“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.” Psalms 139:7-8

“But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. Deuteronomy 4:29.

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.-James 4:8

“King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and…said, ‘Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son go the gods’”-Daniel 3:24-25.

The Sovereign God

He is the one and only God
Who knit us together in the womb.
He is the one who gave His Son
To defy death in the tomb.
His presence is among us
He’s healing broken hearts.
I can feel His awesome power
Sense the hope that it imparts.
So, bow down!
The Lord our Sovereign God
Is in the room.

He sent the Holy Spirit
To thaw our frozen hearts.
Urged us to love our enemies
Allow sinners a new start.
He’s tried so hard to show us
We must follow as he leads.
Gone to great lengths to save us
Not been too proud to plead.
So bow down!
The Lord our Sovereign God
Is in the room.

With the power He rains down
He sends protection from above,
His Holy Spirit is upon us
Wrapping us in grace and love
He came to stop the enemy
And the sin he importunes,
Proving once and finally
Death cannot consume.
So bow down!
The Lord our Sovereign God
Is in the Room
Linda Troxell 04/18/2018
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I have often heard people say, and not only pastors, “I can feel the presence of the Lord in this room.”, or, “Surely God is in this room with us.” In fact, judging by the number of times I have heard things like that, I would assume feeling the presence of God is a common event. So much so that I have been a bit sheepish to say out loud that it is not a common event for me. I have felt the presence of God, but it has been only a few times and afterward, I’m sorry to say, I wasn’t at all sure it had even been real. Feeling the presence of God, for me, is a bit like feeling labor pains; the feeling is so powerful when it’s happening but, for some reason, when it’s over I can’t remember what it actually felt like.

I know why it’s necessary for the memory of labor pains to fade so quickly; it’s for the preservation of the species. If women could accurately remember the pain of labor, we would never bear another child and the species would become extinct. But I’m not sure why it’s so difficult for me to accurately remember the feeling of being in God’s presence. Is it the same for everyone? Do most people experience the presence of God only rarely and then find it difficult to remember once it’s over? I did some research to see if I could answer that question. What I found surprised me. It seems that the information out there is not so much about how the presence of God feels, as it is about how to feel the presence of God. Maybe my experience isn’t as rare as I thought it might be.

When I began my search I quickly realized I would need to clarify my question. Most of what I found written about the presence of God was written to convince the reader that God is, in fact, omnipresent; present everywhere at all the times. However, my question isn’t whether or not God is omnipresent, the Bible tells me that. For example, David writes in Psalms 139, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.”-Psalms 139:7-8. No, I know God is omnipresent, my question is, knowing that God is omnipresent, why am I so rarely conscious of His presence?

I thought that perhaps if I was able to find some commonality among the times that I was aware of God’s presence it would give me a clue as to why I am unable to perceive Him more often. So, I began to think back to the situations in which I remember feeling His presence. I came up with three different kinds of circumstances in which I could remember having felt God’s presence more than once. I can recall feeling Him present when I was fervently praising Him, when I was inordinately hopeless or frightened and when I was writing or speaking and I felt God’s words flow through me. As I thought about these circumstances it became clear to me that two of the three are experiences in which my emotions were dominating; and the third, writing, is a creative activity which largely bypasses the logical left side of the brain. Therefore, they are experiences, for me, in which my logical thinking brain is suspended and my emotional or creative thinking is leading me.

I remember such an experience one particular Sunday in church. The attendance that day was unusually large. The band, in rare form, was backing up a guest singer whose voice, upon hearing it for the first time, touched me deeply. She was singing some of my favorite songs and the entire congregation was singing along in one voice it seemed. It was one of those rare times when all things came together to carry me off into a place close to ecstatic. I remember the goosebumps I felt and my tingling scalp. I felt as if God was touching me. I can bring that day back in my imagination, I can see and hear the band, I can remember the songs we were singing and I can hear the sound of the congregation singing as one body. I can even remember the fact that I had goosebumps and my scalp tingled, however, I cannot, no matter how I try, remember what it felt like for God to touch me. But I remember thinking He had. I remember that I was convinced that God was present in that room with me that day. I felt His touch.

There was another occasion I remember feeling the presence of God but in a much more subtle form. On this occasion, my beloved grandson had been away at college for only a few months and he had experienced the usual bumps in the road that come with adjusting to being away from home and on one’s own for the first time. I was worried about him but only moderately so. Nothing that disrupted my everyday life. Then late one night I noticed a text from him on my phone. It simply said, “Pray for me.” Well, this frightened me. Why so cryptic, I thought; why did he need prayers? I texted him but got no answer. I called but no answer there either. As the hours went by, I became more and more distraught. I was allowing the enemy to use my imagination as his personal playground as I gave into every frightening scenario he could conjure. He was hurt somewhere; he had been kidnapped; he was suicidal. There was nothing too negative for me to entertain. Eventually, I had myself worked up into a state I could not sustain for long. Finally, the small quiet voice came through and convinced me to pray. Because I was too frightened to have words of my own, I began to pray the Lord’s Prayer and scripture. As I did, I felt a surreal peace descend upon me. My mind slowed down, my thoughts calmed, my heart rate slowed, my breathing normalized and my body relaxed. It felt as if time went into slow motion and, at that moment, I felt God in the room with me. I felt as if He was holding me in His arms and I “felt” Him say, “He’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about. Remember who he is; He’s My child, I’ll protect him.”

