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Practicing God’s Presence: The Happy Rewards

“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.

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What Gives Me Worth?

Self-worth and self-esteem

We need to feel we have value

Where do you find your sense of worth? If you were a boastful person, what would you boast about?

The LORD says, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me” (Jeremiah 9:23–24).

If a person boasts, it is because one of the strongest motivations in life is to find significance, importance, worth. We need to feel we have value. It is crushing to think that we are worthless or inferior to others. Whether we boast or not, we all pursue significance.

How we pursue self-worth

We need to be aware of how we try to get worth and how that affects our motivations.

Unfortunately, we may choose insignificant ways to get significance. We seek worth through success, or money, beauty, a chiseled body, knowledge, skill, achievements, power, position, love, fame.

None of these are wrong in themselves, but they do not add to our worth.

And they can be hard to get.

If we fall short of these, our ego will find something to take pride in, even trivial things. Things like whether our pants or shoes are in style. The success of our sports team. The brands we use and how much we paid. The speed and capacity of our technology. Our race, haircut, or knowledge of trivia. The ability to cook a particular dish. A collection of bottles.

We are so voracious for significance that we can take pride in literally anything.

How God gives self-worth

Jeremiah 9:23–24, quoted above, says that there is only one legitimate, effective way to find significance: by knowing God.

That is because God alone is intrinsically worthy, significant, and glorious, and he alone gives worth to his creation. When he gives worth, that worth is enormous.

When he speaks a word of approval or honor, then sooner or later every living human and angel will recognize that worth and likewise give honor. If God does not approve, if he dishonors someone or something, then it will pass away and be forgotten.

So boasting is okay under just one condition: if we are humbly boasting in our relationship with God, fully aware that God is the one who gets all the credit.

But in a sense, we proudly boast in the glory of God. We don’t feel second-rate because we find our worth in him or that he is second best to all the cool things to boast about in this world.

If you know God, if you know how to walk with him as he requires, if you know the wisdom he reveals in his Word, if you know Jesus Christ as Savior, if you know his character and nature, if you love him and delight in your personal relationship with him through prayer throughout each day, you don’t need to prop up your ego with the passing trophies of this world. You have the greatest significance possible.

Signs that you pursue your self-worth in God

What indicates that you find your significance in knowing God? Three things come quickly to mind:

  • How much you read the Bible
  • Whether you connect with God in prayer throughout each day
  • Struggling with feelings of inferiority or envy if you compare yourself to others

Would you agree? What would you add to this list?  Contribute to the Knowing God community by sharing a comment below.

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The Impossible Job

Impossible Job

Do you have an impossible job?

Last night a woman in our church told how God had just given her success on a large, important project at work.

She is a website architect working for a big downtown bank that hired her specifically to upgrade their site’s interface for those with disabilities.

One impossible job

But everyone with whom she directly worked told her: You can’t do this. You will fail. You don’t have the necessary intelligence for this.

Indeed, she agreed. She didn’t know how to do it.

No one knew how to do what the bank was asking. One technician told her he could not do in a year even part of what the company was asking to be done in six months. These were uncharted waters.

She feared what would happen if she failed. That she would lose her job and pay. That she would have to move away.

Unceasing prayer

So she called out to God. All day long, every day, she prayed fervently over every detail, every web page, every line of code. She literally wept and prayed. She felt small and vulnerable.

But she also had fierce conviction that God was great enough to help her with an impossible job. She kept crying out to God day after day, planning functionalities, writing code, telling her team of developers what to do. She worked hard. Day after day she received wisdom for one piece of the project after another. Every step and idea was a discovery.

And so, week after week, one piece, one page, one functionality of the website after another came together. Months passed and the progress continued. The hand of God was upon her, and he blessed her entire team.

Great success

With the deadline approaching they were ready to release their work. They were ready to go live with approximately eighty new web pages of cutting edge technology.

On the day of release they discovered one minor problem. Just one easily fixed bug. But everything else worked flawlessly.

Last night our website architect told this story and enthusiastically gave God all the glory.

Divine wisdom for impossible jobs

As she spoke, a Scripture came to my mind, and when she finished I read it.

