Our First Priority

by Nancy Taylor Tate

“As the living Father has sent Me, and I live through the Father, so he who partakes of Me, even he shall live by Me” John 6:57 MKJV.

Establishing and maintaining a close personal relationship with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ should be central to our spiritual life and ministry. We may be satisfied that we’re pursuing a deeper understanding of God’s Word, but it is essential that we go beyond even this level of spiritual desire. We must recognize that the only foundation upon which our knowledge of the Word can stand is the personal relationship we maintain with the Lord.

The Lord greatly desires to make Himself known to us. Most certainly, we are to seek after His anointing and the operation of spiritual gifts in our ministries. However, before there can be a quality impartation of spirit and life to others, there must first be developed within us a quality of spirit that can only come from our having a personal knowledge of the Lord, through our own personal relationship with Him.

In learning to live in His presence and spending quality time alone with Him, we are increasingly filled with spirit and life. From that deposit within, a spiritual impartation beyond our words will flow as we minister to others.

Our willingness to spend extended times of waiting in His presence often comes from a “dissatisfied satisfaction.” We are to be satisfied with all that we have of the Lord and His workings in our lives, but we must become dissatisfied, knowing that there is much more to be gained. There is to be a genuine fervor in our seeking as we hunger after an increased inward, personal knowledge of Him.

As we come in anticipation and wait in His presence, He will begin to reveal to us the obstacles which hinder our relationship to Him and impart to us the grace to deal with them. It is only the goodness of the Lord and His patience toward us that brings us to repentance, calling us to holiness—a life consecrated to Him.

As we continue setting apart time to linger in His presence and grow in this consecrated walk, the reflection of the glory which comes from our being in His presence will begin to change us into His image. Even as Moses reflected His glory, we need this reflection of His glory in our lives.

I saw this exemplified when I was privileged to be in the presence of some who maintained deep relationships with the Lord. I was also able to sit under some excellent teaching ministries.

Ultimately, my experiences led me to make a very important decision: I determined my first priority would be to seek a closer personal relationship with the Lord, rather than seeking after ministry, gifts, or even revelation. I came to understand that as I spend quality time in the presence of God Himself, I will receive everything else that I have need of to fulfill His call—the anointing and quality of spirit from which ministry, gifts, and revelation flow.

My decision came from a life-changing instance. I had attended a meeting in which the speaker gave an excellent word. Though he had an anointing and was reflecting light from his life, there was something missing.

As I left, I asked, “Lord, what is wrong? He was a great speaker, with a good word.” Then the Lord brought something to my mind that John Wright Follette had said: “There is a difference between having truth itself deposited within our heart and made a part of our life, and simply reflecting truth that has come from another person or ministry.”

I remembered another minister I was privileged to hear just a few weeks prior, the very one through whom the speaker I’d just heard had received his ministry. There was something in this minister’s life and ministry that made me just want to sit by her. I did not care whether she talked to me or not; there was such a presence of God in her, I just wanted to be near her. There was “a little open heaven” right over her head, and I felt that if only I could get close enough, I would be under it also.

Then the Lord showed me that what the speaker had ministered was good; but though there was a reflection of truth coming from his life, the truth Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, had not been deposited within his life in the same way that it had been in the other minister’s life.

Though very gifted and a good speaker, there was nothing that caused me to desire to linger in that speaker’s presence. Suddenly my eyes opened, and I understood what the Lord was showing me.

It is His presencing from within that brings a sense of an open heaven and a deposit in our lives that imparts spirit and life to others. Just as the minister had cultivated that in her life, we too, can spend time in communion with the Lord. Our lives, like hers, can be marked by His presence as we establish and maintain a close relationship with the Lord.

As we are blessed by other ministries and their teachings, we can make a personal decision: Do we simply want to reflect the light that is being reflected to us? Or do we also want to spend quality time in the presence of the Lord Himself, growing in relationship, that there might be a spiritual deposit within from which revelation and ministry will flow?

I greatly desired the relationship. Though it was many years ago, I remember it like it was yesterday, and my decision to make my personal relationship with the Lord my first priority has never wavered.

Each of us needs to receive a revelation of the relationship that is available to us and the call to spend quality time alone with the Lord, that His glory might be reflected in our lives.

We cannot realize all that is attainable until we become willing to go after it.

“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. 

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” 1 Corinthians 2:9-12.

We are to seek God first and foremost for Himself. He is the foundation of everything that we need. We are to focus our seeking upon the Giver rather than upon the gift; upon the Imparter rather than upon the impartation.

The Lord desires to do a total work within each of us. He desires to bring forth the “fruit of the Spirit” in us. As the spiritual gifts which we have received develop, there is also to come forth a greater impartation through their functioning.

Our entire lives are to become a testimony to Him, not just through our words, but through His presence in us. This will be the result of the “habitation of God” being established within our being.

There is a place by God Himself that has been prepared for those who will turn aside to wait upon Him. The Lord is looking for a people who are willing to set aside quality time to come apart to commune with Him, that He might fellowship with them—a people who will hear His call for holiness and live a consecrated life.

Are we willing to come apart and seek the Lord for Himself? There is a little chorus that I love to sing:

“For I was born to be Thy dwelling place,
A home for the presence of the Lord;
So let my life now be separated Lord to Thee,
That I might be what I was born to be.”

What is your first priority?