I have found, over the course of time, that the Holy Ghost takes me into sessions where I am devoting more of my time in what I will refer to as "disciplines". For example, He may direct me specifically to spend the bulk of my time time praying in tongues for a season. Many of you may question how and why anyone would ever sit and just pray in tongues for extended periods of time. Some may even question, "Is this possible?" Without going into a lot of detail at this time let me simply say, yes, you can pray in tongues whenever and where ever you want and the benefits for doing this are tremendous. If you have questions about praying in tongues I will be more than happy to give you the scriptural foundation for this. Just send in your comments to this Blog with your email address. I will not post your questions. Answering questions from people who are genuinely hungry for Truth is what I am interested in. Please don't think I want to debate the issue.
Back to what I was saying. The Holy Ghost may have me in a season of extended times in tongues or private worship. Whatever the case, I have learned to be sensitive to Him and allow Him to direct me into how He wants me to spend my time with Him. He may have me combine praying in tongues with meditating the Bible. Or, He may also have me combine private worship with confessing the scriptures. Whatever the case, the point that I want to make is this, you must learn to be sensitive to His leadership and willing to do whatever it is that He wants you to do. Early on, I had the idea that I needed to spend all my time every day doing one thing. As I have grown in my relationship with the Lord I have discovered that He wants to be able to direct me into how I should spend my time. He knows what I need much more than I do. Another thing I have discovered is that once He alerts me to the specific "discipline" He wants me to focus on, then I will spend the majority of my time that day doing just that. In other words, if He is leading me into private worship that day, I may do some Bible study and some prayer, but the majority of my time that day will be private worship. My objective is to spend as much of my alloted time that day in non-stop private worship. I try not to stop and do anything else. I want to keep a continuous flow of worship coming out of my mouth. Pastor Dave Roberson taught that we make greater strides when we can continue to press in with this continuous unbroken flow as opposed to starting and stopping and coming back to it later. I hope you will be able to put this into practice for yourself. "How long should I do this?" That seems to always be the question. There is no formula that anyone can give you. In other words, I can't tell you that if you spend so many hours every day or week in private worship that in 3 months the heavens are going to suddenly open and God is going to appear before you and fill you with some amazing anointing. But, I can tell you this, however much time you spend in private worship or praying in other tongues or in meditation of the scriptures will cause more change to take place inside of you and bring you that much closer to fulfilling His plan for your life. I highly encourage you to schedule daily time alone with Him. It will be life changing.
I would like to expound a little bit on the subject of combining private worship with confessing God's Word.
Recently, while in an extended time of private worship, all of a sudden I noticed that scriptures began to come up inside of me. So, I began to incorporate confessing those scriptures along with my worship. I recommend this especially to someone who is faced with some particularly difficult situations. Find the scriptures that deal with your situation and as you are worshipping God the Father and Jesus begin to speak out those scriptures affirming that you have the result of those scriptures and thank your Father and your Lord Jesus for the answer. Here is what I found, this gave me even more confidence that I have what I asked for because I'm focusing on all of His goodness and all that He has done for me as I worship Him. What a combination. Here's what you can do. Write down the scriptures that speak to your specific situation. Make those scriptures into positive statements affirming that you have what they say you have. Then, during your time of private worship, begin to confess those statements thanking Him for the answer. If you will continue doing this and refuse to stop, before long you will see the fulfillment of those statements manifested in your life.
I hope this blessed you today. I am working on launching a new website for Mark Jenkins Ministries. Details coming soon.
Blessings.
Mark
