Do you want to experience God’s presence more tangibly in your life?
Me too.
Our most holy and necessary addiction is for manifestations of God’s glory, and nothing but his presence will do the trick.
Let me share a game-changing thought: When the biblical writers talk about the presence of God, they aren’t nailing down a theological truth; they are gushing about a relational one. The Psalms and stories of scripture unveil a special kind of shared experience between mortals and their Creator.
Any shared experience involves at least two vantage points. While God is always present to us in some measure, we usually aren’t present to him. Think about the last time you had dinner in a sports bar and your friend kept watching the baseball game over your shoulder instead of focusing on what you were saying. There is a world of difference between your friend being there and your friend being present. God is present to us because his focus on us never wanes. We aren’t present to him because our focus on him fluctuates so wildly—and we can only share an experience we are both present to enjoy.
The bottom line
When we talk about experiencing more of God’s presence, we tend to mean we want him to become more present to us. Fair enough. More of him would be great. But what if what’s missing is us becoming more present to him? What if he’s waiting for more of us? What if on God’s end, he’s thinking, “I wish I could experience more of Brad’s presence?” Not because I’m so incredible, but because he is. Because he wants to meet my deepest longings for him by sharing time and space with me?
That’s what the biblical language and ‘procedure’ of approaching God is all about—helping us fully grasp, appreciate, survive, and be transformed by our encounters with him. Through Jesus, we can approach God’s throne with confidence and are urged to make it a habit (Hebrews 4:16; 10:19-22).
So good!
If you’d like to go deeper in your experience of God’s presence, I highly recommend listening to this message I shared with Manifest Church this past summer: