christians ask me, David, why is it that I seem to be doing?
OK? Until the moment I go to pray and then suddenly the moment I start to pray, all these thoughts begin to fill my mind.
They ask me, why is it that these thoughts, this inner chaos doesn’t show up until I begin to pray, my friend.
It’s not that the inner chaos shows up when you begin to pray.
It’s that the inner chaos is revealed when you begin to pray. Think about that.
Think about that because that’s important to understand that inner chaos is there all along.
You’re just never quiet enough to hear what’s happening in you, which is why it’s important to practice silence and stillness.
You begin to do this and you become like Jesus, you begin to focus on prayer in this way, set aside those distractions and become consistent.
But now your character becomes like his character.
The fruit of the spirit begins to manifest in your life. You become transformed inwardly outwardly.
You become a reflection of that heavenly light. A child of God.
You begin to carry the presence of the Holy Spirit in an evident way.
There’s a weight on you when you walk around. That’s what happens when you begin to pray consistently.
Come on. Let’s pray. Father, will your Children come to you now?
And we ask Heavenly Father for your forgiveness and your mercy.
We throw ourselves helplessly on your mercy. Thank you for being kind to us.
Now, Lord forgetting those things which are behind us, we now press forward, moving forward, precious Holy Spirit, help us to obey you and hear you.
Help us to respond immediately when you speak teach us and give us the grace to practice silence and stillness that we might behold.
You Give us 100 for your word and speak to us in times of revelation through your word.
And father, I pray, give us the grace to obey, remove every attack of the enemy right now in the name of Jesus and give us the grace to obey in the mighty name of Jesus.
We pray. I want you to say it now because you believe it, say amen.
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Remember until next time, nothing is impossible with God.