How to Connect with God

HOW TO CONNECT WITH GOD

This is a message I preached at Gracepoint on Sunday August 21, 2009.

As I begin please allow me to make a few statements:

□ Man is not God and cannot be God
□ Man needs God
□ New Age secular humanism does not have the answers
□ Science in its purest form validates laws and principles that were established by God
□ All true science validates the Word of God
□ Incorrect science is science that stands in contradiction to the Word of God
□ Whenever the two merge in any form of agreement . . . it is because science has discovered what God has already done

Today I will use a combination of a certain amount of scientific understanding from a book entitled, The Answer, along with the Word of God to confirm and reveal to you spiritual truths and understandings that can open the door to the greatest of potentials in God. (Note: I quote liberally from The Answer throughout this sermon).

Rom 8:7

7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
KJV

So according to Romans 8:7 we have a mind, the carnal that is enmity, or at variance against God. It does not submit to God . . . it cannot submit to God.

Before we finish this lesson you will know why you cannot submit to God with your mind (as you know it).

Heb 11:13

13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them,
KJV

They saw something . . . not with their eyes . . . but in their minds
And they were convinced these promises would come to pass
The promises were seeds for something to come tomorrow
And they embraced them . . . held them close and did not let go
They ordered their lives to do the things to make the promises come to pass

Mark 9:23

23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.
KJV

The secret to our success in God . . . and in life . . . lies in controlling our thoughts.

Acts 2:17

17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:
KJV

Dreams . . . and visions . . . things that come to us by through our minds. If God accesses us with a dream or vision He will come through the gateway of our mind.

Dreams and Visions are not part of the conscious brain that you and I are familiar with. They are part of the non-conscious mind . . . which we will learn about later in this study.

Years ago I came across the concept of a Vision Board.

On a Vision Board one cuts out pictures that represented the goals and dreams one aspires to achieve and pastes them onto bulletin boards. The idea is to create everyday reminders of your life’s direction.

This is not unlike the job books I used to keep of the design jobs I did when I worked in design engineering. What we envisioned on paper eventually came to reality as we executed those plans.

From thought . . . to concept . . . to detailing and drawing it . . . to doing the things required to build it . . . to completion. It was a work of discipline and focus . . . and it worked.

With Madame Currie’s discovery of radioactivity in the late1890’s, scientist began looking into the world within the atomic nucleus, and they were shocked to discover that on a sub-atomic level, the physical world did not behave at all the way Sir Isaac Newton said it should. In fact, the “atom” itself turned out to be a sort of illusion. The closer scientists looked, the less it really appeared to be there.

Coined in ancient Greece, the term atom means, “indivisible unit,” and through the 19th century, scientists believed that our entire universe was comprised of these elementary particles called atoms.

But radioactivity showed us that the atom was divisible after all – in fact, there was a whole new universe of phenomena inside the atom, waiting to be explored, measured, and described. And when our vision of the atom fractured, the foundation of classical physics shattered along with it.

Every object . . . even a block of solid iron . . . is over 99.9999% empty space. But it is what happens inside the empty space and how it affects the solid particles that matter. What happens in the empty space is energy.

Everything is energy.

Einstein said E=MC2. In other words “energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.” His conclusion shattered centuries of thinking and radically altered our view of how the world works.

Einstein’s idea described how energy and matter are not only related, but can be transformed back and forth into each other. A chink had been found in the wall separating the worlds of matter and energy.

Quantum Physics is the study of how the world works on the smallest scale, at a level far smaller than the atom.

The search for the smallest known particle had instead turned up distinct and yet elusive little packets of energy, which physicists called quanta.

The Einstein breakthrough comes down to this: Everything is energy. A rock, a planet, a glass of water, your hand, everything you can touch, taste, or smell . . . it’s all made of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which are made up of protons and electrons and neutrons, which are made of nothing but vibrating packets of energy.
Once we know everything is energy – that there is absolutely no distinction between matter and energy . . . then the boundaries between the physical world and the world of our thoughts start to disappear as well.

The tiny packets of energy known as quanta exhibited some very peculiar behaviors, including and unexplainable ability to influence one another, a property called entanglement.

