The Daily Practice Of God’s Presence

The Daily Practice Of God’s Presence

For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out.

They might have had the opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

Hebrews 11:1346

What one does occasionally does not define a person, but rather, what that individual does regularly. Anyone can do something occasionally, but most of the time that is usually accidental.

The baseball player who occasionally gets a home run but strikes out every other time is not known as a home run king. Anybody can have a good day once in a while, but the real home run hitters are the ones who consistently hit home runs.

Read and Learn More Bible Verses about the Presence of God

Or, to change the illustration a little, take someone who is sick and go to the doctor who prescribes medicine that will help him.

The instructions are that the sick man is to take the medicine regularly until it is finished. In a week, he goes back to the doctor still in the same condition that he was in the week before, with no improvement.

“Have you been taking your medicine?” the doctor asks.

“Only occasionally, when I feel like it,” the man responds.

We might smile at something as silly as that, and yet there are many spiritual parallels. Our spiritual health and vitality are built upon establishing the proper spiritual disciplines and habits.

People recoil at the idea of habits and consider it just routine. And yet, it is the routine that is the most productive.

Whether they acknowledge it or not, everyone has habits, but only a few carefully craft their habits to enhance their spiritual growth and development.

How few of God’s people enjoy the fullness of their salvation! Many are satisfied with their destination, but they neglect the journey. The day-by-day experience of God’s presence is something foreign to many Christians.

In the Old Testament, Enoch became so preoccupied with walking with God that the things of this world grew strangely dim.

“He was not,” the Bible says, “because God took him.” I believe that once a person truly experiences the conscious, manifest presence of God, he will lose interest in everything else in this world.

No longer will the cheap choruses satisfy. The flood of entertainment that has swamped the Church will leave him with a desperately empty feeling inside.

And the cult of personality, which has gripped the Church these days, will no longer draw his admiration.

All those things he once reveled in no longer interest him. He has discovered something far greater in God’s presence.

For the serious Christian, I have a few words of encouragement. For those who are not serious, but merely curious.

I have nothing really to say. But anyone who applies simple spiritual discipline in his daily life will see a marvelous difference in his spiritual walk.

The Discipline Of Shunning The World

I do not think I can say too many times that the world is too much with us. I have often wondered why, after getting victory over the world, anybody would want to court the world and allow it back into his or her life.

It must be understood most emphatically that the world around us conflicts with the Word within us. The two are incompatible.

Jesus made it plain when He said, “In the world, but . . ” By that, He meant that although we were in the world, the world was not in us.

The evidence is all around us that it is difficult to break the tyranny of the world. Once the world gets a hold on us, it refuses to let go.

And it is not hard to see this in, for example, the impulse for entertainment and fun.

We certainly live in a fun generation. Unless we can have fun, and unless that thing is going to entertain us, we will wander off to something that will.

I am not surprised that this is out in the world, but I am greatly disappointed that it has come into the Church.

Churches today are built upon the premise of entertainment and fun. In some places, it would be rather difficult to gain an audience unless you supplied them with ample entertainment and fun.

Worse than that, if there can be such a thing, is the appetite for lust and greed. Again, I do not have a hard time understanding this out in the world.

But among those who have been set free by the power of God, to be driven in their personal and professional lives by lust and greed is most appalling.

The reason I stress this is that all of these are hindrances to experiencing the presence of God. They are, if I may say it this way, cheap substitutes for the real experience with God.

These elements of the world dull our sense of God’s presence among us.

They hinder us in several ways. The first would be in our ability to concentrate. Most people today cannot concentrate on any one thing for a significant amount of time. This is a victory for the enemy of man’s soul.

To occupy a man with things other than spiritual things is the predominant agenda of the devil. Unfortunately, he has the cooperation of the world around us in achieving his goal. And he does not find much resistance.

Another way of hindrance is in the area of expectation. I will mention this in more detail later on.

Suffice it to say right now, the average Christian’s expectation every day is in the direction of the world around him instead of expecting the Lord’s presence.

This I believe is a very important discipline for us, to shun the world and all its distractions. To be mindful of the danger that lurks all around us and to do something about it.

Every person needs to devise some way to discipline himself from the things of the world.

The Discipline Of Meditating On God’s Word

Here is the supreme discipline for every Christian. Following our conversion to Christ, every believer has an insatiable thirst for the Word of God.

Before conversion, we may have had some curiosity about the Bible and the stories of the Bible.

But now, as a Christian, it is an altogether different game. The Word of God becomes our nourishment by which we grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A good deal is being said today about the art of meditation, much of it is quite dangerous.

