Dwelling in His Presence: Spiritual Disciplines to Deepen Your Walk with God by Rhonda Jones - HTML preview

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Spend some time alone and in a quiet area each day preferable for 10-20 minutes. Before you begin, pray and ask God to direct your time together with him. Sit or lie down with your hands in your lap or hanging down at your sides. Close your eyes. Breathe slowly and deeply allowing your abdomen to rise with each inhalation.  Concentrate on your breathing and the spot in the middle of your forehead.  When your mind begins to wander repeat silently to yourself the words Jesus used to calm the storm that terrified his disciples,  “Peace Be Still.”

As you are sitting with your eyes closed, an array of thoughts some negative and some positive may begin to flood your mind.  Each time that happens simply say in your mind, “Peace Be Still,” or another short scripture that brings you comfort.   If you get caught up in a thought unknowingly, once you realize it, repeat to yourself again, “Peace Be Still” or whatever scripture you choose.  You will find that over time if you continue the meditation, you can go for long periods of time without a thought at all and you are living totally in the present.

Always remember that thoughts are separate entities and they don’t become a part of us until we invite them in to stay.  Our goal in meditating is to first recognize the thoughts that want entrance into our minds and if these thoughts aren’t in the truest alignment of who we are in Christ, then here is our opportunity to consciously reject them.  I heard someone once say regarding meditation to see yourself sitting quietly and calmly on the bank of a river.  As you are observing the waves and ripples in river you’ll see various thoughts floating by.  Some of the thoughts will be uplifting and joyful so you bend over and pick them up.  You want to keep these and adorn your home with them.  Other thoughts floating by will be negative and self-defeating and those you just let casually float by.  You’re not claiming them, and don’t want them inhabiting your home, so you just let them float right past you down the river.

I can honestly tell you that meditating on the Lord and abiding in His presence is one of my most wonderful parts of my day.  About one week out of every month all three of my children stayed with their dad. (This was many years ago now, they are all grown)  Now most people might use this time for recreation or absorb themselves in some long-awaited project, but not me.  In fact, for those five-days I may not talk to a soul once I got off work.  I made myself a schedule of how I’m going to spend the week.  Mondays I cleaned up the house. Tuesdays were pampering days.  This is the day I light the bathroom full of candles and take a bubble bath.  Wednesday I did business type stuff. Thursdays I ran errands. Once I got each of my daily tasks accomplished I’d pray, mediate, read the word and/or an inspiration book and go to bed. I didn’t even turn on the television.

By Friday I am a new person.  I am refreshed and rejuvenated.  I have gotten more done in that week than I would have if I’d eliminated my meditation and devotional time.  When the kids would come home on Friday, I’m full of joy and energy.  My love for God has increased and I feel more secure and less dependent on the things of the world.  It was time well spent.  When you spend time just being alone with God, he will supernatural fill and supply you will all you need.  This is what it means to abide.

During the weeks all my teenagers were home, my time with the Lord may be more sporadic and piece meal, but I was determined to get it in.  On the mornings I’m rushed because I just couldn’t wake myself up, I may listen to the biblical affirmation exercise of my meditation tape while driving to work.  Later in the evenings when everyone is settled, I slip away in my room to spend time in fellowship with the Lord and his word.  It’s the spiritual nourishment I needed to maintain my peace and perspective.  In the presence of God, every problem seems minute. It also gave me the confidence he would take care of everything if I brough it to him. 

You may have a consuming job, small children, and a husband or wife, and think you can’t squeeze out the time to spend with the Lord.  As the divorced mother of three teenage girls I know what limited time means.  Throughout the week I was off chauffeuring kids to track meets, hair appointments, and football games.  Then there’s shopping.  Oh, they need their make-up, a new blouse, an item for a project, and juice for tomorrow’s class party that I just found out about.  Sometimes they just want me to take them to Taco Bell. You get my drift? 

