Passion For His Presence (Daily Devotional)

Greetings and thank you so much for the opportunity to come to you today and spend this time with you. This week, I'm just taking the liberty to share some stories from my life, the early days of walking with God and I hope that these little stories will be of encouragement to you. So going back to the year 1982, as a 13-year-old, God doing something in my heart, like I said, there was nobody forcing me or pushing me to do these things, but it was just flowing in my heart and I started reading my bible and I remember initially I would read a passage for five minutes, then it would become 15 minutes, then 30 minutes. So, I would do this in the morning before going to school. So, 7 a.m. was the time that I had to start getting ready for going to school. So, I would start getting up earlier in the mornings because I just felt the need to have more time to read the Bible. And also, when I started praying in tongues, I realized I could pray more. I needed more time and so this is what happened in my life. Again, I'm not saying you have to do this, but very soon I started waking up at four o'clock in the morning because I wanted to have three hours with God every day. So, 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. was my time with God every day before I got ready to go to school. It was so very precious that that time I guarded that time. Now again, I just learned to trust God, there was a verse that was very special, Isaiah chapter 50 verse 4, where the bible says ‘He awakens me morning by morning, He awakens my ear to hear as the learned.’ So, I used to pray God please wake me up tomorrow at four o'clock, I would go to sleep expecting to wake up and sure enough I would be awake sometimes at 3: 45, sometimes at 4 or a little before 4, I'd go and make some tea and then I would lock myself in the room and then for three hours I would spend an hour and a half in prayer, an hour and a half in the word of God, then at 7:00, I'll come out and start getting ready for school. And that became up my daily routine from my 8th grade on through college and so on. So, it became my practice. One of the things that really motivated me was of course the life of Jesus, in Mark chapter 1, verse 35, the Bible says ‘in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place; and there He prayed.’ I felt if Jesus would do that, if He would wake up very early in the morning and go and pray, I must also do it. So, I wanted to follow that example and looking back today, I can say that that time with God and trying to maintain that time with God through the years is the core, is the foundation of a strong life in God. I would encourage you to do that. It may not be in the morning, it may be any time during the day, maybe in the night, but your time with God, let it grow and let it take you deeper and deeper in God. So have passion for His presence and let everything flow out of that. Let's pray, Father, we thank you for the grace that you give us, the grace that empowers us to seek you, seek your presence, pour out more of that grace, Father upon us to seek you more and more in prayer and in your word and let that be the center of our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Daily devotions to strengthen your faith each day. Daily Devotional for Spirit filled living. Each daily devotion is about five minutes in duration. These daily devotionals are centered around a weekly theme. So there are seven daily devotions that focus on the theme and bring you insight, understanding and revelation from the Bible. Each week's theme is listed as a series. So you can listen to the current week's devotions or go to any previous theme/series that speaks to your present need (https://apcwo.org/resources/daily-devotions ). Also available free sermons (https://apcwo.org/sermons), and free Christian books (https://apcwo.org/books) to nourish and strengthen your faith.