I was able to sleep then and I slept all night. In the morning I received a call from my grandson wondering what all of the fuss was about. It turned out that his “Pray for me,” message was sent in response to something I had written to him the night before and he had not gotten around to answering until late that night. I cannot now remember the content of the message to which he was responding, but it was something mundane and innocuous. The larger point is that when I finally got too emotional and scared to think straight, and broke through that fear with prayer, God “came” to me. He was in that room with me and He comforted me and eased my fear. I can’t recreate the feeling nor can I remember it. I remember that it happened, I remember every detail but I can’t remember the feeling. But once I was able to seek God in my despair with my whole heart and soul, He was able to come to me and to comfort me. So there, I suppose, is one key to feeling the presence of God, we must seek Him. “But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. Deuteronomy 4:29.

There have been other, similar, experiences, not a lot, but a few. What they have in common is that I was in a heightened emotional state, no logical thinking in sight and I was beyond any need or desire to resist whatever happened; God was my only focus. I’m sure one reason I don’t perceive the presence of God more often, even when I seek Him, is that I can’t get out of my own way. I allow my logical thinking to talk me out of the experience, so to speak. I had the same problem for many years when it came to faith. I wanted to believe but I kept looking at it logically. How could I believe such a beautiful, yet logically impossible, story? I was finally able to move beyond logic to faith by understanding that I had been confusing illogical with the supernatural. The beautiful story I thought illogical is, in fact, supernatural. So I suppose there is still hope for me that one day I will get beyond logic to perceive the presence of God more often. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.- James 4:8

Well, as fascinating as it may or may not be to know the different situations in which I have perceived the presence of God, it does nothing to answer the original question of why we cannot perceive the presence of God most of the time. However, N. Graham Standish has a theory that may begin to help us understand. I’m sure you’ve all heard about the theory that there are different kinds of intelligence or ways of knowing such as musical, emotional, intellectual, etc. And that we each have varying degrees of each kind of intelligence which we can cultivate, increase, and manage to enhance our lives as we like. Well, Standish suggests there is mystical intelligence which works the same way. He says that if we stop restricting God to certain activities such as church, reading the Bible and praying and begin to look for God and explore Him in all areas of life, we might begin to experience God in more and varying ways and to sense Him more acutely. An interesting idea, one of the few I found that actually addresses the question. It makes sense to me that if we begin to give God a larger role in our lives we would be more aware of His presence. That’s the model we are given in the Bible. That’s how the Apostles lived while they were bringing people to Christ. They did not only acknowledge God on Sundays. He was central to their everyday lives. And that’s what God has always wanted, after all.

I didn’t realize when I started this piece how deeply it would affect me. But after getting to this point I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating everything you just read, the original question, the recreations of the experiences in which I felt the presence of God, and Mr. Standish’s theory of mystical intelligence. And after putting that together with why I want to feel God’s presence so badly, I’ve come to the realization that my original question is truly irrelevant to my walk with God. Feeling the presence of God has absolutely no importance to the big picture of my relationship with Him. Ultimately, we are called to know that God is present at all times in all ways, everywhere, no matter what we feel. Knowing God is present is a function of faith and not of feeling. Human feelings, as we all know are fickle, and unreliable. They can be influenced by everything from ideas to mood, from inclement weather to who we spoke to last. So, it follows that we need to shift our attention from feeling God’s presence to knowing God is present regardless of our feeling

In the end, I suppose I should change my question from how can I feel God’s presence more often to how do I learn to rest in the truth of His presence. God is present always; He is there whether we feel Him or not, whether we want Him to be or not, and whether we believe He is or not. While we are on earth we experience God mainly through our faith. We know that our faith comes through hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.-Romans 10:17. And our faith tells us that God is present when we feel happy, He is present when we feel sad. He is present when we feel He is a million miles away. By faith, we know that God is present even when we don’t believe He exists.

In writing this and after meditating on it I’ve come to believe that the few experiences I’ve had in which I’ve felt the presence of God are probably real. At least real in the sense that the separation I feel between me and God was a little less than usual in my heightened emotional state. And even though I cherish those times and I am open to having more of them, I have come to realize that in my walk with God they are no more important than any other experience I have that involves God. Because, ultimately, I know God is real and that He lives in me and I in Him by faith and not by sight; or in this case not by feeling. More important to me are those times when I realize and I am really aware of what Christ has actually done for us. It is then that I am aware of my profound love for our Father knowing that because of what Jesus did on the cross we can…approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.–Hebrews 4:16. What could be more amazing than that?

Points for Prayer and Pondering

What do you think about the concept of God being present in a room? Is it real? Is it imagination?

Have you had experiences like I described above? If yes and you’ve had more than one can you think of commonalities between the experiences?

Do you think there is a conflict between feeling God’s presence and our mandate to know God is present by faith?