The story is about a young man whom a pagan king recruited to serve in his court. For three years he received training in the language, literature, and wisdom of that culture. At the end of that period, he Daniel and three Hebrew friends were brought before the king for a final exam.

“And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom” (Daniel 1:20).

Proverbs 2:6 says, “The LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.”

James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”

2 Timothy 2:7 says, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.”

Do you need to be a pastor to know God and his ways, to experience God working at your right hand?

No, you just need to have work to do.  You need to sense your need of God’s help, to know that you can’t do anything apart from him. And you need to cry out to him with faith continually. To work hard. And then watch God work. In the end you will give him glory.

 

 

 

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Ultimate Experience: The Unmanageable God

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Knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is beyond control.

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Relationships

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.

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Ultimate Experience: The Mysterious God

Text art "Ultimate experience

 

The ads that blanket your world
beckon you to trivial things.
Here is the great, awesome,
and only worthy pursuit.

In my previous posts in this series, we saw that knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is good, perfect, personal, superior, both like and unlike us. In this post we see that…

Knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is mysterious.

People like mysteries. Once we understand something fully, we get bored with it.

So people like puzzles, mystery movies and books, mystery religions, mysterious people, conspiracy theories, and scientific explorations of the unknown.

We love what is new. We like going places we have never been.

This is another reason why knowing God is the ultimate experience. We can never know all there is to know about God.

He is infinite, different than us, and infinitely superior to us. He is inexhaustible and in many ways unpredictable.

Knowing God is like swimming in the deep end of the pool or in the ocean. Everything else we do in this life is like trying to swim in the kids’ wading pool, or in a puddle. We quickly exhaust its ability to delight, challenge, and inspire.

Every surfer is waiting for the ultimate wave. Every classical music fan is looking for the ultimate sound system and perfect album. Every gamer is looking for the ultimate video game.

But in this world the next big thing eventually loses its luster.

God’s Secret Name

There is always the unknown about God. He both reveals and hides himself.

In the Bible God reveals dozens of self-revealing names for himself so that we can know him. But the Bible also says of Jesus that “he has a name written that no one knows but himself” (Revelation 19:12). That means there are things about the identity of Jesus that he will never reveal to us.

We can understand many thing about his ways. Psalm 103:7, for example, says, “He made known his ways to Moses.”

But in many other ways his paths are beyond tracing out and unexplainable.

Romans 11:33–34 says, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’”

Now that is interesting! That is challenging!

Knowing the Unknowable

Knowing God is like climbing a mountain on which you can never reach the peak.

Knowing God is like writing a book you can never finish because the more you write the more you understand, and the more you understand the more you realize you have yet to learn.

Knowing God is like reading a favorite author who you hope keeps writing more books. You enjoy her writing so much you never can get enough.

The more you know God, the more you see there is to him.

It’s like the experience of astronomers over the last several hundred years. The more they peer into the heavens and the better their telescopes become, the more stars and galaxies they find, the bigger the universe keeps getting.

Knowing God is like the experience of scientists exploring subatomic matter. First they found molecules and thought they had discovered the smallest elements in the created world. Then they discovered that molecules were made of atoms. They thought atoms were the smallest building blocks of matter. Then they discovered subatomic particles like quarks and bozons. What’s next?

If that is true of the material world, which ultimately is finite, how much more is it true of the infinite God?

Of God you can never say, “Been there, done that.”

The apostle Paul was getting at this when he prayed that you “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18–19).

God is the ultimate obsession. The more you know him, the more interesting he becomes.

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Ultimate Experience: The God Like Us and Unlike Us

Text art "Ultimate experience

 

The ads that blanket your world
beckon you to trivial things.
Here is the great, the awesome,
and the only worthy pursuit.

 

In my previous posts in this series, we saw that knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is good, perfect, personal, and superior. In this post we see that…

Knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is both like and unlike us.

What attracts men to women and women to men?

Much of the spark of sexual attraction is the difference between the sexes, not only the difference between the male and female bodies, but also the difference in emotions and perspective. Men and women think differently.

But we are also the same. We share human nature. We are persons capable of conversation and creativity. We share in having mind, will, and emotions. We share in having dreams and hopes, loves and loathings.

