God is a wonderful powerful Being. I know that I've experienced His presence throughout my life in many different ways. I remember when I was a boy how I could feel that God was present in my home and over my life where He has shown up in other ways, pulling me back to Him and drawing me deeper into sanctification
I see three ways God expresses His presence: power, purity, and love.
The Presence of God in Almighty Power
We see this Almighty Power displayed in Genesis 1 and 2 in Creation. He speaks all things into existence. There is power in His word. No other god speaks.
God sometimes shows His power visually, as when He appeared to Moses in the burning bush. It was the sight of the fire that attracted Moses, but the words God spoke that commissioned him to lead the Exodus.
Moses and Aaron delivered His words/commands to Pharaoh who refused to obey them at first. After ten miraculous plagues, he bowed to the divine power and let the Hebrews go.
But when he reneged and sent his army to destroy the children of Israel, God revealed His almighty power by opening the Red Sea and destroying the Egyptians. And God continued to show His Presence to His children on their way to the Promised Land.
In His omnipotence, the LORD sustained His people for forty years in the wilderness, giving them bread from heaven, water from the rock, and meat from flocks of numberless quails.
He showed His power on behalf of other people too, like the pagan Gibeonites for whom He made the sun stand still!
The LORD uses His power for individuals too, most often in divine healing. Miriam, Naaman, and Hezekiah come to mind in the Old Testament.
He miraculously delivers others from evil, Hezekiah from Sennacherib, Jonah from the whale, Daniel from the lion's den!, and his three friends from the fiery furnace, where Jesus shows up too!
In the New Testament Jesus continues to use His Almighty power in the same ways, creating wine from water, feeding five thousand from five loaves of bread and two fish, and calming a stormy sea at His Word.
The Son of God healed all diseases and cast out demons, all at His word. The apex of this power is the raising of the dead, first the widow's son, then Lazarus and then overcoming death in person at the Resurrection.
As the New Testament ends we see Jesus ascend into heaven and promise His disciples the Holy Spirit and power to spread the Gospel to the whole world.
This came to be on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit baptized the 120 with fire and gave them the power to speak with other tongues and do miracles. That day the church was born.
The Almighty Power of God is operative in His church today and is available to every one of us who belongs to Him.
The Presence of God as Love
This Almighty Power is activated by love. As Creation concludes in Genesis 2, we see His Presence as Love as He forms man of the dust and breathes life into him. Later in the same chapter, this loving Presence forms the woman and decrees them one flesh, the basis for love forever.
The LORD loved Adam and Eve and spent time with them in the Garden of Eden where all was perfect and pure. In love, He cursed the serpent who tricked them into sin but made clothes for them and promised a Deliverer even as He expelled them from the Garden.
He continued to show His love for the first couple by giving them children and speaking audibly to the first family, even after Eden. The power of His love took Enoch to His presence alive and saved Noah and his family from the Flood, through whom he saved all humanity.
Jacob experienced God's Presence of love at Bethel where He visited him in Person and showed him a ladder of angels moving between heaven and earth. God and Jacob especially loved his son Joseph whom He gifted with dreams and wisdom to save the children of Israel whom the LORD chose as His people in love and made with them the Old Covenant.
Because He loved them, He gave them the Promised Land of Israel and a Messiah, the King whose kingdom is forever. In love, God chose His line using the Moabite Ruth, the man after His own heart, David, and his son Solomon whom the LORD loved at birth (12 Samuel 12:24).
This love was poured out in glory at the dedication of the Temple Solomon built. At its dedication, fire came down from heaven and burned up the sacrifices Solomon offered, and the glory of the LORD so filled the temple that the priests could not enter (2 Chronicles 7:1-16)
The ultimate evidence of God's love and presence is Jesus. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." - John 3:16. Jesus' entire life is an act of love which He passed on to His disciples and through the Holy Spirit to us.
The love and Presence of Jesus transformed John from "a son of thunder" wanting to call down fire from heaven to those who would not receive Jesus, to the Apostle of love, identifying himself as "the disciple Jesus loved" and to whom He revealed that "God is love."
The Presence of God as Purity
In Genesis 3 sin invades God’s Presence of Almighty Power and Love and is repelled by its Purity. God is holy and His character and Presence cannot abide sin. In heaven we see the angels and elders crying "Holy, holy, holy" and casting their crowns before Him.
When Jesus appeared to John to give him the book of Revelation, John himself "fell at His feet as dead." This is the last time the purity of God's presence is seen in the Bible.
The first is in Genesis 3 where sin has tried to enter paradise, and God repels it and the sinners although He loves them and provides a means of atonement. His holiness and purity demand separation from sin, and so He expels them from the garden.
Cain could not abide in God's presence after he killed his brother, and left the presence of the LORD behind. When Moses saw the burning bush, God commanded "Put off your shoes from your feet, for you are standing on holy ground." -Exodus 3:5
God withdrew His presence from the children of Israel after they violated His purity by worshipping the golden calf and executed 3,000. Later, He slew Aaron's two sons for bringing strange fire into His holy temple.
Achan and Korah brought death to their families through their sin, the one being stoned by all of Israel for taking what belonged to God, the other swallowed up by an opening earth for rebellion against God's leaders.
It was a violation of God's purity that finally ended both kingdoms of Israel and Judah when they turned to idol worship and brought His wrath after hundreds of years of mercy.
Jesus' disciples saw His purity when Peter recognized His divinity in the miracle of the great catch of fish, and said, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man."
This is the conviction brought by the Holy Spirit and explains the terror people feel when they are exposed to the presence of the Lord.
Fearful as this purity may be, it is supremely powerful and brought the conversion of Saul of Tarsus and established the standard of holiness in the church.
A terrible example of this is the sin of Ananias and Sapphira, who lied to the Holy Spirit and dropped dead. The presence of God is shown in the Bible in Almighty Power, Love, and Purity.
The Presence of God Today
I've experienced each of these in my life, but there are seasons when I don't feel as close to him or like he is far away. I can tell you that He is not! He is always with you and will not forsake you, but sometimes we need to tune our hearts to hear, see, or feel him. I want to leave you with three ways to feel the presence of God.
The first is to pray, prayer is a wonderful way to hear God speak to you. He often does it by putting thoughts in your head that you wouldn't think on your own.
The second is spending time in the Word. By hiding his word in our hearts, God gives us faith to hear and obey.
And finally, by sharing your testimony or telling other people about Jesus. This is the great commission, after all, to go into all the world and tell them about who He is and what He has done for us.
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