Space Suit: In God’s Presence

 

Have you ever had the feeling of being consumed by the presence of God? A while ago I got a strange but clarifying image that it is like being in a space suit. In a suit your life is preserved, protected, you see the world a little differently, and it goes wherever you do. Wearing it changes how you interact with your environment. If provides oxygen, the breath of life. If you take it off you lose life.

Before this unusual analogy, God’s presence seemed ethereal and hard to touch. But this image helped me to grasp how real it is and it established the solidarity of His presence in my life. It seemed a strange image but it worked. It helped me to see what it means to dwell in God’s presence, and what it means for our lives. In His presence we have protection, provision, love, mercy, grace, counsel, comfort, truth, favor, and life, everything we need. All He is surrounds us and fills us. When God consumes us, our role becomes one of rest. He does the work through us and our focus shifts from doing to being. We don’t push through life, but let God flow and work through us.

These verses give a peek into what it is like to dwell in His presence, in this space suit:

2 Corinthians 9:8 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.

2 Corinthians 12:9 And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Psalm 37:3-5 Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.

Joshua 1:9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Philippians 4:19 And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

Abiding in His presence is beyond amazing, wouldn’t you agree? Who wouldn’t want this life?

How do we put on this space suit and keep it on? By staying connected to the source. We stay connected by trusting and acting on our knowledge of Him, which is faith.

It all starts with what we know. We bring all that we are to our relationships. Now, a friend may not know a certain side of us, but that is just a lack of knowledge. It is the same with God. He is always there, but our experience of the various aspects of Him comes from knowing Him. This is why abiding in His Word is the foundation of experiencing His presence.

If we don’t know God, His promises and His ways then how do we know what to trust in? Without knowledge we end up trusting in our own image of Him, a false image, that is powerless, or we trust in ourselves that is just as helpless.

Abiding in the truth not only gives us knowledge but cultivates trust in that knowledge. Trust, acting on our knowledge, is how we dwell in the space suit.

How many times do we read in the Word, trust and such and such will happen? Trust manifests His presence in our lives. It makes what we learn about Him a reality. Without trust the knowledge we have would be lifeless.

We come to know and trust God like other relationships. We spend time talking, listening, learning, asking, seeking and experiencing and in the process we know and trust, trust and know. God made this dynamic to be a process that requires time and experiences that give us a deep understanding of Him, therefore His truth always coincides with mercy for His kids.

As we approach the next phase of manifesting His presence in our lives, increasing trust, it is critical to embrace this truth – ALL His paths are truth and mercy. Psalm 25:10 We are on the path of knowing and trusting we aren’t there yet. Our experience of Him isn’t dependent only on our trust, but also on His mercy. We know that we should trust, but we don’t. But as long as we are seeking Him, His mercy is more than enough to cover our lack.

Finally, to increase our trust, God brings events into our lives to test and strengthen it. God knows trusting Him is a struggle that is why He places challenges before us, to push us into deeper union with Him, otherwise we would remain at the surface of His presence instead of consumed by every part of it. If we remain as we are we miss out on experiencing all He has to give us. The purpose of these struggles is to become united to Him. 1 Peter 1:6-7

Consequently, these are the situations in which it is hardest to trust. We are experiencing the sovereign hand of God heavy upon us. Not against us though that is how it may feel, but to draw us near. Like Jacob did to become Israel, we wrestle with God through these times to become who we were created to be. These times push us into Him. We cry out to Him from the depth of our soul, ask Him to help with our unbelief and through the process we draw near to Him, our ultimate purpose. John 17:21 He expects us to doubt, struggle, and question through these times. But He wants us to keep Him by our side throughout the process. We are the caterpillar struggling to become a butterfly.

These trials are difficult to the point of breaking us, but their intensity is essential to obtain the trust we need to experience more of Him. We have to set our expectations aside of how we think things should be going, focus on abiding in His truth and trust Him that He is working everything for the purpose of being united to Him. He will give us exactly what we need to get us into a conscious awareness of that space suit, because that gives Him glory.

The secret to abiding in His presence, in the space suit, is knowing Him, so we can trust Him, then working through those tests of trust and when we do we will move deeper into His presence, the fountain of life.