You can love your dog, horse, or cat, but your relationship with humans has the potential to be far richer than what you can have with an animal (notice that I used the word potential).

We tend to make friends with people who have something strongly in common with us.

Like the electricity between men and women, knowing God is full of wonder because he is both like and unlike us.

Similar to God

God created us in his image, so we resemble him.

Like God, we are personal and relational. We are rational. We both have a will and make choices. We both are alive. We both are moral beings attuned to right and wrong.

Because God created us in his image, we by nature can understand many things about him intuitively as we think about him, and as we read about him in Scripture and ponder his creation.

Because we have much in common with God, we can have a deeply satisfying relationship with him. This relationship has the potential to be far deeper than we can have with any human, animal, or lifeless thing.

Different than God

But God is also very different from us.

He is divine, we are human. He is eternal and uncreated. We are short-lived and created. He created us; we did not create him.

So we are two infinitely different orders of being.

God has no limits. We are limited in every way.

God exists on his own, perfectly independent, with no need for anyone or anything but himself. We are completely dependent on him for everything, every heartbeat, every breath, for existence itself.

God is holy. He is other. He is unique.

And this makes him intriguing. This makes us curious.

Boom

Put these similarities and differences together and you have more than a spark, more than electricity—you have lightning and thunder.

You have the most exciting, interesting, and mysterious experience available.

Therefore, knowing God is the ultimate obsession.

 

We will look next Monday at more reasons why knowing God is the ultimate experience.

Do you like this? Please share it with others.

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Ultimate Experience: The Infinitely Superior God

Text art "Ultimate experience

 

The ads that blanket your world
beckon you to trivial things.
Here is the great, awesome,
and only worthy pursuit.

 

In my previous post in this series, we saw that knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is good, perfect, and personal. In this post we see that…

Knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is infinitely superior to us in every imaginable way.

 

I like to experience people who are better than me. (That’s not hard to find.)

Of course, every person we meet is superior to us in many ways, but we don’t always have occasion to experience it. But when I do, something good comes into my life.

One man in our church is an outstanding cook, with a specialty in making desserts. For many special events he has made gourmet cheesecakes that are the best I have ever tasted. At our last Thanksgiving meal he made a pumpkin cheesecake with homemade whip cream.

He is a blessing to me and everyone in the church for who he is, and he is a blessing to us in this particular way of being a superior dessert chef. I enjoy many things about him, including his superior ability in this area.

People with superior knowledge, ability, experience, character, faith and so on bring more to us than we have. They bring what we need or want, but lack.

God is superior to us.

He is infinitely superior.

He is superior in every imaginable way.

As a result, he brings unlimited benefit to us in every imaginable way.

Divine Superiority

Being around God is like being an amateur violinist and spending a year getting personal daily training from the greatest violinist who ever lived.

Only that great violinist is not only better than anyone ever, not only twice as good or thrice as good or ten times better. This great violinist is not just a hundred times more skilled or a thousand or a million times more skilled than any violist ever. He is literally infinitely more skilled.

That means there is no limit to how superior he is to any other violinist.

That is what God’s superiority to us is. No exaggeration. He has unlimited, perfect virtue and ability.

He created us and our ability. We have no ability or virtue on our own. Literally zero.

So for a human to be around God is for someone who has zero to be around someone who has infinite supply.

Divine omnicompetence

Not only is God infinitely good at what he is good at, he is good at everything. Everything. There is nothing God cannot do, and do infinitely well.

He doesn’t do anything less than perfect, infinitely excellent, and wonderfully superior.

God is superior in knowledge and wisdom. Love and kindness. Joy and peace. Power and energy. Creativity and imagination. Goodness and virtue. Authority and glory. Righteousness and purity.

Not only is good superior to us in every way, he has ways to be superior that we don’t. It’s as though we own three musical instruments, and he owns dozens of instruments. He plays instruments we don’t have. And plays them perfectly.

God is the ultimate. As a result, he is the most interesting being in the universe. And will always be so.

We will never exhaust the pleasures of knowing his superiority.

