Our creator is an awesome God. His majestic glory can be thrilling, awe-inducing, terrifying, or even overwhelming.
We saw in the previous two posts that God’s holiness means he is incomparable and infinitely superior to us in every imaginable way. Now we will see that the meaning of God’s holiness is that his majestic glory is awe-inducing. Depending on several factors, his majestic glory can be thrilling, awe-inducing, terrifying, or even overwhelming.
Awesome God
For example, Paul the apostle stood before one Roman king and described the event on the road to Damascus that changed his life:
“At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.’” (Acts 26:13–15)
So, the manifestation of the glorified Jesus knocked Paul and his companions to the ground. The apostle John had an even stronger reaction:
Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white like wool, as white as snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not.” Revelation 1:12–18
Three reasons for differing reactions to God’s majesty
Several factors determine what effect God’s holiness has on a human.
1. A person’s level of holiness or profaneness. Under the Old Covenant, priests could come into the presence of God in the temple because they were consecrated to God in an elaborate ceremony requiring animal sacrifice, the shedding of blood, and the sprinkling of that blood on the priest and on the altar. The priests were required to bathe in holy water and wear special holy garments and be anointed with holy oil. They had to follow elaborate rules about who they could be around and what they could eat. God restricted the holy places of the temple to the priests, while the masses could enter only the outer courtyard.
2. Mortality. Angels and other holy, heavenly beings are made for God’s presence, so they can see God’s glory and live to enjoy it. Humans, on the other hand, in our fallen state, can handle only so much of God’s glory, unless he gives special grace, such as Moses had on top of Mount Sinai in the cloud of glory when he received the 10 Commandments. Somehow he did not die; he saw God’s glory partially but not his face; and God gave him special grace to experience such majesty and live.
First Corinthians 15:50 says “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” God told Moses, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live” (Exodus 33:20).
When God’s full majesty meets our fallen condition, it is like an electric line designed to carry 120 volts of electricity that suddenly gets a surge of 1,000,000 volts. You get a short-circuit, a meltdown, an electrical fire.
3. How much God unveils his glory. God reveals more or less of his majesty in different situations. For example, the human body of Jesus usually concealed his glory, but on the Mount of Transfiguration Jesus unveiled more of his majesty, as “his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light” (Matthew 17:2).
So, depending on the interplay of these three factors, God’s manifest glory can be the most wonderful, exciting, thrilling experience of a lifetime, or it causes a person to be overwhelmed with fear even to the point of passing out. Yes, God is holy.
Do you want this?
This may not sound appealing. But Moses knew better. Aside from Jesus, Moses experienced God’s awe-inducing, majestic glory more than any other human. He saw God in the burning bush. He conversed with God in the cloud of glory atop Mt. Sinai for 40 days. He consulted with God regularly in the Tent of Meeting, and when he would leave the tent he had to cover his face with a veil because his countenance glowed like a light bulb.
Moses enjoyed these experiences so much that on one occasion, after God told him, “You have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name,” Moses asked, “Please show me your glory.” Moses had already seen much of God’s glory, but he knew there was much more.
God answered:
“I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” 21 And the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” (Exodus 33:19–23)
Moses knew God’s holiness. God’s holiness means his majesty is great, even terrifying to mortal sinners, but thrilling and worth pursuing above all when we have the righteousness of Christ making us acceptable to God.
Our ways versus God’s ways
Our ways: Fallen humans generally want God to be out of sight and out of mind. Let him be helpful but someone we can ignore if we choose. If he insists on having our attention, let his glory be like a 60-watt bulb rather than a supernova.
God’s ways: God plans to put on a July 4th fireworks show for our eternal pleasure and worship. His holy majesty is good, wonderful, and truly awesome. He wants to display his holy glory to humans who have been recreated with the capacity to enjoy his holiness continually forever. As Jesus prayed, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory” (John 17:24). Someday God will give you a resurrection body and perfect spirit ideally made to enjoy the presence of God.
In my last post I made the point that one of the greatest gulfs between our ways and God’s ways is in how we feel about holiness. God is perfectly holy and loves holiness, but apart from Christ we are perfectly unholy. Even if we are in Christ, though we are holy in God’s sight we still often are drawn more to what is worldly, profane, and carnal than what is holy.
In other words, God usually has to drag us into holiness. The Scripture “Be holy because I am holy,” sounds more like a threat than an invitation.
For example, given the choice between watching an episode of Saturday Night Live or spending an hour in prayer and worship, many Christians would choose the former. They might discipline themselves to pray instead of watch profane programming, but they would prefer the comedy. Again, given the choice between watching a three-hour football game or hearing three, excellent, one-hour Bible teachings on how to live a holy life, I suspect few American Christians would enthusiastically choose the latter. Why is that?
How to get an appetite for what is truly good and pleasurable
I say all this not to heap guilt on us but rather to bring the problem starkly into the light. We are very different from God on this. We have a problem, and it is not a small problem. It is not just a matter of whether we can clean up our act well enough to be saved. Rather, it is a matter of knowing God.
True Christians will increasingly want to know God and his ways, and as that desire increases we come face to face with the matter of how we learn to love holiness as God does. How we learn to genuinely desire holiness and dislike worldliness. To have new appetites and desires. How we become like the person who learns to truly love eating natural food and has no desire to consume store-bought, packaged foods loaded with artificial ingredients.
The deadening effect of an unholy mindset
You have gotten this far in the article, so there is hope for you! Some checked out at the first mention of the word holiness. You are still reading because you are no longer walking fully in the steps of Esau, who is the prototype of the person who has absolutely no interest in the things of God, whose life revolves exclusively around the things of this world. Therefore Esau is profane, godless, unholy, irreverent, utterly worldly.
Esau comes up in one of the important sections of the New Testament talking about holiness. Hebrews 12:14–16 says, “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.”
Note the words “unholy like Esau.” Other translations say “godless like Esau.” His defining act was to sell his most valuable asset, his invisible rights as the firstborn son, to his brother. This story is so important to our subject, let’s read it:
When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents. Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. And Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted!” (Therefore his name was called Edom.) Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright now.” Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” Jacob said, “Swear to me now.” So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright. (Genesis 25:27–34)
Note that Esau didn’t seem to do anything terrible here. He didn’t kill anyone, commit sexual immorality, steal anything, bow down to a statue. Hunting animals is not wrong. Esau was simply hungry, ravenously hungry. Nothing wrong with that. But he was also simply a fool, which means he made a choice against his best interest. He did not recognize the invisible things that are most valuable in life. The rest of his life confirmed this, for he showed zero interest in knowing God.
