If it's fire, it's got to look like fire, feel like fire, smell like fire or something.
Welcome to Raising Home Fire's Secret Place Training. My name is Matt Landstown. Straight
after this short teaching, there'll be an activation to help activate you
in what has been taught in this session and so really hope you enjoy the session.
The principle I want to share with you today is this. God wants your presence
more than you want his presence. God wants you more than you want him.
1 John 4.19 says this. It says that we love him because he first loved us and it's actually
impossible to love him without him having first loved us first and I believe the same is true
about his desire for us is that we actually wouldn't have the capacity to desire him unless
he had first desired us. That everything comes from him first and then is replicated and
reciprocated by us back to him. You know it's important for you to know that God's hunger
and his heart for you is greater than your hunger and your heart for him and I want to
talk about this principle and one of the reasons behind it is you know in terms of prayer is and
in terms of growing and in terms of experiencing deeper places in prayer is I have found it far
easier and far more enjoyable and far more fruitful spending time with people that I
know value me and want to spend time with me and if I'm hanging out with someone that I'm
pretty sure doesn't actually want to hang out with me and doesn't really value me that much
and I'm just wanting to get something from them that just never feels very good for me and I'm
sure it doesn't feel very good for you either but to know that God is someone that deeply values us
and has a longing desire to be in our presence not just physically but also emotionally and
mentally and socially and in every other aspect he really loves our presence it just makes for me
it has made my connection with God so much more enjoyable so much more fruitful and so much more
abundant. You might have heard this said before that there is a God-shaped hole in the heart of
every human being that only God can fill and you will never be satisfied and you will never be
fulfilled until that space in your heart is filled by the only one that can fill that space who is
God and you can fill that space you can try and fill that space and many people do with many other
things you can try and fill that space with alcohol with drugs with a career with a relationship other
than God with a tv program with a hobby with anything else but that will always fall short
and will always leave a sense of unfulfillment within you and in the deep core of who you are
because that space in you is a space that God created on the inside of you that is only for
him to take and that only he truly fits and that is true and I think that's a marvelous truth but
what to me has been even more marvelous is this that God has a me-shaped hole and God has a
you-shaped hole in his heart that only you can fill now am I saying that outside of you filling
the space in God's heart that is missing without you filling that space that he is not God am I
saying that God is incomplete without you am I saying that God is unable to be fully God without
you no God is completely able to be God without you God is complete in and of himself he doesn't
need you to be himself but because he's had you and because you exist because he created you
there is a space in your heart now that um that only you can fill fulfill that only you can
fill that space and if that space is not filled by you then there is a space in God's heart that
is unfulfilled now let me explain it like this I don't need my children in order to be me
I have three daughters and I was Matt Lansdowne before I had my three daughters
I didn't need my three daughters to be me I know many happy couples who don't have any children and
they're fully able to be themselves and it's it's awesome but now I've had kids now I have my three
daughters and if something was to happen to any one of my three daughters there would be a there
would be a gap in my heart there would be a space in my heart that was unfulfilled because
now I don't need them to in order to be me but now I have them and I'm their father
If they are missing or if there is a separation between my heart and their heart,
if there is a separation and there is a tearing of relationship between me and one of my daughters,
then there will be a deep sense of unfulfillment and nothing can fill that space because I'm their dad.
And the same is true with God.
There is a space in God's heart that really only you can fill.
You are very special to God. You are very important to God and He loves you so, so, so, so much.
You know, I've done many things and I attempt to live a life that communicates to God and to the world
my desire and my delight in God's presence.
I mean, I have chosen to live in a way where my life is lived in pursuit of more of God.
Now, I know I have all of God the same way as I have all of my wife,
but that doesn't mean I stop pursuing my wife and that doesn't mean I stop pursuing God.
And my life is, I have decided to live my life in a way where my lifestyle and my lifestyle choices
and my way of living communicates to God that God, I desire you, I delight in you, I love you
and I want to experience more of you in our relationship.
And I've done some things that have communicated that to God.
I have lived in that kind of way. I mean, I've fasted for many, many days on end.
I've done things like walked into the forest and said, I'm not leaving this forest.
I've got a tent. I've got my water bottles. I'm not going to bring any food.
I'm just going to go into the forest and I'm going to seek your face, God,
until I find a new dimension in you, until we grow in a greater depth.
I'm hungry for more of you, God.
I've done many things to communicate to God that I'm hungry for you, God, that I want more of you.
I have all of you, but I want to experience more in our relationship together.
And I feel like I'm pretty hungry for God. I'm pretty hungry for the presence of God.
And you're pretty hungry for the presence of God.
But my attempt to demonstrate my hunger for God to God pales in His attempt to demonstrate His hunger for me to me.
And all I have to do to come to that conclusion is this, is to think about the cross, to think about the price God paid.
The price God paid for my presence is so great.
And Bill Johnson says this, if the value of something is determined by how much someone is willing to pay for that thing,
then we need to rethink our value.
Because the price that God paid for our presence is His very life.
So this is not my perspective. This is God's perspective.