Allow me to give you an example of how entanglement works.

Lie detector expert Cleve Backster conducted some incredible lie detector experiments. Backster took some white blood cells from the mouths of his subjects and cultured them in a test tube. He then moved the cultures to distant locations, more than 7 miles away. He attached lie detectors to the cultures and then performed a series of experiments on his subjects.

In one of his tests, he showed his subject a television program depicting the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This man was a former Navy gunner who had actually been present at Pearl Harbor during the attack. When the face of the Navy Gunner appeared on the screen, the man’s face betrayed an emotional reaction . . .

Now are you ready for this?????????

At that precise moment, the lie detector’s needle 7 ½ miles away jumped . . . exactly as it would have if it had been attached to the man himself, and not just to a test tube of his cultured white blood cells miles away.

Subsequent experiments varied the circumstances and increased the distances involved to dozens and even hundreds of miles, with the same astonishing results.

How is such a thing possible?

In the language of Quantum Physics, the particles of the gunner’s body are still connected or “entangled” with one another, and no matter how far apart they are separated in space, they will continue to influence one another. In fact this effect appears to occur at speeds faster than the speed of light, which violates one of Einstein’s rules.

Scientist dubbed this mind-boggling capacity for instantaneous interconnection nonlocality. Einstein had a somewhat less technical term for it. He called it spooky action at a distance.

So now scientists have proven that thought influences matter.

Danish physicist Niels Bohr and his protégé Werner Heisenberg’s work suggested that at its most basic level, physical matter isn’t exactly anything yet. At the subatomic scale, according to new understanding, reality was made not out of solid substances but of fields of potentiality . . . more like a set of possible sketches or ideas of a thing than the thing itself. A particle would take on the specific character of a material “thing” (where its properties collapse into a single state) only when it was measured or observed.

Every time the scientists looked for an electron, an electron would appear, and always right where they were expecting it. And it didn’t matter if the person performing the observation was a scientists or a bus driver. In fact, even more bizarre, it was soon found that the mere intention of measuring particles, even without carrying out the actual act itself, would still affect the particles in question!

Suddenly subjectivity . . . the action of consciousness upon a piece of matter . . . had become an essential component in the very nature of reality.

Ridiculous you say!

Is it that different from Joshua saying “sun stand still” and a universe obeying instantly?

Or another prophet asking the sun to go back 10 degrees?

Or a donkey speaking in conversation to a false prophet?

May God help the last day church to understand that the things of God are still real and flowing freely . . . if we can just re-connect with God.

Some then would say . . . well I have the Holy Ghost and His Word what more do I need? Yes . . . we need those essentials . . . but then you really have no excuse for being disconnected from God.

There is something called the zero-point field. That is supposed to be where at a temperature of absolute zero, where all known energy forms vanish . . . there still seems to be some sort of energy present.

Here at ZPF, beneath the level of energy itself, exists a still more basic level. The field at this level is not exactly “energy” anymore, nor is it a field of empty space. It is best described, physicists have realized, as a filed of information.

To put it another way . . . the undifferentiated ocean out of which energy arises appears to be a sea of pure consciousness, from which matter emerges in clustered localities here and there.

Physicists now say that consciousness is what the universe is made of . . . matter and energy are just two of the forms or manifestations that consciousness takes.

Now let’s see if this makes Biblical sense . . . consciousness creates matter . . .

John 1:1-3
1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
KJV

John 1:14

14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
KJV

Col 1:16-17

16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
KJV

Thought creates everything!

Physicists now say that everything that is, is made of thought. That thought creates the physical world.

□ Everything in the physical world is made of atoms
□ Atoms are made out of energy
□ And energy is made out of consciousness

Thoughts not only matter, they create matter. Thought is where everything comes from.

If we walk strictly by sight . . . the earth is flat and the sun does revolve around the earth. So we must walk by faith (something in the non-conscious mind and on a spiritual level) and not by sight.

We cannot walk by sight, because we cannot see what is there. We see only what we are prepared or conditioned to see.

