2. FOCUS ON THE PRESENCE

​THIS SERIES: CELEBRATE THE PRESENT

​Celebrating the present moment cannot be separated from celebrating the Presence, for God fills everything with Himself:

…though He is not far from any one of us.
For in Him we live and move and have our being.
[Acts 17:27,28]
 
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.
[ Isaiah 6:3]
 
Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast.
[Psalm 139:9,10]
 

​And not only is the earth filled with His presence every moment of every day, for believers there are the added promises:

...surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
[Matthew 28:20]
 
I will ask the Father,
and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you for ever –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.
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you…
On that day you will realise that I am in my Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.
[John 14:16-20]
​

There has been a lot of emphasis in recent years on the manifest presence of God—the experiential presence—and many people have been blessed with wonderful encounters with the Lord. However, some have focused on the sensations rather than the truth of His presence, and have felt bereft when away from an anointed meeting, or disappointed in an experience that has not matched their neighbours'.

C.S. Lewis has some words of wisdom on this:

Of course the presence of God is not the same as the sense of the presence of God. The latter may be due to imagination; the former may be attended with no “sensible consolation.” The Father was not really absent from the Son when He said “Why hast thou forsaken me?” You see God Himself, as man, submitted to man’s sense of being abandoned. .. The act which engenders a child ought to be, and usually is attended by pleasure. But it is not the pleasure that produces the child. Where there is pleasure there may be sterility: where there is no pleasure the act may be fertile. And in the spiritual marriage of God and the soul it is the same. It is the actual presence, not the sensation of the presence, of the Holy Ghost which begets Christ in us. The sense of the presence is a super-added gift for which we give thanks when it comes, and that’s all about it.
[The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III]
​

​The Evil One loves us to believe that we are somehow separated from the Lord, that we are somehow inferior Christians. The truth is that nothing separates us from His love [Romans 8:35-39], and we live grace-filled lives.

THIS WEEK'S GRACE RHYTHM

​Take time at intervals today to focus on the truth of the Lord’s presence. Stop and thank Him that His presence is filling this particular moment, this particular place, and you as an individual.

NEXT WEEK: 
3. STOP LIVING FOR THE WEEKEND…
Guest post.

ALIVE AND GRATEFUL!

Join me on a daily journey into thankfulness!
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[Photo credits: Davide Cantelli (light shaft); Jon Tyson (prayer); Austin Schmid (girl leaping);
Markus Winkler (typewriter) @ Unsplash, with thanks]