I was busy too!  But busyness is not the issue here, priorities are.  You see, the number one, numeral uno priority in our life is our relationship with Jesus.  Everything else, I mean everything comes second to that!  If you must neglect something, it shouldn’t be your time and fellowship with God.  Neglect the yard work, neglect the housework, neglect washing the car, neglect the television, neglect your friends and the telephone, create boundaries if necessary, but don’t neglect your God! 

All this stuff is passing away!  We aren’t going to spend eternity on this earth! Whether we get $1000 back on our taxes verses $1500 isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans in light of eternity.  The car is going eventually rust, but what kind of relationship will we have built with the one who loves us more than anybody else on earth. The one who left his throne in heaven to die for us so you could live victoriously and have eternal life.  If we can’t make time for God, then we’re too bogged down with the wrong stuff.  We must learn to center our life around God and not our circumstances.  If we do, we will find everything else falling nicely into place.  When we spend time with God, it’s like he supernaturally multiplies the time we have left over and we’ll find ourselves accomplishing more than we did if we hadn’t taken the time. 

 It takes practice so be diligent to add this time of quietness and stillness to your day.  If you still feel funny about saying you meditate, just practice controlling your thoughts while driving, cooking, or doing anything that doesn’t take mental processes. My guided Christian Meditation CDs on a variety of topics help you to be still before the Lord.

 

Spend Time In Solitude

When my children were all very young, between ages 3 and 6, I moved on a 5 acre ranch in the middle of nowhere.  I had been divorced about one year and had this dream of living secluded in the country. The population of the town was a mere 100 and consisted of a school, church, bar, post office, and very small general store.  We lived down a 2 ½ mile dirt road and I had to drive my oldest daughter to kindergarten each morning about 7 miles from home.  The closest city was 20 minutes way and I took a trip there once a week to fill up my gas tank and buy groceries. 

We were the only African-American family in town, but I hardly noticed.  Everyone was so friendly and treated me like I belonged there.  In the evenings we took long walks down the dirt road where we brought cut apples to feed the horses. Once we experienced our house being swarmed by bees.  My daughters collected tarantulas they found roaming across our path.  I had planted a large garden that was shared by the gophers as well as us.  I spent hours placing traps to catch them.  

In the whole time I lived there I didn’t have one visitor from outside the local town, and not many of those either.  It was just the girls, solitude, and me.  My ex-husband and friends thought I had lost my mind.  But quite to the contrary; I think it is where I found it.  It was the most wonderful time of my life.  I felt safe and serene.  I had no fears.  Every other weekend I spent there alone when my ex-husband picked up our children for his visit, but I felt safer than being in the midst of a big city. 

During this time I never experienced loneliness.  I felt happy and complete.  We didn’t even have a television, so I didn’t waste countless hours in front of the tube.  I played with my kids, worked on projects, kept my home business going, volunteered for the weekly bible afterschool program, and attended church.  I still regret the day I moved from there. 

Moving to the city changed all that.  Now instead of quiet walks there was traffic and deadlines.  I had to get a real job and go to work.  I had to deal with people, lots of people.  Then I got involved in relationships. I became a slave to my new environment and all the sins it possessed.  There had been a time when solitude and I had been the best of friends. But that had all changed.  When my relationship had ended, solitude had become my enemy and I wanted to avoid it like the plague. I dreaded the weekends my children would go to their dads because it meant spending time by myself and all the horrors associated with it.  For months following the break-up I immersed myself in a bottom-less pit of activity.  I signed up for acting lessons, worked out, visited with friends, played golf, and enrolled in a class.  One day one of my daughters said, “Mom, can’t just stay home and cook dinner!”  But I needed to subdue my pain.  If I was occupying myself with a host of activities at least for a short time I wasn’t thinking about my hurt.

