Experiencing God's Presence #216

Experiencing God's Presence #216

With a shriek, he screamed, “Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In the name of God, I beg you, don’t torture me!”

Mark 5:7

If we really want to know the effects of God’s Presence on us, all we need to do is look at Jesus. He, Immanuel, was and is the Presence of God among us. While He walked this earth in the flesh, He was a carrier of the Presence, the incarnation of God Himself. The responses He received tell us a lot about the effects of being in the company of God.

Demons had a common reaction to the Presence: terror. They couldn’t stand His nearness. When Jesus commanded them to leave, they had to leave (though usually not without some resistance). But even before He said a word, they recognized Him, and they feared. They equated His Presence with torment. They felt compelled to cry out, to argue that the appointed time of judgment had not yet come, or even to loudly reveal Him as the Son of God before He wanted it known. Their darkness could not survive in His light.

That’s one of the great benefits of inviting God’s manifest Presence into our lives. Whatever darkness remains, whatever evil we encounter, whatever confusion and despair we struggle with, it has to go when He comes near. It can’t stand in His Presence. The more we saturate ourselves in His Spirit, the less any evil influences can affect us. Ungodly spirits may harass us, and old thought patterns may try to recapture us, but a continuing insistence on being “in the Spirit” will give them no hold on us. What was true of Jesus’ encounters is true in our lives today: darkness gives way to light.

Jesus, I want no darkness in my life. I’m tired of confusing and depressing thoughts, deceptive reasoning, and all the fatigue and futility that come with them. I know I don’t have to figure it all out; I just need to invite You to come near. So please, Jesus, come near.