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 THE PRESENCE OF GOD

Just before Jesus ascended back into heaven, He told His disciples, “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20b) The profound reality of the eternal life given to all who will believe God, believe what He has done in and through Jesus Christ, is that Life is now being lived in us to be lived through us by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit has united us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He united us to the Vine. The life flowing into and working in the disciples of Jesus is nothing short of the Life of Jesus Christ, eternal life, being lived in us. If God IS Life within us, then His Presence in us never leaves us. He has made us one with Himself.

Hebrews 13:5b states, quoting the Old Testament Deuteronomy 31:6, 8, “I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.” That is the confidence that holds fear at bay and defeats it. God is FOR us. God is WITH us. He has united us to Himself by grace through faith.

That being the eternal truth, God’s Presence with me is never defined by what I feel about His Presence with me at any given moment. My sense of His presence is never meant to be the arbiter of whether He is with me or not. Our ancient enemy wants us to so enthrone our feelings, to in essence worship our emotions, that we look to them to define reality at any given moment. Our lives were never meant to be grounded in what we feel, but in the unchangeable nature of God’s character and the eternal reliability of His Word, His promises.

I can feel like “who did it and ran” and still know that the Lord is not merely “at hand” but is Life within me. I can worship and pray and seek Him in His Word even if emotionally I feel like a stone at the bottom of a frozen lake. As the old hymn sings it, “My hope can be built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’s Name. On Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.” Our emotional state being the sand that sinks the fastest. God is with us because He has “delivered us from the dominion of darkness and has brought us into the Kingdom of His Son, in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.” (Colossians 1:13)

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