After months of this and finally wearing myself out, let alone letting my household fall apart, I wiped my slate clean.  I realized all I was doing was masking my hurt and trying to replace my loss with a mirage of meaningless movement.  One evening alone and miserable I desperately tried to think about whom I could call or where I could go.  I wanted this feeling to go away.  I needed to run from it and put it out of my mind. As I lay there on the couch, I told myself, Rhonda, this is not going to kill you.  Embrace this time in your life.  Learn from it.  It’s here for a reason.  Stop fearing it, let it have its say and it will find it’s no longer needed or wanted.  I could reminisce of a time when I felt at peace, free from anxiety and pain.

Forced solitude is the beginning of the weaning and purging process of all the falsehoods that we have come to believe.  Initially we may not think we can make it.  We’re like addicts needing a fix.  If we don’t get some outside stimulation we think the walls may come tumbling down.  That’s exactly what happens in a sense.  As we move into silence and solitude, old beliefs, patterns, and habits resurface and as we confront them begin to fall away.  Our conditioning loses its grip. We open our minds to new thoughts and clearer realities.  We can use this time for self-reflection and open our minds and hearts to hear new music, heavenly rhythms.  What we’re doing is taking a break from all the distractions and energies which have carried us along in a forcible whirlwind.  As we begin to break away we realize things we thought we wanted or needed we really don’t want or need anymore. We can do without them. 

During this time we discover God is in us, and around us with a message to be heard, not only through His Word but in our hearts as well.  Paul told the church not to look for Jesus in heaven or under the earth, for the kingdom of God is within you!  Jesus through the Holy Spirit lives in the heart of every believer.  For most he’s locked up in a chamber of carnal and rational thoughts and never gets the opportunity to transform our lives through a greater understanding of ourselves and God’s purpose for us.

If while experiencing solitude we are communing with God through prayer and renewing of our minds with the Word of God, we can completely transform who we are.  You may wake up one day and realize that old person with its fears and insecurities no longer exist.  The things that motivated you in the past no longer interest you.  The fears that held you in bondage have lost their power.  Incorporate in your life scheduled times of aloneness, to just be still and know that God is God!

When we consider fasting the first thing that comes to our mind is eliminating food from our diet for a period of time for a variety of reasons.  Some people fast for health purposes, others fast to give their full attention to God and prayer.  I try to fast for at least 3 days every other month.  Most times when I begin a fast I feel confident and determined to follow-through.  The sad fact however is that the majority of the time, by the end of the day, I’ve broken my fast and put something in my mouth that didn’t belong there.  For me, fasting is the way I break the sugar addiction that has gotten terribly out of control in my life.  I know I shouldn’t eat the candy, cakes, and sweets just staring me in the face, but I guess I have the can’t help its.  Those raging sugar demons just won’t let me pass up a good sweet when I see one.  The longer I wait to fast the worst my addiction gets.  Finally I get to the point that it must be done.  I prepare by making sure I have ample bottled water and 100% fruit juices.  I stock up on herbal and cleansing teas.  I throw away any remnant of a sweet in my household.  Sometimes I have placed whole bags of cookies I bought the day before down the drain.  There comes a point when nothing is going to stop me and it usually takes several failed attempts before I get to that place of no return.  The fast is on.

Once my mind is made up, the first day of the fast isn’t so bad.  I begin to get a little hungrier before bedtime but it’s nothing I can’t handle.  I usually wake up hungry the second day and will drink hot teas and diluted juices to take the edge off.  I continue taking my multiple vitamins and other natural supplements throughout the fast as well. 

By about the evening of the second day every food in the world starts to look delicious, even steamed carrots seem appealing.  I have gone past the point of no return so there’s no way I’m going to give in to my urges, but it’s still a battle all the same.  I want to eat, but I’m not going to forfeit all my efforts thus far.  By the third day I’m in agony.  Those sugar demons are working overtime.  I’m moaning and groaning.  Every television commercial is causing my mouth to salivate.  It’s a war of monumental proportions.  I must make it through.

