So meditation, when coupled with faith, links you into the spirit world, and the reality of God. It's one of the great things in the Bible, it's a great truth. If you're too busy, you can't do this. If you hurry, you can't do this, and if you've got lots of clutter in your head, it's not easy to do it either. You've got to de-clutter, slow down and reflect, so television and internet get you busy. You've got to find a way to find space to just slow down, and just for a few moments allow yourself to dwell in the presence of God, and become conscious of Him. Like to come - now, so she will have felt the presence of God. That's good, praise the Lord, okay. It'd be good for you too, wouldn't it aye? [Laughs] So just close your eyes, and so I'm not trying to make too much happen. At the moment all I'm trying to do is just encounter the presence of God, so I just again thank You Lord, You're my shepherd.
I went through every line of that verse. Sometimes I prayed the whole thing, then I'd go back and pray one verse, two verse, three verse, meditate on one verse, then another verse, try to meditate on any of the verses, until I could feel the reality of it see? So thank You Lord, You're my shepherd and friend. I love that. Often I'd never get past that, just that first oh, He's my friend, and He's there with me! I begin to see Him, and feel His presence, and then thank You Lord, my cup runs over. Oh the joy, of just full of the presence of God. Thank You Lord for Your wonderful presence just flooding me right now. I just begin to enjoy it, so I learnt to just stand by the bed, and just fall on the bed and yield and see, just - no bed here now, so I'll just stand on my feet. I just learnt to receive from God, and so what would happen is, you start to feel His presence. Thank You Lord, just touch her now Lord. [Releases one long breath] Let your presence flow all over her life right now. There we are, and you're starting to sense something there, the presence of God is on you just like that.
So learn to yield rather than wrestle, so I practised just yielding to God, yielding to His presence. I'd just put the bed behind me and just stand there and just yield, and I'd be childlike, and just let myself fall [like whoa!] at the presence of God. Then I'd lie there and enjoy Him, and get up again and do it again, and again, and again, until it was easy to just open up and oh, thank You Lord. There's His presence and POWER of God just come over her life right now. Don't you feel the touch of God? You start to experience like a peace comes around you see? What else did you feel? Calm, isn't that great. It's good isn't it aye? Praise the Lord. What did you sense and experience? Yeah. Yeah, huge love, so as I was meditating, meditation opens up the spirit world, or your connectedness to God, and there's an overflow of life through you, and around you. It's great to understand that, isn't it aye? Otherwise you're going to be a performer, trying to perform, rather than a relater, have a relationship, and abiding, and receiving, and being able to give things to people. Isn't that good?
Okay then, well I'll just show you how I did something here. We'll just take a look on this gift of faith, and let me share on that, then I'll get back. I'm going to minister to some, and just pray for a few people shortly, because I want to just put together these areas of moving in the spirit, words of knowledge, prophecy, discerning, and I'll just put it altogether for you, and start to pray for a few people, and explain which gifts are operating as they're operating, okay? So we'll do that shortly. So we'll just have a quick look here, and I won't take too long on this one. I want to look at faith, gift of faith, the gift of faith. Okay, there it is, 18, alright then. So a gift of faith - now a gift of faith is not the same as walking by faith. It's not the same as your daily faith life. It is not the same as getting saved, although when you are saved, you receive a gift at that point to believe, so in a sense, getting saved is a gift of faith at that point. You got faith, and you believed immediately that you're saved, okay.
So what the gift of faith is; it's not a fruit of the spirit, and it's not just daily walking trusting God. A gift of faith is an ability to believe at a moment in time, you know something is going to happen, you absolutely know it. You say: how do you know it? I don't know how you know it, you just know inside what God is going to do, and that it will happen. You have an assurance it's going to take place, absolute assurance it'll take place, and so when you have that deep assurance, then you absolutely know something's going to happen. I want to tell you one, this is a classic one for me, and then we'll give you a few examples about it, but the best thing is if I just share a personal story, and you'll see how it can operate. I go to Taiwan and minister up there reasonably regularly, and they set up various meetings, and the Chinese have got their own way of doing stuff you see, so anyway I went up there into this particular meeting, and as I came out, I stepped straight into the meeting out of the lift, into this room where there's meeting, and then right in front of me there's a wheelchair, and a guy sitting in the wheelchair like this. I think oh no, a wheelchair! I know we'll have a great meeting - this is all what went through my mind - have a great meeting, and then at the end nothing's going to happen over this wheelchair.