Presence of God
There are certain things in my life that create a noticeable difference when done in excess. For instance:
When I was in high school, we went to the beach as a family, the first day I was out in the water most of the day, with no sunglasses on, and the whites of my eyes actually got sun burnt. If I sit in the sun for a long time there is a noticeable difference on my body.
I have something called Raynauds Syndrome. If I am outside in cold weather for too long without proper protection, the blood vessels in my fingers and toes narrow, restricting blood flow to the surface of the skin. This causes numbness and discoloring. If I am in the cold for too long, there is a noticeable difference on my body.
When I am in water for too long, I get pruny.
See there are things in our lives that when done for long periods of time will make things look different.
I want to talk to you this morning about the presence of God. In the anxiety-ridden and stress-filled world that we live in, it’s important that we find our rest and home in the presence of God. God invites us into it, it’s an open invitation, but many times we have things in our lives that get in the way of us actually engaging with God. But once there, there is power found in being in His presence.
This morning, I want to look at 3 stories of men who encountered God in real, raw, miraculous ways. As a result of them being in His presence, there was a noticeable difference in their lives, physically AND spiritually.
And the whole point of the message this morning is to drive this point across. It isn’t a “maybe,” a “could,” or a “might.” It is an absolute, and this is the Big Idea: WHEN you sit in the presence of God, you WILL be different because of it.
Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to the book of Exodus. We are going to start with a story coming out of Egypt. Exodus chapter 3. To bring us up to speed:
At the end of Genesis, Joseph has moved all of his relatives into Egypt to help them survive a famine. In Exodus chapter 1 we see that they’re multiplying like crazy, growing quite strong, and filling the land. There’s a new king in town who starts to freak out at the overpopulation, and decides to turn them into slaves. But that isn’t enough, so the king decides to kill all the newborn males among the Israelites. Moses’ Mom gives birth and saves her baby by putting him in a basket and sending him down the Nile. Pharaoh’s daughter finds the baby and raises him as her own, and Moses becomes a Prince of Egypt.
One day Moses saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, so he killed the Egyptian, then freaked out and ran scared into the wilderness where he happened upon a well. The daughters of a priest came to the well, and some shepherds starting driving them away, but Moses stepped in and saved the women. Moses ends up marrying one of the daughters named ZIpporrah, and Moses goes from a Prince of Egypt to a shepherd in Midian, and this is where we pick up in chapter 3.
Exodus 3:1-6
Here it is. Moses is standing on holy ground, in the presence of God. God tells Moses that He sees the affliction of His people, and His plan is to send Moses in to the lion’s den, the throne room of Pharaoh, and demand Israel’s release.
The first point, if you are taking notes, is this:
1. Being in the presence of God will give you confidence in weakness
Moses begins to have this conversation with God, and we see Moses’ weaknesses come to the surface.
Exodus 3:10-11 – Self-doubt and fear
“I mean come on God, you want me to go before the most powerful man in the world, and make demands of him?!” This was an impossible task set before him.
But look at God’s response in verse 12. “I will be with you.” God gives Moses a rundown of what He wants him to say to the Israelites when he shares God’s plans with them. And look at Moses’ response in 4:1.
Read 4:1 – Skepticism
“Alright God, I hear you, but there is no way the people will listen to me. You really expect them to believe that you appeared to ME, and spoke to ME?!”
And God responds by giving him the ability to prove himself truthful by turning his hand leprous and his staff into a snake. But even after God shows Moses His power, look at verse 10.
Read 4:10 – Excuses
“Wow, turning my staff into a snake, making this coat a magical leprous machine, turning water into blood, that’s, unbelievable! That’s powerful! But……”
So, God gives him an assurance of the power that he holds. “I made your mouth. I have the power to control it. Just trust that I will give you the words to say.” And then finally Moses has just had enough.
Read 4:13 – Defiance
Finally, Moses is like, “God, do you not hear me? I don’t want to do it!
God gets a little mad at Moses and provides some help for him in his brother Aaron.
It’s easy for us to look at Moses and think how ridiculous his efforts of deflection were. Like, look at everything God just showed you, and you still don’t believe that he can use you in this way?
But isn’t this us? So often we know what God wants us to do. We know who God wants us to talk to. We know where God wants us to go. We know what friendships and relationships are not good for us. We know the hard decisions, the things that seem absolutely impossible!
And we enter into this conversation with God. We are riddled with self-doubt and fear. We don’t fully believe that God can really use us, so we come up with excuse after excuse. And finally, when the Holy Spirit just doesn’t seem to give up, we just yell “NO, I’m not going to do it!”
But, if we sit in the presence of God, and allow Him to get some words in, then this is what we will hear:
“I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Fear not, for I will be with you. I created you. I know you better than you know yourself. Trust ME. Don’t trust yourself, you aren’t good enough, but I AM. I will give you words, power, and wisdom to speak. Just let go of your doubts, your fears, your skepticism, your excuses, your defiance, and watch what I can do.”
Being in the presence of God will give you confidence in weakness.
