I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that I am crawling my way through The Healing Presence by Leanne Payne. I read it with my Bible open on one side and my journal on the other, and a pen ready for underlining or commenting (mostly underlining!). Today I simply want to share a great quote from this book and what I prayed after reading it. The unitalicized words in parentheses are my notes.
“As we practice the Presence of Christ (clearly the entire book is about this topic; in a pithy nutshell, Payne means we step into the new life Christ has made ready for us AND we invite Him into ourselves), we make every thought ‘our prisoner, captured to be brought into obedience to Christ.’ Our entire being is thus consecrated to God, wholly committed, given over to Him. We become channels of His life; we carry the cross. (Payne’s definition of ‘carrying the cross’ is included in this sentence; it is ‘being a channel of Christ’s life to others.’)
This life manifests itself as both fruit and gift of the Spirit. As fruit of the Spirit, the character and the nature of Jesus is shown–kindness, faith, humility, love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, discipline. As the gifts of the Holy Spirit, this life manifests itself as the power to say, to do, and to know. Such are the tools with which we work the works of Christ. The fruits are the way of love, that most excellent way in which all the gifts are to operate.”
Father, this is the life I want to live, filled with the Spirit’s fruit–the very character of Jesus–and carried out in the Spirit’s power. I cannot do it on my own–I confess I too often try. Christ promised the Spirit would abide with us forever and said we would know and recognize this Spirit, for the Spirit will live with us and in us. I want to know and recognize the Spirit more and more–beginning right this very moment. Thank You.
Jen Underwood 
Leanne Payne once touched me on the chest with her fingertips – when we nearly collided in a corridor on opposite sides of an inter-communicating door simultaneously – the intensity of the energies of that immediate and spontaneous impartation through that merest touch of her fingertips was like a thermo-nuclear detonation – it nearly threw me off my feet – only His Word kept me on my feet in that moment (Job 4:4 (Moffatt Translation) Your Word has kept us on our feet) – but she had just come from her private devotions of practising His Real Presence – her Long Obedience and her act of pressing further into His Real Presence – it was only afterwards that I realised what exactly she had “uploaded” directly into the noetic-communicative faculties of my Human Spirit….and what I would do with it….it was an immense real energetic disruptive pneumatological transference in the Holy Spirit (she said: “I have Another living within me” – I know I came into direct contact with Him)….I met Clay McLean later and I tried to describe it but it caused a language emergency.