If it's fire, it's got to look like fire, feel like fire, smell like fire or something.
Welcome to another Raising Home Fire Secret Place training session.
Those who dwell in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of
the Almighty.
And our prayer and our vision for this time is that you would be further equipped, that
you would be taken into a deeper experience of the secret place, into a deeper personal
connection with God, and that you would experience what it's like in a deeper way to come under
the overshadowing of God.
Bill Johnson says, whatever overshadows you will come out in your shadow.
And you know, the book of Daniel, Daniel writes this, he says, those that know their God shall
do great exploits.
And so our prayer is that you would grow in your knowledge, not just your knowledge about
God, but your intimate, personal, experiential knowledge of knowing God.
And so enjoy this session.
God bless you.
Well welcome to another secret place training session.
I'm really excited again to be sharing with you in this session about one of the practices
that I use in my secret place time of my prayers and my prayer space.
It's been a massive blessing to me.
And what I want to talk to you about today is the practice of building in the Spirit.
We're going to be talking about building in the Spirit, growing in the knowing, and meditation.
And this is a really big topic.
I'm just going to touch on it.
And I'm going to introduce the practice of building in the Spirit today.
The general idea is that we as people that God has made are made up of flesh and spirit.
We're natural and spiritual.
The natural side of us, our flesh, our hands, and our natural functions, we can build things
naturally.
In other words, I can take my hands, grab a hammer, bang a nail in, I can build a house,
I can cook dinner, I can paint a painting, I can function naturally in the material world
with the elements of my being that are natural, my arms and legs and different things.
But I'm also a spirit being, and the same way I can function and build in the natural,
I can function and build in the Spirit.
And what I want to talk to you about today is a practice that will cause you and help
you to become intentional with building in the Spirit.
Now, on a side note, and you've heard me say this in other sessions, but everything that
is visible came from the invisible.
Everything that is material came from the Spirit.
The Spirit comes first.
So if we become competent builders of the Spirit and learn how to build things well
in the Spirit, in the unseen atmosphere around us, then the physical atmosphere around us,
the natural aspect of our lives will actually begin to form around and begin to be shaped
by the spiritual reality that we are intentional to build in and around our lives as we learn
to be competent builders in the Spirit with the Holy Spirit.
And so that's what I'm going to be talking about today, is that when God speaks, He doesn't
speak things generally, this is generally speaking, into their matured form.
When He speaks things, they come like a seed, and they require stewardship, they require
nurturing, they require building.
There is assembly required to take the seed into the fulfillment of the destination of
the seed, into the fulfillment of God's intention for what that seed will become or what that
word will become.
We're given a promise, we're given a prophecy, then we have to go through the process before
we reach the promised land.
And what I want to share with you today around building in the Spirit is one of the tools
that we can use in the process of taking the seed of the promises of God and seeing
them come through the process until they reach the promised land.
Okay, so let me break down building in the Spirit and the practice of building the Spirit
a little bit more.
What I want to do is I'm going to pull out two scriptures, and we're going to take a
few different points from those two scriptures, and I'm going to tell you a few stories, and
then we're going to go from there and we'll end at the activation.
The first scripture is 2 Corinthians 3.18.
It says this,
But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being
transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
And the point I want to pull out of this scripture is this.
Meditation is really important, and what you choose to give your attention will shape your
experience of life.
and your core beliefs.
The Bible says that as a man thinks in his heart,
so is he.
Your experience of reality is not necessarily
what God intended your experience of reality to be.
Your experience of reality is not necessarily even reality
in terms of what God has defined
and determined reality to be.
Your experience of reality is based on
and is the fruit of what you believe to be real,
not necessarily what's actually real.
And so that's why it's so important to,
if your experience of reality is less than the reality
that you know God has determined for your life
and less than the reality that you know God
has designed for your life,
then it's so important to ask,
God, where am I believing a lie?
And how can I bring my beliefs
and the beliefs of my heart into alignment with yours
so that my experience of reality
can be the actual reality that you have designed
for me to be living in, not a lesser reality?
There are many people living in a lesser reality,
and part of the reason for that is this.
