Constant contact

Billy Graham’s preacher daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, wrote in a piece published in Christianity Today magazine, “I spend a few moments in prayers and in God’s Word daily, but it’s not enough. So at least once a week I draw aside for an extended time with him. I begin the time with prayer, acknowledging his presence and asking him to meet with me and speak to my heart in a personal way.”

Compare that to Paul’s command in I Thessalonians 5:17: “Pray without ceasing.”

In his Sunday morning sermon last week, Jordan explained, “In your personal communion with God as a Believer, when you realize you have this unfettered, instant, continuous access, then in your mind you realize, ‘Oh, what it is to pray without ceasing is just to be constantly conscious of this unfettered access I have with the Father and thus He has with me.’ All of a sudden, prayer’s quite a different thing.

“There’s an old Quaker saying, ‘Whomsoever carryeth about the temple of God with him may pray wherever he may go.’ The Holy Spirit lives in you in order to make your body the temple--the dwelling place--of God. You don’t have to go to a building somewhere to find Him. He’s right there. You’re His temple.

*****

“Do you remember how in the Old Testament the Jews came to the Temple and brought sacrifices there and prayed?

“How many times did anybody get in there behind the veil and offer the blood on that mercy seat and then come right out again? Once a year. That’s where God’s Shekinah glory was manifested.

“The veil was there for the purpose of restricting their access into where God’s presence was, and had they gone in there, they would have died. The glory of God would have slew them; killed ’em, bumped ’em off, made a greasy spot out of ’em.

“They feared God and stood away because of who He was. When the Jew wanted to pray, he was supposed to look toward that Temple and pray three times a day—morning, noon and afternoon.

“In Acts 3, they go up there at ‘the hour of prayer’ to pray. When that Old Testament saint went up there to that Temple he still didn’t have access; he just came up in relative proximity.

“Do you know what Daniel in Daniel 6 does? He opens up the windows of his house toward that Temple in Jerusalem and that thing’s been destroyed, yet he knows to look that way and offer his prayers.

“Do you have to wait ’til the hour of prayer to pray? Paul says in Romans 12:12: ‘Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer.’

“That’s a dispensational term and command. You have instant, continuous availability. Something they didn’t have back there.

“I know we got a song about, ‘Sweet hour of prayer, may I thy consolation share,’ and all that business, but songwriters write songs about things that sometimes don’t make a lot of sense and sure don’t make good doctrine.”

*****

“Paul says in Romans 5:2, “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

“You have the capacity to have the Holy Spirit take you by the hand and lead you right into all of those assets and make them real in your experience by faith. That’s by that deep consciousness that’s produced in your inner man simply by believing God’s Word.

“Faith isn’t you deciding something’s going to be a certain way. Faith is finding out what God’s Word says and believing what God’s Word says is true.

“You find out what God’s Word says about it and you say, ‘That’s what’s real no matter what my experience says, no matter what my emotions say, no matter what the advice of others say, no matter what my reason says, what God says is true.’

“Now, maybe my circumstances, my reason and everything else lines up with what God’s Word says, but it isn’t true because of all of that; it’s true because of what God says!

“Most of the time, your senses and your experience want to go the other way, but you still stick with what’s . . . it’s by faith we have access to this grace wherein we stand. The identity you have in Him, you access it by faith.

“First, the access is by faith (‘faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God’) and that accesses that consciousness, that confidence in your inner man that’s produced by believing God’s Word.

*****

“Listen, when you believe what God says, it has an impact in your inner man. Ephesians 3:12 says, ‘In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.’ Notice in verse 11, God’s doing some things according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus: ‘According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

“When you begin to understand what God’s doing and this eternal plan that He has in in His Son--this cosmic reality that God the Father has planned to be the reality for the universe in His Son, and that one that the Father’s going to use to do all of that--in Him we have boldness and access with confidence. Why? By the faith of Him.

“I don’t have to wonder whether God’s going to accept me; I don’t have to think maybe, possibly He will. All of the questions anybody’s ever going to ask me about my access to God have been answered and I can come with confidence. Yea, I can come with boldness.”