In other words, he was God-less. His god was the world, and thus the world became a profane thing to him. Everything becomes profane to the godless person. And a profane life is an increasingly deadening existence.
Holiness understood
Holiness begins with faith in Christ, and then it increasingly becomes part of our mind, desires, appetites, and actions as we see everything in life in its relationship to God. Our holiness grows as we value things as God values them. As we worship and give thanks to God for every good thing in this world. As we approve the conduct that God approves and humbly abominate the conduct that God abominates. And as we enjoy doing what Jesus would do.
Holiness is God-centered (rather than rule-centered). Holiness is love. It is pure in motive, unselfish, and humble. Holiness is without guile or deception, but fearlessly holds to the truth. Holiness is beautiful beyond words, good beyond description, desirable above every worldly pleasure. It is true, positive, clean, and lasting. Holiness is satisfying, fulfilling, and pleasing. It is energizing and zealous, burning like a fire. At the same time, it is peaceful, but not bored or apathetic. Holiness loves God and his glory above all.
Holiness is clean, pure pleasure. It is a pleasure far surpassing impure pleasure.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord! In his great love, he shares that with you through Christ.
Our way versus God’s way
Our way: Be worldly because it’s more fun. Worldliness is the good life.
God’s way: Be holy for I am holy. Holiness is the good life.
God requires us to make every effort to learn what he has revealed, and to trust him when he keeps secrets.
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” —Deuteronomy 29:29
You have decisions to make, but you’re not sure what to do.
Things are happening in your life and world that don’t make sense.
You want to understand God, his will, and the Bible, but some things are not adding up.
You really want to know
What you can know is a super important and relevant subject because we need knowledge and we all want to know everything. We are all curious. Literally, if we could, we would be like God and know everything about everything.
We want to know how to do everything with perfect skill and success. How to find perfect happiness, relationships, and peace. How everything works.
And how every event in history actually happened.
We want to know.
The details about how the universe and life began. What the future holds.
When our prayers will be answered. Why something bad happened. How long we will have to wait for that job, marriage, child to be conceived, success on the job, visa approval, breakthrough, healing, baptism in the Spirit, promotion, or answer to our question. Or is our wait in vain?
We want to know what every verse in the Bible means. Why God does what he does.
On and on it goes. So many books, so little time. We want to know.
What God wants us to know
Unfortunately, at least from our perspective, God doesn’t want us to know everything. That’s what the opening Scripture above from Deuteronomy says. There are “secret things,” and then there are “things that are revealed.” And Moses says the one who controls that is God.
In fact it all begins with what God is willing to reveal about himself. You need to know two things about God: He hides himself, and he reveals himself. The Bible says:
“Truly, you are a God who hides yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (Isaiah 45:15).
“He who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, he who turns dawn to darkness, and treads the high places of the earth—the LORD God Almighty is his name” (Amos 4:13, NIV).
That means he doesn’t completely hide himself. And he doesn’t completely reveal himself.
At this point there are some things he wants us to know about him and his ways, and so he has revealed those things in the Bible, in nature, in the church, and elsewhere. Otherwise, on our own, we could not know them.
That’s because knowing God is not like studying scientific questions such as how trees grow. No matter how hard we explore, humans cannot know anything about God—literally zero—unless he chooses to reveal it.
But there are other things God has actually chosen to hide. He doesn’t want us to know them now. They are divine secrets. They are mysteries. And no one can uncover what God has hidden.
Mysteries
For example, the two most important things for any human now to know were locked up in a vault called mystery until 2,000 years ago: namely, Jesus and the gospel.
The Bible talks about “God’s mystery, which is Christ” (Colossians 2:2).
And, “the mystery hidden for ages in God” (Ephesians 3:9).
And, “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (Colossians 1:26).
Let’s continue this crucially relevant subject next week. For now, let’s close with these two foundations:
God’s way: He hides, and he reveals.
Our way: We may or may not pay careful attention to what God reveals. Or we may or may not trust God when he hides himself and his purposes. We want to have control over what we can know. We would like to know everything.
Our way: Believe only what we understand. Believe only when we know the future. Trust our own mind and human understanding. God must be and do what we think is reasonable.
“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” —Hebrews 11:6 (ESV)
Believe in God
Have you ever wished that God would make it easier to believe? That he would do for you and everyone else in the world what he did for Saul, as recorded in Acts 9? Give you a vision of Jesus in dazzling light and speak with you telling you what to do? Even perform a miracle?
Before that vision Saul was an ardent unbeliever, an enemy of Christ, but that vision made it nearly impossible not to believe. So if God wants everyone to be saved, if God wants every Christian to trust and obey his Word, why not just do for everyone what he did for Saul?
The Lord requires faith
The answer: Because God loves our faith. And therefore he relates to us in a way that requires faith. He supplies abundant grounds for our faith, but he almost never does anything that makes it impossible not to believe.
For instance, he spectacularly and unmistakably displays his glory in nature, but unbelievers can choose to explain our world with something like the theory of evolution.
He puts into the heart of every human a moral conscience and an awareness of God, but unbelievers can choose to explain that with theories of sociology, psychology, genes, and DNA.
He inspired men to write his Scriptures. The Bible is the most astounding book in the world, a revelation of truth about life and reality that bears the unmistakable stamp of divine authenticity and authority. But unbelievers can choose to avoid God’s Word, and those who do read can choose to harden their hearts to it.
He sent his Son to the world as a man. Jesus taught the truth and performed astounding miracles. He fulfilled Old Testament prophecies. He predicted his death on the cross and resurrection from the tomb. Then God did indeed raise him from the dead, and Jesus appeared to his followers numerous times. They proclaimed that resurrection throughout their world, and many believed, but many more could choose to dismiss the reports and the evidence.
God still does miracles today. Yet unbelievers can always choose to explain them away as something less than evidence of God’s existence.
As God intends
So God gives more than ample reason to believe, but one thing he does not do is show up visibly, audibly, and indisputably in a way that science and all could verify. That is, not since his appearance to Moses and Israel at Mount Sinai and Jesus’s post-resurrection appearance to the disciples. And not more than occasionally to individuals or a small group, as he did with Saul.
