Soaking In God's Presence
SOAKING IN GOD'S PRESENCE
What our ministry is today can be attributed to a period of three months that I spent soaking in the presence of Almighty God. It was a time of incredible visitation when I encountered God in what I call the glory liquid honey cloud of His presence. For about three months, there was grace upon my prayer life where for anything from four to twelve hours a day, all I could do was lie and be still in His presence.
I called it soaking. All I was doing was positioning myself away from the clamor of everyday life and seeking God. Not that I wanted to. I began by praying in hunger, pressing in for the power of God to bring me revival. I kept saying, “Holy Spirit, please come. God, You said if I would draw near to You that You would draw near to me. You said if I would seek You and search for You with all of my heart, I’d find You. God, I am pressing in violently, aggressively. I’m not letting go.” It was a radical pursuit of God’s presence – crying out, seeking. I was desperately in search of the Lord, and I was pursuing His glory. It was a time of holy hunger, a time of extreme yearning. Mine was a holy desperation for Him as a person, and I was determined to be deeper in His glory than I had ever been before. I wanted to experience His presence in a way that I had never known, and I purposed in my heart to have an encounter with Him unlike any other that I had had before.
I did everything that I could. I prayed in tongues for hours. I mean prayed! With praise, worship, intercession, and supplication, I would make my requests known to God. When I decided to pray an hour, I would pray for an hour, and I was loud about it. I was pressing in, and I wanted a breakthrough. I wanted God, and I knew how to sense His presence, but I was never satisfied with where I had been. I wasn’t content with what I had seen. I said, “Lord I want more!” And I pressed in. I was almost in a place of striving.
For me, it became a model of prayer. I had previously learned how to pray in a way that I took myself out of the presence of God. You may ask how that is possible. The answer is that I had developed a routine – a schedule of what I called prayer. I had become comfortable with the way I approached His presence and I had developed a process of spending time with God. I was disciplined about it and spent a fixed period every day reading from my devotional Bible, and I had become regimented. In intercession, I prayed in tongues 15 minutes, praised 15 minutes, and worshiped for 15 minutes. It had become the duty of prayer, and it was always the same. The fire was gone; the passion, the newness, the adventure, and the excitement were gone.
That was my condition as I cried out in holy desperation, hungry for God before I learned to soak. The three-month-long opportunity arose from an accident I had while working in a lumber mill. I was pulling lumber off the green chain and stacking it in the mill. I had an injury, and I was awarded compensation with time off work. I purposed in my heart that I would seek God in the same way I worked every day. I made a decision that I was going to treat prayer like a job, eight hours a day. I decided that I would pray as I recovered from my injury.
That’s how I discovered soaking. I found it when I had this God-given opportunity to press in, reminding myself of God’s promise that if I drew near to Him, He would draw near to me. In desperation, I yelled, “God rend the heavens and come down.” And He did! He came down to show me that soaking is mainly quietness, listening and waiting.
QUIETNESS, LISTENING, AND WAITING
In my walk with the Lord, I have found more power and revelation in quietness than in anything I’ve done in prayer. I’ve come to understand that there is a place in the spirit that I believe is the highest form of prayer. It’s the silent prayer of the heart. It’s the prayer of silence – contemplation and meditation. It is so high that most Christians never get there. They don’t get over the demands of the mind. They fail to learn how to silence the busyness of their minds and emotions so they can enter in to true communion and fellowship with the Lord through quietness.
In the church today, we don’t understand listening prayer. We don’t understand soaking and waiting. There is an art in practicing the presence of God and exercising our spiritual senses. We need to learn how to enter into the rest of God. We don’t know what it means to be still and know that God is God. We don’t know what it means to wait on the Lord. These aspects of soaking were known by some of our ancient fathers such as Brother Lawrence.
During my three months of learning to soak, I had genuine encounters with the person of Jesus Christ. And I believe you will too, if you learn how to soak and be still in God's presence.
