The Power of God’s Presence

One of the little known books written by C.S. Lewis is . As the title suggests, it is a book about prayer where Lewis writes to a fictional friend named Malcolm about how prayer happens and works. In it, he discusses the awareness of God’s presence. He writes,

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend … in fact to come awake. Still more, to remain awake.”

The man of God remains and should remain awake and aware of God’s presence at all times. And God’s presence is both a comforting and terrible reality.

• It’s comforting in that there is no where we can go without God. He is with us in every valley and trouble. He will never leave us, nor forsake us.

• It is terrible in that sins are never secret and hidden from His pure and holy eyes. God’s presence is wonderful and frightening.

But the truth is this: His presence is clearly obvious. Just think about that for a moment. There’s no place where He isn’t fully present – unlike me. I, on the other hand, can only be in one place at any given time, and some would say even then I’m not always fully there! Consider Psalm 114

“When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language, Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his dominion. The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. What ails you, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back? O mountains, that you skip like rams? O hills, like lambs? Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob,who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.”

In Donald Whitney’s book , he gives a series of questions that help the individual look beyond his outward works and into his soul. One of the ten questions he asks really applies to our application here in Psalm 114: are you more sensitive to God’s presence?

He shares in his book about a study done by George Barna in a book entitled . In that study, he shares that two out of three adults who profess to be Christians can remember at some time in their lives sensing God’s presence. At some time? Rarely? The rest of those surveyed who profess to be Christians say they have never sensed God’s presence! Never?! Whitney writes,

“Insensitivity to the nearness of God certainly means less awareness that ‘the eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good’ (Proverbs 15:3). That leads to thinking less of restraining sin on the one hand, or of doing food on the other. For after all, who will know? At such times, we imitate Moses when ‘he looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian’ (Exodus 2:12). No matter who we do not see, we must never forget the One whose presence is unseen yet more real than any other.

“In effect, living apart from a conscious sense that the Lord is present is to live as though God really is not there. More pleasure is sought in things, dreams, or people than in God. A relationship with God is reduced to mere religion. The spiritual disciplines devolve into mere duty or even legalism. Public worship becomes an obligation, not a privilege. Obviously, this is not the profile of a growing Christian.”

And he is right. Christians should be aware of the presence of God in their lives and they behave and think accordingly.

Being aware of God’s presence is not limited to some mystical experience (e.g., like birds chirping). It is about recognizing the reality of God’s real presence and real majesty manifested in a real way. Certainly there will times when you feel as if you are living in a deserted place and can’t see the presence of God but the Christian will be more aware of God’s presence than say “at one time I knew He was there.”

Whitney closes his chapter with four extremely helpful suggestions for opening your spiritual eyes to God’s presence. Here are some practical steps.

• Go often to the place where God has revealed Himself most clearly – the Bible. He doesn’t say “Take more nature hikes” or “spend more time alone on a beach.” Read the Bible! Martyn Lloyd Jones once said of God’s Word “There more we know it and read it, the more it will take us into the presence of God. So if you want to set the Lord always before you, spend much of your time with regular daily reading of the Bible.” Listen to God’s voice in the Scripture and you will sense His presence often if you are mediating upon it.

• Acknowledge His presence with you by talking with Him. God is a real Person is really present and to ignore Him in prayer is to create distance (e.g., like a husband sitting in the room with his wife without talking to her and creating distance or lack of intimacy).

• Seek Him in the manifestations of His presence given only in congregational worship. Our gathering is a Temple. It is a place of worship; it is a place of His presence. God always has and always will manifest Himself in unique ways in the congregation that He won’t in private.

• Continually reaffirm the truth that He is omnipresent. He is with us always (Matt 28:20). Even if we don’t sense His presence, He is there. You have to work hard to affirm has not left or forsaken you in the desert.

Whitney concludes his chapter by saying we need to develop “God eyes.” He says whenever you are conditioned to look for something blue in a room, you see everything blue in that room. You have “blue eyes.” Whitney says we need to develop the discipline of looking in our lives and the world around us and see God everywhere and notice He is there.

, pg. 57.

Ibid., pgs. 57-58.

, pgs. 65-68.

, pg. 133.

“The Secret of a Happy Life,” pg. 411.

ool of water,     the flint into a spring of water.

, page 75.