Last week, I said that the Word of God, Jesus Christ, is still incarnate today, in you and I – those who are in Him.
If you believe this, how does that begin to change your posture toward the “Presence of God?”
The more you receive your Oneness in Christ, and submit to Live from His Life, the more you will notice, and feel disconnected from statements that would indicate any separation from God.
“Lord, we invite Your Presence.”
“We just want Your Presence.”
“The Presence of the Lord was really strong tonight.”
These, and others like them, are heard in prayers, worship songs and in the speech of Christians.
While there is certainly nothing harmful or wrong with these, they nevertheless reveal a lack of seeing the reality of the depths of the Lord’s Life. They make the Lord’s Presence something to be achieved or worked for. They make God’s Presence something “up there,” or otherwise not here, and therefore to be invited, conjured, called, waited for, etc. They make the Lord’s Presence an occasion to be experienced more than a Life-reality to be One with.
God Himself walked in the Garden with Adam and Eve, in harmony of Presence with and in them. His essence gave them expression, even as He invited them to partake of More in the Tree of Life. Interestingly, it was only immediately after the wrong tree was eaten of, and independence was chosen, that we see a segregation of the Lord’s Presence, from that of Adam and Eve:
…the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” (Genesis 3:8)
The veil had come down over their created eyes of the heart (faith), putting their previously enjoyed and shared Presence with and in the Divine – in the dark. Now, having eyes of flesh only, they could “see” that they had been separated from God and His Life. And they were terrified. They hid in their shame and fear while God was calling,
Where are you?”
How many in the Body of Christ today are still living as if behind a bush with a fig leaf covering, thinking themselves apart from God’s Presence?
Is God not OmniPresent?
The epic Psalm 139 captures this beautifully when it cries:
O where can I flee from Your Presence?” (Psalm 139:7)
He is everywhere. All the time. And He has never stopped calling “Where are you?” after His Beloved.
But even David didn’t quite have the whole picture, the rest of the Beautiful Story. He saw before His time that God was indeed what Isaiah would call, Immanuel, God with us. But when Immanuel Himself, Jesus Christ, became a Life-giving Spirit, He moved into a realm beyond that of with us, into a reality of God in us. Now, when the Lord calls for us, He calls from within. He beckons our eyes of faith re-opened, to see what already is.
God with us. God in us. God through us.
A person submitted to the Lordship of Christ Lives by His Divine Life. They become His touch, His breath, His words. They are The Word. Where they are, He is. Where they go, He goes. Whomever they are with are in the very Presence of God, because they are the Presence of God. He becomes the cause, and they are the effect. Life happens, as He leads.
I am not suggesting that someone in this posture is God, but in the paradox of the Divine Oneness we are invited to partake of, we share, and are God’s Presence. We are His Divine Life, revealed and Lived into the earth. We are what it means to be truly human. We are the Garden restored, expanded even, the Tree of Life, chosen.
Knowing this, and then asking for God to bring His Presence, or to come – is to reject the truth of what already is. The Presence of God is here. The Presence of God is now. The Presence of God is closer than with, or near. The Presence of of God can be in and through.
The Presence of God is the Kingdom of God. Jesus Himself said it was “not here, and not there.” No, the Presence, the Kingdom, is within (Luke 17:21).
The Presence of God… is you!
