Hosting the King: Drawing His Presence into Your Life
Our King longs to be hosted by His people; the precious Holy Spirit longs to be wanted, to be invited, and to be cooperated with.
It is the place where we offer all of who we are to Him so that He comes to rest on us markedly.
We all have incredible gifts operating in our lives. These are gifts given by God, and Romans 11:29 says that these gifts are irrevocable. That means these gifts can never be taken away, regardless of how we use them. For example, say I bought my husband a brand-new, top-of-the-line guitar, but the gift was contingent on him playing it five times a week in the evening and practicing specific songs I had chosen. Though my instructions may be beneficial and help him steward well what he had been given, it would not be a gift at all because gifts don’t come with conditions. Gifts are freely given, and the receiver can choose what they want to do with what they are given. Now, if my husband never played the guitar or, worse, used it in a damaging way, I may never give my husband a lavish gift like that again, but the guitar is his to use as he sees fit.
In the same way, God has given us gifts and taught us many excellent principles in the desire that we would steward them in our relationship with Him, but He does not and will not control that because He is love, and love always gives a choice. We must not mistake gifts for rewards. So many times we will think the gift on our life is the evidence of the presence of God operating in our lives, but it is actually the fruit of our lives that marks whether we are walking with Him or in our own strength.
In all our options in this world, the Lord invites us to surrender and submit to His Spirit. It is in this place that our gifts no longer operate in our strength but they now operate filled with His limitless power, and impossibilities begin to bow. Our gifts were meant to be used in cooperation with the power of the Spirit, just as Jesus cooperated with Him while here on earth. It is like the difference between battery power and plugging into an electrical box. Our gifts on their own have some strength but also have many limitations. When we operate in the things of God without dependence on the Holy Spirit, we operate in the limited revelation of what we know of Him, and eventually the power runs out. But when we create a resting place for Him by living in dependence on Him and offering all of ourselves to Him, we become conduits for the power of the Spirit to flow through, fulfilling His desires and bringing Heaven to earth.
This invitation of actual dependence is what I came to know in this encounter. I had received so much training and tools— all are true, sound, and necessary—but they were never meant to operate independently of dependence on God’s presence. I needed a baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire to understand that all of the training I had received was not to prove my identity but existed as an invitation to walk in His ways with Him. My gifts and knowledge needed to be constantly filled with His power so that the world could see a demonstration of His glory. I was well on my way to living an independent, principled life of form with no actual power. I truly thought I was pleasing God by doing things for Him, and I had not realized that He wanted to do everything with me, filling every void and strength with Himself.
This yielding to His power is the same reason the disciples had to wait in the upper room. They could only fulfill the commission Jesus had given them once they had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and His power in order to be obedient to the call. The same goes for us. The call of the Christian life is one of significant risk and reward, but neither can be entered into without our complete dependence on the Lord. Jesus wants to fill us and empower us to do the impossible in our everyday life, but it requires full awareness that we depend on His Spirit.
Do Not Resist Him
As we would worship the Lord during those evening meetings, our praise and welcome would begin to host His presence. Like Ezekiel’s river in Ezekiel 47, the tangible presence of God that we could sense in the room before we started worshiping began to rise like that river. It went from ankle-deep, to knee-deep, to waist-deep, until we were fully submerged in this mighty rushing Holy Spirit river that He longed to pour out on His people. When the river of His presence rises, we are welcomed to get swept away in His ways into a Kingdom full of righteous peace and joy, a Kingdom in which nothing is impossible. Even now, as I write, I ache with a longing for a move of the River of God in such a way that we as a people would be swept up and could only go where He was sending us.
There is a deep groan in the spirit, in creation, and in the heart of His people for a manifestation of the glory of God. There is a longing in every created person for a connection so powerful and union so bonded with our Creator that they would live a life far beyond their capabilities. This is our inheritance in Jesus. The life surrendered to the Lord and thus full of His Spirit is a life that carries the promise to know His glory and walk in it (see Ephesians 1:18-23).
When I would pause the personal prayer at the start of the service and ask the people to return later, it would allow each of us to host the Lord by giving Him our attention and love in our worship, setting Him as the priority. As we did this, He would move and stir hunger in His people for more of Him. The people came for prayer after the service, and because we had waited on Him and made room for Jesus to take first place, the Holy Spirit would move so powerfully. The voice of limit and lack that had plagued me for so long had now been replaced with the voice of the Lord. The Holy Spirit whispered to me as I would lay hands on each person that they are His resting place, His prepared place, and that He was longing to pour out His glory upon us.
I would feel led to say this out loud: “God, I honor this resting place, this prepared place, this house to hold Your glory.” As I would, before I even touched anyone, people would be touched powerfully by Him. It was not just a few people, but hundreds of us were encountering a God so personal that He would fill us with Himself and call us His home. I remember one meeting that I went to—it was a women’s night at our church, and if I’m honest, I was a little nervous for the ladies. They were not our school of ministry students, and I wasn’t quite sure how ready they were for the kind of “Hayley” they were going to receive. The old Hayley would have tried to tone herself down and pull herself together, but she was gone—she had been laid down in a grave and had been resurrected by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. There was no more scrambling over my notes or anxiety over being too much and offensive; instead, I was still inside. Where before I had hoped to find confidence in myself, I now found it in the fact that God was enough and He was with me. I used to spend so much time apologizing for myself, but I now realized God was moving unapologetically within me, and He was pleased to do so.