What you spend the most time looking at,
you'll end up looking like.
What you spend the most time beholding
will end up being what you become
and will end up determining your experience
or what your experience of life is like.
We behold His glory as in a mirror
and are transformed into the image.
The underlying principle there is what you behold
will transform you into its image.
If you are beholding something less than God
and less than the reality of God for your life,
then the thing that you're beholding,
that lesser reality that you are beholding
will end up shaping your experience of life
and your experience of reality and your belief system.
Where that has happened and in aspects of our life
where we are believing and where we have had our attention
on a lesser reality than God's reality,
it's important for us to repent
or just to push that reality to the side
and look to God and look to the glory of God
and look to the face of God to reset our reality,
to reset our truth, and to reset what we're beholding
and therefore becoming.
The other aspect of this is that our lives
are made up of many different aspects.
In my life, I've got my family life,
I've got my recreation, I've got my financial reality,
I've got my church reality, I've got my work reality,
I've got the reality of my health.
I've got the, there's many different aspects
that make up my life.
And I can often be, and probably the same with you,
is that I can be in situations where 80% of the aspects
of my life are in the reality of God
or at least in a good place.
And a couple of the different elements of my life
might be, I might be experiencing less
than the reality of God.
Well, if I take those elements of my life
and bring them before the glory of God
and say, God, teach me how to see these elements
of my life, and I begin beholding those elements
of my life, say, for example, my financial reality,
I begin beholding my financial reality,
not from my experience of finances up until this point,
but from God's perspective, from God's point of view,
and from what God has designed my financial reality
to be like from heaven's perspective.
And I begin beholding my finances
from the perspective of God,
then my finances will begin to be shaped
by the way I'm beholding them in the glory
and in the presence of God.
They'll begin to be shaped by God's perspective
of my finances.
So you become what you behold.
And when you take an element of your life
and you bring it into alignment with God's perspective
and you begin beholding that element of your life
from God's perspective, God's perspective on that element
will begin shaping that particular specific element
of your life.
That's the key to building the spirit in this.
Another scripture I wanna read to you is Isaiah 40.
So let's go there.
Isaiah 40 verse 31 says,
but those who wait on the Lord
shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be worried,
and they shall walk and not faint.
That word wait means to be bound together or woven into.
And to wait is really,
an element of that word is to meditate.
So those who wait on the Lord in a state of meditation,
or it's really two different things.
Those who take time to intentionally behold God, to intentionally behold the glory of
God, those who take time and are intentional to wait on the Lord, meditate on the Lord,
are then woven into and bound into the life of God.
And whatever element of our lives we take with us in that place of waiting, that element
of our lives is then woven into the life of God and the experience of God, and that life
of God begins to transform that element of our lives until that element of our lives
is formed into what God has intended originally to be our experience of that particular element
of our lives.
So to illustrate what I've been talking about and to illustrate this principle and this
practice, what I want to do—and like I said, I use this practice, I use this tool
in just about every area of my life at different times to build and to shape and to be intentional
about bringing those elements of my life into what God has intended my experience of those
elements of my life to be.
But I wanted to share one story of a building in the Spirit moment.
And this is actually not one of my stories, but I was teaching my interns how to build
in the Spirit, and I want to share that story.
A few years ago now, I had a bunch of interns and I was teaching them about this practice
of building in the Spirit, and we started to go through an activation of building in
the Spirit.
The activation was we took a truth and we took one of the truths of God, and our goal
and the goal of building in the Spirit is to wrap your life around that truth, around
that reality, to intertwine our life into that reality.
So the truth we had was, everywhere I go, God goes to.
Everywhere I go, God goes to.
And therefore, everywhere I go is where God is.
And if it is where God is, then what God does can just naturally happen wherever God is.
And so the simple truth was, everywhere I go, God goes to.
And so we took that truth and we kind of put it in the Spirit, in the middle of the group,
and we just took turns to pray.
And the whole thing with this building the Spirit with meditation is that we imagine,
and so what we did is we said, Holy Spirit, come into our imaginations.
