Prayer is the key prayer is the key. Prayer is the Master key! Jesus started with prayer and ended with prayer, prayer is the Master key. // Who is like unto Thee O Lord! 2x among the gods who is like Thee, You are glorious in Holiness fearful in praising, doing wonders alleluia!.
Father in heaven O God we Thank You, we blessed Your Holy Name, we worship You, we adorn You, we honour You we reverence You for who You are. Thank You Father for another privilege to pray and receive answers to our prayers, glory be to Holy Name forever and ever.
Beloveth, are you ready to go up and pray down answers to You prayers today? If you then let us guide our loins, bend our knees and lift up our voices to heaven.
Today in line with our theme for the month we will be considering another important attribute of God that will help your understanding of who God is and what He can do in your life and situation.
Ever heard the word “Immanence”. God in His omnipresent nature is everywhere likewise God in His immanent nature penetrates everything. Therefore God is omnipresent and immanent, penetrating everything even while He contains all things.
Sin introduce incompatibility between God and the sinner. It thrown humans and God out of accord with each other. However when a sinner believes in the blood of atonement and put his or her trust in Christ, he or she is justified in heaven and become a regenerated person on earth. Beloved, you get regenerated only here on earth – don’t wait until you die because there is no place to regeneration after you are dead!
When you are generated by trusting on the merit of Christ, you are given a measure of God’s character and there is enough of the image restored that there can be quite full measure of comparability. And that comparability allow God to draw feelingly near to a person. And it make communion morally consistent.
A human cannot communion with a dog but you can pet its head but you cannot commune with the dog, there is too a dissimilarity of nature. In the same way God cannot commune with a sinner because there is a violent unlikeness, a dissimilarity that makes communion impossible.
Col 3:10”put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created Him.”- the new man who is you, started of your way towards Godlikeness. God can only commune with anything except His own likeness, therefore there is no fellowship between God and that unlike thing. The regenerated man hold commune with God and can call Him “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6).
Often times most Christians do suffer from a sense of divine remoteness. They know God is with them and they are God’s children, they know all these in there head but they are suffering from a sense of remoteness. Like we thought some time ago knowing something in your head is one thing; to feel it in your heart is another. I think most Christians are trying to be happy without having a sense of His presence.
The sense of His presence absent and you see this in worship place. Sometime the yearning of His presence can be seen in two places in our worship – Prayers and hymns.
You hear this often in the place of prayer- “Oh Lord, come; oh Lord, draw near; oh Lord, show thyself; be near to me, Lord,” if isn’t enough, hear us sing “come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” or “Draw me Nearer, Nearer, Nearer, Blessed Lord.”
Here we think that God coming from across distance to us. We learn from the bible and that of Christian theology, all the way back to David, declare that God is already here- now. God does not dwell in space, and therefore God doesn’t have to come like a ray of light from some remote place. There is no remote place in God; He contain all remoteness and all distance in His own great heart.
Why then do we feel Him in the distance: it is dissimilarity in our natures; it is the unlikeness. But if we got enough likeness that God can commune with us and call us His children and we can say “Abba Father” however we sense our dissimilarity, and that is why God seem remote.
What I am trying to get across is simply this; nearness to God is not a geographical or an astronomical thing. It is not a spatial thing. It is a spiritual thing, having to do with nature. And so when we pray “God, draw me nearer,” we are not praying for God to come down from some remote distance. We know God is here now. Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you always.” (Matt 28:20). The Lord is here, Jacob said, “God is in this place and I didn’t know it”. (Gen 28:16). He did say, “God came to this place”; he said, ‘God is in this place.”
Beloved what are we praying for, then? We are praying for the manifestation of the presence of God not the presence, but the manifestation of the presence. Why don’t we have the manifestation? Because we allow unlikeness. We allow dissimilarity. That sense of absence is the result of the remaining unlikeness within us
So the yearning in our heart is that of ransomed heart to be like God so there can be perfect communion, so that the heart and God can come together in a fellowship that is divine.
Beloved when we come to the realization that God is everywhere it help us to pray and receive answers to our prayers. We are praying and waiting but we are praying knowing that God is hearing us as we pray once there is no unlikeness between us and God.