That is God’s deliberate way of doing things. He always leaves those who do not want to believe an open back door to escape the truth. And he always gives those willing to believe more than enough reason to believe. (See Romans 1:16–23; John 3:14–21; John 18:37)
He always conducts our relationship with him in a way that requires faith.
Romans 1:17 says, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
So, obviously he must love our faith. Hebrews 11:6 (the Scripture that opened this post) shows he is indeed pleased by our faith and dislikes our unbelief so much that we cannot please him without faith. Jesus always commended people who had faith and chided those who did not believe. He talked about it regularly because it matters so much to him.
Unfortunately, if we had it our way, we would never need faith in God. We would always know what the future holds and have full control of it. And everything God does would make sense to us ahead of time. What faith requires is actually offensive to our pride, to our proud minds. It takes us out of the driver’s seat. It makes us dependent, like children. We won’t understand everything. “Unless you turn and become like children,” said Jesus, “you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).
God’s Ways: He loves our faith and so relates to us in a way that requires us to believe him.
Implications
For all who want to know God and walk and work closely with him, this means five things:
We must never be okay with our own doubt and unbelief. (But we are to be merciful toward others who See Jude 1:22) (See John 20:27; James 1:6–8)
We must choose to believe what the Bible says and resist our Western scientific training that has left a bias in our mind against the supernatural. This is a choice based on who we think is more reliable. (See Luke 1:37; Matthew 22:29; 1 Corinthians 1:17–31; Proverbs 28:26)
We must do the things that strengthen faith. Read and memorize the Bible daily. Attend a church weekly that believes that the Bible is inerrant and that God still does supernatural miracles such as healings. And pray continually. (See Romans 10:17)
We must understand that for all our lives, growing in faith is God’s spiritual curriculum for us as much as growing in love, holiness, and knowledge. Therefore God will allow situations in your life to draw out more faith. So you need to respond to those situations as God intends—with faith in him and his Word. (See Hebrews 12:2)
Question: In the comments area, tell us: What would you add to this list?
You’ll never know God better if you don’t recognize how different he is from you.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” —Isaiah 55:8–9 (ESV)
God’s ways are not our ways. Think about that. Fix it in your mind. Let it sink in deeply because knowing and believing that is critical for anyone who wants to know God and his ways.
God’s ways are not your ways. That is the default human condition according to God.
It is critical to recognize that because most people assume the opposite. People think they know what God is like, so they don’t press in to know more about him. They don’t exert themselves to learn if they have wrong beliefs about him. They are satisfied with what they already believe.
Our default beliefs come from our own reasonings about what we have grown up seeing, hearing, and reading from family, movies and shows and music lyrics, ads, school, friends, religious background, teachers, writers.
These are influences that may or may not be right. But how can we know? There are thousands of various, contradictory beliefs on God and his ways. How can you confirm your beliefs are correct or discover your beliefs are wrong?
I believe that the only authoritative source for knowing God and his ways is the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. I’ll explain why in a future article. But my starting point is the belief that I cannot figure out God and his ways on my own, nor can humanity, and that in love God has revealed the inspired, inerrant words of the Bible so we can know and walk with him.
How to close the gap between your ways and God’s ways
Since the Bible says, as we saw above, that the default human condition is ignorance about God and his ways, how should that shape our pursuit of God?
We should read the Bible daily with an open, curious mind. Regular reading of the Bible is necessary because the influences we experience most tend to shape our thinking most.
We should read the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments, because we need to form our beliefs on everything the Bible says on a subject, not on isolated verses. This is necessary because we can find an isolated phrase in the Bible, take it out of context, and adopt almost any wrong belief or practice.
When we read something that contradicts our beliefs, we should confirm it with the full context of the Bible, and then believe the correct interpretation of the Bible instead of ourselves. For Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” And Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”
We should be humble, teachable, and obedient to God. The uniform testimony of the Bible is that pride and stubbornness lead us astray. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
We should know that God relates to us on his terms, not ours. God is infinitely merciful and kind to reach down to us and meet us where we are, but when we turn to him, he never leaves us as we are, and he never changes. He says, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).
We should know that the more we have been submerged in our world’s way of thinking, and the less we have been exposed to the full message of the Bible, the more foreign and shocking God’s words in the Bible will seem to us. Western culture has veered farther and farther from its Judeo-Christian roots. The verses from Isaiah above are becoming increasingly true. To paraphrase: Your ways are way not my ways.
Some would label this approach to faith fundamentalism, using the word in its pejorative sense. But anyone who believes that a document has divine authority and takes it seriously will be labeled a fundamentalist by those who do not agree.
But this is the only rational approach given what the Bible says and what human experience shows.
Not to take this approach is relativism in its full, pejorative sense. It is putting trust in limited human perspective and experience and even majority opinion, all of which the Bible says are deeply flawed. It is putting our trust in contemporary trends in thinking, which history shows always change and thus cannot be absolutely true and reliable.
Life principle: If you want to grow in your knowledge of God, you begin by recognizing that your ways are not God’s ways.
What does God require?
This post is the beginning of a series on what God requires of us if we are to know him and walk according to his ways. Don’t miss the next post, which is on the necessity of faith.
Let’s conclude with a typically spicy and forthright assessment of the situation from God’s perspective: Proverbs 28:26 says, “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool.”
Your soul has a big appetite. A filling meal is on the table. You can find spiritual satisfaction.
We all know what it’s like for life to crowd out the practice of God’s presence. We get busy. Distractions are everywhere. We face problems and crises.
But God invites us to a better way.
He told Moses, “You shall set the bread of the Presence on the table before me regularly” (Exodus 25:30).
This was a regulation for the Tabernacle, the transportable tent where Israel worshiped during their desert wanderings. It became the model for the permanent Temple.
So, what does this have to do with practicing God’s presence? The Temple is a metaphor for body and soul. First Corinthians 6:19 says to Christians, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?”
The bread of the presence
The temple had three sections: the courtyard, the holy place, and the most holy place.
The most holy place, containing the ark of the covenant, had the very presence of God. This corresponds to God’s presence in you that never leaves. He has united with you, and that’s that. You can’t practice it; he’s there.
The area outside the most holy place was the holy place and had three pieces of furniture: a table for burning incense, a lampstand, and a table for the Bread of the Presence.
The priests put twelve fresh loaves of bread on that table weekly to replace the stale bread of the previous week. The fresh bread of God’s presence was not in the holy place unless the priest did something.
