Next, the Holy Spirit trains us through a developed sense of recognizing His Presence. It begins, quite simply, by listening. Isaiah 30:21 says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it’” (
NIV
). If you are not listening, you will not know the way. God may speak in a still, small voice or by dreams or by visions or by someone who gives you a word.
If you think you have heard from the Lord, test it. The Lord will not contradict what He has said in His written Word. If a voice speaks something different, it is not His voice. He will always edify and build the Kingdom of God, save souls, comfort families.
You will find that the prophetic is often a corporate experience. By that we mean that individuals often see and hear in part. When we come together and share what we hear from the Lord we receive a fuller picture.
Next, the Holy Spirit teaches us through increased godly character. When you hear a word from God, you next learn to obey. Every time you do what God has told you, you gain confidence for the next time. As you grow in maturity you will see more and more fruit. Then you become willing to go deeper.
This is not complicated or mysterious. In fact, sophistication tends to hinder true depth. Psalm 42:7 says that “deep calls unto deep.” If you are one inch deep, there is very little deepness calling unto deepness. It will be surface to surface. If you stay there you will never go to the depths of the goodness and greatness and awesomeness of God. Plus, on the surface is where all the storms are. The deeper you are in God, the less you are affected by any storms out there.
It is important not to let your emotions override your discernment. The widow of Zarephath is a good example. God told Elijah that He had spoken to a widow and told her to feed him. So Elijah went to her and said, “Okay, give me that morsel of food.”
She replied, “Who are you? I don’t have anything.”
Had God spoken to her? Sure. God Himself said, “I commanded her to feed you.” But she had not heard Him. She was too focused on her own painful situation. In the end, at the prophet’s insistence, she grudgingly obeyed and was able to receive her breakthrough.
Negative emotions can prevent you from hearing the voice of the Lord. The more inward you get, the more you isolate yourself—even from God. That is why it is important to turn your attention to God through things like praise and worship. Choosing to focus on Him facilitates hearing the miracle word of God that will break open channels of glory and blessing for you and your family. God does not want to leave you alone. He wants to bless you and deliver you in your situation.
Beginning to Recognize the Presence
The Shunammite discerned that this was a holy man of God. What does it mean to be holy?
Holiness is the principal attribute of God. In God there is no mixture, no corruption. That river runs pure, and when you drink from it everything will live.
When it is God it is holy. Light and darkness cannot dwell together. In the clash of kingdoms there is the Spirit of the Lord and the spirit that is not of the Lord. The latter is what the Bible calls the Antichrist spirit. The word means “opposed to or in place of.” Mixture is where you find the spirit of Antichrist. When it is Jesus, it will be holy.
Our aim is to welcome and stay in the atmosphere of the glory because that is the place where nothing is impossible with God. An example in our ministry was the resurrection of a six-year-old boy in the Congo. In the Presence of the glory I, Mahesh, received a specific word of knowledge. I said, “There is a man here. Your son died this morning. Come up. Today God is going to resurrect your son.” When you give a prophetic word like that before forty thousand people, something better happen! And it did. In the glory nothing is impossible.
There are reasons why blessings come. Blessings are loosed because you welcome the Presence of God, you give room to the Presence of God. It is important, therefore, as God starts doing things—and we believe we are going to see Him doing more and more—that you start “touching” it. As you touch it, realize it is not you; it is His Presence doing it. In other words, don’t get delusions of grandeur! It is like the scene in
Star Wars
when Luke Skywalker lets out a whoop after shooting down an enemy gunship. Han Solo calls out, “Great kid!” Then he turns and adds, “Don’t get cocky.”
It is good for us to do important work, but it is also important not to get arrogant because it is the Presence of God that is going to give us the victory; it is the Presence of God that is going to give us otherwise unexplainable deliverance.
And the other side is not to have a poverty mentality. This does not come automatically. We have to believe. Even though we have been delivered from slavery, sometimes people still think like slaves, and God has to deliver the heart of slavery from us, just as He did the children of Israel. We need to think like a royal priesthood, a holy nation. The King-Maker has adopted us into the kingly line.
