Greater Presence Of God In Me Series

Greater Part 2, By Pastor Rob Ketterling.

All right, we are continuing our series focusing in on the greater presence of God. And I just am so excited about when the church does the series together and we do the Lifegroups and everybody's on the same page. And we are looking this week at the greater presence of God and why should we seek after the greater presence. Why do we really want to seek after it more?

We talked about the presence of God, and I'll give a quick review because we are only two weeks into this now. But last week we talked about the omnipresence of God, that God is everywhere, okay? It's an attribute of God that he's omnipresent. We also talked about the indwelling presence of God, that when you give your life to Jesus Christ and he becomes your Lord and Savior and at the end of this service here and at all of our campuses we are going to give people an opportunity to do that when you do that, you have the indwelling presence of God. There is the omnipresence; he's everywhere.

When you give your life to him and you say, "I want to be a Christian, I want to turn from my sins and ask for forgiveness," the Bible says that the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit takes residence in you, okay? So we have the indwelling presence.

Then we talked about the manifest presence. And we've really focused in this series on that aspect; that there are times when the presence of God is felt in a greater way. It is the manifest presence of God. It's the moments of greater nearness. It's the moments of greater awareness. It's a moment of greater intimacy. And those happen. And we desire as a church, we desire very much so that we have greater intimacy, greater nearness, greater awareness. This is something we are hungry for.

And sometimes we get accused as a Spirit filled church of just wanting the manifest presence of God for the feeling. Some people say, "Well, you know, you go there, they kind of get emotional." You know, and I talked about it in week one about this lady coming to our church and feeling something and crying during service. And people will say, you know, "You only want the presence of God in that way for the feeling, for the goose bumps," for the whatever you want to call them. And it is just like it's all just emotion and feeling. And we absolutely enjoy those things. But I'm telling you the manifest presence of God is more than that. It is more than a feeling. As a matter of fact, I'm titling my sermon More Than a Feeling. Now all the older generation just went right to Boston. I know you did. The younger generation is like, "Who's that?" Okay, but that's okay. We are just having a moment here, all right.

But it's more than a feeling. It really is. The manifest presence of God is more than a feeling. There's something that is so much more beneficial to God being manifest in our life in a greater way where we are more aware of what he's doing around us, in us, through us, in the moment. And so we are going to look at those things that the manifest presence of God brings.

Now, I want to point out that the very first thing that I believe that the manifest presence of God brings into our life is more comfort. It brings comfort to the follower of Jesus Christ. When you are experiencing the manifest presence of God, all of a sudden in the midst of your storm, in the midst of your trial you will feel comfort and peace like you've never felt before. You can head into the storm, and you can be trembling, and all of a sudden the manifest presence of God intensifies. You're more aware, you're more near, something happens, and all of a sudden there is a level of comfort you didn't even know existed. Okay?

The psalmist gives us a little insight into this. In Psalm 27:4 8, he says, One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

Those are all presence terms. He's saying, "I want to gaze on the Lord. I want to be in his house. I want to look at his face. I want to be near him." He's saying, "I want the presence of God."

And he says, 5 For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling;