Now I can get my spirit alive very quickly. I've learnt to do that very easily, but then the next part is actually the worshipping part. Now worshipping is much more tender, and I have found it most helpful, the problem you find as you worship is your mind wanders, starts to think oh, that'd be nice, sit down and watch television - [prays in tongues] - [laughter] yes, that'd be lovely. I wonder what match is on right now - [prays in tongues]. You see? We're not going to engage in worship much that way, see? So worship is consciously and intentionally letting your heart reach out, and affirm the love and value you have for Him, so if I just get my mind distracted I'm not really worshipping. I'm going through the motions. They draw near with the lips, but the heart is not there, because the mind has gone somewhere else, but if I was to just ponder that Jesus is with me and I just begin to say oh, I love You. Thank You Lord for Your goodness to me. I just worship You, I just give You everything. I just love You Lord and thank You for Your presence - and I can start to begin to feel and become conscious that He's there, feel the atmosphere starting to change.
Now that took a moment or two - but you say well, that doesn't happen for me. Well it didn't happen for me either until I practised. I practised worshipping. I practised giving myself to Him, lift my hands up and dance and praise the Lord and just give - I learnt to just give myself to Him. I found sometimes for me initially I was so hung up, I found it helpful just to just give myself physically, and dance before the Lord, celebrate His presence and just give myself, then yield to Him and say: I love You Lord, just come and fill me and overflow and just crash on the bed and let Him just come all over me. I learnt to explore what it is to just stand in the presence of God and enjoy Him. Sometimes it can be just so delightful, you just want to just stay there admiring Him. Worship engages Him, and you just begin to feel His presence. Other things just seem to change. You come out of a time of worship, where you've engaged the presence of God, other things seem to not have so much importance any more. The difficult part is getting rid of the baggage so you can engage Him personally.
So it's helpful to picture, to use your mind - that brings us to the next one of growing in our spirit man, is to develop our spiritual imagination. Now people sometimes get trouble with this, and notice what Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:15; Meditate on these things; give yourself totally to them, so that your progress or profiting might appear to all. To meditate means to revolve around in your mind, to picture, to use your imagination to see spiritual truth. It's true that whatever you set your heart on, your heart will open up to, so you set your heart on problems you'll open up to problems. Set your heart on the Lord and meditate, so you may not feel anything much about the presence of God, you may not feel that He's there at all. You may think He's a long way off. I lived with God a long way off for a long part of my life, but then I learnt that if I would meditate and picture truth, just imagine the truth, in other words use your imagination. The Bible says: love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and strength - that would include my imagination.
So if I was to just imagine what it is to stand in the presence of God who loves me, and hold the picture that Bible says of what He's like, His countenance, His eyes, His face, His beauty, all that He is, and just meditate: now what does that feel like to be welcomed by Him like that? Just imagine seeing the scripture. I have found an interesting thing happens, that as you do that, you begin to write into your heart the truth. If I was to say: what is the sum of this multiplication problem, three times four? Three fours are? [Twelve.] Now you didn't have to stop and think about it because you'd learnt it by heart. How did you learn it by heart? By repetition, so repetition of seeing the same thing, welcoming the same thing, affirming the same thing, it begins to grow in our heart as a spiritual reality, and so it doesn't really take long. Once you've started to meditate and hold your mind, fixed - I've meditated in Psalm 23 on Jesus being my shepherd. I've meditated in Revelations about Him being the great and glorious coming king, and each time you meditate, you begin to see Him differently.