Hi, I’m Bill Johnson from Bethel Church, Redding, CA. Welcome to God Today. My greatest, greatest delight in life is to host the presence of God. It is to be a person the Holy Spirit would rest upon. The brilliant example that we have is Jesus baptized in the water. John 2 says that when He came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit rested upon Him in the form a dove and remained. That means that He stayed upon Him continuously His whole earthly life. That to me is an invitation. It is an invitation for you, for me to learn what it is to be people the Holy Spirit will rest upon.
You see, He lives in every believer. If you’ve been born again, He lives in you. Your body is His temple. But, the Bible declares the Holy Spirit also rests upon people. This is the way I look at it. The Holy Spirit is in me for my sake, but He comes upon me for yours.
When the Holy Spirit comes upon a person it is so that we have impact; an effect on the world around us. When the Spirit of God came upon a prophet there would be a prophecy. The Holy Spirit rested upon Jesus, He fixed every situation around Him that He came into contact with, everything the Spirit led Him to. That means when the Spirit of God rests upon you and upon me, we become people that turn our affections toward Him and that Spirit of God rests upon us. That means we become positioned to make a difference in the world around us.
But, for me, it starts with my affection for Him. I like to go to sleep at night turning my affection towards the Holy Spirit. It’s not a time I want to stay up praying. When it’s time to sleep, it’s time to sleep. I’m not wanting to sing all the new songs I just learned, it’s a moment where I’m going to sleep, but I want to sleep in an encounter with God Himself. So, what I do is I turn my heart’s affection towards the Holy Spirit. It’s almost like an embrace, in that embrace I like just to go to sleep. You’ll have a better day if you have a better night. The way we spend that night is engaged with God Himself.
In Song of Songs, it says, “though I sleep, yet my heart is awake.” It’s such a deep and profound reality. That we are ready to encounter and engage with God throughout the night. One of the most bizarre stories in the Bible is Solomon, where the Lord met him in the night, but it says specifically – in a dream. So think about this: Solomon’s great choice for wisdom happened in a dream. In other words, God trusted Solomon’s decision while he was asleep.
The point is, you can direct your heart towards God in such a profound way that He will encounter you and entrust you things that you would never receive while awake.
Father, I ask that this would be the season of increasing encounters with you even while we sleep. That you’d teach us about the Holy Spirit, about how you move. We just want to recognize your presence and just simply cooperate. Not grieve, not quench, but cooperate fully with who you are and what you’re doing. I ask this that Jesus would be exalted. Amen.