So it is with us. Normally we need to attend to God’s presence in order to experience it. We can’t rely on old bread. We need to keep presenting fresh bread through prayer, worship, turning our thoughts to God, and so on.
Soul food
Bread is an important metaphor. It was the daily food staple of the Israelites. God uses this metaphor to teach that his presence is the daily food of our souls. Nothing is more satisfying or delicious to our spirit than God’s presence.
Jesus said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35).
If you truly experience God’s presence, it is more satisfying than media entertainment, smart phone activity, human conversation, food, pleasure, or work.
Find spiritual satisfaction even in a crisis
Moreover, God’s presence is available at the hardest times. David said, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” (Psalm 23:5).
He literally experienced that when fleeing from King Saul’s assassins. David went to the temple and asked the priest for something to eat. The priest gave him the Bread of the Presence. (Mark 2:25–26; 1 Samuel 21:1–6)
The lesson for you is, the satisfying bread of God’s presence is available if you have assassins at your heels.
If you feel everything is going wrong.
If you feel worse has come to worst.
When you are tired, alone, afraid, stressed, worried, sick, hungry, bankrupt, unemployed, rejected, persecuted, homeless, hospitalized.
God’s presence is available to you.
So eat the bread of heaven. Every hour of every day. He wants to be with you even in terrible times.
Moses said to God, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here” —Exodus 33:15
These words from Moses raise an important question. Are you content without God’s presence? Are you willing to head into your daily situations without it?
The story in Exodus 33 that brought forth Moses’ words provides important principles for us about having God’s presence.
The situation was this. Israel had just sinned grievously by worshiping the golden calf made by Aaron, and they had been rebuked and punished. God then told them to depart and head into the Promised Land—with one all-important change in their situation. That is, God would not manifest his presence with them as he had done since delivering them out of Egypt.
He would give them an angel to guide them, but no longer would they have God’s presence.
Moses tells God what he thinks of that: “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.” I don’t want to go without you. The Promised Land is not the Promised Land without you. I must have your presence.
In this story we see four principles.
1. Sin disrupts our experience of God’s presence.
When we sin, we grieve the Lord and our sense of walking in communion with him is broken. Our awareness of him and his holiness is broken or disrupted. The attitude of honoring him is broken. Our worship is broken. And the manifestation of God’s presence is disrupted or broken.
What takes its place is a sense of guilt, shame, uncertainty, tentativeness, loneliness.
What is at stake for Christians is different from what was at stake for Moses and the Israelites. Jesus will not leave or forsake us as long as we keep sincere faith in him. Neither does the Holy Spirit come and go, living in us and then not living in us depending on whether we sin.
What changes is our mental state, as described above, and God’s willingness to manifest his presence.
God does not manifest his presence in a constant way.
For example, I can be in a room full of people and manifest my presence in different ways and varied degrees. I may say and do nothing but sit in a chair and observe. At other times I may talk softly or loudly, moving around the room, doing things like working, moving furniture, serving food, washing dishes. Consequently others in the room will notice my presence more or less.
In the same way, the Holy Spirit manifests his presence differently.
2. We should not be content to go through our day without God’s presence.
The feeling that God is absent should not be acceptable to us.
If we do not regard God’s presence as essential, if we are willing to go without it, we can, for God gives us the desires of our hearts. But when we charge ahead without his presence, we do so to our loss.
For God himself is the great reward of life. If you have him, you have all. If you do not have him, you ultimately have nothing but ashes.
3. We should ask for God’s presence.
In one important sense, we can assume that if we are Christian we have his presence. The Holy Spirit lives in every true believer.
But we cannot assume we have the fullest measure of his presence that is possible and available. That is the implication of Ephesians 5:18: “Be filled with the Spirit.” That admonition is meaningless if the full measure of the presence of God is constant and something we can assume to be true.
Asking is especially important if we have lost the sense of his presence through sin. After we have confessed and repented, we should sincerely ask for the renewal of his presence.
4. God has favor toward our request for his presence.
This story shows the willingness of God to have mercy and dwell among his people, even when they are unworthy. Even when they have failed egregiously.
This favor drives the story of the Bible. It begins with God walking in the garden with Adam and Eve, and it ends with God bringing the temple to earth and living with his people forever in the New Heavens and New Earth. Being present with his people is the heart of God.
In his sovereign time and way, God responds to our request for his presence. We do not have because we do not ask.
I want to be like Moses, to have the attitude that I don’t do life without God. I want every moment of every day to be as filled with God’s presence as he is willing to give me. Anything less is unacceptable.
Would you like to read more on the subject of God’s presence? I invite you to read my free weekly email on Knowing God and His Ways. Sign up here.
And see my other posts on practicing God’s presence starting here.
You can also get my Kindle ebooklet Practicing God’s Presencehere. This 47-page booklet is a revised collection of my blog posts on this life-changing subject.
You can recognize God’s presence. It is typically not dramatic or earth-shaking.
By Craig Brian Larson
Last week in our church’s midweek prayer meeting I experienced the presence of God. After approximately fifteen minutes of our praying and waiting on the Lord, I unexpectedly had two clear sensations. First, it felt as though the spiritual atmosphere in and around me became lighter, as though there was a lifting. Second, my hands quickly became warm, as though flooded with more blood.
These sensations caught my attention, though unexpected and unsought, and I began praying about what God wanted me to do next because, although I have experienced both of these sensations before in prayer, they are not my everyday or everyweek experience, and the feeling was not usually as clear.
Often when I have this sensation in a meeting, I will begin laying hands on people, praying for them, and blessing them. I did not do that on this occasion, and perhaps I missed an opportunity because, although I did pray with a strong sense of inspiration for the remainder of the meeting, nothing extraordinary happened.
There is no doubt in my mind I experienced the presence of God in that meeting. But experiences like this are not the only way God manifests his presence. Some feel more powerful to us, some less, but they are all important, for God chooses how he works in us, and he has a purpose in each. In this article we will identify eight ways we experience the presence of God.
God’s presence is recognizable
Twice in his epistle, the apostle John says we know something by the fact that we actually recognize the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives. First John 3:24 says, “Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.” First John 4:13 says, “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” Both of these verses imply that Christians are able to recognize the Holy Spirit’s presence in their lives. That is, it’s not something we simply take by faith; rather, there are recognizable indicators of the Holy Spirit’s presence.