When the explorer Magellan’s expedition first arrived on the shores of Tierra del Fuego in 1520, the native canoe-going population didn’t mount much of a response, because the vast European sailing vessels represented such an alien concept that they literally could not see them. Like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and the rest of the team of the USS Enterprise stepping out of their invisibility-cloaked spaceship, the foreigners seemed to be natives as though they steeped out into their smaller canoe-like landing craft literally out of thin air.

You have heard the old expression “I’ll believe it when I see it.” But that is not really how it is. The truth is more like this: You’ll see it when you believe it.

Belief is the most powerful force in the universe. It is from your belief system that you develop faith.

Physicists now know that the universe is structured in a series of layers or levels, much like an onion. Inside of organisms we find cells; inside cells we find molecules . . . then atoms, then electrons, protons, quarks, gluons, bosons, mesons, photons, leptons . . . and the smaller the world, the greater the amount of force we find wrapped inside it.

The deeper in nature you go, the more dynamic nature becomes. In other words, the more fundamental the level to which you penetrate, the greater the power you will find.

Like the little ball inside the golf ball . . . that little dude is powerful once you delayer around it.

For example . . . chemical power . . . the force or chemical interactions, operates at the level of molecules and atoms. Nuclear power operates at the level of the atomic nucleus, about a million times smaller . . . and it is a million times more powerful. Yet even the nuclear level pales in comparison to the deeper levels today’s quantum physics is exploring. According to physicist Ervin Laszlo (author of Science and the Akashic Field), the zero-point field has an energy density of 1094 ergs per centimeter . . . that’s ten thousand billion, billion, billion, billion times more energy in a single cubic centimeter of “empty space” than you have in all the matter in the known universe!

And that is just within one cubic centimeter of empty space!

Your thoughts are powerful. They have a direct, casual impact on our reality.

Victor Hugo said, “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

I re-emphasize something that physicists now believe . . . underlying all we know as the world is a field of pure consciousness, billions upon billions of times more powerful than any measurable energy. Physicists are now saying that:

□ This field of absolute consciousness knows everything that happens, anywhere and everywhere in the universe, instantaneously and with absolute accuracy.
□ To be honest friends . . . what they are saying is not that unlike what we know and believe to be true about the One True and Living God
□ Physicists are saying . . . not the Bible . . . but physicists . . . and I quote . . . “that the world is bounded by an infinitely large, omnipotent, omniscient intelligence, which lies behind everything in the phenomenal world as its source, author, and ultimate destination.”

May I quote from another author?

Heb 11:1-3

11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

2 For by it the elders obtained a good report.

3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
KJV

The things we see and that take place in the seen world . . . do not originate there.

There is something called The Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction is the creative process through which the unseen world gives birth to the events and circumstances of our lives.

Einstein’s relativity revolution revealed that everything is made of energy. Cells, molecules, atoms, protons, neutrons, guarks, gluons, leptons, mesons, bosons . . . they are all energy. The things that seem tangible to us, including ourselves, are simply energy slowed way down to a state that we recognize as “solid”.

But what does that mean, exactly, “energy slowed way down?”

Take an ice cube. We can find out where it came from by speeding it up, that is, by adding energy to it to raise its vibrational state. When we apply heat to our ice cube, it soon reverts to a liquid. Continue speeding up its vibration, and that liquid soon evaporates to steam, and then finally into water vapor. Continue accelerating its rate of vibration, and the elements that formed that ice cube will eventually revert to a state of pure energy, and beyond that, cross the Cartesian barrier to become what lies beyond energy, which is consciousness or information. That is where the ice cube first came from. It was first an idea.

Everything . . . every phenomenon in the universe . . . starts with an idea. Things are created from the non-physical level, turning that which we can’t see into that which we can.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Sir Isaac Newton used the principle of cause and effect as it operates in the physical, mechanical world as the basis of his law of thermodynamics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Newton did not grasp that matter, energy, and consciousness are not distinct and separate domains, but are simply different frequencies along the same continuum. Quantum physicist’s now know that the principle of cause and effect does not just apply to the mechanics of matter, but to the mechanics of everything . . . including our thoughts.