Let me just say that meditation apart from the Word of God is quite hazardous and opens us up for the delusion of the enemy.

Some would instruct us to empty our minds (some find this rather easy) and focus within. I know what would happen to me if I tried that. I would fall fast asleep.

There is nothing within anybody’s soul worth meditating upon. True meditation begins with the Word of God.

I must caution here that the Bible is not an end in itself. We were not given the Bible as a substitute for God until we got to heaven.

Rather, the Bible is to lead us straight into the heart and mind of God. Contemporary Christians do not seem to get this.

The hymn writer Mary Ann Lathbury, in her marvelous hymn “Break Thou The Bread of Life,” seems to know what this is all about. One phrase she uses explains it:

Beyond the sacred page, I seek Thee, Lord; My spirit pants for thee, O Living Word.

Some Christians read the Bible only to find some prooftext to use in their witnessing, which is more arguing than witnessing.

To come to the Word for anything less than meeting God borders on sacrilege. Many come to prove a point. Some come to establish a doctrine. This, however, is quite wrong.

We must discipline ourselves to come to the Word with holy anticipation to meet with God. To come to the Bible and not be fed is the sad plight of many people today.

I would suggest we discipline ourselves to read the Bible until it comes alive—until we can almost feel the breath of God breathing upon us.

David felt this way, particularly when he wrote, “As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God” (Ps. 42:1). He knew what it was to pant after God.

One dear old saint of God gave the instruction that we should nourish our souls on the high thoughts of God.

This can only be done through the Scriptures. As we come to the Bible, we come with the holy anticipation of actually meeting with God.

Also, part of the discipline of meditating on the Scriptures is to allow the Scriptures to cleanse our thoughts and make our minds a clean sanctuary appropriate and pleasing unto the Lord.

Often while meditating upon the Scripture, a verse or a word will capture my attention. The temptation is to move on, but in disciplining myself along these lines, I have discovered that in wrestling with the Scripture the result is an experience with God.

The Discipline Of Solitude

Another discipline toward the daily practice of God’s presence is the discipline of solitude. We live in a very noisy world. All around us are noises and voices that are most distracting.

Has there been a person born of a woman yet unable to overcome the impulse to talk all the time? Nothing is more annoying to me when riding in an airplane than to have a young child in the seat in front of me.

I can almost guarantee that during the flight the child will talk and talk and talk almost without stopping.

Solitude perhaps is one of the most difficult of our spiritual disciplines. Everything in our life and the world around us mitigates against this.

Because of its difficulty, this discipline is very important. What could be more important than sitting in silence before God?

Many times, when we come to God in prayer, we come with a grocery list of things we are asking for. I believe in asking God for things. I believe that it is important to come before God with a list of things that we are trusting Him for.

But after all that is done, some time must be given to cultivating silence before His presence.

This takes practice and discipline, I guarantee you, and will not come easily. We must plow through all the voices around us clamoring for our attention—voices calling us away from God to do things, important things, but things nevertheless.

There is not a Christian alive but has to die and die daily, to thoughts of self-importance. There are things that we must do, things that only we can do.

Many Christians suffer from the guilt of doing nothing. Coming before God in quietness and waiting upon Him in silence can sometimes accomplish more than days and weeks of feverish activity.

David understood this very well. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, he wrote, “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10).

It is in silence that we begin to see and then hear the pulsating heart of God. All of the nervous activity of our culture hinders us from really getting to know God as He desires to reveal Himself.

We must overcome this American mindset that says a moment of silence is a moment wasted. The discipline of silence is the price we pay to get to know God.

The Discipline of the Daily Expectation of God’s Presence

This seems to be something taken for granted, and yet I wonder: How many Christians harbor within their spirit the daily expectation of God’s presence? How many truly expect a personal encounter with God?

It is quite important to cultivate a daily expectation of God’s presence in your day. Jeremiah 29:13 admonishes us, “And ye shall seek me.

And find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Proverbs 8:17 states, “I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me.”

Let me quickly point out that this expectation must be based on the Bible and not some esoteric hope. The Christian must fearlessly repudiate anything not in harmony with the plain teaching of the Scriptures.

Our daily walk is not in a vacuum; rather, it is fortified by, “Thus saith the Lord.” It is the Word of the Lord that gives direction to our daily expectation of God’s presence.

Each day presents a new opportunity to experience God and fellowship with Him. Nothing should so occupy the mind of the Christian than discovering God in his day. Remember, the three Hebrew children discovered God in the fiery furnace.