Grace
To recognize God’s manifest presence, we need to understand how the New Testament uses the word grace. The first use of the word is to describe the unmerited favor of God. That is, we are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Though we have sinned and deserve only condemnation, God gives us kindness and salvation. (For example, see Ephesians 2:8–9.)
The second use of the word grace is to describe enablement. God gives ability. For example, Peter writes, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10). Here Peter refers to the ability and willingness to teach and serve others in a church as examples of grace, of enablement, that God gives people. In other words, if God’s Holy Spirit did not give this ability and motivation, people would not be able to do what they do.
Grace is an important word in this article, for it is a key idea in properly understanding the presence of God in your life. Whenever you experience the grace of God’s enablement, you are experiencing the manifest presence of God. His hand is on you. He is working for his good purpose. Don’t miss it. Respond properly and prayerfully. Don’t take for granted, downplay, or ignore the less dramatic manifestations of his presence. And at the other end of the spectrum, don’t fall into the unbelief that is blind and deaf to God’s extraordinary workings.
Let’s look now at eight ways we experience God’s gracious presence, beginning with the less dramatic (but all-important) and concluding with the extraordinary.
1. Grace for truth
Jesus’ 12 disciples had already been with him for several years and seen many miracles when one day Jesus asked them a crucial question: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13).
The identity of Jesus is obvious to believers today, but it was not so to the people of that time, and not even to the 12. They responded, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Notice that nowhere on that list is the correct answer. Jesus was doing and saying extraordinary things, but he was a man clothed with flesh and blood. At this point, his cross and resurrection could not even be imagined. Who he was was anyone’s guess.
Then Jesus pressed the question home. “Who do you say that I am?”
Peter responded. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Again, this confession is probably unremarkable to you. Of course he is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Nothing earth-shaking or miraculous there. Important, yes, but such words and such a belief does not require God to come and manifest his presence. So we might think.
Jesus knew better. He responded as though Peter had just won the lottery. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:17–19).
Over the top? No. Jesus is far more impressed by what Peter just confessed than by all the miracles he himself had done to this point. Jesus knew that fallen sinners cannot truly comprehend and believe spiritual truth apart from the supernatural working of God in their lives, that is, apart from a revelation from the Holy Spirit, apart from the Holy Spirit turning on the light in one’s human spirit—apart from the grace and presence of God. Jesus said God had “revealed” this to Peter.
On the scale of what matters in the long run, nothing could compare to this, not having blind eyes or deaf ears opened, not having crippled limbs healed, not walking on water. All these are powerful works indeed, and wondrous to see, but by themselves they don’t get your sins forgiven and your soul saved. That depends on faith in the truth about Jesus. And that depends on the miracle of a revelation from God. (Judas, for example, saw all the miracles and even heard the truth, but he never truly heard.)
The apostle Paul also recognized that it took the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit for a human to believe even the most fundamental truth about Jesus. Paul wrote, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). Think about that. Three words. The most basic truth about Jesus. You can’t say it with conviction unless you are “in the Holy Spirit,” that is, unless you are experiencing the presence of God. Don’t take that for granted. Don’t think you can learn spiritual truth like you learn geometry or chemistry. It’s supernatural.
On the road to Emmaus, two disciples of Jesus experienced the presence of God. Jesus had been crucified just days before. They had heard the report from the women who went to the tomb that they had seen the resurrected Lord, but the men did not believe it. As they walked on the road Jesus came and walked with them and explained the Scriptures to them. Later that day, he suddenly vanished from their sight, and they realized this was the resurrected Jesus.
Their next words are crucial: “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’” (Luke 24:32). Has your heart ever burned as you read the Bible, heard a sermon, thought about God, worshiped him, meditated on his names, or considered the most important ideas of the Christian faith (its doctrine)? That was supernatural. It was as supernatural as what happened to the 11 disciples when Jesus appeared to them a few hours later: “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).
Back in the book of Corinthians, Paul explained, “No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God…. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:11, 12, 14).
And so, whenever you read the Bible or listen to a sermon, and you understand and believe what the Bible says, you are in the Holy Spirit. God is present with you and in you. As 1 John 2:27 says, “His anointing teaches you about everything.” His manifest presence is changing your heart as surely as a pitch-dark room changes when the light is turned on. The grace he is giving you to understand and believe the truth is eternally important and should be greatly valued as what it is—supernatural—as wonderful as bread broken to feed 5,000.
And what should you do in response? Believe. Trust. Obey. Share.
2. Grace for Christian virtues
In general there is one time of day when I am least likely to sense the presence of God. It is when I wake up during the night. And it is no coincidence I’ve had more fearful, selfish, unbelieving, tormented, greedy, rash, and quitting thoughts in the middle of the night than at any other time. There is a direct correlation between the condition of my heart and the manifest presence of God in my life.
But the middle of the night is not the only time that my flesh can take over, and God can seem far away. If my wife and I argue about something on Sunday morning and I have lingering feelings of anger, I am not going to sense the presence of God in church until I forgive. If discouragement or jealousy or self-pity settles into my soul, God will seem far, far away.
When the flesh, that is, the sinful nature, controls my heart, the Holy Spirit is not in control, and his manifest presence fades. Galatians 5:17 says, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other.” The one that rules is the presence that is manifest and felt.
When God first chose Saul to be king of Israel, the prophet Samuel met with him and revealed God’s selection. Samuel revealed a sequence of events that would happen to Saul, including an encounter he would have with a group of prophets. Samuel predicted, “Then the Spirit of the LORD will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man” (1 Samuel 10:6).
Here we see God’s mighty Holy Spirit presence rushing upon Saul and manifesting in two ways: the spiritual gift of prophecy and the spiritual transformation of his soul. Unfortunately Saul later rebelled, disobeyed, and hardened his heart against God, and the Holy Spirit left him, but at this point the transformation was real. We see this new presence of God in his life manifested particularly in the courage he showed on several occasions to step out and lead Israel in battle against its enemies, despite shyness and a low opinion of himself.
God’s mighty presence turns you into another person. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23). When the Holy Spirit fills your soul, you act like Jesus rather than Satan.
God’s presence feels like God’s character. It feels like love, peace, righteousness, wisdom, and joy. I opened this article describing a time when I felt God’s presence physically, but that is not the typical way a Christian experiences God’s presence. Typically we will recognize God’s powerful presence by the fruits of the Spirit in us, by godly virtue. As Paul told Timothy, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7).