I was too far gone in this journey to resist anything God wanted to do, and the thought of resisting God was too painful to consider. In the light of His face, the fears that used to hold me back, the fear of being rejected and cast aside, now bowed to the fact that I only wanted one thing—God. God had become enough for me. No job, no position, no friendships, and no approval of man could ever outweigh what I had experienced in the Lord at this time. This was not something that I thought of or conjured up in my own strength but simply through the power of the holiness of God. In light of the fear of the Lord, the fear of man now felt inconsequential. The lying ploy of the enemy that had robbed from me for 29 years had been broken over the knee of a loving Father who was pursuing me. He had paid a price far too expensive for me to afford and had now placed His Spirit upon me in such a way that I could not bear to refuse Him.
The Lord was moving in me in a way that was so powerful to me, but I am sure to others it was confusing or at least unusual. I had to overcome the worry that some would not understand and that some would but would not be ready to receive it for themselves. I have come to realize that there are times in our journey with the Lord when we have to choose to surrender ourselves to what looks or feels unusual because we sense God is doing a work. There can be a temptation to shut it down or move away because it’s too far out of our comfort zone. I must admit that there have been many times when I have had to wrestle through to receive from someone who didn’t come packaged as I was comfortable with. We have all wrestled with this at some point, and we have all failed. But the beauty of this is that our own ability qualifies none of us; we are qualified by what Jesus did on the cross for us, and He is looking for a humble heart that is willing to make room for His Spirit to rest on them and He will do that work in us. This night ministering to our women was another moment that required me to step over the line of comfort and give myself to Him without resistance, and when I did He filled me with grace that enabled me to surrender further.
We must not resist God. I can remember times when I rejected what God was doing because I was offended by how it was packaged. I distinctly remember not attending a meeting of a well-known and anointed minister because I was bothered by the criticisms I had heard from others. Other times I would carry judgment in my heart because of how distracting certain manifestations were and wouldn’t want to be a part of things I thought were “too much.” Of course, not all manifestations or ministers are anointed, but my heart was one of judgment and not hunger.
“Hunger is the evidence of humility. ”
On this night, ministering to the women, I surrendered myself fully to Jesus once again. The Holy Spirit started moving tangibly, and I began to shake and cry under His presence once again.
God doesn’t always come in the way we expect Him to. There are times God will package Himself in a way that we have to surrender our preconceived notions about what it should look like to receive what He has. We are not the ones in charge—He is. When I look at the magnitude of who God is, I realize how small I am, and I am able to hunger for Him. Think about Jesus being birthed in an obscure stable or the people whom God used in the Bible. God doesn’t fit our mold; we fit into His.
He Makes Us Hungry For Him
That night I was graciously received by hundreds of women who filled our church sanctuary and listened as I tried to speak through weeping and shaking, yielding to what the Holy Spirit was doing in me. I want you to imagine what it would be like to try and listen to someone speak through weeping, shaking, completely overcome by the power of God. These are the moments that are hard to comprehend. We are all hungry for the Lord, and sometimes these sound like marvelous experiences, but they are also costly.
As those beautiful women sat in the sanctuary that night, God broke all my boxes and began to move. One by one, women made their way forward and filled the altar to receive a touch from the Holy Spirit. I remember my mother was visiting us during this mighty outpouring. That night she was touched powerfully by the Spirit and ministered alongside me to many women.
We invited mothers to fetch their children from childcare as the evening was drawing to a close, but the Holy Spirit was still moving. Seeing mothers bring their small children into the room to encounter God together probably was and is still one of my favorite memories as I am a mother myself. At the end of the night as we were wrapping up, I began to move off of the stage trying to figure out how I would get home as I was under the power of the weight of God. A line began to form beside me of women wanting prayer for more of the Lord.
As I began to pray for women, the line got longer and longer. The women I was nervous about ministering to were so hungry and willing to receive because they wanted Him. Their humility to receive from one of their peers and their ability to see the Holy Spirit moving over potential offense was humbling for me, to say the least. I began moving down the line and praying for woman after woman. Some of our school of ministry ladies had come to support me during this time and they became my catchers. Woman after woman, old and young, began to get touched by the power of the Holy Spirit. I remember looking at the clock before we started praying; it was nearly 11 p.m. and the line of women waiting for prayer started at the front of our sanctuary and wrapped all the way around the room to the exit. Over a hundred women waited for prayer, and He gave Himself without hesitation. The Holy Spirit swept through the room to encounter us all. This demonstration of hunger started to happen all over our environment, and in all of our meetings God was moving markedly in His people.
