When I was a younger Christian I prayed and asked God to put me with some Christians that could help me. God answered that prayer.
One of the most effective things they taught me was how to BEGIN each day with God. They taught me how to have a REVIVAL each morning. We called it "morning watch". Sometimes we called it "MOrning Revival".
It doesn't matter what you call it. The point is one of the single biggest helps I got was to build up the practice of letting GOD be the FIRST order of business each day. The morning is the best time.
Before the world makes its demands on your whole being, it is so good to present yourself to the Spirit of God. It can get SO good that at night when you go to bed you look forward to your time in the morning with God.
Listen, stuff that you are not clear about - decisions and and things like that, they can be clearer to you if you start your day with prayer, Bible reading and calling on the name of Jesus.
When you need God to speak to you and lead you, in the morning at your time with God, His voice in your innermost spirit can be clearer.
I am so very glad these Christian brothers taught me to have a time in the morning with God. This is really like the chess player getting control of the center of the chess board early in the game.
The early morning is like the spiritual center of the spiritual chess board. Now if you cannot get to God in the morning then another time is good. The important thing is to have a time designated as your time with God.
Before the world comes down on you demanding your mind , emotion, and will, it is so effective to present yourself before the Lord Jesus for a time with the Lord.
When I come to meet with God in the morning or at any time for that matter, it helps me greatly, to call on the name of Jesus.
By calling "Oh Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus!" I stir up the presence of Jesus within my spirit. I am not kidding. To call on the name of the Lord calls our hearts back from destrucations to contact the Spirit of Christ. He is rich to all who call on His name.
So it is good to excersize your innermost being by calling out to the Lord Jesus. There is no law or rule on how many times you can call on the name of Jesus. There is no official rule that calling X number of times "O Lord Jesus. O Lord Jesus" is taboo.
You may call "O Lord Jesus" as many times as you wish. You call until your distracted mind is brought to the presence of the Holy Spirit.
But you should call on the Lord Jesus from a pure heart. You call with the intention to touch Jesus. This is not vainly lifting up the name of God to curse or to vainly chant. This is to call on a Person for the sake of contacting that Person. Then you call to linger more with that Person. You can call "O Lord Jesus" or you can call "Abba Father. My Father. Abba Father."
The prinicple is the same. This world has a strong current which only carries people AWAY from God. To swim upstream of this current of this God opposing world, it is good to call on the name of God. To call "O Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus I LOVE you. O Lord Jesus" is to call on the resurrected Christ. This is to call on God Himself.
To call "O Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus." is to call on God. God is in Christ. It is also to call on the Son of God. God is in the Son of God. It is also to call out to the Holy Spirit. "Now the Lord is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:17)
You need not be doctrinally confused. You first need to CONTACT Jesus Christ and God by calling on the name of Jesus.
It is good to call on the name of Jesus as SOON as you wake up. If you call on the name of the Lord Jesus for five minutes your spiritual life will be on fire. If you call out and confess and tell the Lord Jesus that you love Him, the fire of the Holy Spirit will begin to burn in your heart.
He is RICH to all who call upon Him.
So when you have your time with the Lord Jesus in the morning it is effective to start by calling on the name of Jesus --- "O Lord Jesus. O Lord Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus. O Lord Jesus. Lord I love you. Lord you love me. O Lord Jesus I call on you from deep within."
You should call from deep within your being. Do not simply utter the name Jesus from your throat. Call from the deepest part of your being. Call deeply. Keep calling O Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus until it deepens. The Lord Jesus WILL become real to you.
Then after calling on the Lord Jesus to stir up your spirit to touch the Spirit of Jesus, you can open your Bible and read. You can read and interspearse your reading with calling, praising, and praying. You can pray over what you read. You can give thanksgiving and praise over the lines you read.
This is to excercise your spirit. The Bible says for us to "excercise yourself unto godliness."
Many times people are simply too passive. You have to excercise your innermost being to touch the Lord Jesus in prayer. But it is not really your effort that does the work. It is God's faithfulness. It is the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the precious blood of Christ which removes all distance between a man and God.
Why is God not real to some of you ?? It is because of your sins.
Why is it that God is not real to some of you? It is because you need the claim that the blood of Jesus cleanses you from all sins. It is the lack of detailed confession of your wrongdoings. The distance between you in God is caused by the guilt of your sins. The sins are thoroughly taken care of by your putting each of them under the redeeming power of the blood of Jesus.