On the morning of the fourth day, I’m feeling wonderful.  The cravings are gone. I’m not hungry anymore.  Food doesn’t thrill me anymore. In fact, I can take it or leave it.  I feel light and free.  I’m waking up early with so much energy I don’t know what to do with myself.  I may get up an hour earlier than normal and cook breakfast for the kids or undertake some major project.  From day four on, I feel I could live without food forever.  Why encumber myself with such menial rituals that zap your strength and force your allegiance? 

I usually force myself to eat on about the fifth day, but what I put in my mouth is much different than the half of carrot cake I downed five days earlier.  And sugar, what’s sugar, an enemy of the past, whom I dare not invite in for fear of its sinister clutches.  Now, my diet now consists of an abundance of fruits and vegetables, lean meats, fish and poultry.  I pass by the deserts, sodas, and potato chips laid out in our staff lounge with air and celebration.  I have fought the sugar demons and won.  I will go months without the slightest temptation of eating poorly again.  But after about that time my rationalization kicks in and I tell myself just one cookie isn’t going to send me off the deep end.  I know all to well, that it’s that first cookie that marks the beginning of the end of my victory over sugar, and off begins the cycle again.

I relate this story because we all have physical, mental, and emotional addictions we need broken in our lives.  Fasting coupled with the word of God and prayer is our first line of defense to eliminating specific areas of bondage in our lives.  You must separate yourself from the demons that grip you long enough for you to gain power over them and eliminate them from your system.

 Maybe you’re addicted to relationships, or have had several unsuccessful relationships in the past year. You’re tired of meeting Mr. or Ms. Wrong, but seem to attract them like flies.   Commit to staying single for the next year or longer.  Spend the next year weaning yourself of your false need for a companionship and devote your energies to developing your relationship with the Lord.  Get to know yourself better and find out what about you is attracting or creating these faltering unions.  If the temptation to be around the opposite sex is too strong, avoid them as much a possible until you can build your resolve. Get to the point of not needing or even wanting a relationship before you enter one again.  As long as the desire for a relationship dominates a good portion of your thoughts and actions, you are not ready for one.  When you are ready, trust God to bring the right person along in His way and in His timing.

You’re friendships with unsaved friends may be creating internal conflicts with your walk with God.  Your friends want to continue to party, look for men or women, and drink alcohol all to your dismay.  So far you haven’t the courage to confront them and stand up for the Lord, so you just go along with their carousing against your better judgement.  As I discuss in The Company You Keep it may now be time to wean yourself from unproductive friendships and relationships.  Allow God to send new friendships into your life that will honor Him and your commitment to living a godly, Christian life.

Use solitude as a way to become the person you want to be.  You will find that the more time you spend with yourself, the more time you must spend by yourself.  Use solitude and stillness to hear the quiet promptings of the Holy Spirit who wants to speak to your heart and spirit.  Solitude is the fast of the mind, soul, and spirit.  It will wash away the falsehoods, misconceptions, and claws of sin if you use it in conjunction with God’s word.  It will clear your mind and heart and allow you to see clearly the truth of God and the truth about your situation.  Solitude will create balance in your life.  If you practice it faithfully you will quickly notice when you are feeling off kilter and need to retreat again.  It will give you the peace you need to live in this world, but not be a part of it.  Solitude is the invisible force God uses to rejuvenate and energize our spirits.  Use it faithfully.

You may want to begin with an hour of solitude now and then. Turn off the television and the radio.  Enjoy looking at nature or staring at a sunset.  As you feel more and more comfortable alone with your own thoughts extend this time to days and possibly weekends.  Once you begin to live with solitude you won’t be able to live without it.

 

Entering God’s Presence Through Praise

 

 “The joy of the Lord is our strength,” Nehemiah 8:10. Praise and worship is another avenue we can use to strengthen our relationship with the Lord. When I first joined the church I currently attend I was so taken by the praise and worship that two weeks later I decided to join the choir. The songs, music, worship and praise that takes place in our services seemed to usher in the very presence of God.  Many times I wish the praise and worship would extend throughout the whole service. God inhabits the praises of his people. Ephesians 5:18 and 19 tells us to, “be filled with the Spirit.  Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name our Lord Jesus Christ.” “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” declares Psalms 100.  Praising and worshipping God helps us to take the focus off ourselves and unto our awesome God.  The Bible says He is worthy to be praised.