Every thought you form broadcasts a distinct and particular frequency, and that frequency elicits a response from the quantum universe as surely as a swinging hammer has an impact on the surface it strikes.

This proves that “things do not just arbitrarily happen to you.” You are at cause in your life. This puts you squarely in the driver’s seat.

□ Embracing this principle means you no longer have the luxury of blaming other people or external circumstances for the things that happen in your life.
□ When we don’t recognize this principle operating in our lives, it’s easy to start seeing ourselves as the effect of those events. Rather than seeing that we are making things happen, we start to believe that things are simply happening to us. That easily leads to what is often called victim mentality.
□ I am here to say that you, working together with God, need to learn to be the cause and not the effect.

Resonance is a word derived from the Latin meaning “to sound again”, and is simply the transfer of vibration from one medium to another.

Ever wonder why a singer’s high note could shatter glass? Here is the clue to the riddle:

If you were to lightly strike a piece of crystal with a tiny hammer, it would ring out a tone with the same pitch as the singer’s high note.

This is the principle of the tuning fork. Hold a tuning fork tuned to A440 near any musical instrument, play the same note and the tuning fork will vibrate. Play a different note, and it won’t vibrate. The piano’s A-string and the tuning fork share the same waveform, as do the singer’s high note and the crystal, which is why they resonate.

The way the singer’s high note, sung clearly and loudly enough, can cause the tuning fork to vibrate and even shatter crystal, is the same way the right thought, held clearly and strongly enough, can cause events in the physical world to happen.

How can I possibly say that?

Let me use Mahatma Gandhi as an example. His single thought, held clearly and firmly, defeated an empire.

As Proverbs says . . . “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

The dream is in the seed. The how always comes after the vision and decision.

Have you ever heard of gestation?

Ecclesiastes, Pete Seeger, and a band called The Byrds all had it right. There is “a time to plant, a time to reap . . . a time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing.”

Gestation means that for every seed, there is a gestation or incubation period, a specific span of time that particular seed needs to establish itself before it can unfold from blueprint into fully realized physical form.

□ Carrot seed takes about 70 days from the time you plant it until you have a fully grown carrot
□ A lamb has a gestation period from gestation to birth of about 145 days
□ A human 280 days

When connecting with God . . .

We must comprehend that faith without works is dead. We have to embrace His Word around our promise or vision and give the gestation period time to bring it to pass.

Here is a hint. If you plant a seed . . . leave it planted. If you keep digging it up it will never grow and develop. One of nature’s laws is that force always negates. If you push on the process, it’s going to push back. You have to allow the vision time to germinate and grow, to take root and find its resources in its own time.

In the mean time action is required. Be purposeful, be patient, and be active.

Sunlight diffused may cause a leaf to warm slightly; that same sunlight focused with a glass will make it burn. To truly connect with God and become a partner with Him to see His mighty wonders come to pass, you need the clarity and focus of the magnifying glass.

Each of the following connected with God. They were clear in their purpose and their focus allowed God to work through them:

□ Noah
□ Abraham
□ Jacob/Israel
□ Joseph
□ Moses
□ Joshua
□ Samuel
□ David
□ Nehemiah
□ Elijah
□ Elisha
□ Jesus
□ Paul

You can also.

Before I conclude please allow me to speak about the mind.

The human brain is the most complex, powerful machine in the universe. Your brain contains a network of about 100,000 miles of blood vessels and 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) neurons, with the capacity to perform some ten quadrillion operations per second. Imagine the scope and complexity of every telephone system throughout the entire planet. Your brain, according to experts, embodies that same scale of complexity and capacity in each individual brain cell.

Imagine for a moment what is going on in your body right now. As you are listening to me, every second about 10 million cells die off and another 10 million new ones are created. Although you are completely unaware of it consciously, since I made that statement you have de-commissioned and commissioned about 100 million brain cells to replace them.

Yeah . . . wow.

Scientists say that if you were to write out your brain’s potential as expressed by the number of neural connections it could make, it would take you 75 years to write out all the zeros. That is the level of power and capacity you have at your disposal every moment of every day.

In other words . . . your potential to achieve is essentially without limit . . . and that is without adding God into the equation.

