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Name: Lynn
Subject: The Manifested Presence
Email: htrails@...
Website: www.lynnridenhour.com
The Manifested Presence:
Our Birthright

By Lynn Ridenhour


".And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one
accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a
rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were
tting." --Acts.2:1,2


I live for His Manifested Presence.

For me, the Christian life can be summarized in one small phrase: seeking
His Presence. Possessing correct doctrine will not do. Loyalty to church
attendance will not do. Faithful & regular Bible study is not enough.
Daily devotions leave a vacuum. Hearing good sermons will not do.
Beautiful singing falls short. Dedication to the restoration movement won't
satisfy. Proper church government creates a void. Curiosity in ancient
manuscripts often leaves our hearts empty.

I need His presence. I must have it.

You don't understand. It's a matter of life & death for me. The Christian
life cannot be lived with good substitutes. And all of the above activities
become good substitutes for the best. Granted, all of the above religious
practices can be good for the soul. But who wants the good when we can have
the best?! Why live under the shadow when the Real is nearby? There is no
substitute for the manifested presence of God.

Too often the good becomes the enemy of the best. It gets in the way of His
presence.

David, a man after God's own heart, perhaps said it best:

"Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from
e." --Psalms 51:11

I hear David's heart. "Lord, you can take anything you want away from us but
don't take away your presence! We can live without most anything, but not
without your Manifested Presence." David was a desperate man and so am I.

I like the way Tommy Tenney put it:

".If you ever have an encounter with the manifest presence of God, it will
ruin church for you. From then on, you put up with church. What you really
want is, 'Come on, God.' Man-centered sermons and songs will make you sick.
Going through the motions will just drive you nut
--The God Catchers, p.24

My sentiments exactly.

Let's cut the chase. Here's what I'm getting at. Tommy Tenney in his
marvelous book "The God Chasers" describes a scene in which the manifested
presence overtook all of the above religious activities-as well as the
saints. Though the passage is a bit lengthy, it's well worth our reading.

".Ironically," says Tenney, "as a minister I was suffering from the same
hunger pangs as the people who had never met Jesus before! I just wasn't
content to know about Jesus anymore. You can know all about presidents,
royalties, and celebrities;.that doesn't mean you know them..
.It's simply not enough to know about God. We have churches filled with
people who can win Bible trivia contests but who don't know Him.
.I returned home after speaking at my friend's church in Texas. The
following Wednesday, as I was standing in the kitchen, the pastor called
again. He said, "Tommy, we've been friends for years now. And I don't know
that I've ever asked anybody to come back for a second Sunday in a row.but
would you come back here next Sunday too?" I agreed. We could tell that
God was up to something.
.This second Sunday was even more intense. No one wanted to leave the
building after Sunday night service.
"What should we do?" my pastor friend asked.
"We should have a prayer meeting on Monday night," I said, "with no other
agenda. Let's gauge the hunger of the people and see what's happening."
Four hundred people showed up that Monday for the prayer meeting, and all we
did was seek the face of God.

I went back home and by Wednesday the pastor was on the phone again, saying,
"Tommy, can you come back again for Sunday?" I heard past his words and
listened to his heart. He really was not interested in "me" coming back.
What he and I both wanted was God.
.This body of believers in Houston had two scheduled services on Sundays.
The first morning service started at 8:30, and the second one followed and
began at 11.
When I returned for the third weekend, while in the hotel, I sensed a heavy
anointing of some kind, a brooding of the Spirit, and I literally wept and
trembled.
The following morning, we walked into the building for the 8:30 Sunday
service expecting to see the usual early morning first service "sleepy"
crowd with their low-key worship. As I walked in to sit down in the front
row that morning, the presence of God was already in that place so heavily
that the air was "thick." You could barely breathe.
The musicians were clearly struggling to continue their ministry; their
tears got in the way. Music became more difficult to play. Finally, the
presence of God hovered so strongly that they couldn't sing or play any
longer. The worship leader crumpled in sobs behind the keyboard.
.So I spoke to my wife, Jeannie. "You should go continue to lead us to
Him." Jeannie has an anointing to lead people into the presence of God as a
worshiper and intercessor. She quietly moved to the front and continued to
facilitate the worship and ministry to the Lord. It wasn't anything fancy;
it was just simple. That was the only appropriate response in that moment.
The atmosphere reminded me of the passage in Isaiah 6; something I'd read
about, and even dared dream I might experience myself. In this passage the
glory of the Lord filled the temple. I'd never understood what it meant for
the glory of the Lord to fill a place. I had sensed God come in places, I
had sensed Him come by, but this time in Houston, even after there was all
of God that I thought was available in the building, more of His presence
literally packed itself into the room. It's like the bridal train of a
bride that, after she has personally entered the building, her bridal train
continues to enter the building after her. God was there; of that there was
no doubt. But more of Him kept coming in the place until, as in Isaiah, it
literally filled the building. At times the air was so rarefied that it
became almost unbreathable. Oxygen came in short gasps, seemingly. Muffled
sobs broke through the room. In the midst of this, the pastor turned to me
and asked me a question.

"Tommy, are you ready to take the service?"
"Pastor, I'm just about half-afraid to step up there, because I sense that
God is about to do something."