It Starts with Visitation
It starts with visitation. You learn that when the Presence of glory “visits” you, He leaves blessing. He leaves refreshing. He leaves you better than you were before. When you get around the glory of God, when you get around the Presence of God, you and your family will always come out plus, plus, plus. Visitation is wonderful—but our goal is habitation. When we welcome and steward and nurture this coming of the Lord, we create the atmosphere for habitation. It is like saying, “God, if You are going anywhere, You are coming to my house!”
Think of the Shunammite. She said, “Man of God, if you are going anywhere, you are coming to my house. If you are going to eat anyplace, anywhere within five hundred miles of here, you are going to eat at my house. Would you like steak? Stroganoff? Chicken enchiladas?”
I, Mahesh, spent some time ministering in France, and my hosts said, “What do you like to eat?”
I said, “I like escargot.”
Now, you might say
Yuck!
but I like escargot. So they fed me escargot every night. Those crawly things, you know? They crawl and they leave a trail. But when you cook them in garlic and parsley—yum!
So in a similar way, if we want His Presence to come we ask for it. We say, “God, I want it. I want it. I’m hungry for it.”
This hunger is, we believe, opening the way for a new season in the Church. She has had a season of healing revival. There was a charismatic renewal. There was a prophetic movement. There was a time when the teachers came forth. We had the church growth movement. We had Toronto and we had Pensacola. But these were precursors to the manifestation of His Presence that we sense He is waiting to give. This is the season of the visitation, and those who are hungry for His glory will see miracles that we have never seen before. We sense it. We smell the storm and hear the sound of the abundance of rain. This is for us all. It is not for a few superstars. It is for every man and every woman. And the time is now.
As we receive the Presence our homes can become a colony of heaven on earth, and anyone who comes there will be blessed. Whatever you touch, whatever you lay hands on will be blessed.
I, Mahesh, remember in Cincinnati, Ohio, some time back during a healing service that a woman came up to me and said, “My best friend has cancer, and she’s dying. Can you pray for her?”
I said, “Of course, honey. Where is your best friend?”
She said, “I brought her.”
“So where is she?”
“She’s outside.”
I said, “Why do you keep her outside?”
She said, “My best friend is a dog.”
There were five hundred people waiting in line. I said, “Bring your friend in.”
So in a few minutes she came up to me with a big female German Shepherd, and I felt as though the Lord said,
Welcome
her. She’s a lady of My Kingdom.
So I welcomed her. I said, “Hello, come here.”
Her owner brought the dog up to me, and I put my hand over her. The moment I brought my hand over the dog, she fell over—slain in the Spirit. True. All of the pastors there were saying, “I’ve never seen a dog slain in the Spirit!” But God’s glory was there for this woman and her sick dog. The Lord healed her friend!
If the atmosphere is there everything will be blessed, no matter what it is—your children are blessed, your business is blessed, even your dogs and cats are blessed. Something happens when you cultivate the atmosphere that welcomes the Presence. As you move in that authority, everything is going to come in line with the glory of the Lord—your life, your home, your marriage, your ministry. Everything has to bow to the name of Jesus Christ. And what you have been waiting for for forty years will come overnight. It will not be by your might, your power, but by the Presence coming to raise the dead, make the blind see, restore homes.
This is not just for you, it is for many households. In the coming days people are going to come to your house to say, “Can I find the glory here? Can I get a touch of it? My son is in prison, my daughter is on drugs—may I get a touch?” All because you discerned the Presence and welcomed the glory. This is visitation.
When I, Mahesh, was a young, poor, college student attending Texas Tech, I made my way to Dallas to go to a Bill Gothard seminar. I did not have two pennies to rub together, so I was thrilled when I happened to run into a family I knew from Lubbock in the midst of the huge crowd of people. They were staying at a friend’s house and were kind enough to say that they were sure I would be welcome to join them. I could sleep on the floor or whatever. I was thrilled to have a place to stay and thoroughly expected to sleep on the floor somewhere for the week.