As the scripture says . . . “we are fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The human body is designed to treat the brain like the king it is. There is no other organ of the body that receives better or more elaborate care. Snugly encased in its protective bony shell, your brain weighs only 2-3 pounds, a mere 1 to 2 percent of you total body weight, yet it consumes 20 percent of the air you breathe, 25 percent of your total blood flow, 30 percent of the water you consume, and 40 percent of all the nutrients drawn from your bloodstream.

Without going on and on about the brain’s construction and layers, let me just say that the various functions and aspects of the brain fall into two larger, basic divisions: the conscious brain and the non-conscious brain.

Now folks . . . I am going to lead you down a path that can help you connect with God. Please follow me . . .

The different aspects of the conscious spectrum are the will, memory, perception, reasoning, intuition, and imagination. To get you where we need to go I must mention some things about each, as well as things about the non-conscious spectrum.

Will

The will is the conscious faculty involved when you make a decision to do something new or different.

Courage, discipline, commitment, loyalty, and perseverance . . . all of these traits are reflections or variations of this core conscious drive we call will.

Memory

This will blow your mind. Conventional wisdom says that memory is stored in your brain. New scientific discoveries are now proving that some of our memories (or perhaps even most of our memories) are stored outside us in the quantum field.

Sounds like science fiction doesn’t it?

Scientist say that once you have an experience or a thought, that experience or thought is broadcast out into the quantum field and resides there in wave form, potentially available to anyone. Of course it will most readily be accessible to you, because your brain is the one that processed that experience . . . that is your brain and that experience have a unique resonance.

Grasp, perspective, insight, and having a big view are all different ways we have of describing this conscious function of memory.

Perception

If I ask you, “What do you see with?” you would probably say, “My eyes”.

But this isn’t really true: You see through your eyes, just as, if you wear glasses or contacts, you see through those lenses.

But you see with your brain. Because of this, what you see is based not on what the eye can detect, but on the neurological patterning in your brain.

This explains why perception is so variable, and so individual. You can have several people observe the same event, yet when you interview them carefully about what happened, you can get a completely different story from each one.

Reasoning

While will is related more to physical action and perception to the input of the senses, reasoning is where we start moving into the more cerebral activity we typically think of as intelligence. Reasoning is the capacity to connect the facts of a particular situation with larger principles, based on thousands of other experiences, even those far removed in time and space.

There are too broad types of conscious action here . . . deductive and inductive. Deductive reasoning is the ability to logically examine available facts and arrive at a logical conclusion based on consistent principles. Inductive reasoning is taking the same process in the opposite direction: arriving at a principle or set of principles by extrapolating from observed facts.

Intuition

Intuition is the faculty of knowing before you think.

The word intuition comes from the Latin intueri, which means “to look upon”; it refers to the ability to observe a situation instantaneously, without our sense of perception or our logic acting as intermediary.

There is no such thing as someone with “poor intuition” or “no intuition”. We all have an acute intuitive capacity; we differ only in our ability to integrate that intuitive sense with the rest of our conscious functions. Often we let our conscious functions get in the way of or question what we are feeling. When we say someone has especially strong intuition, what we’re really saying is that he has a particularly well developed ability to be aware of his intuition and not drown it out with other conscious processes.

Imagination

Imagination means that we are able to create pictures in our minds out of images drawn from the quantum field of all possibilities, and make those pictures as vivid as if they were physically happening.

Imagination is often the prime casualty of the process of growing up. For most of us by the time we are in our mid-thirties, 95 percent of the creative-imagination neurons in our brains have atrophied from lack of use.

Add to that the box of limitations many churches seem to place on people who want to learn more than the basic principles of the doctrine of Christ.

Einstein put it well, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

The Conscious Brain is very limited.

The conscious brain has a very difficult time remembering more than six or seven digits or more than two or three events at the same time.

The average person loses focus every 6 seconds.

And yet as you sit there scientists say that your biochemistry is functioning at a rate of 10 quadrillion reactions per second . . . if you did that with your conscious brain you would be dead . . . but the non-conscious brain does it effortlessly and with precision.