Tears were streaming down my face when I said that. I wasn't afraid that
God was going to strike me down, or that something bad was going to happen.
I just didn't want to interfere and grieve the precious presence that was
filling up that room!.
.My friend is not a man give to any kind of outward demonstration; he is
essentially a man of "even" emotions. But when he got up to walk to the
platform, he appeared visibly shaky. At this point I so sensed something
was about to happen, that I walked all the way from the front row to the
back of the room to stand by the sound booth. I knew God was going to do
something; I just didn't know where. I was on the front row, and it could
happen behind me or to the side of me. I was so desperate to catch Him that
I got up and publicly walked back to the sound booth as the pastor walked up
to the pulpit to speak, so I could see whatever happened. I wasn't even
sure that it was going to happen on the platform, but I knew something was
going to happen. "God, I want to be able to see whatever it is You are
about to do."
My pastor friend stepped up to the clear pulpit in the center of the
platform, opened the Bible, and quietly read the griping passage from Second
Chronicles 7:14:

If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves and pray,
and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from
heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Then he closed his Bible, gripped the edges of the pulpit with trembling
hands, and said, "The word of the Lord to us is to stop seeking His benefits
and seek Him. We are not to seek His hands any longer, but seek His face."
In that instant, I heard what sounded like a thunderclap echo through the
building, and the pastor was literally picked up and thrown backward about
ten feet, effectively separating him from the pulpit. When he went
backward, the pulpit fell forward. The beautiful flower arrangement
positioned in front of it fell to the ground, but by the time the pulpit hit
the ground, it was already in two pieces. It had split into two pieces
almost as if lightning had hit it! At that instant the tangible terror of
the presence of God filled that room.
I quickly stepped to the microphone from the back of the room and said, "In
case you aren't aware of it, God has just moved into this place. The pastor
is fine. [It was two and a half-hours before he could even get up,
though-and even then the ushers had to carry him. Only his hand trembled
slightly to give proof of life.] He's going to be fine."
While all of this happened, the ushers quickly ran to the front to check on
the pastor and to pick up the two pieces of the split pulpit. No one really
paid much attention to the split pulpit; we were too occupied with the torn
heavenlies. The presence of God had hit that place like some kind of bomb.
People began to weep and to wail. I said, "If you're not where you need to
be, this is a good time to get right with God. I've never seen such an
altar call. It was pure pandemonium. People shoved one another out of the
way. They wouldn't wait for the aisles to clear; they climbed over pews,
businessmen tore their ties off, and they were literally stacked on top of
one another, in the most horribly harmonious sound of repentance you ever
heard. Just the thought of it still sends chills down my back. When I gave
the altar call then for the 8:30 am service, I had no idea that it would be
but the first of seven altar calls that day.
When it was time for the 11:00 service to begin, nobody had left the
building. The people were still on their faces and, even though there was
hardly any music being played at this point, worship was rampant and
uninhibited. Grown men were ballet dancing; little children were weeping in
repentance. People were on their faces, on their feet, on their knees, but
mostly in His presence. There was so much of the presence and the power of
God there that people began to feel an urgent need to be baptized. I
watched people walk through the doors of repentance, and one after another
experienced the glory and the presence of God as He came near. Then they
wanted baptized, and I was in a quandary about what to do. The pastor was
still unavailable on the floor. Prominent people walked up to me and
stated, "I've got to be baptized. Somebody tell me what to do." They
joined with the parade of the unsaved, who were now saved, provoked purely
by encountering the presence of God. There was no sermon and no real soTwo
and a half hours had passed, and since the pastor had only managed to wiggle
one finger at that point to call the elders to him, the ushers had carried
him to his office. Meanwhile, all these people were asking me (or anyone
else they could find) if they could be baptized. As a visiting minister at
the church, I didn't want to assume the authority to tell anyone to baptize
these folks, so I sent people back to the pastor's office to see if he would
authorize the water baptisms.
I gave one altar call after another, and hundreds of people were coming
forward. As more and more people came to me asking about water baptism, I
noticed that no one I had sent to the pastor's office had returned. Finally
I sent a senior assistant pastor back there and told him, "Please find out
what Pastor wants to do about the water baptisms-nobody has come back to
tell me yet." The man stuck his head in the pastor's office, and to his
shock he saw the pastor still lying before the Lord, and everyone I had sent
there was sprawled on the floor too, just weeping and repenting before God.
He hurried back to tell me what he had seen and added, "I'll go ask him, but
if I go in that office I may not be back either."
I shrugged my shoulders and agreed with the associate pastor, "I guess it's
all right to baptize them." So we began to baptize people as a physical
sign of their repentance before the Lord, and we ended up baptizing people
for hours. More and more people kept pouring in, and since the people from
the early service were still there, there were cars parked everywhere
outside the church building. A big open-air ball field next to the building
was filled with cars parked every which way.
As people drove onto the parking lot, they sensed the presence of God so
strongly that some began to weep uncontrollably. They just found themselves
driving up onto the parking lot or into the grass not knowing what was going
on. Some started to get out of t heir cars and barely managed to stagger
across the parking lot. Some came inside the building only to fall to the
floor just inside the doors. The hard-pressed ushers had to literally pull
the helpless people away from the doors and stack them up along the walls of
the hallways to clear the entrance. Others managed to make it part way down
the hallways, and some made it to the foyer before they fell on their faces
in repentance.
Some actually made it inside the auditorium, but most of them didn't bother
to find seats. They just made for the altar. No matter what they did or
how far they made it, it wasn't long before they began to weep and repent.
As I said, there wasn't any preaching. There wasn't even any music part of
the time. Primarily one thing happened that day: The presence of God
showed up.
--The God Chasers, pp. 2-10

That's what I mean!

I don't know about you but I'm moved-deeply moved--by the above account.


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