How to Pray the Scriptures and Experience Jesus Personally

I don’t have a scripture again tonight. I’m just going to talk to you tonight. Whenever I talk with you about experiencing the Lord, I only have two or three sources I can draw from: the scripture, what it says; my own experience; and the experience of others. And of course, when you share in the meetings, you also enter that experience. There has been something that I have tried to help the church with on many occasions, almost from the time I first got here, it’s never taken root in the life of the church, and actually, I’m not disturbed about that, I’m not concerned, I’m not even burdened, but I’m going to talk about it again tonight.

It is extremely important; as far as that goes, it’s a pillar in my own life. All I can do is share it with you again. One day, you’re going to have to get past my words and get into your own personal experience. I don’t know if you recognized from last night what was actually said, but what was actually said last night was that you’re being thrown on the Lord to know Him yourself in a way that’s unique to you. I hope you’ll not forget what was said last night. I really hope you won’t forget. I believe this morning was fresher for all of us. I believe that. I believe there. Maybe one or two of us hit a dry hole, but for most of you, I know it was fresher. I have a lot more to say, even about this morning.

I got you just as far as getting out of bed. I’m not trying to create a specific routine that a Christian will follow each morning. Every morning is different. So, I’m not saying that what I’m going to mention tonight follows what was said last night. It doesn’t. This doesn’t, but it is something for you to know and experience.

Do you remember our dealing with Psalm 42? You remember that? What did you learn from that? That in that spirit, there is not a little brook in the desert. There are cataracts: streams flowing down from the hills, creating waterfalls, and the waterfalls spouting and hitting one another, forming cataracts. That is the main point.

Now, brothers and sisters, you come to the Lord in the morning. I believe that you have made some great progress over the last two months in getting past a feeling of condemnation when you come to the Lord. Shake your head yes or something, even if it’s not true; encourage me a little. That sense of condemnation that most Christians carry into the Lord’s presence; it’s just not necessary. We can go right past it. But oh brother, oh sister, it is so difficult to stop “begging” prayers. When you get a hold of yourself, stop them, and start turning them around, you come up with a whole new prayer. It’s not like you turn it around. You literally come up with something totally new. You know why? Everything you say has to be altered.

I once said to you that I never understood what Beta Sheirich prayed when she prayed, and I listened intently, but I never understood what that gal was talking about when she prayed. I still don’t know. I’m sure if I prayed with her tonight, I wouldn’t understand. She and the Lord would have their own wavelength. They had developed their own way of communicating with each other, and you couldn’t break into it. Sometimes you knew what she said, but most of the time you didn’t know what she was talking about, and you really didn’t care. It really didn’t matter. But I have found that when I come to the Lord, there’s that prayer of my soul standing up there looking at me, wanting to say… some drippy droopy thing, and beg the Lord, and plead, and ask Him for what I’ve already got, and tell Him how terrible I am. I look that prayer straight in the face and refuse it, but I look behind it and try to see what it was that really needed to be prayed. I suddenly realized there wasn’t even anything. What has to be said is very simple.

I might have this great big agonizing prayer that I want to pray, and I look at it, and I know it’s not from the Lord, and then I look at it again, and I know you’re not going to be praying, prayer, and then I find something to take its place, and about all I come out with sometimes is…and it’s deep…it’s felt. “Jesus, You’re Lord of absolutely everything.” That didn’t sound like much of a prayer to the hearer, but it had great significance to me, within my inner being.

I’m going to come back to this now. I want to talk to you about the scripture as prayer. I don’t think I’m going to talk for more than five minutes, which means it probably won’t last over twenty. I’m not content with the room full of brothers and sisters who use the scripture the way I describe it, not the way I experience it. I don’t even know what this passage is about. I only know that I got to the epistles. What then shall we say, that Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, is found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

Now to the one who works, his wage is not reckoned as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness, just as David also spoke of the blessing upon the man to whom God awakens righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.

That passage of scripture sounds very theological. I would hate to ask you to get up in the morning with that passage of scripture. I really would. That’d be hard. What you would do with that scripture, I don’t know, but I’m going to talk out of my heart. I don’t know anything more about that passage of scripture than you do right now, but I know that if I get up in the morning, that passage of scripture is capable of taking me to places I’ve never been before. And possibly to take you to an experience, literally, that you’ve never had with the Lord before in your life. Now how? I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it to you. I want you to know that you’re capable of such an experience. I cannot tell you how I deal with the scripture as prayer, but I will tell you this: if I did not have the scripture to deal with as prayer, I’d hate to have to go on from this day forward. I could do it, but I sure don’t want to.

The other day, I was meeting with the sisters who are now in Hong Kong, and we were reading out of Hebrews 4. I had never met with those sisters; none of them. They’re gone, so I’ll just talk about it. I looked at the sisters, and I said, there’s no need for you and me to get together this morning trying to handle this, because I know what’s going to happen. I’m going to dominate. So, you just sit there and listen. They said fine, and I started. Please forgive me again for so many personal references. I don’t know how to talk about the things that we’re talking about tonight without being personal. Just don’t know how to do it. When we had gone for about five minutes, frankly, I forgot those sisters were there. There came a moment when we were all praying together, and the whole thing blended. It’s true, I did more than they did, but the Spirit of the Lord just swept us, and we were no longer, quote, “praying the Scripture”, end quote. We had gone somewhere, and from there we had been watered, and from there we had been touched, and from there we had been broken. From there, we were weeping, and from there… we were just so swept up by the Lord. We spent an hour there and didn’t even know it. Finally, I said, we need to talk a little bit. One of the sisters said, “It’s seven o’clock, and we need to talk a little bit,” and one of the sisters said, “It just can’t be seven.”