Hosting the Holy: Anointed to Bask in His Presence
From the time I was a little girl, I have always loved to learn about David.
His life provokes me to know God more. I read his victories and his failures, I read his love songs to the Lord, and I am blown away at the consistency of his passion over his lifetime. He did not do everything right, but he was known as a man after God’s own heart. Not only that, but it was God Himself who described David that way. Friend, I don’t know about you, but I want God to think of my heart for Him that same way. What a powerful commendation from Heaven!
David was called a man after God’s own heart because he loved to minister to the Lord, and he placed a high priority on hosting God’s presence. This is a golden key for those of us who are hungry for revival. Revival brings the nearness of God so close in our everyday life, so we must develop the same kind of passion that David had. We must determine in our hearts that we are going to host God in our own life, in our homes, and in our churches.
If there is one thing, one lesson that I have learned from experiencing and studying revival, it is this: God comes and stays where He is hosted well. God is not interested in being an entertaining addition to our Sunday services. He is interested in creating a habitation among those who give Him the preeminence that He so richly deserves.
Many churches fall so sadly short of experiencing the manifested presence of God because they are not trying to host Him; they’re trying to host people. David cared about the people of Israel, but Scripture shows us that God’s heart was his top priority.
When David came to the throne after the death of Saul, that marked a tectonic shift in policy and priority for the kingdom. David’s ascension to the throne united the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, bringing unity where there had been civil war. There were many major differences in the leadership styles of David and Saul, but I believe the most important difference was found in this heart issue of pursuing God’s presence.
David and the people of Israel were hungry for the presence of God. They had gone quite a while without sensing the need for His presence, because Saul was a man who thought he could rule without being in God’s presence.
When we look closely at the life of Saul, we see such wasted God-given talent. We see that he was appointed, he was anointed, but he chose the path of arrogance. He started well. He was God’s first choice for the rulership of Israel. Israel asked for a king, but it was God who selected Saul. When he became king, we read of the Spirit of the Lord coming upon him, and he would defeat the Philistines. We read of a king who was little in his own eyes, but the longer he stayed in power, the more he thought he had put himself there. Most alarmingly, we have no record in the Word of God of King Saul having a passion for God’s presence. He was not a man of worship or prayer. He was not a student of God’s Word. He really thought he could rule God’s people outside of fellowship with Yahweh.
When we come to a place where we think we can continue with our lives outside of fellowship with the Lord, we are in the most severe kind of spiritual danger known to man. If you are satisfied with your own qualifications and giftings, that is all you will have to rely on, and I promise you, it will not be enough.
I cannot tell you how much danger the churches of America are in right now because they think they know how to function outside the presence of God. If God does not show up on a Sunday morning, our churches have mastered the art of faking it, of pretending God’s manifested presence is among us, and continuing on with the meeting like it’s no big deal.
Jesus did not say, “Apart from Me, you won’t have very good meetings.” In John 15:5, He said, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” He wasn’t kidding. This was not hyperbole. The reason Western society has not been changed by the power of God is because the Church has done a whole lot of nothing. We have pretended to love God’s presence, but we have not taught our people the glorious joy of abiding in Jesus. It really is no wonder that we haven’t seen much eternal fruit produced, because we think we can do life without the abiding presence of Jesus.
Saul did have the anointing, but he showed no desire for God’s presence. He did not place a priority on having the presence of God with him. Saul never bothered to inquire of the Lord. When he realized that people were leaving him, he disobeyed God’s instructions and moved ahead without God’s presence or blessing. Even knowing that God was offended at him didn’t bring him to repentance. He did not repent, but he still wanted Samuel to “worship” with him. The truth is this: Saul was not interested in seeking God; he was interested in looking like he was seeking God.
Our ministers and churches seem to love the King Saul method, but if you wholeheartedly pursue the Lord like David did, that will get you labeled as strange, even radical. It will even make King Saul throw a spear at you.
The more King Saul moved away from God and His presence and tried to do things in his own power, the more he felt the need to try to maintain the attention of the people of Israel. The drive to seek attention caused him to turn into a demonized, spear-throwing monster who was willing to ignore the needs of his people to stage a manhunt against an innocent man. Why was he so desperate for attention? Because he had made the critical mistake of assuming that authority and attention are the same thing. Nothing could be further from the truth!
We have an entire ministry culture that has been contaminating the Church. We think, “If I look good enough, if I can preach good enough, if I can lead worship good enough, they’ll hand me the microphone.” Friend, we must come to a place where we are seeking Jesus instead of seeking attention, or we will never be able to host His presence in our lives and churches! Oh, God, deliver us from this auditioning spirit!
What if you have been losing your spiritual authority because you have been auditioning for a ministry platform rather than pursuing God’s presence? What if our churches and ministers look a lot more like Saul than David? What can we do about this?
David shows us the key to his entire life in one of his most famous psalms, Psalm 27. In verse four, David says, “One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple.” In verse eight, he says, “When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘ Your face, O Lord, I shall seek.’”
This is what set David apart. David knew that it was God who had established his kingship, his dynasty, and he wanted to honor the One who had brought him up from the shepherd field. David had the right idea. He had a hunger for God’s presence, and he wanted to do something about that hunger. He was famous for inquiring of the Lord, and he was completely dedicated to hosting God.
This is what attracted God to David’s life—this pervading passion to enjoy intimate fellowship with the Lord. It was the hallmark of David’s life. If we are going to be a revival remnant, a people preoccupied with the presence of the Lord, then we must have the same hallmark. Fellowship with God must be our top priority.
David’s hunger was good, but what he did about it was not. In his haste, he made a critical error.
