The Experience of God’s Presence
As we look toward next Thursday (Christmas Day) and consider the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, I can’t help but think about the biblical motif of God’s presence. That is the point of the incarnation, after all! Immanuel—God with us—is a break into the silence of history’s longing for a coming Messiah. It is the culmination of the groan since the Garden of Eden that God would dwell with humanity once more, no more separation. We received tastes of such a reality in the tabernacle, in the temple—and yet no man-made building could truly hold the fullness of God’s presence. No, there must have been a breaking-out into history by God Himself, in the only means possible—through being born as a baby. This wondrously stunning reality is why we sing:
Israel's strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.
The incarnation has me thinking, though. What is it truly like to experience God’s presence? The men on the road to Emmaus experienced this reality as their hearts “burned within them” (Luke 24:32). Thomas must have experienced it as he placed his fingers in Jesus’ nail-scarred hand. These experiences and others must have been what it was like for Adam and Eve to have walked in the garden in the cool of the day with God: Fullness of life in the fullness of the experience of the presence of God. This is what I mean by the experience of God’s presence. What does one’s soul feel when they have an encounter with the living God?
For those of us who are more “liturgical” in our philosophy than charismatic, this conversation can be received as unnecessary, manipulative, or flimsy. But the reality is, Christians throughout church history have frequently experienced this reality. Because the gospel is not just something that’s meant to be affirmed, it’s something that is meant to be experienced. God does not only come to give us a new mind (although He certainly does that!), but he comes to give us a new heart. As theologians often remark, in the gospel, God gives us new affections. The Holy Spirit indwells us to restore our soul (Ps. 23:3), not just thoughts. At the hearing of the gospel in Acts 2, the people were “cut to the heart,” not just intellect. Christianity is no mere knowledge-based religion, though it’s no less than that. It is a reality that must be experienced. Because God wants His presence to be experienced. You and I, we were meant to experience the presence of God.
Think about it this way—any loving husband would want his wife to know that he is there for her, he has chosen her, he wants her. Any sense that she may feel of his distance is only testification to his lack of affirmation, or her lack of belief in his affirmation. For married couples who do not consistently reaffirm their affection for one another with acts of love and words of affirmation, enter a slow drift of apathy. The experience of the other person’s presence, even unknowingly sometimes, becomes cold and dark.
In the same way, God does not desire that his presence be seen as cold and dark. No—he wants us to drink deeply from his presence (Jn. 7:37-39), to “sit at his feet” (Luke 10:38-42), to experience his presence to the fullest.
And yet, the reality is, for many Christians, we’ve only scratched the surface of experiencing God’s presence in our life. We know God loves us, and yet, when pressed, we see him as a distant father who has no immediate care for our current needs. And yet the Bible is very clear that time and time again, God seeks out his people for the end goal of relational closeness. The Protestant Reformers even saw this, using language to communicate that Christianity was based on our fixed union with Christ in the gospel, and yet that we all have wavering communion with Him in our day-to-day experience of it. But this is what we must pursue—absolute communion and intimacy with God.
As we’ve walked into this holiday season, it is probably no surprise that though these should be some of the most holy days for Christians, they often seem to be the darkest. Ridden by sin and apathy toward God and filled with distraction, the Christmas holidays often are not the moment in which we experience the fullness of God’s presence. But they should be. And you have the opportunity for them to be. You have the opportunity to draw near to Jesus in the deepest sense—by remembering His finished work accomplished for you, and by resting in it.
My encouragement for you (and my prayer for my own soul) is that this Christmas season, we would be a church and a people who “draw near to God,” and that he would “draw near to us” (Jms. 5). Don’t slip into apathy, but pursue Him, even while you are out of your typical rhythms. Drink deeply from His presence this holiday season.