Divine Generosity

I like to experience God because he is generous with what he has. He likes to give. He likes to share his superiority.

Another word that describes God’s superiority is glory. God is glorious and he delights to show and share his glory.

Therefore, knowing God is the ultimate experience, the ultimate obsession.

 

We will look next Monday at more reasons why knowing God is the ultimate experience.

Do you like this? Please share it with others.

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Ultimate Experience: The Divine Person

Text art "Ultimate experience

 

The ads that blanket your world
beckon you to trivial things.
Here is the great, the awesome,
and the only worthy pursuit.

 

In my previous post in this series, we saw that knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is good and because he is perfect. In this post we see that…

Knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is a divine person, not an impersonal thing or force.

God is he, not it.

That means we can have a relationship with him. He has mind, will, and emotions. He is alive. He has experiences. He communicates. He plans, desires, intends, enjoys.

We know God in the way we know a person, not the way we know math tables.

Disappointed Dreams

At some point in our lives we all have dreamed about obtaining some thing.

I have enjoyed photography since I was a teenager and over the years have bought three SLR cameras.

I don’t buy on a whim. With big purchases like that I research the product and prices thoroughly and usually pray about the decision for six months to a year before pulling the trigger. (I usually feel guilty about buying something like a camera and wait until I feel permission from God to do it.)

After waiting that long, I’m excited when the box comes in the mail.

With my last camera purchase a few years ago I enjoyed carefully unboxing the camera and patiently learning its features. I marveled at how much the technology had advanced since I bought my previous camera. I was impressed with the quality of the pictures. I was more than satisfied with the product and the purchase.

But the experience of owning and using the camera did not match my dreams of getting it. Likewise with lenses I have purchased for it. Likewise with every thing I have ever owned.

Things can’t bring as much lasting happiness as good people and healthy relationships. The reason bad people and unhealthy relationships are so painful is due to the tremendous power of people and relationships. When they are good, there is nothing better.

And that is why knowing God is so satisfying. God is the perfectly good person. With him we can have the perfect relationship.

God Is Love

God is a relater by nature. He is Trinity, three persons, one God. He has been in a relationship of love for all eternity.

Knowing God is dynamic. Our relationship changes and grows. There is give and take, back and forth.

We enjoy fellowship and togetherness. There is presence and absence. There is learning. There is knowing and being known, loving and being loved.

Knowing God brings joy as only a relationship, only a person, can. We are social, relational beings by nature, and that is because God made us in his image. God is social.

The pain of loneliness shows we were created for relationship.

Relating to people satisfies a need in our soul we do not fully understand. As we know God better, our need for relationship is met in an ultimate way.

 

We will look next Monday at more reasons why God is the ultimate pursuit.

Do you like this? Please share it with others.

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Ultimate Experience: The Good and Perfect God

Text art "Ultimate experience

 

The ads that blanket your world
beckon you to trivial things.
Here is the great, the awesome,
and the only worthy pursuit.
Jeremiah puts into words the heartbeat of this blog:

“Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (Jeremiah 9:23–24)

Knowing God and his ways is the ultimate pursuit. The grandest ambition. The most satisfying goal.

Here are just a few reasons why.

First, knowing God is the ultimate experience because he is good.

I like to be around things that are good. Food is good. Sunshine and warm temperatures are good. Music is good. Parks and trees and fields and nature paths are good.

I like to be around people that are good. Good people are generous and kind. Good people are honest and authentic. They are encouraging and hopeful. They stretch me. They comfort me. They heal me. They teach me.

The great news is that God is infinitely good, and being around him is the ultimate good. The more you can get of God the more good that comes into your life. And God’s goodness never cloys or becomes harmful in the way that eating too much will hurt you. God is a good you can never get too much of.

Second, knowing God is the ultimate pursuit because he is perfect.

God has no faults and makes no mistakes. Ever. He is perfect in knowledge, perfect in wisdom.

God never miscalculates or misjudges. He never has to change, grow, or mature. He does not change because he cannot improve.

Whatever God does, we can be assured he has handled the situation exactly as it should be handled.

I am drawn to that because I am not perfect, and that brings endless problems. Because I am so deeply flawed, I want to know the God who is willing to lead me toward perfection.

