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 Presence here. This 47-page booklet is a revised collection of my blog posts on this life-changing subject.