1 year ago

What is Dwelling Prayer Who may dwell in the Lord's Tent John 14_21 Thanksgiving and Praise Keep My Commandments The Binding Prayer There's no set formula Confidence Repentance Use our Imagination Worship

What is Dwelling Prayer?

Sister Clare explains Dwelling Prayer
Excerpts of various Teachings

(Clare) I’ve had a few people ask us about our method of prayer, and how we’ve gotten so close to the Lord.

That’s why I share with you how we draw near to God in Dwelling Prayer. We call our form of prayer ‘Dwelling Prayer’, because we’re dwelling with the Lord according to His promise that if we love Him, we will obey Him and He will dwell with us. John 14:21… He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.

He is the entrance, the gateway to Heaven. And so, what we do, we come into His presence with thanksgiving and praise, as is written in the Scriptures. We worship Him. And, as we’re worshipping, we enter into our hearts spiritually, where he is present – and we worship Him there in our hearts. We use our imagination to some degree, just to get started to see the Lord, and He takes over pretty quickly.

Well, we start out with the Binding-Prayer. The Binding Prayer begins with repentance for our sins and shortcomings. What’s nice about that is that when we’re looking at these different things that are possible sins that we could have committed during the day, it kind of gives us an outline…

Preparation for the Binding Prayer…
Dear Lord Jesus, I come before You as a child still learning; please teach me to see and hear You clearly. Please search my heart, and help me to repent and direct these prayers so they are effective. Please reveal to me the doors I have opened. Jesus, please remove them with their demons to the abyss and help me to sin no more.

Open doors could be…
Did I pass judgment or criticize in my heart or mind, falsely accuse, gossip or cast a slur? Did I steal, cheat or lie, spend money meant for other things, take something that belonged to another? Did I covet, over-eat or lust for something, or listen to something sinful? Did I disrespect my spouse or parents? Was I arrogant and proud, did I disobey You?

Forgive me, Lord, and deliver me from evil. Father, I forgive and bless from my heart those people who have chosen to be our enemies, and pray that Your love would heal and convert them. ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do.’ Guide me so I am not the cause for another man’s sin, but a blessing, leading them to You.

So, it’s a good idea to do an internal check about where we are at and what we’ve done today, our attitude about the day. Our attitude about the Lord and our attitude towards others. So, I’d take the time to do that, looking at each item and making sure that I’ve apologized and asked forgiveness having done what I did. And asking for strength not to do it again.

So after we are done with the Binding Prayer, we like to enter into the Lord’s presence with praise and thanksgiving, worshiping Him in spirit and in truth. We can do this with or without music. We prefer to be drawn to Him through the lyrics of a worship song, sung directly to Him, or by His Grace He may touch us and draw us in without any other manifestation. You may feel more led to pray and worship without music, just going to Him directly in your heart. I mean, all of these things work. We just want to be close to Him and there’s many different ways to be close to Him.

There’s no set formula. But we have found a formula that most often works for us. And we begin by playing worship music and entering into the song. Worshiping the Lord through the lyrics of the song and, many times we’ll begin to see Him very clearly while we’re worshiping. And then we just connect with Him and continue to worship Him.

There comes a time during worship where He would like to impart something special to us – so there’s kind of a holy silence that comes over us. A very sweet and special peace that the Lord inundates us in. And, we stay there with Him and we dwell with Him in our hearts – we continue to dwell with Him, for it’s written… If we obey Him, then He will dwell with us.

So, that’s Dwelling Prayer. We dwell with the Lord and we listen for His voice, and we enter into our hearts with thanksgiving and praise and worship, where Jesus dwells. And, at a certain point, He may want us to be still and dwell in Him. And, so we do and He speaks to us there. Jesus is the True Shepherd – no one comes to the Father except they come through the gate of the sheepfold, where Jesus is.

Now, after we’ve been with Him for a while in dwelling prayer, sometimes it seems like we are seeing Him on the outside of us, you know like standing before us, sitting before us. And that’s just spiritual vision – that can be in our heart, or outside of us. But, you begin in the heart by worship, and this safeguards us from taking a wrong turn or getting involved with things that are wrong.

Believe that He wants to be with you more than you want to be with Him because, I’ll be honest with you, that’s the absolute Truth. He longs for your presence and because you’re not there with Him and for Him, He continues to long for your presence. It’s a lie that you’re not good enough for God to talk to you.

He may begin talking with you by putting thoughts in your inner mind…like a spiritual voice. He’ll always be kind, gentle, and affectionate with you. Never harsh or condemnatory. He may even ask you to write down your conversation with Him.

This is a good thing to do. Then you can go back and read what He’s saying and again, have confidence in listening to Him. Because when you go back and read your journal you can feel it and hear the voice of the Lord just coming through those lines and it gives you so much more confidence to go back into prayer again and expect to hear from Him.

You can also answer Him and this will become a time of dialogue between the two of you. This is where the relationship really begins to blossom and you talk to each other and He speaks His Heart to you and you pour your Heart out to Him, too. Sometimes He’ll take you even to Heaven.

Here is a Song about the very basic attitudes of heart and behavior that inspire God to invite us into His Dwelling place to commune with Him. He longs to spend intimate tristing time with us, truly He longs for this, but some sins are especially destructive and obnoxious to God and Heaven and they tend to separate us from the sweet intimacy that could be ours.

As we progress in our walk with Him, He begins to address these things because we are no longer children who feed on milk alone. We have been walking in the Spirit, taught by the Spirit and are beginning to manifest the fruits of the Spirit…true holiness. In this song I exhort all of us to keep a guard on our hearts knowing that we can please God by protecting the eye and ear gates into our minds and beings. And let us also be vigilant about what is coming out of our mouth…

The Song is based on Psalm 15 – sung by Sister Clare

Who may dwell, who may dwell in Your holy tent?
He who walks righteously, speaking truth from the heart.
He who rejects dishonest gain,
and stops his ears against plots of destruction.
Who shuts his eyes against contemplating evil.
Who slanders not his neighbor, nor harms another.
And never defames a friend.
Who may dwell, who may dwell on Your holy mountain?
He who refuses to contemplate harming his brother,
and keeps his tongue from evil, Never using his lips to deceive.
He who harbors not bitter envy and selfish ambition.
He who keeps his heart free of judgment
and always speaks well of others.
You will dwell on the heights, never to be shaken.
He who forgives offences and is quick to confess his own fault,
Who is lenient with the shortcomings of his brother,
and swift to correct the error of his own ways.
He who spends not his life on worldly gain and pleasure,
but looks after the needs of the poor and the alien in his midst.
He who cares nothing for the praises of men,
nor courts their favor,
but considers his ways before God
and seeks only His favor.
You will dwell on the heights, never to be shaken.
He who gives thanks when things go well,
as well as when things go badly.
Who entrusts his life to the wisdom of the Almighty.
He who forms no complaint in his heart,
nor utters a deprecating word,
But makes his heart a tabernacle of praise
and thanksgiving to the Most High God,
always giving thanks for His benefits.
You will dwell on the heights, never to be shaken.
Your refuge will be the mountain fortress.
Your bread will be supplied and water will not fail you.
Your eyes will see the King in His beauty.
And view a land that stretches afar.
You will dwell on the heights, never to be shaken.