Livng in the Lord's Presence

Recently, I’ve been thinking about what it means to live all of the time in God’s presence. I’m not talking about the fact that God is omnipresent. We know that God is everywhere, always present in our lives and world. Rather, I’m talking about our awareness of our life being lived in God’s presence. Am I living each moment with a true and unmistakable sense of God’s presence in my life?

I love what the psalmist says:

He has saved me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.And so I walk in the LORD’s presence as I live here on earth!  - Psalm 116:8-9 NLT

While the author of Psalm 116 says in verse 9: “I walk in the LORD’s presence as I live here on earth!”, the Hebrew is literally translated “before God’s face.” I get the idea from the psalm that he is not just living in God’s presence when he is doing “religious stuff” like praying, reading scripture and attending a “worship service”. I think that the message of the psalm is that he is living with a keen awareness and deep sense of God’s presence throughout his everyday life on earth.

I’m reminded of one of my favorites New Testament scriptures.

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to (daily) give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy (daily) sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him (live in his presence).   – Romans 12:1. (paren-thetical words and phrase added by me)

Paul tells us that everything we think, hear, say and do…our every day lives... are worship to God. Our daily lives are lived in his presence. We don’t do this in order to earn God’s favor. The psalmist and Paul both remind us that we live this way in response to what God has done for us already: “He has saved me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. And so I walk in the LORD’s presence as I live here on earth!” (116:8-9).

Living in God’s presence as an act of daily sacrificial worship is our response to his magnificent and gracious salvation. Ask God this week to remind you that you are living with him “face-to-face”.  Ask God to remind you that everything that you do this week is done as though God was present with you.  Ask God to remind you this week that your life is lived daily as selfless worship to Him. Truly living in the presence of God will advance our personal and communal journey of being transformed into the image of our creator.

Tim Oliver

Lubbock, Texas