The conscious brain loses focus every 6-10 seconds max . . . but your non-conscious brain never loses focus . . . never.

The conscious brain occupies 17 percent of total brain mass (about 1/6 of the brain’s weight), yet it controls only 2-4% of actual perceptions and behavior. The non-conscious brain occupies 83% (about 5/6) of total brain mass and controls 96-98% or perception and behavior.

Conscious impulses travel at speeds of 120-140 mph. Non-conscious impulses travel at speeds of more than 100,000 mph, or 800 times faster than conscious impulses.

The conscious brain processes about 2000 bits of information per second. The non-conscious brain processes about 400,000,000,000 (four hundred billion) bits of information per second.

The conscious brain is volitional. It is the part you control by conscious will, the part that sets goals and judges results. The non-conscious brain is servile. It sets no goals of its own, but instead executes the goals it is provided with; it does not judge the merits or values of results, only whether or not they match the given goals.

The conscious brain perceives past and future. The non-conscious brain has no perception of past and future; to the non-conscious brain everything is happening now.

The conscious brain operates with a very short-term memory span, generally limited to about 20 seconds. The non-conscious brain remembers everything it experiences forever.

And this is the part of the brain that most of us have limited our relationship with God to.

SO HOW DOES ONE CONNECT WITH GOD?

We must eliminate the barrier of what God can or cannot do.

We must learn to relate to him with a whole mind and not just through our human reasoning.

Since the carnal mind is enmity against God and cannot know the things of God . . . yet that is where we limit our relationship to Him . . .

We must come to Him and ask, seek, and knock . .

Then you can enter a place like Elijah . . . Lord open my servants eyes that he can see the chariots of fire and horsemen that surround this mountain and that there are more with us than there are against us.

Elijah sent his servant to look for the rain cloud 7 times before his servant saw it. Elijah saw it before the first time.

Don’t you long to be like that?

Jesus said go to a certain place and find a colt tied. Go and find a man carrying a water pot and ask him to use his upper room.

Don’t you long to be like that?

The conscious mind is your enemy . . . it worries about dress styles, temperatures, who sits in your favorite seat, volume, songs you like and don’t like, and excuses like I could live for God if I didn’t hate Bro. so and so . . . so much.

□ You can’t know God like that folks

I conclude with the question.

Luke 10:27

27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
KJV





























HOW TO CONNECT WITH GOD

Rom 8:7
Heb 11:13
Mark 9:23
Acts 2:17
John 1:1-3
John 1:14
Heb 11:1-3
Luke 10:27

OVERWHELMED

I write this as a pastor, child of God, and father with a heavy heart.

I always try to write from an encouraging perspective because our God is exceedingly and abundantly able to deliver and bless His people. God is faithful. In spite of that . . . tonight sleep evades me because of the multitude of trials that beset me. And . . . I write to say that through the mighty hand of God I shall again prevail.

So I warn you before you read further that I am about to write things in a manner that is totally out of character for me . . . because I will speak clearly about the wounds of human failure and its effects on other people.

I have watched people around me struggle as of late with great calamities and trials. I have visited the hospitals way too much. I will not even mention the intensely personal trails and tribulations afflicting every branch of my family members right now, but suffice it to say I am overwhelmed. My heart is crushed and bruised. I am hovering somewhere between stunned and angry.

Yes . . . I am overwhelmed.

As one who is overwhelmed I am in good company. David also spoke of being overwhelmed in the 61st Psalm. His response gives me hope.

Ps 61:2-8

2 From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

3 For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy.

4 I will abide in thy tabernacle for ever: I will trust in the covert of thy wings. Selah.

5 For thou, O God, hast heard my vows: thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name.

6 Thou wilt prolong the king's life: and his years as many generations.

7 He shall abide before God for ever: O prepare mercy and truth, which may preserve him.

8 So will I sing praise unto thy name for ever, that I may daily perform my vows.
KJV

The Hebrew meaning of the word translated here as overwhelmed is ataph (aw-taf'). It means to shroud or clothe to languish in darkness. It is commonly used in reference to feinting, swooning, or failing.