John wrote, “If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). When God abides, he is present. When your heart is moved with compassion for a needy person, that is Christ living in you.
Paul wrote, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7). When the supernatural peace of God replaces anxiety in your soul, that is the presence of God.
When you show me a godly person, you’re showing me God’s grace—God’s manifest presence—in a person. Notice again the connection of the Holy Spirit’s powerful presence with Christian virtues in these verses: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13). “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17).
So do not discount the grace of a Christlike heart. The healing of the soul is just as supernatural as the healing of the body, though both are of course important. If you leave a church service, or conclude your daily devotional time of prayer and Bible reading, filled with love, faith, peace, joy, hope, humility, and a passion for holiness, you have experienced the manifest presence of God. You are filled with God. This is more common than spectacular manifestations of God’s presence and far more important in God’s sight.
3. Grace for reverence
I completely surrendered my life to Jesus when I was 19-years-old. I had grown up believing in Jesus and had a tender conscience toward him, but when I went away to college that gradually receded.
Then, at a hotel, on a trip to Iowa for a gymnastics meet, I walked into the room of a teammate and found him reading the Bible. It occurred to me I needed to read the Bible, so I went back to my room and began reading the Gideon’s Bible in the dresser drawer. I don’t remember what part of the Bible I was reading, but what I will never forget is how I suddenly became gripped with a sense of the fear of God. My soul was overwhelmed with the awareness that he is the Lord of everything, and I was not living as though he was Lord. I bowed my head and tearfully confessed my sins and made him the Lord of my life.
That kind of fear is not natural to human nature. In fact the opposite is true. Have you ever read the Book of Exodus, how God delivered Israel from Egypt by unleashing ten terrible plagues on Pharaoh and Egypt and their idols, and wondered, What was Pharaoh thinking? One after another, the plagues brought the nation to terrible misery and utter ruin, yet time and again Pharaoh would harden his heart and say no to Moses’s demand that he let the people go. Then, even after losing his own firstborn son to the final plague, along with every other family in Egypt losing their firstborn son, and allowing Israel to leave, in no time he sends out his chariots and soldiers to bring Israel back. Pharaoh, what are you thinking? What has to happen for you to learn your lesson, for you to fear God?
What must happen is supernatural. Even suffering the most terrible judgments and seeing with one’s own eyes the awesome wrath of God, fallen human nature will not sincerely fear God. Unconverted people might temporarily fear consequences, but they will not have the authentic reverence God deserves. That is what biblical history reveals over and over again, from Adam, to Cain, to Lamech, to the mysterious “sons of God,” to Israel and its series of fallen kings—even including Solomon—to Judas, to the Pharisees, to the antichrist and the people suffering the final Tribulation who even in those terrible times will blaspheme God and refuse to repent of their wickedness (Revelation 16:9, 11, 21).
The apostle Paul wrote about mankind’s natural refusal to fear God. His conclusion about the human condition unaided by God’s grace is this:
“We have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one….There is no fear of God before their eyes.’” (Romans 3:9–12, 18)
This is the normal state of fallen humanity. Even believers who follow their flesh will lack the fear of God and continue in sin apart from God’s grace. What else could explain the way non-believers and believers alike ignore God’s commandments about sexual morality, about taking God’s name in vain, about slander and lust and greed and coveting and impurity? Scripture warns that we reap what we sow. God warns “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Yet people act as though God is someone to be trifled with, as though they will never stand before a holy God and give account for every single thing they have ever said and done and receive full justice.
What must happen to overcome this irreverence toward God is a work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said when the Holy Spirit comes, “He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8). The Holy Spirit must convince people about the issues that should cause people to fear God, their sins, their unrighteousness in God’s sight, the judgment of God that is coming. The Holy Spirit must convince people of the holiness of the one true God.
Therefore, when you experience both a head and heart knowledge of the holiness of God, and sincere reverence for him, and you fear doing anything that would incur his judgment, that is the presence of the Holy Spirit in you. When you experience true conviction of a particular sin and a willingness to repent, that is the presence of the Holy Spirit. And oh what an all-important grace that is.
4. Grace for liveliness
The presence of God that brings spiritual vitality is something I unmistakably experience—or don’t experience—every single week. That’s because I am a pastor of a church, so I lead worship services and other prayer meetings every week. Frankly, some of them are lively and energetic, and some drag along. In some God feels very present, and in others he feels far away. In some attenders do not need anyone spurring them on to participate enthusiastically, and in others people are passive and even bored.
I’ve learned I cannot predict or control this. No matter how much I pray and even fast for the meetings, no matter how hard I work to prepare, God’s presence is up to him. And usually it really is a matter of the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit, not just how much sleep people had the night before or how tired they are from work, although that at times comes into play. I can usually feel in my spirit whether a meeting will be alive even before it begins.
Spiritual vitality that comes from the grace of God does not happen only in church meetings. You do or do not experience it every day, all day, with regard to your motivation to seek the Lord and obey his commands, read the Bible, pray, worship and sing to God, and serve others in love. You are spiritually zealous or disinterested in spiritual things. You are stirred to seek the Lord, or spiritually flat.
I’m now going to quote a passage in Scripture that illustrates the relationship between vitality—life—and the Spirit of God. You may be tempted merely to scan it, but I urge you not to make that mistake even if you’ve read it many times before. I quote the full excerpt because it will have its deepest effect on your spirit if you read it slowly in full. It is the picture of a river flowing from the temple of God, and of course the river is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit:
“1 Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. 2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side.
“3 Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. 4 Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. 5 Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through.
“6 And he said to me, ‘Son of man, have you seen this?’ Then he led me back to the bank of the river. 7 As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other.
“8 And he said to me, ‘This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. 9 And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.
“‘10 Fishermen will stand beside the sea. From Engedi to Eneglaim it will be a place for the spreading of nets. Its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea. 11 But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt.
“‘ 12 And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.’” (Ezekiel 47:1–12 ESV)
The manifest presence of the Holy Spirit of God brings life, energy, zeal, dynamism, vitality, to your soul and to the gatherings of God’s people. He dispels human lethargy, heaviness, and deadness.
This is why the apostle Paul would begin and end his letters with the blessing/prayer, “Grace be with you.” He was saying, may God enable you by his presence to live this Christian life; may his Holy Spirit empower you to be spiritually alive.