My choir days were short-lived.  I attended three of the weekly three-hour evening rehearsals before I decided it wasn’t practical for me to continue.  I was getting home and to bed too late to feel rested enough for my next day’s work.  I didn’t feel quite comfortable leaving my three teenage daughters home alone for that extended period of time either.  In addition, the church is about a 20-minute drive from home that added to the already lengthy time commitment. 

I realized however it wasn’t so much being in the choir that I wanted but to experience that extending feeling of being in the presence of God.  My quick remedy was to replicate these same experiences at home by recording and purchasing the very same music that touched my heart at church.  God is everywhere and just not contained within the four walls of the church.

During mornings, days, or evenings when I was alone or could sneak away into my bedroom, I would sit on my bed and play particular worship songs that ministered to both myself and the Lord.  Later I made one long recording of my favorite worship songs to play continually for 30 minutes or more.  Within minutes of turning upon the recorder and opening my heart and mind to the Lord, a sweet and warm spirit would fill my room as well as my being.  Sometimes I’d get so carried away I begin dancing around the room like I was performing for Jesus, or jumping up and down with joy and enthusiasm.  Other times I’d be so overcome with God’s love that I would sit and cry and praise Him for everything He has done in my life.  But one thing was always for certain, when I was in the presence of God, I never wanted to stop what I was doing and leave it.  Those feelings of God’s love, security, and peace drove me back to God’s presence time and time again.  It is a part of my life I will never want to live without. “In thy presence in fullness of joy.” (Psalms 16:11)

When I was teaching Sunday school, I’d miss out on the praise and worship portion of the service altogether.  As much as I enjoy it, I knew I would never miss out on glorifying God in song and adoration because I could always do it at home.  One nice thing about praising God alone at home is that you don’t have to be self-conscious of the people around you.   You can dance, kneel, cry, shout, and sing your lungs out to your hearts content.  I also believe God honors us for taking out time from our weekly schedules to exalt and bless Him in this way.  I continually feel renewed and believe my relationship with God has deepened from this ritual I have embraced.

Ask friends or your worship leader to recommend songs or artist that will usher you into God’s presence.  Between our church services our sound technician plays music.  On more than several occasions I have inquired about songs I heard and liked.  Also, visit some of the Christian music sites on the Internet.  Many let you listen to portions of songs right on-line.  This is also available through amazon.com.  I particularly enjoy some of the WOW collections, Celtic praise music, among others.  Select your favorites off of each album and make your own praise and worship tape, then let the praise begin.  You will never have to wait for another church service again to enter into God’s presence through the celebration of praise.

 

Spiritual Breathing

Have you ever been so wrought with emotional pain and anxiety that you could hardly function? I have.  After my break-up I was incessantly overcome with an almost debilitating grief and agony.  It was like emotional charged toxins were churning in my body with no avenue for escape.  It was the kind of emotional pain that causes you to moan and wail.  For months I just lived with this constant and gnawing anguish.

Then almost by accident, though there are no coincidences, I discovered a technique that would effectively release these spasmodic feelings from my body, heart, and soul. I was sitting in the parking lot of my daughter’s school to pick her up.  I was so depressed and absorbed in my hurt that it actually contorted my face.  I prayed but still the pain persisted.  For no apparent reason I laid my head back on the head cushion and began to breathe deeply.  Upon each exhalation, I focused on the pain leaving my body through by lungs and my skin.  With each breath I began to feel better until the pain was eventually gone. Though I’m sure I’m no way original, I termed it spiritual breathing. 

Colossians 3:8 says, “But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from you lips…since you have taken off your old self with its practices…”

Then Colossians 3:10, tells us to “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, hol