That is what God has planned for his followers. Jesus said, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

The Bible describes the people who have already died and gone into God’s presence in heaven as “the righteous made perfect” (Hebrews 12:23).

God is working to make us “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:4).

So I love getting to know him. I want him to correct all my faults. I want him to fix me. I want to be better, and only God can get me there.

 

We will look next Monday at more reasons why God is the ultimate pursuit.

Do you like this? Please share it with others.

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Knowing God in a Personal Way

For several weeks I thought about what should be the prime focus of this blog. I settled on this: I realized my great passion is knowing God and his ways.

That has been my pursuit since I surrendered my life to Christ at age 19. I immediately began devouring the Bible. The idea that this book had the ultimate truth, about what mattered most, captured my soul. Since then I have been thinking about this book and the God who wrote it on a daily basis.

The Bible is not a simple book, and God is not a simple person. The more I read, the more I saw the challenge of fitting everything in this sacred book together. For example, sometimes God is the most merciful and forbearing person imaginable and at other times he seems quick to anger and quick to judge. How does this all fit together? Making it all fit is my passion.

Knowing God in an experiential way

Because I want to know God, not just about God. I want to know God like I know a person I spend time with, not like a person I read a systematic theology about. I want to know God relationally, knowing him as someone I communicate with, rely on, follow, and love all throughout the day. I want to know his ways based on experience with him, not just principles. I want to know how to pray in a way that pleases him and receives answers.

I want to know how faith works, the kind of faith that is powerful and effective (see James 5:16), especially because faith and unbelief were the qualities Jesus commented on most often in his interactions with people. Teachings about faith have been abused, but that does not mean we should avoid the subject. Faith matters.

And so I’m persistently trying to learn how faith works because I want to depend completely on God, put all my weight on his words, take his words seriously, and live as though they are true—because they are. This is what it means to know God and his ways.

I have been trying hard for years to practice God’s presence, in the manner described in the book The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence. This is at the core of how I know God. It has helped me enormously.

The Crucial Role of the Holy Spirit in Knowing God

I have been trying hard for many years to learn how to work with the Holy Spirit and his gifts. I have been trying for a long time to learn how to “hear God.”

(I put “hearing God” in parentheses not because I don’t think it is possible to hear God. Rather, normally when we use that phrase we mean something less than hearing God audibly, or even hearing words in our minds that we think are God’s words. I believe that God does guide and give his thoughts, just not very often in a conversational, “he said” “I said,” sort of way. At least that is my experience.).

I believe Zechariah 4:6 expresses God’s heart: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of hosts.” God wants kingdom work to be Spirit-powered. As I see it in the Bible, God’s method of church growth and ministry is through the gospel, through the Word, and through the gifts of the Spirit.

I believe this, but I fall a million miles short of seeing that happen the way I think it can. I am on a huge learning curve and have been for many years. I want help on this. So I hope the community of people who read this blog will help me and each other through comments and prayers.

Knowing and walking with God means working with him. I don’t relate to God just so he’ll help me in “the work of the Lord.” I work for God because it’s part of how we walk with him, love him, and know him.

I am enthralled that God is infinitely superior to me in every imaginable way. I am interested in any person who is superior to me in any way, even two steps beyond me. Well, God is infinitely superior to me and in every way! How could I not be interested in him? God is fascinating. He is interesting, creative, strong, intense, passionate, good.

Think about that last adjective. God is good; Jesus said God alone is good. I want to be as near as I can to any good person, and God is perfect goodness, infinite goodness. As Psalm 73:28 says, “It is good to be near God.”

In summary, this blog on Knowing God and His Ways will regularly engage these subjects:

  • Practicing God’s presence
  • Walking with and working with the Holy Spirit
  • Prayer and faith
  • Walking with God experientially like you relate to a person
  • Understanding what the Bible reveals about God
  • God’s infinite superiority

This post is approaching 1,000 words, so it’s time to stop. Normally I plan to write 300 to 600 words.

For more information about this blog and my writing, see the About page.

Knowing God and his ways is the greatest adventure! I invite you to join me every week in the journey. I plan to post weekly on Mondays.

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