How to Pray the Scriptures: Experiencing Deep Union With Christ

Here’s where I wish we had a month, and to try to condense this into a small time, you’re going to have to listen to me very carefully. Almost every word I utter will be important. We stumbled once…we stumbled into places and realms unseen. This happened in Santa Barbara, California. We were people who rose early in the morning, seven days a week. Now, we didn’t all get up seven days a week, but many of us did, early in the morning. We met before the Lord, and this went on for years. We had very attuned spirits, very sensitive. If you do that for a long time, it does affect you. What we were doing was taking the Scripture and turning it into prayer, ala Jeanne Guyon’s book, Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ. It is a very beautiful thing, and that’s what we had. But we stumbled into other realms.

The best way I have ever been able to explain this is with Psalms 23. Who was the first person to experience Psalm 23? David. That’s true, but it’s not true, because that is a realm of space and time. There is another realm where there is no space, and there is no time. It is always now, and it is a realm that completely envelops our realm, and any event in that realm can take place anywhere: at the end, at the beginning, before the beginning, after the end, above, below, and in a very real way, David, like all of us, as the body of Christ, we never have a spiritual experience that is not His (Jesus). Now, that’s a very profound statement. I want you to hear it again. You cannot have a spiritual experience that is not His; you cannot have a godly spiritual experience that is not His, that He has not known. Would you like to try to poke holes in that? That you would know something spiritually and experience it that your Lord has not known – not much of a chance. David has touched something of Jesus Christ. Perhaps the Lord Jesus did not have that experience until Galilee or Golgotha, but when He had it, it belonged to the eternals, because, as the Lord Himself said, “the Son of Man who is in the heavenlies,” and He was standing on earth when He said it, but He was speaking of the present. Before Abraham was, I AM, and that puts Him in front of David. His experiences are up there in heavenly realms. Therefore, I can take the beautiful Psalm 23, and I can say, Lord, that is David’s experience, but it’s also yours.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want is the testimony of Jesus Christ. Show you what a great memory I’ve got. I can’t memorize anything. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. How am I doing? Alright, help me with the next line. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemy. You anoint my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord eon upon eon upon eon.

All of that is Jesus Christ’s testimony to His Father. Do I have the right to say that I’m going to allow the Lord to speak those words rather than David? Shall I sit and listen to Him speak to them? Then I have to ask myself, will I do damage to my Lord or to myself or to Scripture or to spiritual laws if I sit there and listen to Jesus Christ say, “Father, You are my shepherd.” Well, is He the Lamb of God? I figure He needs a shepherd. Is the Father the one who led Him? You bet your life that’s what He said. The whole Psalm will hold up without changing a thing. He walked in the valley, and He looked up, and He saw death, and the shadow of death fell upon Him. And He said to death, “I’m not afraid. Look over here. There’s someone over here on my right. You’re on my left. My Father’s with Me. And I’m not afraid.” It’s His testimony. Do I dare, therefore, listen to Him say it? Alright, I dare. Well, then, would I dare do something even more so? Would I dare get inside of Jesus Christ and take His name? Well, I have two things to say to you. I am inside of Jesus Christ, and according to what I preached, the gospel I preached last night, I’m part of Him, and so are you, if you are part of the bride of Christ, and shall I take His name? Well, what did He say about that? So, you’re looking at me, and you don’t even know…what did He say?

Nobody in the church; I want to hear from the others. What did He say? They’ll pray in my name. Well, Gene, that’s not what that meant. You can’t prove that. Shall I dare my oneness with Christ, take my place within Him, and hear Him say to His Father, “Father, You are my shepherd. I shall want.” I dare, and that’s when we stumbled into other realms. But boy, we had years to prepare ourselves for that experience. Years. And we fell in. We didn’t go there deliberately. I remember the first days when this was happening. I have never seen anything like this before or since then: such awe. Shirley, were you there? Do you remember that? She was a guest. Judy, do you remember this? There were three or four of you who stood out there and said, “What on earth are you talking about?” Yes, that’s right. Exactly, and then we broke up into three groups over a period of about six or eight weeks. There was a period of time after that that was absolutely awesome. I remember when Sandy walked up to me and said to me, “Gene, there’s somebody else in there.” Somebody else said to me, “Gene, there’s somebody else in there.” And somebody else said, “Gene, there’s somebody else in there. This girl keeps breaking in.” So, do I dare…speak not as an individual, but do I dare speak as the whole girl?

Now listen. Lord Jesus, you’re my shepherd, and I have absolutely no needs whatsoever…and that’s not me – that’s the whole girl locally. That was awesome. Except somebody answered back and spoke to the girl, the most beautiful girl in the world. “I am your Shepherd. You have no needs. I’m with you.” I can’t tell you how those things came about, but they came about through brothers and sisters discovering these things. I’m not even going to tell you how it came about in a practical way, but that girl spoke, and the Lord Jesus spoke, and I got out of the way. And how many brothers and sisters said to me how liberating it is to get away from having to pray. All this is happening, and I’m not even there, and I cannot tell you what that means. That is marvelous. That’s why these brothers and sisters don’t have the foggiest idea what you mean when you say, “Do we pray?” I could kill y’all sometimes. Your ignorance and your naivety get me in so much trouble. Somebody comes up to you, they know all the Bible, they are sons and daughters of John Darby, and they start giving you all these questions you’re supposed to know the answer to, and you give them these stupid, stupid, naive, dumb answers, not knowing that standing in front of you is a wolf with a tape recorder waiting to catch, not you, but me. That lets you off the hook. We’ll see about that on the day of judgment, brother. Yeah, it does, and I’m the one who’s supposed to be skinned.