Your presence and you are more valuable to God than even God is to Himself.
Because if God is willing to pay His life to have you and to have your presence, to have you in His life,
then that logically means, and we can logically arrive at the conclusion,
that you are more important to Him than even He is to Himself.
If there are any thoughts you have or any conclusions that you've made about yourself that are less than the way God sees you,
or less than the conclusions God has made about you,
then it would be a wise thing to repent and change the way you think about yourself.
The cross is really God saying, I would rather die than to live without you.
God would rather die than to have an eternity without you.
The thought of God living life for all of eternity,
absent from you, away from you, separate from you,
was so unbearable to God that He chose to die instead of have that as His reality for the rest of eternity.
That He so longs for your presence. He so longs for you.
He so loves to be with you. He so loves to have you with Him.
He so loves to spend time with you.
He so loves talking to you.
He so loves sharing His space with you.
He is just so in love with who you are.
And He loves to be with you so much.
And like I said at the beginning, for me, it is so much easier to spend time,
and so much more enjoyable, and so much more fruitful to spend time with someone
that I know values me and loves to be with me.
Before you even had the opportunity to choose to spend time with Him,
He's already chosen to spend time with you.
He chose you before you chose Him.
He loved you before you loved Him.
He wanted you before you wanted Him.
And that will always be true.
God bless you, and I pray that this revelation, this core belief, this truth
becomes a foundation in your life and a foundation in your prayer life.
What about this baptism in fire though?
What does that mean?
Because if it's fire, it's got to look like fire, feel like fire, smell like fire.
And welcome to the activation. In this activation today, we're going to take the information
and we're going to take that through and see it through until it becomes within us revelation.
And then we're going to dwell in that revelation with the Lord until that revelation becomes
within us transformation. And we know this, that transformed people transform the world.
It is God's intent and God's desire that you would learn to and that I would learn to engage
in the presence of God and the desire of God to be with you, not just in some areas of your life,
not just in most areas of your life, but in every single aspect and area of your life.
And that's the purpose of the session. And that's what dwelling in this truth
will result in, in your life. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to call out some questions.
I'm going to share some questions with you. And then once I've shared a question,
I'm going to ask you to press pause, get some music, get some, get a quiet space,
get in a space that you know is conducive to you connecting with God, get a pen and paper,
get something to write some stuff down on. And I'm going to ask you to process these following
questions with the Lord. Okay, so here is the first question. We're going to begin with celebration.
And what I want to ask you to do is I want to ask you to think, what are some moments or some
aspects in your life of your life where you currently feel connected with God? And I want you
just to write a list of all the areas and aspects of your life where you currently feel connected
to God, where you currently feel like you're engaging in the presence of God, where you feel
an awareness of God, where you feel like God is with you. For me, just to give you some examples,
for me, my art. Every time I'm doing art, I just feel like, wow, it's so easy to connect with God
while I'm doing art. Preaching is another thing for me. Teaching is another thing for me. And
there are different aspects of my life. Surfing is another part of my life where I feel like it's
it's very easy for me in these particular areas for me to be absolutely aware of the presence of
God and engage with God's desire to be with me. And so I want you just to make a list of that.
And then I just want you to, as you're making that list, I just want you to allow your heart
to be thankful towards the Lord for what He's given you in these areas of your life.
And so we're going to take like five minutes. I want to ask you to take five minutes. Press
pause. Take five minutes to process that question with the Lord.
OK, well, I hope you enjoyed processing some of those things with God. The next question
is this. I want you to ask the Holy Spirit if there are any areas in your life, any areas of
your life where you have found it hard to connect with God or where you have believed that God
doesn't actually want to be present with you in those particular moments of your life. There may
be areas of your life that you haven't been proud of. There may be areas of your life that you might
be ashamed of. There might be areas of your life that you're struggling with, or they might just
simply be things that you thought God was disconnected from. They're neither good nor
bad. They're just you just for some reason don't feel connected with God. And I just want you to
write a list of areas in your life where you don't feel terribly connected to God or you feel
completely disconnected from God. And so, press pause and process this with the Lord now. Take
about, I don't know, two to five minutes and just make that list. OK, you've made that list. That's
awesome. Next thing I want you to do is I want you to go through the list one by one and I want you
to ask the Holy Spirit how He felt about you in that moment and where He was for you in that moment.
Well, awesome guys. That's the end of the questions for today. That's the end of our
activation, but I'm going to give you one last thing, and that is a little activity, a challenge,
something for you to do for the rest of the week that will help you deepen your awareness and grow
in your awareness of God's presence in every area of your life and of God's desire to be with you
and engaged in who you are in every area of your life.
And this is it, I want to encourage you, before you do any new activities, before you get
into anything new, any day for the rest of this week, see if you can take a moment, maybe
30 seconds, maybe a minute, to just acknowledge the presence of the Holy Spirit, and to lean
into His heart, and to lean into Him, and to see how that affects your life, see how
that affects you doing what you do on a daily basis.
Okay, God bless you, and have an amazing week.
We'll see you next week.