Historically the great mystics of the church have explored the different realms of encounter with God and have penned out a general picture of what it looks like to experience fellowship with God. To some there seemed to be four levels of prayer, or four stages we go through when coming into God’s manifest glory.

Recollection– This level of prayer is a casting off of burdens, distracting thoughts, and prayer requests. This is the unloading stage, everything that you need to give to the Lord, confess, and request is taken care of in this place. Unfortunately many stop here: they unload their burdens, blurt out their prayer list, and once they feel some relief they take off. But the Holy Spirit has so much more for us if we would simply wait and listen for His presence and voice. We should cast our burdens upon Him so that we can experience the heavy weight of His manifest glory. Many many christians only engage in this realm of prayer; always unloading, requesting, asking, pleading, but never move beyond the prayer list into the realm of delighting, feasting, drinking, enjoying, and basking in the presence of God.

Meditation– If we make it past the first level we will enter this next stage of prayer called meditation. In this place you are just beginning to enter into a deeper place of God’s presence. You may start to receive visions, and or revelation. This is more of a revelatory realm, you receive insight and there is a certain level of God’s presence to it all but there are deeper places as you linger in His presence and allow His glory to fully overtake you. Don’t get stuck in this stage where you are always getting a new word, or seeing vision after vision but you do not linger in His presence and move into deeper depths of glory. If you get a vision or revelation, write it down for later, and then once again turn your mind and heart to embrace His presence, allow Him to fill you more. This will make way for the third level of prayer.

Union- This third level of prayer is a realm of God’s presence that consumes you. You may feel very intoxicated, extremely light, very heavy with a thick blanket of God’s glory, or you may even have electricity pulsating through your body. There is no strict science to this, you may feel combinations of the many manifestations of His presence. Usually you can still function to a certain degree. You may be able to still walk, but with great difficulty, or speak, yet with slurred words. You have entered into the living reality of the scripture, “Delight yourselves in the Lord.” (Psalms 37:4) This is a place of drinking deep of His love.

Ecstasy– The last stage of prayer is called ecstasy, this is union amplified. In this stage you are completely overtaken by the Holy Spirit. You cannot walk, you cannot talk, you are plastered to the floor under a flood of God’s glory and love. You may feel like you’re going to die from over-joy! You become so full of the Holy Spirit you may feel like you’re going to explode. Imagine a volcano of glory erupting inside of you, or being swept up in a hurricane of bliss, not that these analogies even come close to the intensity of encountering the all-consuming God. He will always be much more than we can ever fathom.

This word ecstasy actually comes from the greek word ekstasis meaning amazement, or displacement of the mind, which is translated in the bible as trance. For example,

“And it came to pass, that, when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance(ekstasis).” (Acts 22:17)

When you fall into an ecstasy (trance) your mind is thrown out of the reality of this world and into the realm of the Spirit. Your total consciousness becomes absorbed into presence of God almighty. In a trance your mind is drawn away from all surrounding objects and your attention is locked into the face of Christ alone. Divine ecstasy in a nutshell is to be completely taken over and overwhelmed by the Spirit of God.

There is such a glory in this place that infuses and overwhelms your senses to the nth degree. This level of encounter can bring such a radical change to your character. In this place you may even receive instant infusions of virtue, meaning that you may have struggled with a sin for years, but in the glory, you’re suddenly injected with the character of Christ, and the sin you have so battled with burns up like paper in the furnace of His love.

We were created for ecstasy, and the only place we’ll find it is in the burning heart of God’s presence. This is the cry of humanity, we are aching for the bliss that Adam gave up when he sinned, but the veil has been ripped in two and now mankind has been given access through the broken body of Christ Jesus to enter into the eternal realms of glory that we were created to explore and enjoy.

The Temple

These levels of prayer can also be compared to the old testament example of the temple. It was comprised of three courts: the outer, the inner, and the holy of holies. The holiest place was where God’s glory rested on the ark of the covenant. It was the glory realm. Tragically there was a thick veil that separated the Isrealites from His presence. Only the high priest once a year could enter and atone for the sins of the people. But now under the new covenant the veil has been torn, and we are all kings and priests! We have been given access to what was once denied mankind. We have been brought into oneness with the God of the universe!

These three courts are also symbolic of the spirit, soul, and body. We are the temple, (see 1 Corinthians 6:19) and we too have three courts. The body being the outer, the soul being the inner, and the holy place being our spirit-man where the very glory of God resides. As we begin to move from the outer court of the flesh into the inner-awareness of the spirit, we awaken to the glory of God within. His Spirit begins flooding out of our spirit man and filling both soul and body.

“Having therefore boldness to enter into the holiest place by the blood of Jesus. By a new and living way, which He has consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.” (Hebrews 10:19-20)