5. Grace for boldness
Another way we recognize the presence of God is when Christians have courage to speak the Word of God regardless of potential hostility or harm to themselves. The presence of the Holy Spirit gives boldness.
Early in the history of the church, the religious leaders seized the apostles Peter and John for healing a lame man and then preaching to the crowds that gathered about the resurrection of Jesus. The Jewish leaders put them on trial and asked, “By what power or by what name did you do this?”
Peter did not answer tactfully. “Let it be known to all of you,” Peter said, “and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:10–12 ESV)
That was not a statement written by a public relations firm to win the favor of those in power. But it was a bold statement of the truth. And before the author of Acts gives us Peter’s words, he tells us that Peter was “filled with the Holy Spirit” (v. 8). Boldness and the presence of God go together.
After the religious leaders consulted together about what to do with Peter and John, they ordered them to stop preaching Jesus, threatened them, and then released them. Peter and John returned to the church and reported what had happened. The church lifted their voices to God and prayed that he would give them boldness to keep preaching the gospel. What happened next was earth-shaking: “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).
The presence of God and fearlessness go together.
Fifteen hundred years later, in the early days of the Reformation, a young German monk caught the attention of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church when he began writing and preaching that people are saved only by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, apart from religious acts of penance. Eventually he was excommunicated and brought before a Church court, where the Church scholars demanded he recant his writings. If he did not, he would be given a death sentence and likely end up burned at the stake.
Facing that threat would get your attention. The monk asked for time to consider his decision. One day later he took his stand before the reassembled court and declared:
“Your Imperial Majesty and Your Lordships demand a simple answer. Here it is, plain and unvarnished. Unless I am convinced of error by the testimony of Scripture or by manifest reasoning, I stand convinced by the Scriptures to which I have appealed, and my conscience is taken captive by God’s word. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to act against our conscience is neither safe for us, nor open to us. On this I take my stand. I can do no other. God help me.”
The monk, of course, was Martin Luther. Where did he get the boldness to take such a stand? From the grace given by the presence of the Holy Spirit.
6. Grace-enabled “flow”
When God is present, there can be an inspired, streaming flow of whatever he is manifesting.
Jesus said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit” (John 7:37–39 ESV).
The presence of the Holy Spirit can flow like a river. The water just keeps coming from its source. There is a flow of ideas, words, feelings, energy, guidance. Whatever we are doing with God at that moment can become easy and natural.
Not that we always experience this, not that the absence of flow means the Holy Spirit is absent, but when there is a flow of spiritual inspiration the Holy Spirit likely is present in a special way.
Jesus said, “When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” (Luke 12:11–12 ESV). That’s flow. Jesus said the words will be there when you need them.
That’s what happened to Peter on the day of Pentecost, when he stood up and spontaneously explained to the crowd that gathered what was happening. After recording some of his words, the author of Acts writes, “With many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them” (Acts 2:40 ESV).
When I speak to others in a gift of prophecy, I experience a flow. I begin speaking with an idea or a few words that I feel have been revealed to me, not knowing what I will say after the first sentence. Then the words and ideas just keep coming, and sooner or later the flow stops.
I vividly remember one especially inspired time of praying over all the attenders at one Sunday worship service. I laid hands on people one by one and prayed as I felt led of the Lord. After praying for a half-dozen people, I was interceding with a level of inspiration I had never experienced before. God was showing me things and inspiring me with faith that kept getting stronger and stronger. When I was finished, I even went back to pray again with some of the earlier people in line because I felt they had been shortchanged by not being in the later flow.
There is an important lesson here for those who want to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. When the flow comes, follow it. Don’t choke it off. Don’t stop prematurely.
7. Grace bringing physical sensations
One of the most familiar stories in the Gospels is the account of Jesus’ healing the woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years, but there’s something in this that Westerners can easily miss. The woman touched Jesus, immediately received her healing, and then this happened: “Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’” (Mark 5:30 ESV)
How did Jesus perceive power moving from his body to hers? We don’t know for sure because the Scripture doesn’t tell us, but most likely he experienced a physical sensation. I say this is likely because Christian history—in particular the history of great spiritual awakenings and revivals, as well as the testimonies of ministers used in the gift of healing—are filled with stories of Christians saying they had physical sensations when the Holy Spirit came upon them or worked through them in a special way. This is not always the case, and it is obviously subjective, but it is reported too often to ignore.
One author lists the following physical sensations reported by people attending such meetings: heat, electricity, power, trembling, weakness, or a weight upon them.
I think it’s likely Christians often have physical sensations like this, actually from God, but it never crosses their minds that it could be something spiritual. They either don’t pay attention, or they dismiss it as having a physical cause. That is the way people trained in Western education systems think.
I saw a video last week of a missionary to Taiwan named Cina Silva who testified of being healed of torn ligaments in her ankle. She was in a meeting, and when the speaker came to the podium, he greeted everyone with the words, “Jesus is here to deliver and heal.” Cina reported, “As soon as he said the word ‘heal,’ this power surge went into my foot and across to the other foot and went up and down my body, twice.’” She was instantly, permanently healed.
8. Grace for what we recognize as supernatural
Finally, we experience God’s presence in things we clearly recognize as supernatural. Although all the graces described in the previous points are supernatural, requiring the power of the Holy Spirit, we usually don’t think of them as supernatural.
On the other hand, we recognize the clearly supernatural presence of God in miracles; physical healings; dramatic healings of the soul including deliverance from demons; the baptism of the Holy Spirit; spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues and interpretation, words of knowledge, supernatural signs and wonders, and visions and dreams and unusual messages from God.
These supernatural things are real, and they are not limited to the times of the Bible. They happen today regularly all over the world. When they happen, God is present.
This was true even for Jesus: “It came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them” (Luke 5:17 KJV).
Notice in 1 Corinthians 12:4–11 the emphasis on the Holy Spirit being present to manifest the supernatural gifts: “4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit,9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit,10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills” (1 Corinthians 12:4–11 ESV).
Clearly, when supernatural spiritual gifts are manifesting, God is present.
Once my wife was driving on a four-lane road that was not a divided highway, and she was in the left lane of the two lanes going her direction. She heard in her spirit the words, Move into the right lane. She didn’t know what to think of this, and then again she heard in her spirit the same words. So she pulled into the right lane. In less than 20 seconds, some sort of jostling occurred in the cars coming from the other direction, and one of the cars swerved into the lane Nancy had been in a few seconds before. Nancy was spared from an accident by God’s supernatural presence in a voice in her heart.