That night I went with them to what turned out to be a beautiful house. A lovely woman met us at the door. My friends introduced me and said, “This is our friend from India who is studying here in America right now. He needs a place to stay for the seminar. Can he sleep on the floor or the couch somewhere?”
The lady of the house looked straight at me and said, “No.
” I thought,
O Lord! Talk about rejection!
But she continued, “No, he’s not going to sleep on the floor or on the couch. He is going to sleep in our master bedroom. My husband and I will sleep on the couch.”
I tried to refuse to no avail. She told me that I could not stay if I did not use the master bedroom. So I thanked her very warmly.
Soon I was ushered to a large bedroom with its king-sized bed. I had never been in anything like it. I lay down and went to sleep just overwhelmed by God’s provision for me.
Suddenly, at three o’clock in the morning a terrifying rushing sound woke me up. This was during the Vietnam War. Once I got oriented I realized that B-52 bombers were taking off from nearby Carswell Air Force Base in Ft. Worth. They kept taking off one after another for about an hour and a half. Everything was reverberating with that sound. The house shook, the walls shook, my bed was shaking. It was quite some time before I was able to go back to sleep.
In the morning, I got up and went to the kitchen in hopes of finding a cup of coffee before heading to the meeting. Instead, I was met by my hostess, who said, “I fixed breakfast for you.”
I turned around and the entire table was filled with food: chicken fried steak, omelets, fried eggs, bacon, gravy, ham, sausage, all kinds of pastries, jams, jellies and fruit that I had never seen before. She said, “This is for you, we have already eaten.” I was not sure what to think, but I sat down gratefully and ate what I could before going to the seminar for the day.
That night, the same thing happened. At three
A.M.
I was awakened by the jets taking off, and I lay awake under that tremendous roar until it finally stopped and I was able to go back to sleep. In the morning, my hostess again had prepared a tremendous feast. She said, “Yesterday we were out of kiwi, but I have some for you today.” I would have never noticed. There was no way for me to eat all the food she had prepared. This continued the third, fourth and fifth day of the seminar.
On the last night, I again went to bed, but when I was awakened in the middle of the night this time I realized that Someone was in the room with me. Golden beams of light surrounded me. I have never seen such wondrous light. It was like living rainbows. It felt as though all the galaxies of the universe were with me in that room.
And in the center I saw Jesus. He had walked into my room. I was completely surrounded by His light and Presence. My breath was taken away; I was not sure whether I was dead or alive. If I was alive, I wanted to die because I did not ever want to be away from the absolute joy and ecstasy that I was experiencing. There is nothing in human language to describe the utter joy and delight of His Presence. I saw right there that light and love and truth are a Person, and His name is Jesus Christ.
Then, in the distance, I started hearing a symphony of musical instruments that I had never heard before. This music began to stir and play and reverberate all around me. I suddenly realized that the source was the sound of the B-52s taking off. But as those roars came into the Presence of the glory, each sound wave had to bow to the name of Jesus and was transformed into a song and glorious symphony praising the Lamb of God. That night a lot of my definitions changed because I realized it is all Jesus.
As morning light began to break at about 5:30 or so, the glory started collecting itself together, and the Lord started walking out of the room. I wanted Him to take me with Him. I did not want to be anywhere but in His Presence. And by the way, if you have a revelation of the glory, death of our earthly body has a whole new definition. Absent in the body; present with the Lord. There is nothing like the awesome glory of the Lord. But as the glory was gathering and the Lord was about to go, He turned and smiled and said,
I brought you to this house.
His eyes were so tender and full of love and compassion, and yet conveyed complete victory. He said,
This woman’s husband has
asked for a divorce, and she cried out to Me. I have put healing in
your mouth for their marriage. As you speak, that word will heal
them, and their marriage will be restored. I have put the anointing
on you.
Then He withdrew.