Finding Rest In The Presence Of God Series

Does God seem far away? Many feel God is far off. They wonder… Can you really experience God? Can you really sense God’s presence? Can you really know God deeply? The answer to those 3 questions is yes.

We we can experience God’s presence outside of us, and within us. God isn’t far off. He’s so close we can hardly imagine it.

To know Jesus Christ, to have received Jesus as savior, we now have peace with God. And we begin a journey through this life and toward heaven. As we live day by day we engage in deep relationship with God our Father.

We pray to God. We talk to God. We experience God’s presence. We enjoy fellowship with God.

We’ve learned to increasingly look to the Spirit, and not our own soul, to be led by God.

Now I want to take us to a moment in the journey of Israel through the wilderness. Moses was leading them through the wilderness toward the promised land. God had given them His law, the ten commandments, but the Israelites had made a golden calf and worshiped the false idol, and so God punished them for their sin.

But even after this grievous event, there is hope for Israel. I think we understand that grief of sin! We’ve all been in that place where we realize, oh no, I just sinned against God. I did something very bad. And we feel convicted by the Spirit within us.

So we come to God, and confess our sins, we express sorrow, and we repent, we commit in Christ to not commit that sin again. We make a plan to stay free.

Similarly, Moses is trying to make things right for Israel. So Moses is in this terrible situation, having seen the people betray God and worship an idol. So he goes to meet with God about the situation.

And it says this, "Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the “tent of meeting.” Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses. Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to their tent. The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.” -Exodus 33:7-11

Moses would constantly go to God, and meet with God. All the people would watch him as he went, and they would worship God while Moses met with the Lord. Isn’t that amazing?

God would then speak with Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Moses was a friend of God! But notice Joshua, Joshua did not leave the tent. Joshua just stayed in the tent, he wanted to be with God all the time. Can we learn to be like Joshua who sought God's presence continuously?

For Moses and Israel, God was with them in the tent of meeting. But for us as new testament Christians we have the Lord God Almighty living within us. We have the Holy Spirit inside of us. We have become ourselves, body, soul, and spirit, the temple of God (1st Cor 6:19-20).

So, to meet with God, we simply must turn within to His presence within us, and meet with God there.

Jeanne Guyon in her book has constantly referred to the concept of turning our attention to the presence of God within us. We meet with God who is with us. We have had experiences of an outward presence of God. But what about the inward presence of God?

He is so close to us. He is closer than we could imagine.

Point number one, God desires to meet with us, and the cloud of his presence surely descends from outside us, but more so, from within us. God desires to meet with us as a friend, and speak to us.

Your part in that is to turn to Him. Constantly. Jeanne Guyon makes it clear that we should continuously turn to Him. Brother Lawrence taught something similar in his famous book "Practicing the Presence of God."

From time to time we get distracted, and we lose our sense of God’s presence. So we learn to turn again to that presence and focus in on God.

As we do that more and more, we find what David wrote about the Lord, from Psalm 16:8, “I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.”