Knowing God

Saturdays are usually my day of rest when I allow myself to lie in and focus on receiving & appreciating all that God has done for me. It’s a rest that God led me to, to counter the Pharisaical works-mentality that would drive me to keep ‘pressing in’ for fear of God withdrawing. The mandate to rest reminds me that He blesses me because He is good, not because my prayers earn it; that Sabbath-rest is a prophetic picture of our eternal rest because Jesus has already done all that is needed (selah).

However this morning I had to get up early, to medicate my dog, and once I was up I felt a strong invitation from the Spirit to come and spend some time with Him before anyone else woke up. I will be honest, I am struggling to put into words the fullness of what He showed me next, but I will try because that is what I felt Him ask me: to keep recording and keep sharing the things I see, for the encouragement of others.

As I laid face down on the floor I became aware that I was lying before His throne, conscious only of His glory and power rippling continuously over me. I couldn’t speak – you can’t, when you are in His presence. I have experienced similar before, but this morning there was a call to dwell more regularly in this place, and I silently prayed for Him to help me find my way here more often – as if it was a faint trail through woods that I could turn into a well-trodden path with frequent use. But immediately I felt a correction that finding my way to His presence is not a path but a single step – or not even a step exactly, but just a shift from the physical realm to the Spirit-realm. That I live in two realms: I can simultaneously be on the carpet in my living room and at the feet of the Most High King in the Spirit – and we are called to an awareness of both.
Maybe in reading this you already know what I am talking about, in which case please just pray for me to walk in it more fully.

As I lay there unable to speak, I had to repeatedly take my thoughts captive (they kept trying to distract me back to the stuff of life here – relationships, conversations, prayer needs etc). But every time I came back to that awareness of the throne room and God’s holy presence I could barely speak. When you come face to face with the living God, prayers become redundant. At that point worship was not singing, praying or giving – it was simply a consciousness of Who He is, that caused me to lay before Him and know His greatness (or probably just a tiny bit of it, as knowing the fullness of it might well have destroyed me).
Urgh, words are so feeble at trying to explain the truth of the Spirit.

Even the word ‘prayer’ can carry so many unhelpful connotations. I often refer to my ‘Secret Place’ times with God as prayer, because most people understand at least that prayer is speaking to God. But it is so much more than that – it is communing with Him, being present with Him, sharing relationship with Him, knowing Him (!). Prayer – or communing with God – is so much more than speaking words out loud and trusting that He is listening. It’s more than giving space for anointed thoughts to drop into our spirits as we wait on His answer. And it’s certainly more than that weird double-minded thought process that we can go through when we tell ourselves we are praying “in faith” – meaning that we don’t actually have the answer yet but we choose to believe we do! (faith is more than a decision – it is a knowing! But maybe that’s another blog post.)
No, the prayer/ communion that God has allowed me to taste is a single step/ shift into the present reality of the Spirit realm. And it is available to us all.
We are not limited to praying to the great unknown and waiting for feelings to confirm we have ‘made it’ into His presence – we are invited to experience (not feel!) the pure knowledge and awareness that we are sitting/ standing/ kneeling/ lying before the most High God, knowing the rippling glory of His powerful presence – not as a physical feeling, but as a Spirit reality.

In June this year I heard God say, “Stop looking to your feelings to judge if you are worshipping Me. You have let your feelings become an idol. Repent and just worship Me.” It was one of the blog posts that never made it out of my ‘draft’ folder, for which I am sorry, for I know God wanted me to release it but I ran out of time to write it. Forgive me, Lord.

It’s not about feelings: we mustn’t seek goosebumps, tears or fits of the giggles. They may all come, but they must not be our focus. We mustn’t try to validate our worship with feelings of peace, joy, conviction, holiness etc as if they could somehow ‘prove’ that we are connecting with the Spirit. Honestly, I don’t even particularly want to seek God’s prophetic words and revelation, although I deeply appreciate how generous He is to reveal such things to us. But they can still become an idol when they are all we seek.
I just want to live more in that place that He allowed me to glimpse – where I see my Lord and know His glory – where all I can do is lay at His feet and know Him, where words are redundant in the face of His everything. And God wants that for you too.

None of our human petitions, songs or anything else have any relevance when we are truly in His presence. He is everything, and once we have tasted and seen even a tiny bit of Who He is, prayer will never be the same.