What does it mean to intentionally “dwell” in God’s presence? In this episode, Gina has a conversation with Teea Martin and Priscilla Conner. Listen as they share the story of gathering women in Teea’s home to intentionally be in God’s presence, the significance of this gathering and the surprising places it led. What could Jesus be inviting you into?
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Listen below to follow along starting at 20:14
Unity through a Single Focus
Teea:
Well and there was an interesting connection that happened that I couldn’t have planned or prepared or expected. When you go vertical with the Lord and you’re in a room with other people that are going vertical, you go to this holy space, there was like a supernatural connection between us that bonded us.
There was a bond with that group of women. We are so close yet we’re not in each other’s everyday lives. I mean, many of us have become good friends and we see each other and overlap of course now. But we know there was something so special.
So at the end of the summer we did one full retreat day where I invited four of my spiritual mamas, my mentors, my sweetest, like they’re the best, most wise women in the entire world. They came and just loved on us, and we just did just Q&A and pondered things with them and had this amazing time of prayer. At the end, one of the questions that the Lord had brought to us was, “How are you going to multiply what I’ve given you during this time?”
I remember you telling me, you sat down with your family and you gave some of these questions, which we should talk about what those were too. You did some of these questions with your husband and the girls and just pondered them with each other. Did you do it with some friends too?
Priscilla:
Every week after we met and got back to my friends who do know my husband and kids. But I would go back to them and be like, “This is so different and so good and fulfilling.” It’s hard to explain to somebody who’s not going through it. Right at the end I would share your prompts with them and then also my husband and girls would sit down and we would just take time as a family.
Again not proximity, but presence with the Lord. Just teaching my now eight and 11 year olds how to do this. That the Lord is real and alive and wants to have a relationship with you. You can hear from the Lord. So that’s been fun.
Teea:
I’ll rabbit trail on that for just a second during our quiet time with the boys. So I’ve got three boys and we homeschool. During our time together, I don’t know when this was, a couple months ago I think, I sent to our group a picture of what they wrote. I had prompted them with a question, “Lord, what do you think of me?”
I prepped them the same way I did the girls, which is simply, “You’re going to ask the Lord this question. You’re not journaling. Like what do I think the Lord thinks of me? You’re asking the Lord the question, and you’re going to just write down any thoughts that cross your mind. If you have no thoughts, write down ‘I don’t know what to say, or I hear a bird chirping, or I am cold, or I have an itch.’”
All of a sudden the Holy Spirit just takes over your pen. You get words out and then when you go back, you look at it and you can so easily discern what was from the Lord and what wasn’t. My six year old wrote down, “I love you Arthur, and I forgive your sins.” And I was like, “Man, if that is not the best thing to hear from your father.” I love you and I forgive you. If that’s the only thing that he can take from sitting with the Lord, those are the two biggest parts.
Navigating Discernment
Gina:
You mentioned discernment, and I think that’s the beautiful thing. I think for some that’s a little scary. I don’t know if I trust all the thoughts that I have. Or what if He says something scary or what if He says something painful, or what if he says something hurtful? So that verse “Rejoice, always, pray without ceasing. Give thanks. Do not despise prophecies. Do not quench the spirit, but test all things.”
So that testing is, does this line up with God’s character, with what He has said about Himself and what He said about me? So when you do that, that’s the proving ground, right? That’s the discernment piece that you can go, “Wow, this lines up with who God is. This lines up with His character. This lines up with the truth, and what I know to be true, and this is affirming and my Spirit resonates.”
Maybe there is something that is convicting, but His voice is never condemnation. Part of listening to hear Him, is learning to hear His voice. My sheep will hear My voice. That familiarity of “This is my Father’s voice. Oh, here’s another familiar voice, but that’s not my Father.”
Because there are familiar voices, the familiar spirits, those things that prey on our insecurities, on the strongholds and high things that have exalted themselves against the knowledge of God. So when you’re in that place of practicing, you start to learn very quickly whose voice is speaking.
It’s like a mom, you could be in Disneyland, your kid yells, screams, or cries, and you’re like, “that’s my kid.” Like there could be a sea, but you know, that’s your kid. It’s that same kind of thing. So that’s such a beautiful piece because I do think for some it’s intimidating, and a little bit of a scary prospect.
