The Strategy of the Inner Room..
I highly value passionately for God. Yet I often observe believers who are excited about the possibility of being used by God but who have no strategy attached to their passion. As a leader, I see them frequently. They remind me of my son when I first taught him to play Yahtzee.
If you've never played Yahtzee, it's a simple game with five dice in a cup. With each turn of three dice rolls, you throw all or some of your dice, trying to achieve a good combination of numbers; different combinations mean different scores. While luck plays a big role in Yahtzee, strategy makes a difference. The roll called Yahtzee is worth the most points, but it's the hardest combination to get.
On every turn, Lake announced that he would roll for a Yahtzee. Turn after turn went by, and he never rolled a Yahtzee. Several times I tried to explain the strategy of the game. He seemed to listen intently to what I was saying, but when his turn came again, he just rolled all his dice and yelled "Yahtzee!"
Lake never won a game of Yahtzee. He had no strategy whatsoever for the game, but he did have lots of passion.
In the same way, I believe many Christians get excited about the idea of being used by God to change the world. They walk around with passion, yelling "Revival!" I love the passion to change the world, but we're not going to change anything by yelling "Yahtzee!" every time. We need a strategy attached to our passion.
The most strategic thing you can do with your life is to plant it in the secret place with God. We are not called simply to work for God; we are called to love God with everything within us. Jesus made this clear when He addressed Martha and told her that Mary was doing the more important thing (see Luke 10:42).
If you want God to use your life, the most practical, strategic thing you can do is to establish it in the inner room of prayer. Allow the Lord to meet you in your secret place and develop your roots in hiding. It's important to have a history with the Lord that is hidden, that no one else knows about.
There are certain things God wants to release to you that He will only give you in the secret place. You can look in other places for them, but you won't find them. I recently read about a critically endangered bat on Silhouette Island, part of the Seychelles Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. These bats live nowhere else in the world.
If you had a desire to see one, you could travel across Africa, look all over North and South America, and search all of Europe, but you wouldn't find a Seychelles sheath-tailed bat. You won't even find it on the other islands of the Seychelles. No matter how hard you look, you will only find this bat in one place: Silhouette Island.
It's the same with finding certain things in God. There is an anointing that is found only in one place. You can go to as may conferences as you want, but you will not find it there.
God reserves certain things to be found only in the secret place alone with Him. If you want to receive them, you have to separate yourself to the inner room of prayer.
Banning Liebscher