During my sophomore year at Illinois State University, I made a decision one morning to ask a girl out for a date. I had been introduced to her once several weeks before, and I was interested in her. I decided to phone her later that night after working on an assignment at the computer lab. I was sitting in a computer room typing out my code with about six other students. The door opened to the lab room, and I glanced behind me. I did a double take. It was the girl I had decided that morning to ask out for a date. I did not have any classes with her. I had never seen her anywhere except for the time I was introduced to her (Illinois State had about 20,000 students). But here she was in a little room on the night I was planning to ask her out.
I had enough sense to know when God had set the table for me. I said hi and asked if I could walk her back to her dorm room when she was finished with her work. She said yes, and a year and a half later she said yes when I asked her to marry me. When you experience a clear providence such as this meeting, you know that God is present working in your circumstances.
Conclusion
God is present everywhere, at all times, though we do not see or feel him. But at specific times he manifests his presence in greater, perceptible ways for certain purposes.
Recognizing God’s presence helps us in many ways. It enables us to respond accordingly, to make sure we are fully attentive to him, to ask him what to do and listen carefully, to step out in faith, to work with him, to give thanks and worship.
Recognizing God’s presence can guide you and make you more fruitful in your work for him.
“Practicing God’s presence is one secret to experiencing all the New Testament promises.”
To grow in our knowledge of God and his ways we must learn to practice God’s presence. This is how we enjoy a personal relationship with God, rather than merely know facts about him.
The normal Christian life
Moreover, practicing God’s presence is foundational to the Spirit-filled life taught in the New Testament. It enables us to have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). It makes us aware of him throughout the day no matter what we are doing. We will have the fruits of the Holy Spirit in every situation (Gal 5:22–23). It is how we fellowship with God all day.
By practicing God’s presence we obey the Scriptures that tell us to “pray continually” and “give thanks in all circumstances” and “rejoice in the Lord always” and “do all to the glory of God” and “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “cast all your anxiety on him” and “abide in Jesus” and “walk in the Holy Spirit.” (1 Thess. 5:17–18; Phil. 4:4; 1 Cor. 10:31; Mark 12:30; 1 Peter 5:7; John 15:4; Gal. 5:25)
The secret of overcomers
Practicing God’s presence is one secret to experiencing all the New Testament promises to those who are a victorious new creation in Christ.
If we are persistently sad, angry, fearful, and discontent, we are not practicing God’s presence. When we regularly feel empty and dry, we are not practicing his presence. If we often feel guilty, distant, and disconnected from the Lord, if we live in continual defeat before some sin or addiction, we are not practicing God’s presence.
God’s presence brings joy. Supernatural peace. Faith and confidence. Satisfaction, contentment, and fullness.
God’s presence is life. His presence is living water and bread from heaven. His presence gives strength and victory.
As we practice God’s presence, we sense his love and gracious intentions. We feel close to him and can bring everything to him moment by moment. He is at our right hand, ever before and around us.
And even when we feel nothing, we will know he is there and hears us. We will not have a sense of doubt and disconnection that makes us feel something is wrong between us and God. We can practice God’s presence even when we do not feel his presence.
Let me say that again because if you miss that you will often feel like a failure. We can successfully practice God’s presence even when we do not feel his presence. (More on that in upcoming posts)
So practicing God’s presence is one secret to the abundant Christian life.
Practicing God’s presence is well within reach
Thankfully it is not hard to do. It is not just for super saints or longtime believers. Even a new Christian can learn it.
Though not hard, it must be learned. We must build new mental habits, which take time.
If you put the teachings in this series into practice, in one or two months you will be well on your way to a transformed life. And then for the rest of your life you will keep learning more.
You will be stronger in the Lord than you imagined possible. You will defeat life-controlling habits. Your Christian life will work.
Does that sound too good to be true? Am I overpromising? I don’t think so.
Certainly we will experience trials, discipline, and struggles all our lives. Certainly we will have ups and downs in practicing God’s presence. We will always have unanswered questions.
But when we practice God’s presence, we walk through these difficulties as overcomers.
An apostle’s example
Paul describes this: “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” (2 Cor. 4:7–10)
And elsewhere, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:11–13)
And again, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:37–39)
This is the victorious life possible for those who practice God’s presence. We will learn how in upcoming posts.
Relationships are interesting because people are interesting, and one reason people are interesting is they are not puppets. People are a wonder to explore and a challenge to know because we each have our own mind and will.
And because of that, relationships are dynamic, fluid, ever changing, like Chicago weather. Being a weatherman in Chicago is interesting; in San Diego, boring.
God has his own mind and will, and so he is anything but boring to relate to.
If you want a God you can control, master, limit to formulas, put in a box, and have all figured out, you’ll need to make yourself an idol. People make idols so they have some measure of control. We come to idols because we want some higher power who will do what we want. Idols are manageable deities.
The true God is not manageable.
People have written books about How to Manage Your Boss. That’s an interesting turnaround, and it’s something every employee would like to do. How sweet it would be to control the supervisor who controls you.
But you can’t do that with God. Forget about writing the book How to Manage God. It can’t be done.
Few would dare put that into words, but that is what we all try to do. We want to control our lives, and therefore we need to control God. We know he is superior to us, but we need to manage him if we are to have the life we want. So we set the agenda and schedule for how he works in our lives and see if we can persuade him to go along.
But the true God is way beyond us.
He is “the blessed and only Sovereign” (1 Tim. 6:15). He “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11). “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth” (Psalm 135:6).
The world is his kingdom, not mine.
If that were the end of the story, we might not be happy.
God’s open-door policy
But there is more. For God invites us into a relationship where our desires matter immensely to him.
Though he is sovereign, he invites us to present our requests to him. He is a good Father who loves to give his children what they ask if it is in their welfare.
God is sovereign and holy, which is wonderful; he is also loving, fully open to our entreaties, good, kind, generous, gracious, relational, and completely approachable through faith in our perfect mediator Jesus Christ.
Put that all together, and you know he is both almighty and trustworthy.
Knowing him is never boring. Never shallow.
What it is to mountain climbers to scale Mount Everest is just a hint of the majestic experience that awaits us as we walk with God.
Your soul has a big appetite. A filling meal is on the table. You can find spiritual satisfaction.