Then the other thing too that I love, I feel like I’ve just been fascinated lately about God’s presence. I’m working with a church right now, and they are going through transition. The lead pastor left, and just moved out of state, and they’re looking for a pastor and they are really hungry for what the Lord has next.
They are really hungry for God to be their king. Not just for another man to be their king, but really to be yielded in dependence. So they really felt like the Lord said this is about prayer and presence, not strategy and smarts, which is really powerful. It’s easy to say that, but then how do you actually live that out?
Something that has struck me is that I think we can reduce God’s presence to a feeling, like, “Oh, worship is great. I felt God’s presence. I just want to encounter His presence emotionally.” And that’s great and significant, but it’s so much more multidimensional than that. God’s presence then requires something of us.
Now what do I do with that? What do I do with the revelation that I’m receiving? What do I do with the words that He’s saying? It requires a level of trust, and then really a level of obedience to then go to my family and go, “You know what? I’m not going to keep this for myself. I actually want to share this, and I want to risk that awkward moment at the table where my kids are looking at me like ‘what’?”
That risk is another beautiful place for the Lord to meet us, because that obedience, it’s like the woman at the well having a conversation with Jesus, and then just running to the town and the whole town comes to know Him, because of her willingness to make a fool of herself and declare the things that He spoke to her. It’s really powerful.
What is God’s Truth?
Priscilla:
A couple things that I was thinking about while you were talking, Gina, one of the exercises Teea had us go through, was to write down on one side of the paper a lie that is deep seated, that you have carried with you for a while. You know that it’s a lie, and you are embarrassed to admit it to somebody else, and you’ve battled it. So write that down. Then we took time to counteract that with: “What is God’s truth?”
I was thinking about when I go back, and I look at my notes from the times that I have spent time with the Lord, and just journaled listening to what He’s downloading to me, just journaled writing, writing, writing. I go back and look at those sometimes I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t remember this.” And that’s proof. If you need the proof, that’s the proof.
There’s a lot that I go back and look at that I don’t remember. The Holy Spirit goosebump moment is definitely gone. I’m looking at his notes like, “Oh, what is this? What was I even thinking about?” And it has caused me to just really dive back in and think about what He is trying to teach me through it. That exercise in particular, I go back to those notes, and because those lies are something I battle still.
Reading what God said brings me such incredible peace. I know that’s true. I know that was the Lord counteracting that lie for me. That is what I need to reprogram in my brain. So that has been a very powerful thing for me to go back to, and take with me.
Gina:
I just love this, because all of these pieces are different things, like bringing in a little bit of inner healing and prayer ministry. It’s organic and it’s being led by the Holy Spirit, not just a program. I’m not knocking that at all, but there’s a time and a place for that. I love how God’s love and pursuit of us is going to meet us, and going to bring us to those things.
Because His desire is for wholeness. Jesus died to reconcile us to Himself. Right. That full reconciliation and redemption, is restoration to original design, to original relationship, to who we were made to be, to our identity, and all that stuff. I think sometimes there’s that understanding of healing. We identify the lie, and we take authority, and we renounce it, and then we replace it.
That’s great at that moment. But then you need to walk out your freedom. You need to learn how to walk out your healing. That’s where I think oftentimes the enemy comes and trips us up again, or tries to pull us back, because it’s just easy once we get out of that moment of revelation to forget.
We’re a forgetful people. Or those familiar spirits, those patterns, those accusations, those lies, have become so familia, that it’s a comfort zone there. So it’s easy to fall back. So, like you’re saying Priscilla, to have that moment and then have that journaling and have that record. That is your altar of remembrance, right?
That’s why I put the altar of remembrance section in the Dwell journals. Because it’s like, “Okay, the Lord is going to meet you here in this time of meditation, in this time with Him. He’s going to speak to you through His Word, through His presence. Then when you come back a week from now, two weeks, about two months from now, He’s going to meet you and He’s going to continue to speak.
Being able to go back and see this is what He said. It’s that altar of remembrance. Now what is He saying? Because His word is alive. It moves, it transforms, it changes. So that allows you to then look and celebrate this journey, and praise Him for His faithfulness, for His love, His covering, and His leading and transforming and sanctifying you in the process.
Check out the rest of this conversation: Creating Corporate Intentionality, & The Power of Intentionality
Check out the Dwell Meditations