Alright so let’s keep going, sticking with Moses, go ahead and turn to Exodus chapter 34. God did what He said He would do and used Moses and Aaron to free Israel from Egyptian bondage. They are wandering in the wilderness and Moses goes up onto Mt. Sinai to receive the 10 commandments from God, as well as hundreds of other laws. Coming down off the mountain, the people had grown impatient and began worshipping a golden cow, so Moses in frustration smashes the tablets. God tells Moses that it is time to leave Sinai, and we get to chapter 33.
Moses has a conversation with God in which he begs God to show him his glory, God says that no one can see His face and live, so instead he places him in the cleft of a rock, covers him with his hand, and passes by, allowing Moses to see His back.
After this Moses heads back up the mountain and hears from God again. This time, however, things end a little differently.
Read 34:29-35
2. Being in the presence of God will make you look different
Look back at 34:29. It says “his face shone BECAUSE he had been talking to God.”
As a result of Moses being in God’s presence, his face was visibly different.
Now don’t hear me say that this is what will happen to us when we bask in His glory. But what I am saying is that you can tell when someone has been with Jesus. You know what I’m talking about. The passion, joy, love for others…they become almost unrecognizable. Our natural self is transformed and we begin to look like Jesus. But this doesn’t happen unless we remain in the presence of God.
Being in the presence of God will make you look different.
Now I want to jump back a bit and look at one more story before we wrap things up.
Go ahead and flip back to Genesis 32. To quickly set the stage and give context to what’s going on here, we have to look back at the beginnings of Jacob and Esau. If you remember, Jacob had cheated his older twin brother Esau out of his inheritance. Back then, the oldest son got the birthright, which was up to 2/3 of his father’s wealth. When they were teenagers, Esau came in from a long day of hunting to find Jacob cooking a pot of stew. Esau was hungry, and so impulsive, that he was willing to trade his birthright for a bowl of stew.
Years later and Isaac, their dad, is on his deathbed. He wants to formally give Esau his blessing. Long story short, Jacob deceives his dad and tricks him into giving him Esau’s blessing. As you can imagine, Esau is pretty ticked, so he says “I’ll let the family mourn a few days after my dad dies, but then I’m going to kill Jacob.” So Jacob runs, and about 30 years pass by. God tells Jacob to return to the land of his fathers, and if he does, God would be with him.
So Jacob gets closer to home, and catches word that Esau is on his way to meet him…with 400 armed men. By the way, Jacob totally didn’t bring his army. So Jacob splits up his people into two camps, hoping to avoid complete annihilation. And we find Jacob now in a desperate conversation:
Read Genesis 32:11-12
Read Genesis 32:22-31
Just so you aren’t left wondering what happened. Read Genesis 33:4.
3. Being in the presence of God sometimes requires wrestling
“Jacob begins his night full of fear and desperation, but at the end of his struggle he had God’s blessing and a renewed faith.” If you remember anything about Jacob’s life, God usually spoke to him in a dream or a vision, but this time he required him to wrestle all night, and then he inflicted him with a debilitating injury.
Listen, God pursued Jacob in this. God was the initiator. Jacob was sweating with anxiety when God showed up. And you know what, God will meet you in your anxiety, in your fears, in your uncertainty. But it may not be in the way you expect. And on top of that, we have to keep in mind that there is always more going on than we might understand, and God always uses it to transform us for good.
Jacob’s name meant deceiver. He had lied and cheated his way to a big inheritance, and a pretty great blessing. But it wasn’t his by right. But now, God changes his name to Israel, which means “striven with God.” He was no longer to be known as the one who got his blessing by deception, but now he would be known as the one who prevailed with God by faith.
Jacob received a brand-new identity! But that would not have happened if he hadn’t wrestled with God right in the middle of his fears and anxiety.
You see “sometimes the blessings of God are released in our lives through persistent prayer.” There are times in our lives when those blessings are released after a season of prolonged wrestling with him.
One pastor says “when God calls you to wrestle with him in prayer, it is an invitation to receive his blessing. Stay with him and don’t give up. Do not let him go until he blesses you! He loves to bless that kind of tenacious faith and you will come out transformed.”
Being in the presence of God sometimes requires wrestling.
Conclusion:
There is absolutely nothing in this world like sitting and resting in the presence of God. It’s not easy sometimes. Sometimes he asks us to do things that seem impossible, so we push it off and come up with excuses. When you are tempted to deflect, just be quiet and listen to Him. He will give you a supernatural confidence in your weakness.
And when you are consistently in His presence, you will absolutely be unrecognizable. You will look less and less like yourself, and more and more like Jesus. The Bible says that “He must increase, and I must decrease.” This is only possible when we are transformed into the image of our creator, by being in His presence.
Sometimes it’s really, really hard. Sometimes we wrestle with God. We cry out to Him but it doesn’t seem like He’s listening. He is. We question Him and shake our fist at Him, guess what, He can handle our questioning, He can handle our fears, He can handle our doubts. Don’t expect that a relationship with God will be easy, it’s not. But when we pursue Him, spend time sitting in His presence, things get a whole lot better.