Todd Bentley
What our ministry is today can be attributed to a period of three months that I spent soaking in the presence of Almighty God. It was a time of incredible visitation when I encountered God in what I call the glory liquid honey cloud of His presence. For about three months, there was grace upon my prayer life where for anything from four to twelve hours a day, all I could do was lie and be still in His presence.
I called it soaking. All I was doing was positioning myself away from the clamor of everyday life and seeking God. Not that I wanted to. I began by praying in hunger, pressing in for the power of God to bring me revival. I kept saying, “Holy Spirit, please come. God, You said if I would draw near to You that You would draw near to me. You said if I would seek You and search for You with all of my heart, I’d find You. God, I am pressing in violently, aggressively. I’m not letting go.” It was a radical pursuit of God’s presence – crying out, seeking. I was desperately in search of the Lord, and I was pursuing His glory. It was a time of holy hunger, a time of extreme yearning. Mine was a holy desperation for Him as a person, and I was determined to be deeper in His glory than I had ever been before. I wanted to experience His presence in a way that I had never known, and I purposed in my heart to have an encounter with Him unlike any other that I had had before.
I did everything that I could. I prayed in tongues for hours. I mean prayed! With praise, worship, intercession, and supplication, I would make my requests known to God. When I decided to pray an hour, I would pray for an hour, and I was loud about it. I was pressing in, and I wanted a breakthrough. I wanted God, and I knew how to sense His presence, but I was never satisfied with where I had been. I wasn’t content with what I had seen. I said, “Lord I want more!” And I pressed in. I was almost in a place of striving.
For me, it became a model of prayer. I had previously learned how to pray in a way that I took myself out of the presence of God. You may ask how that is possible. The answer is that I had developed a routine – a schedule of what I called prayer. I had become comfortable with the way I approached His presence and I had developed a process of spending time with God. I was disciplined about it and spent a fixed period every day reading from my devotional Bible, and I had become regimented. In intercession, I prayed in tongues 15 minutes, praised 15 minutes, and worshiped for 15 minutes. It had become the duty of prayer, and it was always the same. The fire was gone; the passion, the newness, the adventure, and the excitement were gone.
That was my condition as I cried out in holy desperation, hungry for God before I learned to soak. The three-month-long opportunity arose from an accident I had while working in a lumber mill. I was pulling lumber off the green chain and stacking it in the mill. I had an injury, and I was awarded compensation with time off work. I purposed in my heart that I would seek God in the same way I worked every day. I made a decision that I was going to treat prayer like a job, eight hours a day. I decided that I would pray as I recovered from my injury.
That’s how I discovered soaking. I found it when I had this God-given opportunity to press in, reminding myself of God’s promise that if I drew near to Him, He would draw near to me. In desperation, I yelled, “God rend the heavens and come down.” And He did! He came down to show me that soaking is mainly quietness, listening and waiting.
QUIETNESS, LISTENING, AND WAITING
In my walk with the Lord, I have found more power and revelation in quietness than in anything I’ve done in prayer. I’ve come to understand that there is a place in the spirit that I believe is the highest form of prayer. It’s the silent prayer of the heart. It’s the prayer of silence – contemplation and meditation. It is so high that most Christians never get there. They don’t get over the demands of the mind. They fail to learn how to silence the busyness of their minds and emotions so they can enter in to true communion and fellowship with the Lord through quietness.
In the church today, we don’t understand listening prayer. We don’t understand soaking and waiting. There is an art in practicing the presence of God and exercising our spiritual senses. We need to learn how to enter into the rest of God. We don’t know what it means to be still and know that God is God. We don’t know what it means to wait on the Lord. These aspects of soaking were known by some of our ancient fathers such as Brother Lawrence.
During my three months of learning to soak, I had genuine encounters with the person of Jesus Christ. And I believe you will too, if you learn how to soak and be still in God's presence.
Todd Bentley
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