Practical Pointers on Enjoying God in Prayer (2)

In this post, we would like to consider the next two points from chapter 5 of How to Enjoy God and How to Practice the Enjoyment of God: appearing before God, and being silent. In these sections, Brother Lee was burdened that we would not touch the Lord in a superficial way but in a deep and intimate way. He quotes the psalmist’s prayer in Psalms 42:2: “When will I come and appear / Before God?” His soul panted for God and thirsted for the living God. Is our time with the Lord merely an activity that we attempt to perform before running out the door each morning? Or is there an intense longing within to appear before Him, to contact Him, and to absorb Him?

Brother Lee points out in these two sections that we need to practice to quiet our entire being, shut the door to the outside world, and turn deeply to the Lord in our spirit. This is to appear before the Lord. Although sometimes our need is to cry out in a loud way to get out of ourselves and release our spirit in praise, Brother Lee’s emphasis in this chapter is that we need to quiet our entire being and bring all the parts of our being into subjection to the spirit. He encourages us that this takes much practice. Many of us can testify that as soon as we are quiet, our mind begins to wander and to consider all of the matters that are pressing upon us. We need to learn to leave all of the earthly matters behind and to contact the Lord in an intimate and secret way.

This takes much learning and many lessons. Many times it takes twenty minutes just to calm our being down. Once our being is calm we are brought into the presence of the Lord, into the index of His eyes, and are able to speak with Him, to listen to Him, and to wait on Him. May we give ourselves to cultivate such a time with the Lord! If not every day, at least we can set aside a few times each week to appear before the Lord!