I encourage you to live in realm and you will see how heaven can be experienced while on earth as did Jacob.
Having done all beloved let us stand as we are told. The teaching of today is such a special one that you will not like to miss. Have your work done by praying with understanding, then enter into the rest of the Lord. Let’s get into it:
“There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” Heb. 4:9
God has provided a Sabbath, and some must enter into it. Those to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief; therefore, that Sabbath remains for the people of God. David sang of it; but he had to touch the minor key, for Israel refused the rest of God. Joshua Could not give it, nor Canaan yield it: it remains for believers.
Come, then, let us labor to enter into this rest. Let us quit the weary toil of sin and self. Let us cease from all confidence, even in those works of which it might be said, “They are very good.” Have we any such? Still, let us cease from our own works, as God did from His. Now let us find solace in the finished work of our Lord Jesus. Everything is fully done: justice demands no more. Great peace is our portion in Christ Jesus.
As to providential matters, the work of grace in the soul, and the work of the Lord in the souls of others, let us cast these burdens upon the Lord, and rest in Him. When the Lord gives us a yoke to bear, He does so that by taking it up we may find rest. By faith we labor to enter into the rest of God, and we renounce all rest in self-satisfaction or indolence. Jesus Himself is perfect rest and we are filled to the brim in Him.
Are you overwhelmed, you don’t need to be only rest in the safe hand of God. Yearn for His manifestation in your life or better still like the psalmist cried lead me to the Rock that is higher than I:
“When my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.” Psalm 61:2
Most of us know what it is to be overwhelmed in heart; emptied as when a man wipeth a dish and turneth it upside down; submerged and thrown on our beam ends like a vessel mastered by the storm. Discoveries of inward corruption will do this, if the Lord permits the great deep of our depravity to become troubled and cast up mire and dirt.
Disappointments and heart-breaks will do this when billow after billow rolls over us, and we are like a broken shell hurled to and fro by the surf. Blessed be God, at such seasons we are not without an all-sufficient solace, our God is the harbour of weather-beaten sails, the hospice of forlorn pilgrims.
Higher than we are is He, His mercy higher than our sins, His love higher than our thoughts. It is pitiful to see men putting their trust in something lower than themselves; but our confidence is fixed upon an exceeding high and glorious Lord.
A Rock He is since He changes not, and a high Rock, because the tempests which overwhelm us roll far beneath at His feet; He is not disturbed by them, but rules them at His will. If we get under the shelter of this lofty Rock we may defy the hurricane; all is calm under the lee of that towering cliff. Alas! such is the confusion in which the troubled mind is often cast, that we need piloting to this divine shelter.
Hence the prayer of the text. O Lord, our God, by Thy Holy Spirit, teach us the way of faith, lead us into Thy rest. The wind blows us out to sea, the helm answers not to our puny hand; Thou, Thou alone canst steer us over the bar between yon sunken rocks, safe into the fair haven.
How dependent we are upon Thee—we need Thee to bring us to Thee. To be wisely directed and steered into safety and peace is Thy gift, and Thine alone. This day be pleased to deal well with Thy servants.
Lord, we Thank you because you are our sufficiency. In you we are safe and secure. Help us to always be in Your presence as prayed David “… I will dwell in the house (Presence) of the Lord forever.
This very understanding (Immanence of God) will help your prayer life and will boost your faith as well, so walk in it. Pray for the Manifestation of His presence as you worship Him songs and pray, having known that God is presence everywhere. He is the very breathe in your nostril do you believe that. Than pray with such understanding.
You need not a pastor to pray down God’s presence, you don’t need the choirs to sing down His glory, you need to enter into His presence by being in same image like Him without sin nor blemish. Jesus is here for you ; you cling tight to Him.
Father, I know You answer us when we call according to Your commandment to us, answer us when we pray to You today as we pour our heart before Your throne today and always in Jesus Name.
Beloved, the heaven is ready to hear you pray, therefore open your mouth and He will fill it.
Remain blessed in the Lord.
