Initially you have to allow your mind - then I just read the scripture, try to get the picture, and then I imagine what that would be like and just stay there imagining it, trying to feel it and then the Holy Spirit takes over and a flow comes. I'll just show you again - you can be my helper again Mary, that'll be a great idea. Come and be my helper again. We'll pray for lots of people shortly, but I want you to just help me in this one. Now I want you just to close your eyes, and I want you just to be open for how God might touch you. I'm not going to try to minister to you, or pray for you in any way. What I want to do instead is just holding your hand just to stay joined to you. What I want to do is to just meditate that Jesus is my friend, my wonderful friend, my shepherd. Thank You Lord, You're my shepherd and friend. So I begin to meditate and see Him there, standing just in front of me. I begin to see everything, see His eyes so full of love and life, countenance so joyful, just reach out to receive His love.
You see the moment I locked in, she started to feel the overflow. Meditation enables you to open your spirit and heart to the truth of the Bible. That's why we're to not only read the Bible, write the Bible, memorise the Bible, but meditate, allow our mind to reflect on it. There's at least three different ways of meditating I'm aware of now, but one way of meditating is to meditate into encounter with God. You don't hear much about that. You can meditate over a truth of scripture, and begin to look at it, and begin to gain insights and see how it might apply to your life. That's one way of looking at scripture. You can meditate on scripture also to enter in and experience God, that's another way of meditating. You can meditate on scripture just to build it into your heart, by repeating it over and over, so there's at least three things I'm aware that we could do with scripture: one for insight, one for impartation, and the other to open up the realm where God is.
So Mary, could you come up and describe for us what you experienced? Well [laughs] that's pretty quick, so I'll just take this off so you've got access to talk - here we go. There we go, just talk into that.
[Mary] I just felt just overwhelmed by His love, by His presence. It just - I couldn't stand, yeah...
[Pastor Mike] Still can hardly stand.
[Mary] ...I can still feel it, just... [laughter] yeah. I can't stop it.
[Pastor Mike] Now you see where it's - yeah, you can't stop, yeah. [Laughter]
[Mary] I can't. It's just overwhelming, His presence.
[Pastor Mike] Yeah, so see how it got opened, meditation opened the way for that to happen. There's a strong presence of God.
[Mary] Yeah.
[Pastor Mike] There it is - oh! Holy Ghost, come now. Praise the Lord. She's feeling the presence now. [Laughter] Be really good for us to just do a couple of things then shall we? Why don't we just do that? We'll just put into practice at least a couple of the exercises we've learnt now shall we? Now, you're going to need a help for this, so what you're going to need is you're going to need a chair to fall back on so - we can't catch everyone, and so we're not going to catch anyone. [Laughter] You have to catch yourself [laughter] so I'll give you three things that we're going to do. We're going to do the three things that we just learnt which strengthen your spirit man. One of them was that we would speak strongly in tongues; two, we'll confess the word of God, and each time we do something, again notice what it does for you. Then the third thing we'll do is we'll meditate, and I'll just help you with the meditating in just focussing your mind.
Now some people their mind doesn't focus easily. It's like a butterfly, it goes everywhere. That's just a matter of reigning in your mind, training your mind to stay in one place and not go everywhere else. Once you've trained your mind you can stay there, and you can lock in and stay there a long, long time. Now we realise then our mind can be trained to serve our spirit. Now initially you may find it a little bit difficult. Everyone's experience will be a bit different, but just see what God does anyway aye? Why not try, okay? Come on then, stand up then where you are, and then position yourself so you've got a seat, so should you fall over unexpectedly you don't fall on anyone else. [Laughter] If you are a very, very big person you may want your chair backed up to the wall so you don't just go clean head over heels, straight over into someone else. There we go Tim, straight up against the wall. [Laughter]