We give you our imaginations, and Holy Spirit, we ask you, and this is what I always do,
I ask the Holy Spirit, what does it look like and what does it feel like when this truth
has fully outworked its way in my life?
What does it look like and what does it feel like?
Because whatever I see and feel in the Spirit, I can have in the natural.
That's the principle.
And so what does it look like and what does it feel like when the truth of, God, you are
with me wherever I go, is fully outworked in my life?
And so we took that truth, we asked that question, and then we started to imagine what our lives
looked like and what they felt like when that truth was fully outworked.
And so we'd be as specific as possible.
And so I say, I want you to imagine that from right now, after the session finishes, you're
walking home, what does it look like to walk home?
And so we start dreaming into it.
And we've done this a few times now, so they had kind of learnt the ropes.
But one of the interns was like, I can imagine that I'm walking down the road and I can just
feel the presence of God and I feel happy, I feel joyful.
And out loud with words, the intern is describing the feeling.
And it's important that you use words.
Don't keep it in your mind.
We've just done two sessions, a session on words and a session on speaking in tongues.
And they're speaking words out around what it feels like.
It feels so good.
God, I feel peace.
I feel calm.
I feel joyful.
I feel like, and they're just going into as much description as they can with their words
from what they're feeling as they're imagining what life is like when this truth is fully
outworked.
And, Lord, I'm walking down the road and as I'm walking down the road, I can imagine,
I can see there's someone in my imagination, I can see someone, they're leant up against
a transformer, against a green box, and they've got crutches.
And I walk up to them, I say, listen, what's going on?
What happened to your crutches?
But I don't feel afraid.
I feel confident because I know you're with me, God.
He says to me, it's my birthday, and I've broken my ankle.
I just broke it.
So I feel the presence of God.
I feel the pleasure of God.
I feel the excitement.
God, I feel your excitement.
And they're just imagining this.
And I say, hey, listen, can I pray for you?
Because I believe God wants to heal you today.
Now these guys have never seen a miracle before this point.
This is the first time they've done this.
And so in the
In this Building in the Spirit session, they lay hands on this person and they say,
In the name of Jesus, be healed.
And they're like, Whoa!
Oh my gosh, she just threw her crutches away.
She's running around.
She's completely healed.
She's saying there's no more pain.
And that was the imagination.
That was the Building in the Spirit.
That was what they saw and felt in the Spirit.
After they asked the Holy Spirit to come into my imagination,
help me wrap my experience of life around this truth.
And so my experience of life comes into alignment with your reality.
And so anyway, they did that.
And then I sent them home.
They came back the next day.
And when they came back the next day, they said,
Matt, you'll never guess what happened.
I was walking down the road, and I got to that green box that I imagined
in our Building in the Spirit time.
And the lady was there.
She had crutches.
And I said, Listen, have you broken your ankle?
She said, Yes, I've broken my ankle.
It's my birthday.
I said, I knew it was your birthday.
And then I said, Can I pray for you?
And as I prayed for her, I felt the same feelings.
And the power of God hit her.
She threw her crutches away.
She started running around.
She got completely healed.
And I was like, Oh, my gosh.
And then you'll never guess what happened next.
They haven't seen a miracle before this, guys.
They go to the library.
They said, We went to the library, and the next person we saw come
out of the library had crutches.
So we prayed for them too, and they got healed.
And they were so excited.
The reality that you build in the Spirit today will be the reality you
live in tomorrow.
If you can see it and feel it in the Spirit in your time of meditation,
in your time of building in the Spirit, if you can see it,
the more you can see it, the more you can feel it,
the more you can have it in the natural.
And so what we're going to do now is we're going to go into a time
of activation, and we're going to go through a process like what my
interns went through, and we're going to go through that right now.
We're going to go through a building in the Spirit process.
I hope I've managed to unpack the principle behind this and the practice
of this, and we're going to enter into this now in this activation.
Awesome.
Well, welcome to the activation.
I hope you had a good time in that session.
What we're going to do is we are going to go into a time of building
in the Spirit.
We're going to take a truth of God.
We're going to take one of the principles of God, one of the truths of God,
part of the reality of God, and we're going to take that,
and we're going to set that in the middle of our minds,
and we are going to begin to build our lives around that reality.
