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.