God simply wants you to acknowledge that that was a sin. You were sinful. He has made abundant provision for your sins. He does not need you to grovel on the ground in self pity. He does need you simply to believe in the death of Jesus for your sins.
God is not interested in you groveling and crying for mercy rolling in your tears on the floor. Your tears do not cleanse your sins away. The blood of Jesus cleanses your sins away.
It is not that you need more time to feel bad. Your bad feeling does not cleanse you. Neither does time cleanse you. It is the blood of Jesus which cleanses us from ALL sins. We should claim this. We should believe this. We should pray this and thank God for the precious blood of Jesus.
To stand on the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus is to stand on His redeeming death. In the morning when you have your time with God, bring all known offenses under the blood of Jesus. Call upon His name. Call and confess your sins. Thank God and praise Him for the redemption of Jesus Christ.
Then you are ready to receive light and revelation from your reading of the Bible. Then you are ready to receive spiritual nourishment from the word of God.
This kind of lifestyle will cause your being to be transformed. You will know that you are changing. People around you will notice that you are changing. You are being changed by your habit of contacting Jesus Christ in your modest time with God each morning.
Without strain, old habits will drop off. You simply lose your taste for them. You simply do not care that anything would interfere with your sweet and rich enjoyment of God.
Some harder problems will take more and deeper touching of the Lord. They may call for fellowship with others who can pray with you and for you. But this is the road which leads to victory.
Now remember - Jesus Christ, raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
The Sweetness!
Now some people may be puzzled or simply argumentative. They may say "What do you mean the blood of Jesus cleanses me?"
The blood of Jesus is not around here anywhere. That sounds weird. Do I mean that you have to get hold of the physical blood of the man Jesus who died and rose some 2000 years ago? No.
This is the fact: What Jesus has accomplished is appropriated is all in the Holy Spirit. His life is somehow in the Holy Spirit. His death is there too. His redemption is there too. His resurrection is there too. When you touch the Holy Spirit deep in your being, you appropriate for yourself the work of Christ.
Think of it as a drink with a lot of rich ingredients. Say you had a glass of orange juice. This juice has all kinds of healthy vitamens in it. When you drink the joice vitamen B12,vitamen C, vitamen whatever, all get into you.
This is like the Holy Spirit. This is like the all-inclusive bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. All that He has accomplished for us is now the ingredients of this Holy Spirit.
We appropriate it for ourselves by faith. We take into us the Spirit of Jesus Christ by calling upon His name. That is one way, a good way. Then we stand upon the items of His life,death, and resurrection - declaring them in faith - "Lord Jesus, I thank you for your precious blood. The way I spoke to my spouse Lord, I put under your blood. The anger or lust that I expressed yesterday, Lord I put it ALL under your prevailing blood. Thank you Lord that your blood cleanses me from all sins."
People wonder why God is not real to them. They come to a forum like this and see all kind of intellectual arguments. Mostly it is not these matters by which you sense a distance between you and God. It is the need to be cleansed of your sins which is more often the case.
Our sins make a seperation between us and the living God. In Christ God has made provision for that problem. We need to believe that and stand upon it. Then there is no problem of God not being real to you.
Fact comes first. Feeling follows. First stand on the devine FACTS of the Bible. The FACT Is that the blood of Jesus Christ God Son cleanses us from all sins. That is big and small sins. That is forgivable sins and unforgivable sins. That is public sins and private sins. That is sins that you know of and sins that you do not yet know of. That is all sins.
We must stand on the fact. We thank God for the cleansing power of Christs death on the sinner's behalf. Thankfulness reveals faith. Faith activates the Holy Spirit to flow within your being.
Praising and thanking God for the divine facts shuts the mouth of the Devil. The lies of Satan are silenced and you draw close to your heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Chist.
"They overcame him [the devil] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they loved not their soul-life even unto death.".
The word of the testimony is to proclaim the divine FACTS of the word of God. The blood removes all stains and brings deep and utter peace to the conscience. The distance is removed and you draw close to God. God is then real to you subjectively. No one, but no one can tell you differently.
"The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, heirs also; on the one hand, heirs of God; on the other, joint heirs with Christ ..." (See Romans 8:16)