Practice Seeking The Presence of God
A few thoughts on looking for God.
Do you ever feel the pressure to spend time with God “the right way?”
I mean there are so many options people throw out there for us. You can find a million different Bible reading plans, journaling methods, or podcasts. You can find different opinions about how much you should read or how little you should read. You can be caught up in feeling like you’ve messed it up if you forget a name or two that should be on your prayer list.
All the while the cycle goes on and on and on. We get stuck in feeling hopeless that we’ll ever consistently spend time with God because we have no idea how to do it the “right way.”
What I’m going to present to you is not another method, but a goal that can drive your interactions with God.
Ready for it? It’s simple.
Seek His Presence.
That’s it. That’s the goal. On the surface, this may seem more abstract and difficult to do than anything else but maybe that’s the point? God wants us to rely on Him for everything. So why would we think we shouldn’t need to rely on Him when we spend time with Him?
We can get real good at keeping a Bible reading plan and miss God’s voice.
We can make it all the way through our prayer list without praying in the Spirit.
We can check all the boxes on a quiet time but leave that time completely unchanged.
The point of sending time with God is being in His presence, not accomplishing something.
We need a prayer list. We need a Bible reading plan. We need structure. But without God’s presence those three things are useless.
So how do we seek God’s presence? I’ll present 5 thoughts below and then we’ll be finished.
1. Confess your sin and the weights of life holding you down.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
—Hebrews 12:1-2
According to Hebrews 12 the weight and sin that clings closely to us is what prevents us from moving with Jesus and looking to Him.
Seeking His presence will first require us to confess our sin and the heavy burdens clinging to us.
2. Ask Him for more awareness of His presence.
If God is always present everywhere then there’s no 4 step process we need to do in order to attract His presence.
However, if God is always present everywhere and we’re not seeing Him then that means we need to be made more aware of His presence. Who else can give us that but God? We need to ask Him for it.
3. Expect Him to meet you in His Word.
I’ve heard people say, “God goes where He’s wanted.” What if every time you approached His Word you expected Him to talk to you?
I know when I’m walking in a large crowd I’m not usually expecting anyone to talk to me. So when a random person starts calling my name it takes me a few moments before I realize they’re trying to get my attention.
What if, in a strange turn of events, God is trying to get our attention as we read His Word but because we’re not expecting Him to speak to us, we miss Him? I know that seems strange but if we’re reading His Word because our Bible Reading Plan tells us to and not because we’re desperate for a word from His Word, we’ll miss Him.
4. Linger with Him.
We’re going to get most familiar with His presence when we linger with Him.
Something special happens when we move away from a transactional interaction with God and we start having relational interactions with Him.
A transactional interaction looks like this:
I read a chapter in God’s Word
…He helps me understand it
…I leave the interaction with more knowledge.
A relational interaction looks like this:
I read a chapter in God’s Word
…He helps me understand it
…I sit there and ask questions
…He takes me to another passage
…He reveals something about His character
…He reveals something about my need for Him
…He leads me to a promise from His Word I can believe and hold onto.
…He shows me how to apply a specific truth from the chapter to my daily life.
…I leave the interaction with more knowledge, wisdom, understanding, and sensitivity to what God is doing in my life.
+ That entire interaction was teaching me to better understand God’s presence (The Holy Spirit) which helps me know what His presence is like when I’m going about my day.
Do you see the difference in the two type of interactions with God? Learning to seek God’s presence means lingering with Him and moving from transactional interactions to relational interactions. John 15 is an excellent chapter on what happens when we linger with God.
5. Look for Him everywhere.
This is similar to #2 but now let’s think about it beyond our normal Bible reading time every day.
If God is everywhere, then He is everywhere. Which means you can find Him everywhere.
Seeking God’s presence means looking for Him everywhere.
At your job? He’s there.
At ball practice? He’s there.
At church? He’s there.
At the coffee shop? He’s there.
He can be found there, but only if we look for Him. Making a practice of seeking His presence means actually looking for Him.
When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
—2 Kings 6:15-17 (ESV)
What was the difference between Elisha and the young man? Elisha went out looking and expecting the God of Angel Armies to be present. The young man didn’t know that was possible. We must be looking for God’s presence around us.
6. Acknowledge your weaknesses to God.
I’m talking honest, humble, confession. There is a difference between self-loathing statements about ourself when we’re insecure and self-aware statements about ourselves.
A self-loathing statement out of our insecurity would be, “Well, I guess I’m just not very good at ____! God’s gonna have to help me!” (Said with a sarcastic, dramatic, and dismissive tone after your weakness has been on display for all to see.)
A self-aware statement would be, “I have noticed I’m weak at _____ and I have the tendency to _____. I really need God’s help to be ______.”
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
—2 Corinthians 12:9 (ESV)
Look at that, the power of Christ rests upon us when we acknowledge our weaknesses. This is key.
Oftentimes, though, we won’t acknowledge our weaknesses because we’re embarrassed by them. One of my greatest weaknesses throughout my time following Christ has been my prayer life. I would sit and read the Bible for hours but when Jackie asked me if I prayed about a specific thing I would always dance my way around a “no.”
I have needed to acknowledge to God, “God, I’m not consistent in prayer. I need help. Will you help me?” That acknowledgment was hard because I didn’t want to admit to God I wasn’t a good prayer.
Another area I’ve needed to acknowledge my weakness in is my decision making skills. Historically I’ve been an atrocious decision maker. I move too slow, the moment passes, and the decision I make reflects the fact that I didn’t consider every aspect of the problem. That was embarrassing for me because in leadership, good decision making skills are required. I didn’t think I had what it took to be a leader because of that.
For the longest time I tried to overcompensate, “muscle up,” and figure out a way to be better. It was embarrassing to need to ask God for help in this area because I thought, “by this point in my life I ought to know how to make decisions.”
But as soon as I acknowledged my weakness to God I noticed a shift. He began to help me lead from a place of wisdom rather than foolishness. It was His power, not mine.
His presence and power is attracted to our humbly acknowledged weaknesses.
7. Posture yourself appropriately.
In Exodus 17 Israel went to battle with Amalek. They were only winning the battle when Moses had the staff in his hands and his arms raised above his head. When his arms would drop, they would lose.
He had a couple buddies join him to hold his arms up.
God was the one bringing the power for victory, but Moses’s posture mattered to God.
As we spend time with God a valuable question would be, “What body posture do you want me in to receive your word?”
This morning I was having a hard time hearing from God. When I read Exodus 17 I sensed the Lord tell me to raise my hands as well. As soon as I did I heard clearly from Him.
It doesn’t happen like that every time, but it happens enough to know that God does care how we posture ourselves toward Him.
In fact, practicing any of these 7 things aren’t a guarantee we’ll hear from God. God alone decides when we’ll hear from Him. However, we do see God move closer toward people doing specific type of things. We need to do whatever we can to prepare ourselves to hear from God if He so chooses to speak and reveal His Presence to us.
Thanks for reading along and I hope you experience God today in more ways than you ever have before.
—Brandon
Great suggestions