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-- © GodSpeak International 2008 --
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES
Author: Teresa Seputis ts@godspeak.net http://www.godspeak.net

Encountering God

Lesson 11
Being Proactive To Encounter God
Part 3 - Waiting On The Lord

By Teresa Seputis

We saw in our last lesson that the more actively we pursue God, the more we will have encounters with Him--providing we pursue Him in ways that He finds acceptable. We began looking at some of the ways that God likes to be pursued:

We talked about the first two in previous lessons. Now we will discuss the last in this lesson.

Soaking

The term "soaking" refers to a type of prayerful waiting on the Lord in hopes that He will meet you as you seek Him. Soaking usually involves worship music (either live or recorded) playing in the background, but some people use bible reading instead of worship music. Soaking is a form of "waiting on the Lord" and cannot be rushed. A typical soaking session will usually last one or two hours. There is not a program or agenda during this time--it is all about seeking God with the expectation that you will encounter Him.

Soaking can be done alone in the privacy of your own home, or it can be done in a group setting. First you to get physically comfortable, then to focus your attention on the Lord. It is not uncommon for soakers to lay down on the floor or to get very comfortable in a chair. In some places, soakers bring their own blankets and pillows with them.

If soaking is done in a corporate setting, the organizers sometimes have some designated "ministry team" members who move from person to person, praying quietly over them and asking God to come and meet the person who they are praying for. But many people find soaking just as effective whether or not there are prayer team members ministering to the soakers. That is because the goal of soaking is not to have encounters with other people, but to have them with God.

Some soaking groups simply start by opening up the room and starting worship music. People come in, find a spot, and then begin waiting on the Lord. Other places start with some type of short corporate worship or with a devotional, then invite people to find a spot to soak.

Soaking may be very quiet, or it may get really loud and rowdy. It seems to depend on the people present and on what the Lord is doing at the moment. Sometimes God does inner things (such as breaking the power of condemnation off of a person) and they begin to sob loudly. Other times He meets them in a way where they begin to shout or to speak loudly in tongues. Sometimes people get up and dance in response to what the Lord is doing. Other times God is doing a love thing or a peace thing and the person rests quietly in His presence. As much as possible, the other soakers ignore what is going on in the people around them and seek to focus their attention on God, looking for their own encounter with God.

(Many people have wonderful encounters with God in soaking sessions, but not everyone is able to encounter God this way. Some people find their minds wander and they get distracted and forget that they are actively waiting on the Lord. Others get bored. Others are so physically tired that they end up falling asleep.)

Soaking seems to have arisen out of renewal style ministry prayer, such as the Renewal Meetings that sprang up out of Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship in Canada. They would have meetings and at the end of the meeting, people would go stand on prayer lines and ministry team members would move around the room and pray for people. They would ask God to come and reveal Himself to the person, to bring more awareness of His presence and of His love. At other times they would ask the Lord to come with more of His power or more of His anointing. These prayers often got abbreviated to "More Lord!"

The amazing thing was that God seemed to respond to these prayers in incredible ways. Some people would feel His love, others His joy (sometimes accompanied by laughter), some would get inner healing or physical healing, and others would get empowered. Many of the people would end up "slain in the spirit" (or falling to the ground with the help of a catcher to assure that they were not hurt when they 'went down'). The ministry team members would frequently keep praying for the person for a minute or two after they went down, and help them move into an even deeper encounter with God. Many of the people would stay down for fifteen minutes to half an hour (and some much longer) after the one praying had left them and moved on. And the Lord would often continue to meet them as they laid there in His presence.

This was first referred to as "carpet time" because the ministry area was carpeted. Later on the term soaking was used to refer to people lingering on the ground after being prayed for, and having a prolonged encounter with God.

I remember something that I was told when I was new to all of this. They said, "The Lord comes in waves. When the intensity dies down, you might be tempted to get up and move on with your day. But instead, try staying down a little longer and silently asking the Lord to come and meet you again. Many times He comes even stronger the second or third time than He came in the initial ministry."

I applied that advice to my own life very early on, and I used to have some really amazing encounters with God where His nearness was very tangible and very wonderful. They had some of these renewal-style meetings in a city nearby to where I lived, and I would go there often to receive prayer and do carpet time. I found that many times the initial encounter with God was very mild, but if I would stay down and keep seeking Him for more, that He would usually answer my prayers. He would come a second time (more powerfully than the first), then after a while, it would get faint again. But if I waited patiently and asked Him to come again, He would often come and meet me a third or forth or even fifth time.

