Ephesians 3:12 Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence. To be able to come into the presence of the Lord and spend time with Him is awesome! We don't have to come before God shy and awkward and barely getting to have an audience with HIm. God takes time for us and He has opened up an avenue of relationship that is beyond compare. God who made the universe, formed this earth, formed human beings, and gave the ultimate love sacrifice for you and me. God REALLY loves us, and for us to not approach the throne of grace and spend time with Him is an insult to the power of His forgiveness and grace. Satan will try to convince you that the unfairness of us messing up quite often is regulated by God. God's grace is completely complete and binding. The power of God's presence is best realized when we come to the end of the point of controlling our lives and surrendering to His control and His ways. Psalm 18:30 God’s way is perfect. All the Lord’s promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection.
We just need to surrender to the perfection of God's ways and one of those perfections is the realization of the open way to come before God and come into His presence. A. W. Tozer wrote the following “Down through history man has taken many paths in his quest for God’s presence, all to no avail. Only one path is correct, and that path is revealed in the Word of God. Only in the Bible do we begin to understand what these inward stirrings are and how to find entrance into the presence of God. A right understanding of the Bible opens to us the only path into the presence of God.”
One sure way to find the presence of God is in His Word. The living Word of God is the gateway to the presence of God. The Word is LIVING!! It has life, in the midst of death, it has life! Sadly, we read the Word of God at times like it is a dead book of history that has stories about past things we don't even believe anymore. How sad! The Word of God brings us into a totally believing way of thinking about God and who He is and what He does. To deny the Word of God in your mind and heart is to deny the presence of God in your life. What do we do to activate the Word of God and realize God's presence in our lives? We pray God's Word, which as I wrote earlier is alive and functioning to empower us in our walk with God.
Keep in mind that living in God's presence is not about us, but it is about God and how He works through us and to us. We have the responsibility to encourage each other to come into God's presence and also come into the power of God through His presence. If we worship God as His Word tells us to worship Him we will experience God's presence and it will spark into flame the fire of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. That flame engulfs our attitude about God and Him working and suddenly we begin to deeply believe all God's Word to the point of living it! Malachi 3:16 Then those who feared the Lord spoke with each other, and the Lord listened to what they said. In his presence, a scroll of remembrance was written to record the names of those who feared him and always thought about the honor of his name.
There is either power in God's Presence or there is no power in God's presence. I am going with what God's Word says about it. How about you? The Psalmist said it this way in Psalms 67:1 May God be merciful and bless us. May his face smile with favor on us. When we get into the Word of God and come boldly before Him we suddenly realize that God is for us, not against us, and our faith factor goes into hyperdrive, as it needs to do. Coming into the presence of God is like rain coming from the sky after a long drought and the end result of that physical rain is a growth of wonderful fruit-bearing plants. In our life, it will be like the ultimate quenching of our thirst for God and the end result will be an abundant life that is increasingly becoming more and more dependent on God. At that point God will react to our faith and begin to show us how to live the life of faith He has given us opportunity to live.
The Power of God's Presence makes everything else fall into place. Singing worship. Life worship. Reclamation worship. Restoration worship. Everything worship will begin to warp into a new level, God's level. At that level, God moves in powerful ways and we begin to experience the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples. Matthew 6: 9 Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy. 10 May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Tozer said it well in the above quote. “Down through history man has taken many paths in his quest for God’s presence, all to no avail. Only one path is correct, and that path is revealed in the Word of God.
The Pilgrimage Continues
David Warren
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