What attracts His presence? HUNGER for His Presence (Ep. 206)

Scriptures and Key Points on Attraction His Presence:

Revelation 19:7 NIV Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

• When there is an element of hunger taking place that bears fruit in the areas of self reflection, personal repentance, and corporate commissioning by God, God is up to something.
• Even when some people have wrong motivations, God has a way of sorting things out. 
• We need an awakening in the Church if we are going to have influence in the culture.

 “Rather than praying for revival, let us pray to the revival giver. So God can do a work in us and then do a work through us. Then a revival will come forth.” – Winkie Pratney

Four Things That Attract the Presence of God:

1. Holiness
   1. This is not about external piety or religious incantations, but an internal consecration of heart that gives us the desire to go deeper in God and higher in expectation.
2. True, Authentic Humility
   1. Psalm 51:17 NKJV The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, You will not despise.
3. Honesty
   1. We must have complete honesty between us and God
   2. We need a love for Truth more than anything else (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 NKJV)
4. Honor
   1. Malachi 1:6 NKJV “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am the Father, Where is My honor? And if I am a Master, Where is My reverence? Says the Lord of hosts to you priests who despise My name. Yet you say, ‘In what way have we despised Your name?’”

• It’s what we do behind closed doors that determines the power of God, or lack of it, in public.
• Everything we do must be born out of the presence of God.

How To Have Personal Revival – A.W. Tozer 

1. Get thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself.

   1. Any Christian who desires may at any time experience a radical spiritual renaissance, and this altogether independent of the attitude of his fellow Christians.
   2. The most important question is, How? Well, here are some suggestions which anyone can follow and which, I am convinced, will result in a wonderfully improved Christian life. 
   3. Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is the stagnant soul. When speaking of earthly goods Paul could say, “I have learned to be content;” but when referring to his spiritual life he testified, “I press on toward the mark.” So stir up the gift of God that is in thee.

2. Set your face like flint toward a sweeping transformation of your life.

   1. Timid experiments are tagged for failure before they start. We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God, “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”

3. Put yourself in the way of blessing, hunger for His Presence.

   1. It is a mistake to look for grace to visit us as a kind of benign magic, or to expect God’s help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met. There are plainly marked paths which lead straight to the green pastures; let us walk in them. To desire revival, for instance, and at the same time to neglect prayer devotion is to wish one way and walk another.

4. Do a thorough job of repenting. 

   1. Don’t be in a hurry to get it over with. Hasty repentance means shallow spiritual experience and lack of certainty in the whole life. Let godly sorrow do her healing work. Until we allow the consciousness of sin to wound us we will never develop a fear of evil. It is our wretched habit of tolerating sin that keeps us in our half-dead condition.

5. Make restitution wherever possible. 

   1. If you owe a debt, pay it, or at least have a frank understanding with your creditor about your intention to pay, so your honesty will be above question. If you have quarreled with anyone, go as far as you can in an effort to achieve reconciliation. As fully as possible make the crooked things straight.

6. Bring your life into accord with the Sermon on the Mount. 

   1. The sermon on the Mount and other New Testament Scriptures are designed to instruct us in the way of righteousness. An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly. I recommend that the self-examination be made on our knees, rising to obey God’s commandments as they are revealed to us from the Word. There is nothing romantic or colorful about this plain downright way of dealing with ourselves, but it gets the work done. Isaac’s workmen did not look like heroic figures as they dug in the valley, but they got the wells open, and that was what they had set out to do.

7. Be serious-minded. 

   1. You can well afford to see fewer comedy shows on TV. Unless you break away from the funny boys, every spiritual impression will continue to be lost to your heart.  The people of the world used to go to the movies to escape serious thinking about God and religion. The devil’s ideals, moral standards and mental attitudes are being accepted by you without your knowing it.  And you wonder why you can make no progress in your Christian life. Your interior climate is not favorable to the growth of spiritual graces. There must be permanent improvement in your interior life. 

8. Deliberately narrow your interests, hunger for His Presence. 

   1. The Jack-of-all-trades is the master of none. The Christian life requires that we be specialists. Too many projects use up time and energy without bringing us nearer to God. If you will narrow your interests God will enlarge your heart. “Jesus only” seems to the unconverted man to be the motto of death, but a great company of happy men and women can testify that it became to them a way into the world infinitely wider and richer than anything they had ever known before. Christ is the essence of all wisdom, beauty and virtue. To know Him in growing intimacy is to increase in appreciation of all things good and beautiful. The mansions of the heart will become larger when their doors are thrown open to Christ and closed against the world and sin. Try it.

9. Begin to witness. 

   1. Find something to do for God and your fellow men. Refuse to rust out. Make yourself available to your pastor and do anything you are asked to do. Do not insist upon a place of leadership. Learn to obey. Take the low place until such time as God sees fit to set you in a higher one. Back your new intentions with your money and your gifts, such as they are.

10. Have faith in God. 

    1. Begin to expect. Look up toward the throne where your Advocate is at God’s right hand. All heaven is on your side. God will not disappoint you.

• If you will follow these suggestions you will most surely experience revival in your own heart. And who can tell how far it may spread? God knows how desperately the church needs a spiritual resurrection. And it can only come through the revived individual.

Concluding Thoughts

“Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on Earth.” 

― John Wesley

• To fear God is not to be afraid of God, but to walk in that place of loving His presence.

“The men and women who have most fully illustrated Christ in their character and have most powerfully affected the world for Him, have been those who have spent so much time with Him as to make it a notable feature of their lives. Over a period of time they come to the place where they become like Him and, consequently, they reflect His Glory… To be little with God is to be little for God. To be much with God is to be much for God.” – E.M. Bounds

Psalm 62:5-6 KJ21 My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall not be moved.

“A revival may be expected when Christians have a spirit of prayer for a revival. That is, when they pray as if their hearts were set upon it. When Christians have the spirit of prayer for a revival. If they go about groaning out their hearts desire. When they have real travail of soul.” ― Charles G. Finney 

Matthew 5:6 NKJV Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

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