Sometimes I would just feel His nearness, sometimes He would speak to me or empower me, and sometimes He would even catch me up into visions and give me direct supernatural encounters with Him. A lot of other people had similar experiences.

Somewhere along the line, folks discovered that you could have the same type of encounter with God without standing on a prayer line and waiting for someone to come and pray for you. You could just lay down and ask God to come and meet you, and He would.

I don't know exactly how it happened, but somewhere along the line most services moved away from having folks wait for the ministry teams to come and pray for them--and they would just have folks lay down and seek God.

I personally do better "soaking" in a corporate setting than in the privacy of my own home, and I do better with live worship than with recorded music. But I know people who are just the opposite. They do better at tuning into God in the privacy of their own home where there are less distractions.

Soaking can be a wonderful way to wait on the Lord, seek Him and encounter Him. If you haven't tried this before, I suggest you give it a try. If you have to be subtle (even in your own home) then try turning on worship music, laying down on your own bed and asking God to come and meet you. If you are not used to waiting on the Lord, you might want to start with 1/2 hour and work up to longer sessions. Be patient when you start soaking--you may not experience Him in a tangible way immediately. You may have to wait a while. Or you may have to repeat it on multiple session before you have a direct encounter with God.

Receiving Ministry

I already talked a bit about one type of ministry prayer that helps draw you into the Lord's presence. I call it "renewal style prayer," where a prayer team member lays hands on you and asks the Lord to manifest His presence to you, to meet you, or to give you an encounter with Him. I love that prayer style and usually have encounters with God when someone prays for me in this manner.

But it is not the only type of ministry prayer that can draw you into an encounter with God. That is because when someone is being led of the Spirit to minister to you via some form of prayer, they are doing what the Father is doing--and the Father is turning Heaven's attention on you. It doesn't matter if it is prayer for physical healing, or if it is theophostic ministry or some other form of healing of memories. The same holds true for deliverance ministry. Likewise, God can meet you strongly if a brother is agreeing together with you in prayer for a breakthrough in an area of need (finances, job, housing, etc).

The key is to look expectantly to God to meet you as you receive ministry prayer from one of His own. You may find yourself having a stronger encounter with Him than you expected.

I remember the first time that God met me in this manner. It was back in 1995, and I was having some serious health problems. I got very sick during a church service, and a group of about five or six people from the prayer team took me into a private room to pray for me. They sat me in a chair (I was too weak to stand) and they stood in a circle around me. They prayed for about ten minutes or so.

At first I was too sick to pay close attention to what was going on, and my attention was sort of zoning in and out of what was happening around me. I remember that one of them invited the Lord's healing presence to come into the room with us. Then suddenly I was keenly aware of God's presence and I saw a vision of God sitting on His throne, surrounded by a bunch of angels. It was as if they were above me (on the ceiling or something) and a hole opened up in the roof over my head. I could see God looking down at me through that hole and I could see all of the angels looking down at me. It was as if Heaven's attention was focused on me.

Back then I wasn't used to being in God's presence and the experience scared me. I felt too dirty and significant to be worthy of Heaven's attention, and I kind of wished they'd turn it somewhere else. God sensed my discomfort and closed the vision--from my perspective the hole in the ceiling closed back up and I couldn't see God's throne anymore. As soon as it "closed up" and the fear went away, I realized that I'd made a mistake in wanting that to end. I began to silently ask for God to open that hole again and turn His attention back to me, but that did not happen. However, by the end of that ten minute prayer session, I walked out of that prayer room feeling completely healthy and I was able to go back an participate in the rest of the church service.

I had encountered God as I was ministered to. I hadn't been expecting this, so the encounter scared me and startled me. God was gracious and because I was afraid, He kept it very short. If I'd been in a place to expect/desire/pursue His presence, I suspect He would have taken me into a deeper encounter with Him.

The point of the prayer I received was for physical healing, not for any type of encounter with God. But similar to worship, ministry prayer can usher in the presence of God. So next time you are receiving ministry, I recommend that you look expectantly to God and perhaps He will give you a direct encounter with Himself.


-- © GodSpeak International 2008 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.net> --

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