Hasty hunger will always get you in trouble! David decided to move the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, and that was a good decision. But he did not decide to consult the Word of God regarding how to bring the Ark to Jerusalem. He neglected to check the Torah for the protocol of carrying and entering God’s presence. My friend, there is a protocol to entering the presence of the Lord.
One of the books that has helped me so much in learning to host the Lord is Glory by Ruth Ward Heflin. In that book, she said this: “You praise until the spirit of worship comes. You worship until the glory comes. Then, you stand in the glory.” Many people seem to find this difficult, because this type of protocol will usually not fit into a twenty-minute package. This is not a fun, new way to put songs together; it is a protocol that surpasses music and gets down into your lifestyle. Haste is never involved in real worship, and when you allow yourself to make decisions in hasty hunger, you will always find yourself making serious errors.
There is a progression when you’re hosting His presence! When you fail to follow the protocol, you won’t consult God’s instructions. Any time we fail to consult God’s Word, disaster is the inevitable result.
You see, those who long for authentic revival find their joy in the presence of the Lord. Reading His Word is life to their souls. Worshiping before His Throne and enjoying His presence are not occasional activities; He has become their heartbeat. They are willing to pay the price of time to be with Jesus because they have found Him to be worth it.
Our churches have failed to press in for real revival because we care more about the clock on the wall than the Presence in the room. I am reminded of something C.S. Lewis once said: “Revival is not going to come until most of us really want it.” The main reason we are not seeing a radical move of the Holy Spirit is because most of us think we have this church thing figured out without Him.
Let’s take a momentary pause from the life of David to look at the last week of Jesus’ time on earth. He specifically chose to spend the last few days of His life in the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. I find that so interesting.
When I am going through something, I tend to gravitate toward my family. We are not perfect, but we certainly know how to circle the wagons when one of us is going through something. If I had been in Jesus’ shoes, I would have gone home to Mary. Surely, when you’re about to endure the worst thing anyone could ever go through, you go home to Mama. But that isn’t what Jesus chose to do. He went to Lazarus’s house.
Do you think that Jesus spent His last week of His natural life at Lazarus’s house because it was close to Jerusalem, or could it be that they had learned how to host Him well? Could it be that they had mastered the art of taking care of His needs and making Him feel wanted? Could it be that they had learned how to make the King of Heaven feel comfortable in their home? I say again, Jesus comes and stays where He is hosted well.
In a moment of hasty hunger, David said, “Build me a new cart.” David’s hasty hunger had a death toll associated with it. The pitfall of hasty hunger is something that every revivalist must avoid.
Let me illustrate this. Nathan and I have some wonderful friends in Mississippi, Pastors Hardy and Jill Jones. They are salt of the earth kind of folks, and they invited Nathan and me to come and minister in their church. Nathan was flying in from another country, so I set off to meet him at the Jones’ house in Mississippi.
One of the reasons I love Jill Jones is because that woman can cook like you would not believe. She used to own her own restaurant, and it shows. She says, “I’m going to go into the kitchen and throw something together.” The things she “throws together” will throw you into fits of culinary delight. She is just unbelievable!
As I was making my way to Mississippi from Florida, I made a stop in Pensacola to use the restroom. I had been driving for several hours, not eating anything. I came out of the
restroom to find a shelf fully stocked with massive bags of Cool Ranch Doritos. I was so tempted to grab a snack and go for it! I stood there for a few seconds debating with myself over whether or not I should do this. That’s when I realized only a moron grabs a bag of Doritos when you can have a steak!
Eating a bag of chips will give you a sensation of fullness, but any nutritionist will tell you, those are empty calories. You made yourself feel full by grabbing a quick snack, but you have not nourished your body at all. Hasty hunger will settle for anything, but that is not good at all!
David’s hasty hunger gave him a “new cart mentality.” Where on earth did he get the idea to carry God’s presence on a new cart? God never instructed anyone to carry the Ark on a cart. That idea came from the lost. The only other time in biblical history that the Ark was carried on a new cart was when the Philistines were sending it back to Israel after they had captured it in battle.
David’s first experience as a warrior was when he faced Goliath, who was a Philistine. Yet when it was time to draw God’s presence closer, when it was time to go deeper, he decided to pursue God in a way that he had learned from the very people he fought as a boy. They were his sworn enemies! Why was he trying to mimic their approach to God’s presence?
Remember when David ran away to live in a Philistine city called Ziklag? God never told him to run away or to live his life outside of the covenant territory. In fact, as long as he stayed in the wilderness of Judea (praise), Saul couldn’t so much as lay a hand on him. But the minute David moved in fear to the land of the Philistines, his city was attacked and he lost everything in a moment. Only when David became friendly with his enemy did he expose his life to attack.
Do we really need the nightclub laser-light smoke machine stuff in the house of God, or have we learned a new cart mentality? Do we really need to make our churches look like this world to win this world? We don’t need mood music or mood lighting to experience the power of God. How much more truth must we sacrifice on the altar of relevance to win people to Jesus? We need deliverance from the Philistine approach!
You cannot do spiritual things in a worldly way and expect to get supernatural results. It doesn’t work that way! The Word declares in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” We need to stop trying to figure out new methods and trust in the Lord once again. We need a return to reverence and to the Word.
Sincere desire for God’s presence did not excuse the irreverence of David and Uzzah. That shows us that the moment we try to carry the presence of God without the fear of God, we have stepped outside the boundaries of His protection. We dare not make these same mistakes, lest we see similar results.
Uzzah’s name means “strength.” You see, when man’s strength tries to bring natural stability to a move of God, it always ends in disaster. You can encourage a revival, you can speak into a move of God, but it must be done through the Word and through prayer. If you try to steady the movement of God’s Spirit with the “wisdom” of man, you will find yourself becoming “seeker sensitive” instead of being “Spirit sensitive.”
