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To "soak" in God’s presence is to rest in his love rather than to "strive" in prayer. It is to sit or lay in his presence, in the context of worship, being still and listening to him.
I heard an interesting explanation of what soaking is a while back. If you did a word study in Classical Greek you would find the Greek words bapto, meaning to dip, and baptidzo, meaning to immerse. A particular study used the illustration of pickling.
The recipe called for the raw fruit to be dipped in boiling water to sterilize the cucumber, using the word bapto which means "to dip in and out quickly." Then it called for the cucumber to be immersed, which is the word baptidzo, and soaked in the brine and the pickling solution for several weeks. What happens during this soaking time is that the marinade or the pickling solution soaks deep into the flesh of the cucumber until it takes on the flavour of the pickling solution so that it no longer tastes like a raw cucumber.
This is what we mean by soaking. May you be so marinated in the presence of the Holy Spirit, soaking in the River of God, that you no longer "taste" like your old, raw nature any longer, but you have taken on the flavour of the Holy Spirit. "Pickle us, Lord, in the marinade of the Holy Spirit. Soak us in your wonderful presence until we become more and more like You."
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