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Stirring The Deep

Tag Archives: God’s presence


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The Greater the Victory

The Greater the Victory

 

The greater the possibility of defeat, the greater the victory.

Soon after we moved to California my husband and I were at a point of having spent all our savings on trying to start a business. We had no jobs and a house mortgage that could cover three houses the same size in Tennessee, where we moved from. Yet, we believed that God put us in this house. A steadily draining bank account with no replenishment in site seemed to be a pending defeat waiting to consume our lives. The waves were crashing into the boat and starting to sink us.

You can look at this experience two ways; one stupidity for not selling sooner or an opportunity to witness the power, mercy and care of God. We opted for the latter. Still green in our Christian walk, this trial went to the depths of our souls. Did we trust God was our provider and not ourselves? Did we truly believe He was in the details like His Word says? Were we going to rely on that still small voice telling us He would provide and there was no need to sell our home? Did we honestly think He cared that much about little ole’ us? Did we think He could provide the money we desperately needed? When you have to act on your beliefs then you know if you truly trust what you say you do.

A month from going under, we took a break from our job search and headed for the beach. We spent a couple of hours talking about our situation, God, and the possibilities of what would happen. There was no question we weren’t selling. We decided to rest in the promises of God we had been studying. No action, no faith. If we not now then when? If we don’t trust Him with our lives, then what is everything we had been learning for? Is He our God or isn’t He? Several times, we paused let the water dash over our toes and wondered at the amazing peace we felt. Shouldn’t we spend every waking hour trying to find some income? Shouldn’t we be nervous wrecks?

We followed the whisper.

God provided. We didn’t have to sell our home. The blessings started to pour into our lives. We trusted Him and He was faithful. That trial put our relationship on a different level with God because acting on our trust in Him breathed life into His promises.

Looking back the choice was between; believe God and enter into His land of promises and rest or stay wandering around in the desert until He provided another opportunity to demonstrate our trust was in Him and not us.

The possibility of defeat was huge as it banged at our back door, but looking back the enormity of the defeat made the victory all the greater and sweeter. It is a time in our life that we often reflect upon to give us peace, a time we felt the caring perfect mighty hand of our Lord.

Our ultimate purpose is to be one with God in truth, will and desire. Everything we go through is for that purpose. These moments when the possibility of defeat are great are the most powerful in increasing our union with Him. We have to call upon like no other time, we have to expand our trust and depend on Him with all that is within us and those acts take us deeper into His presence.

In a boat the waves crashing all around, I sit starring into Your eyes. The storm is great, but You control the storm. It is only a matter of time before You calm the waters. You look at me; what, who am I trusting? Am I scrambling to and fro, calling to others to rescue me, or paralyzed with a panic stricken stare? My eyes remain fixed on you. I see nothing else but you and your love and care for me.

2 Samuel 22:33 God is my strength and power, And He makes my way perfect


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Space Suit: In God’s Presence

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.


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Abiding in God’s Presence

 Abiding in God’s Presence

 

I often mention that reading God’s Word, the Bible, is essential to our spirits’ lives. But what makes all the difference is how we read. Most people read the Bible like they would another book; a text book, a historical book, or a guide for good living and miss the whole point.

God tells us He is our husband, so that is how we are supposed to relate to Him. He desires not that we know about Him, but that we intimately know Him. To talk to Him like a spouse, to spend time with Him one-on-one on a regular basis, to listen to His words, and to put our focus on Him. He created the Bible to foster this intimacy with us.

For years, I read the Bible like a book. I believed they were His words, but I didn’t understand what I want to share with you today – that it is about a fostering a relationship not reading a book. Because of my lack of understanding, I couldn’t stay focused or disciplined in my reading. It would often be dry, I wouldn’t get much out of it, most of it didn’t seem to relate to me and parts were boring and confusing. So, I rarely read, read in spurts, and preferred listening to someone else talk about Him instead of going to Him. I knew I should read, but just couldn’t seem to fly solo.

After hitting yet another low point in my life, I made a commitment to read a chapter a day regardless of how I felt (that was key to getting started). After that commitment, God showed me how I was approaching it wrong in three main ways; my motive, our relationship and His role. From then on everything changed; I mean everything – my entire existence because I started to abide in His presence.

  1. My motive.  Every time I sat down to read, it had always been about me; what I got out of it, if I felt encouraged, inspired, connected to God, if He answered my questions and prayers to be healed, restored, and feel His presence.

God told me – what if you treated your husband that way? What if it was always about you? What kind of intimacy would you have? Intimacy takes two. Your motive when you come to My Word should be to learn about Me, to get to know Me. That fosters intimacy. Stop making it about you. Make it about Me and I will take care of you.

He started to reveal Himself to me in ways I had never known despite the years I spent in church and Bible studies.

  1. Our relationship. I use to approach reading the Bible like reading a book, after all it is a book, right?

God told me – You say you love Me, but you don’t spend time with me like you love Me.  I am no longer a flesh man, the flesh is gone. I am Spirit and that is how you are to know Me. 2 Corin. 5: 16 My Spirit is in the Bible like it was in the flesh man, Jesus. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. John 1:14 If Jesus, the flesh body, was here what would you do? Would you spend time with Him? Would you want to talk to Him one-on-one?  He is here.

I was no longer sitting down to read a guide for good living, I was sitting down with my God and talking with Him, listening to Him, hearing His heart, will, and desires. I was cultivating a relationship.

  1. His role. I had depended on others to teach me about God. I thought I couldn’t glean what they could from the Word, so I didn’t. I figured it wasn’t my gift. It was easier listening to others’ words, ideas, and interpretations than weeding through all those chapters by myself.  I thought it was one in the same.

God told me – What if you always went to your husband’s friends and family to learn about him? They may repeat things he said, talk about things he had done, but how well would you know him? What kind of intimacy would you have with him? This is how you are acting toward Me when you rely on others to teach you about Me. I gave you My Spirit so you can understand all I have to tell you. 1 John 2:27, Hebrews 5:12  Teachers are to teach others to teach themselves, not spoon-feed them. 2 Timothy 2:24  I want you to come directly to Me because that requires a seeking heart, trust and dependency on Me and those things foster the depth of intimacy I desire with you. I will teach you about Me, trust Me. If you continue to rely on others there is only so close we can be.

My mind being renewed in these three ways altered my time with God. My relationship with Him started to become what I always desired thus true life followed. I won’t mislead you, knowing Him takes time, years, just like it does in other relationships. It was years of spending time before I felt true intimacy with Him, where I felt I was abiding in His presence. But God gave us His Word and His Spirit so we could know Him, be one with Him in will, purpose, and desire and abide in true love and truth. If we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us.