By David Hobbs
I had a few extra days in my book tour itinerary so I spent them visiting IHOP (International House of Prayer) in Kansas City. [It features 24/7 prayer and worship for probably the last 10 years.] My first night was in a nice hotel, but the price was high. So I moved to one at literally half the price—no breakfast, no internet, a dive; but cheap.
It’s been 5 years since I‘ve been to IHOP, and oh what a difference! The parking lot is packed. The auditorium is comfortably full instead of sparsely populated. The musicians are so good it is like a continuous high quality concert. Thousands visit every week.
But the format is basically the same: a worship leader with other musicians and singers on backup. They get started on a song and then see where the Holy Spirit takes it. And He does take it! Incredible throne-room experiences!
My first afternoon I put in a three hour stint. During that time I saw many come and go. A whole family or group of people would file into a pew in front of me and sit. Then a half hour later I would open my eyes again and they would be gone. I felt in the spirit that many went away unchanged, perhaps disappointed, after hoping they would meet God there, only to find it didn’t happen.
God is cagey. He won’t let us take short-cuts, or the easy way.
I found it to be a time of giving rather than receiving. We were giving God worship and ministering to Him (at least those who entered into the flow). Those who came hoping to sit and receive but with nothing to give went away disappointed. They were violating God’s principle: “No one is to appear before me empty-handed” [Ex. 23:15]. I had some high times in worship in those three hours, but I didn’t meet God there either.
I came back to my dingy hotel room, ate and took a nap during a thunderstorm, woke up all alone, began meditating on Him and singing to Him and that’s when I met God—not in the loudly worshipping throng, but all alone in a squalid hotel room. Why was that?
The Holy Spirit sent me to Romans 10 where I found the answer. Please excuse me for taking some liberties with the Scriptures:
6 But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven [for me]?’… 7 or ‘Who will descend into the deep [for me]?’” … 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart…”
In other words, “Don’t look for someone else to do it for you!” I realize I’m lifting this passage out of context, but the principle I’m looking for is there, though it’s not what Paul is emphasizing.
The worship team was establishing the presence of God through their worship, but most of the audience was not engaged. They were passive. To meet with God in the way they were longing to, they had to use their own God-given tools: their mouth and their heart. It was not something anybody else could do for them. What they wanted was truly near them, but it would not come through a feeling generated by the band; it would take action on their part. We have been conditioned to be passive in our culture and it leaves us feeling empty and dissatisfied.
With the Lord, it’s those “words from our mouth” that He uses to search our hearts and show us what’s in there. “The spirit of man is the Lord’s lamp; it searches out his inmost being” (Prov. 20:27 [NIV] alternate rendering). We hear ourselves say something (“Lord, give me a Hawaiian vacation”) and we think, “Wow, that sounded selfish and oriented toward ‘me and me alone’. Lord let me re-phrase that: Have Your way first in my life, and then let me go where You want me to go.”
We see this happening in James 4:13:
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into this city or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for awhile and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this and that.”
This person’s thinking was corrected by the Spirit, but only after he spoke what was in his heart, after he brought it out in the open where it could be dealt with. When we’re passive, such things stay locked up inside where we’re unaware of them and they remain unchanged.
We need to come before God and speak, not only to expose wrong things, but good things also: dreams and hopes and godly desires. God puts these in our hearts so he can give them to us as part of His promise to give us the desires of our hearts. But we have to speak them out so we can identify/discover them, and start a process of praying and believing for them. It’s all part of how God works bringing things to pass. But it doesn’t happen in passive mode. In passive mode we are waiting for God to do something, while all the time He is waiting for us to act.
In the case I first mentioned--the people who were going away secretly disappointed because God didn’t meet them there--I felt the disappointment of the Holy Spirit too, and His love longing for them. He so much wanted to engage them, more than they realized and more than they wanted Him. But they weren’t coming the right way: with the words of their mouths and the faith of their hearts. So they were in effect tying His hands from what He wanted to do.
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