If it was not for the fiery furnace, they never would have experienced the presence of God as they did that day.

We are sometimes so anxious to get rid of the furnace and in so doing fail to experience God’s presence in that unique way.

I think this is a sacred expectation for us. The mother will carry her child for nine months, and people will say of her.

“She’s expecting.” And we all know what she is expecting. That bundle of joy changes everything about her life from that day forward.

No less so is the expectation of God’s people. My encounter with God today may be of such a nature as to alter the entire course of my life.

With a sacred expectation for me to dwell upon each morning, as I get up, I look for God in all the circumstances of my day.

Let me give personal testimony that I never anticipate a day without experiencing the presence of God.

Yes, some days are filled with His presence, and other days are just as barren as the desert Moses found himself in before he met God in the bush.

Start the day seeking God’s presence and search for Him all through the day and revel in the gracious encounters of God throughout the day.

The Discipline Of Reverential Awe

One of the things I grieve over in the church today is that there is a lack of reverential awe or fear of God in our midst. In our worship services.

A crude familiarity has developed through the years. It seems we rush in, out of breath from worldly activities, only to rush out again never having received the blessing.

I believe we need to cultivate a healthy appreciation of the holy presence of God in our midst, especially in our assemblies.

There is no fear of God among us anymore. There is no holy hush that comes upon us as we supposedly sit before the living God.

Our services and our singing are crude, coarse, and borderline profane. All of it, in my opinion, is unbecoming of the Majesty of the glorious Christ whom we serve.

To know God is to fear Him. And this fear is to love Him as He deserves to be loved. Not the coarse, irreverent, Hollywood romantic love, but the high and holy rapturous love of the saint on fire for his Lord.

I must confess that I live each day in fear of God. It is a healthy fear. It is wonderful. It is a sense of His awe shrouding my heart and mind as I look to Him in humility.

The Discipline Of Obedience

One last discipline I need to include here is obedience. Obedience is not something that comes naturally to any of us, particularly in the spiritual realm.

There are many things arrayed against us necessitating us to track all diligence in obeying the Scriptures.

There is a “once for all” factor in the Christian life. Our salvation is a once-for-all experience, but there is also the daily renewing of our walk with God.

Each day we must diligently follow the leading of the Scriptures and the Word of God.

One marvelous thing about the leading of the Holy Spirit is that He never leads us contrary to the clear, plain teaching of the Word of God. This cannot be stressed enough.

The key to disciplining ourselves in the area of obedience is always keeping in mind to whom we are being obedient.

Of course, the resolve of my obedience is an encounter with God. The hymn writer put it this way, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus.”

The most unhappy Christians in the church today are those who are walking in disobedience. We must immediately and forthrightly discipline ourselves to obey the Word of God.

Make Room For His Presence

To experience the presence of God is a pilgrimage of utter delight and fascination for the believer. How sad for some who live their entire lives in a way that everything can be explained.

Oh, my friend, make room for mystery in your Christian life!

We are busy-beaver Christians. The average church calendar has something going on every day and night of the week. I think many things in our lives and on our calendars need to go.

Often we do things just because we have done them before. Or we are following the herd instinct and doing it because other people are doing it as well. Christianity, I fear, is not allergic to fads and fancies.

All of these things hinder our experiencing a conscious, manifest presence of God in our everyday life. I’m not talking about sinful things but about the things that hinder us from pressing on into His presence.

What is needed today is spiritual discernment along with the courage to identify these things and root them out once and for all.

If you knew someone was coming to visit, you would cancel everything and make preparations to receive that guest. Let us make room for this guest—our Lord.

And may He not be just a guest but rather an intimate companion in our day-to-day walk.

I am confident that God in His goodness will bring you to a deep experience of Himself as you seek Him with all of your heart.

God Reveals His Presence By Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1769)

God reveals His presence:
Let us now adore Him,
And with awe appear before Him.
God is in His temple: All within keep silence,
Prostrate lies with the deepest reverence.
Him alone God we own,

He our God and Saviour:
Praise His Name forever!
God reveals His presence:
Hear the harps resounding;
See the crowds the throne surrounding;
“Holy, holy, holy!”

Hear the hymn ascending,
Angels, saints, their voices blending.
Bow Thine ear To us here;
Hearken, O Lord Jesus,

O Thou Fount of blessing Purify my spirit,
Trusting only in Thy merit: Like the holy angels
Who behold Thy glory, May I ceaselessly adore Thee.
Let Thy will Ever still
Rule Thy Church terrestrial, As the hosts celestial.