I was watching this minister on Youtube the other day and he said, “Holy Spirit, we invite you to come into our presence now…”
Although this is quite a common way for many to pray, asking for God’s presence before they pray, I do have a little trouble with it.
There is no where in the bible when the disciples had to invite God or the Holy Spirit or Jesus to come into their presence. Rather Jesus said:
Matthew 18:20 (NKJV)
20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”
Where two or three are gathered in His name, He is already there. This is the truth from Jesus Christ.
And if Jesus Christ is already there with us because we’re gathered together in His name, isn’t that weird to still invite Him into our midst?
It’s like you are there in the room with your friends, and they are inviting you to join them in their room when you are already there in the room with them.
Of course, the difference is that we can’t see Jesus in the room, so we assumed that He will only come when we invite Him. But this isn’t in the bible.
Then you might think, “What’s the big deal?”
The big deal is that when we pray like this, we are opening a door for doubt and unbelief. We don’t believe that Jesus is already with us when we are gathered together. We believe He will only be there under certain circumstances. This practice has very subtly brought us into doubt and unbelief.
Faith operates on spiritual facts. And spiritual facts are based on the written word, not what we feel, or what we have been taught.
Could this be the reason why we are unable to heal the sick and cast our demons or raise the dead? Because we don’t believe Jesus is in our midst.
There is still another reason why we can’t heal the sick or raise the dead – we think we’re not powerful enough. That is doubt. And because of that we can’t move the mountains. You can read about it here.
Have you experience this before?