Led by His Presence

This morning I woke up with the theme of Presence running through my mind. Not my usual waking up thoughts, so I decided to pay attention and let the Lord speak to me. I find that often the Lord speaks in those times when my mind is still quiet, right after I wake up. I guess one could say the Lord is an efficient communicator, for He knows when to speak when I will listen.

So the primary theme around His Presence was the need to foster our sensitivity to it, and also return to Him our attention, by being present to Him. I was thinking about Moses and the first time the Presence of God filled the tabernacle, and there was real purpose and immediacy to His presence. Here are the verses from Exodus 40:33-38 NIV:

[33] "Then Moses set up the courtyard around the tabernacle and altar and put up the curtain at the entrance to the courtyard. And so Moses finished the work.

[34] Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. [35] Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

[36] In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; [37] but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out---until the day it lifted. [38] So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels."

Apparently the moment that Moses finished the work on the tabernacle, God's presence filled the tent of meeting, which is where Moses and God would meet and talk. This speaks to me of God's desire for us to experience His Presence. We see this same pattern when Solomon finishes the temple in 2 Chronicles 7:1-3 NIV:

[1] "When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. [2] The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it. [3] When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying,“He is good; his love endures forever.”

I love the idea of the presence of God filling the temple, and sometimes wonder why we don't experience this type of visitation of God's Presence? The answer is that we still do occasionally see God visit His people with His manifest presence, it just may not have happened near us, nor in the church in which we participate. There have been several "revivals" in my lifetime here in the US, and many more abroad, where the Presence of God shows up in very noticeable or manifest ways.

More importantly, His presence is always with us, for when we experience salvation, His Spirit takes up residence in us! Jesus said the Holy Spirit would be in us - John 14:15-17 NIV: "If you love me, keep my commands. [16] And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever--- [17] the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you."

So for me, the theme this morning was learning to recognize the presence of God stirring in our midst. Since He is in each of us, He doesn't need to come and fill the room with His presence, but can rather move in us. The issue I think is that many of us just don't recognize this, or haven't learned to discern His presence's affect on us.

That is what I felt the Lord wanted to discuss today, learning to pay attention to His presence in us. Part of the reason many of us struggle with this is we are not bringing ourselves to be present to Him, in other words we are distracted. I had in my mind the image of people today with their smart phones sitting around each other, each distracted by their phones, completely ignoring each other. That is a great example of distracted relationships.

When we gather together the Lord is moving in us, and we want to be able recognize that and listen to Him, we want to follow His leading, as the Israelites did when His presence was over the tent of meeting. We want to be able to sense the stirring of His Holy Spirit, and move in that direction. The onkynway we can do that is if we are paying attention to Him.

I am reminded of PS 123, where the song writer talks about the maid having her eyes set in the hands of her mistress. This speaks of constant attention to the direction she might be given. I believe this is the way the Lord wants us to come to Him, especially during our times of prayer and corporate gathering. The Lord wants to speak to us, wants to give us direction, wants us to experience His presence and learning to discern and understand how He interacts with us is essential. We must learn to pay attention to the gentle stirrings, the new thoughts that enter our mind, the ideas or memories that represent themselves, and especially any physical manifestations. When the Lord reveals His presence to us, His power will affect us, and that is good.

We must establish a culture in our lives, and in our churches that values the direction of the Holy Spirit. That should be a silly statement, but I think this is unfortunately not the norm for many churches. It is too often the case that we can have church whether the Lord reveals His presence or not. We have fine tuned our liturgies to honor God and speak about God, but we seem to have forgotten He is in our midst, alive and well and wanting to move and direct and breath life into us.

For us to make progress individually and corporately in our ability to recognize the Presence of the Lord, we must practice, and give ourselves the freedom to step out and try out what we are hearing, sensing or feeling. I can't tell you how often I get a sense of God wanting to do some thing, but I sweep it away because it seems silly to me. I heard a story about a church group that was learning to hear from God, listening to the stirring of the Holy Spirit. One man only heard that he was supposed to tell the lady who was conducting the training that she was wearing a yellow dress. That certainly doesn't sound like some amazing word of the Lord, but when he spoke it out, she was overwhelmed by the mercy of the Lord and fell weeping. She had asked the Lord to confirm her long term prayers for a family member by having someone speak a very specific word that morning saying she was wearing a yellow dress! Only the Lord knew that, and the man who listened to the stirrings on the Holy Spirit in him, spoke it out! It was magnificent!

So my prayer is that I would learn to listen and recognize the stirrings of the Lord's presence in me. I pray that we would all learn to pay attention and be present to Him, whom we serve and love. Let us learn to be lead by the Presence of the Lord who is in us!