That is exactly how I feel right now. The enemy has tried to cover me in a shroud of darkness. I am hurt, wounded, and disgusted with people and their willing failures. I am hurt at how callously people hurt other people or vent their carnality on the work of God. I am appalled at the many who think the church is all about them. I am so disillusioned at the hypocrisy of preachers and their fickle religious organization.

I am saddened at the tragedies that have recently befallen friends and family. The betrayals have overwhelmed me . . . including the disappointment and betrayal I feel toward our own elected government.

OK so I warned you . . . this is out of character for me . . . because I am overwhelmed right now.

So there is one thing I have tried and proven that always works when I am overwhelmed. I turn to the Word of God for hope and direction. The Word will lead me as to what to do in the Spirit.

I find that Psalms 77 says:

I WILL cry to God with my voice, even to God with my voice, and He will give ear and hearken to me.

2 In the day of my trouble I seek (inquire of and desperately require) the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out [in prayer] without slacking up; I refuse to be comforted.

3 I [earnestly] remember God; I am disquieted and I groan; I muse in prayer, and my spirit faints [overwhelmed]. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!

4 You hold my eyes from closing; I am so troubled that I cannot speak. (AMP)

Therefore I, like the psalmist before me, must cry out to God with my voice. If I do He will give ear and hearken unto me.

The Bible describes Psalms 102 as “A Prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the Lord”.

So let us read that prayer.

1 Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come unto thee.
2 Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me: in the day when I call answer me speedily.
3 For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.
4 My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread.
5 By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin.
6 I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert.
7 I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.
8 Mine enemies reproach me all the day; and they that are mad against me are sworn against me.
9 For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,
10 Because of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down.
11 My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass.
12 But thou, O LORD, shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.
13 Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come.
14 For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof.
15 So the heathen shall fear the name of the LORD, and all the kings of the earth thy glory.
16 When the LORD shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory.
17 He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer.
18 This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the LORD.
19 For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the LORD behold the earth;
20 To hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death;
21 To declare the name of the LORD in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem;
22 When the people are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the LORD.
23 He weakened my strength in the way; he shortened my days.
24 I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are throughout all generations.
25 Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.
26 They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:
27 But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.
28 The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee. KJV

I need to pray like that. I need to follow that example and open my soul before the Lord because yes I am overwhelmed. So also was the writer of Psalm 102, but after his mighty prayer and inward soul searching he concluded by saying, “the children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee”.

Somehow, someway, someday and by the grace and sure mercies of God I and mine are going to make it. His Word gives me hope. His strength renews me.

I am the determining factor. Just exactly what will I allow God to do through me and with me?

Psalms 124 says:

1 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, now may Israel say;

2 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us:

3 Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:

4 Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul:

5 Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.

6 Blessed be the LORD, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.

7 Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.

8 Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

KJV

God is the difference maker. He is the difference. I may be overwhelmed but my God is never overwhelmed. God is in me by the power of the Holy Ghost. I have His Name Jesus in my forehead. If I put my trust in Him even if I fall I shall arise.

David once hid in a cave. It was a place of cold darkness. Yet Psalms 142 records the prayer he prayed while in that cave.

142:1 I cried unto the LORD with my voice; with my voice unto the LORD did I make my supplication.

2 I poured out my complaint before him; I shewed before him my trouble.

3 When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path. In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me.

4 I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.

5 I cried unto thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.

6 Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.

7 Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.
KJV

David’s hiding in the cave was caused by the worst of events and circumstances . . . yet it produced the best of responses from a true believer and worshipper.

That is what I too must do. I may feel like I am in a cave and overwhelmed . . . but I too must praise, worship, and trust in the Lord my God.

In order to overcome what the enemy is hurling at me now I must do as David did when he was overwhelmed. He went back in his experiences and remembered the former times of God’s grace, mercy, and delivering power.

Psalms 143 says:

3 For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead.

4 Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.

5 I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands.

6 I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Selah.

7 Hear me speedily, O LORD: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit.
KJV

I may feel overwhelmed at this time, but that is only an opportunity to trust in the Lord and in the power of His might. My God shall deliver me . . . and He will do it speedily.