Let me just come back. I am telling you things that are, to some of us, as holy as holy can get, as sacred as sacred gets, and I always feel frustrated about sharing these things with brothers and sisters in a weekend conference. Many don’t have the foggiest idea what I’m saying. Have no idea how to make it practical, and we need weeks and weeks and weeks. Some of you have heard me tell…I was with the brothers from Romania in Hungary for two months. We spent time with the Lord every morning. It was about coming into the beginning of the second month that those brothers, being forced into this daily, at the end of the first month, they began to touch realms unseen, and it was the same experience. It had a certain glory to it: a shekinah glory to it. I never knew what that meant, did you? He has some of this awesome… You can tell when it has happened… the brother is whispering, “something happened.”

I’ll never forget when Daniel came into that meeting that morning and said, “Gene, He spoke to me in the air. Yeah, he speaks to me in there. It was his very own voice speaking to me.” And what did he say? The man of sin will appear in six weeks. (laughter) You don’t know the same Lord I know, brother. It has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with anything. I read a little book. You may have read this book. I was really…whatever that is. This girl was having experiences with the Lord, and she told her pastor about them; it was very intimate, true, and real. The pastor said, “Well, ask him when he’s coming back.” I’m not talking about those things, saints. For one thing, we are guarded by the Scripture. We’ve never done this except with Scripture, and the Scripture holds us within those bounds. They are divine, holy touches with Christ, and you may not have any of this this weekend, but you can if you pursue.

Now, I want to tell you a little story. It’s a story I could not have told you yesterday, and I’m going to tell it because you don’t have an off button. If I ask you to come up here and start telling this, we might be here at 3:00 a.m. Is that okay if I tell it? Yeah. Is it all right? Valerie has spent years meditating before the Lord; I’m sharing her testimony with you today. She read Jeanne Guyon’s book and began praying the Scripture. Then she listened to tapes and read The Highest Life and The Secret to the Christian Life, and she even got through lesson number four, which you can’t have unless you get through the first three. You’d be amazed at how few people have ever asked for lesson number four. Valerie shared with me things today that I have never heard anyone do. She showed me John 17. Now, that’s an interesting chapter, isn’t it? I’m going to tell you in just a moment some of the things she’s done. I’ve never heard of anybody doing that. But she began speaking to the Lord as the bride, and allowed the Lord to speak back to her, and she said, “Sometimes, Gene, this is so real. I just cry and cry and cry.” I understand that, sister. I’ve been there.

Then she told me something. I don’t know if I’m going to do those things. You spend a lot of time with this, and you’ll get a little spooky. She heard her Lord say…she’s with the Scripture in John 17…this is the prayer for that girl. And the Lord Jesus said to the Father, “Father, I’d like for You to meet my wife, Valerie.” Well, you may not appreciate that, but you may never have been where this girl’s been, either. I identify with that sister. Then she showed me something, and I’m going to share this now with everybody. I’d like for the churches to listen. She showed me Xerox copies she had of John 17. Not one but a whole bunch of them. And Valerie, didn’t you say to me something about you cannot exhaust John 17? Every time you try, it just keeps getting larger and larger. And is it something like that? Didn’t you say? Yeah. But you use the Amplified New Testament. But I’m talking about John 17, and I think you used the word inexhaustible. Every time you go back, you’d think you’d wear John 17 out, just like I still cry over Psalms 23 sometimes. I’ve been through that thing, and I have never, never found the bottom of Psalm 23. She takes this one, and it’s a matter of the Father and the Son fellowshipping. This one is the Son fellowshipping with her. This is the Father speaking to her. This one is something else and something else. Then she showed me something I’ve never seen. There are a few phrases in John that repeat themselves, and she finds those phrases. Here’s her Xerox copy. There’s a place where one phrase is repeated two or three times; she puts a yellow mark through them, ignores the rest of the chapter, and listens, praise the Lord, to those words. I’ve never heard of anything like this.

She listens to the Father. She listens to the Son. She listens to the bride. Listen, folks, these people get into conversations with one another, and it’s so wonderful to not be there. I’m going to repeat that for those of you who are spooked out. You’re not there, and you’re not here either. This is a sacred thing; don’t ever play with this. This has a life of its own. You become nothing but an observer, and she has a whole bunch of Xerox copies of John 17, with phrases she finds in them. You may not have understood anything I’ve said, but most of you will be alive after this conference is over, and you’re no different from Valerie. You can go home and be alone with the Lord, and you can find this realm. I have people who have been asking me for years what you do when you don’t have a church. I’m going to say go spend a week with Valerie up in Oregon, and let Valerie show you how to have time with the Lord every day in a very wonderful way.