We're going to begin to go into a process of letting that reality,
letting that truth reshape our experience of life.
And so I'm going to choose it for the sake of this activation.
You can do it with any truth you want at another time,
and I encourage you to do so.
But I'm going to take this truth, that this is the truth,
that God is, that Jesus is the Prince of Peace,
and that Jesus is with you everywhere you go.
Therefore, peace is with you everywhere you go.
And we're going to ask the Holy Spirit this question.
Holy Spirit, what does it look like and what does it feel like
when our lives are in the full experience of the peace of God,
where our lives are fully baptized, where our lives are in the full,
full experience of walking in the fullness of your peace?
What does it look like?
And so what we're going to do is I just encourage you
to close your eyes right now, and I'm going to start you off.
And when I finish this, you can feel free to press pause
and keep going as long as you want.
So I want you to repeat this after me.
Holy Spirit, I give you my imagination, and I ask you,
what does it look like and what does it feel like
when my life is fully experiencing the truth of your peace,
when I am walking in the fullness of peace?
What does it feel like?
And I want you just to imagine a certain scenario
that is common in your life.
Maybe it's your home life.
Maybe it's going shopping in a supermarket.
For me, I'm going to imagine walking into my house,
and I'm going to speak out what I'm seeing, what I'm feeling,
and then, like I said, you can press pause
and you can begin to speak out what you're seeing
and what you're feeling.
But, Holy Spirit, what I see is I'm pulling up in my driveway.
I've had a hard day at work.
but I'm not feeling stressed out.
I feel like you've got the whole world in your hands.
God, my whole life is in your hands.
I feel secure.
I don't feel like I have to fight for anything
with my own strength.
I feel free.
I feel like I have room.
I feel like I have room to invite people into my world.
I feel like I have space around me.
I feel like I can take a deep breath.
I'm not in a rush.
Sometimes I'm in a rush,
but today, because of this peace, I'm not in a rush.
I'm not feeling rushed.
I'm feeling free.
And I step out of my car and something about this peace
is causing me to feel energized.
I feel energized.
I feel healthy.
I feel happy.
Peace is bringing me joy.
I'm walking down my pathway to my front door
and I can see my little daughter, Mila,
and she's in the window and she's waving at me.
And she looks like she's a little bit sad.
She's maybe a little bit grumpy.
And so I open the door.
I'm excited to see her and I'm carrying peace.
And as I open the door, there's peace all around me.
And I get down on my knees
and I just give my daughter a hug.
And I just feel all of the tension drop off of her shoulders
and she gets a big smile on her face.
And my wife says to me, man, what just happened in the house?
What just happened in the house?
Mila's just got, everything's just gone calm.
And a calm comes right into the house,
into every room in the house, into everybody in the house.
And everything just gets calm and still and free.
And there's joy.
There's joy.
And even right now in this meditation,
I'm starting to lose any pressure
to have to come up with another thing to say right now.
But I'm just,
it's like I could just stay in this place in my lounge.
I'm in my imagination right now,
but I'm imagining that I'm in my lounge
with my kids and my wife.
And we can just sit down,
we can just enjoy one another's company.
And there's no rush.
Peace has chased away the rush.
There's no anxiety.
And time is on my side.
I felt like I've been fighting against time.
Like I haven't had enough time,
but time is on my side
because God has my life in his hands.
Peace is freedom.
And this is an example of a building in the spirit.
I just take my life
and I could just go through any different aspect of my life.
If there are any aspects of my life
that I'm not experiencing peace,
I could go into those different aspects
or scenarios in my life.
And I could bring the truth of God's peace
into those aspects of my life.
And those aspects of my life and those scenarios
would begin to be reformed in accordance
and in alignment with the truth of God
as a God of peace that's with me everywhere I go.
So I wanna encourage you to keep doing that.
I wanna encourage you to press pause now
and just carry that on.
And you say your part now,
you say what you're seeing.
So take about five to 10 minutes every day,
taking that truth you've decided on
and take that five to 10 minutes
to put into practice the practice
of building in the spirit.
Thank you.