You make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11
It’s incompatible with the Christian faith to NOT want to be in God’s presence. After all, the practical result of being in God’s presence is joy. And who doesn’t want joy? And yet many Christians seem stressed out or bored and that suggests they lack this sense of God’s presence that today’s verse speaks of.
In fact, the whole of Psalm 16 makes being in the presence of God very compelling. It’s a natural desire for anyone who have been around those who have experienced being in God’s Presence to want the joy, comfort, and sense of well-being and love that comes with being in His Presence. It is available. So why don’t more Christians experience His Presence?
I see two reason: 1) We don’t know or believe it’s available. 2) We don’t know how to get there. We’ll start with the first: We don’t believe it’s for us, individually. Some people have been influenced by the spiritual mediocrity of those Christians they associate with—perhaps even those who lead them—to not realize that the presence of God is available, personally.
They read right over verses like Ps 16:11 and if they think about them at all, they assign it to heaven some day. But it’s clear from the context that David isn’t talking about someday, he’s talking about right now. And he’s talking about everyone.
Somehow, in popular Christian understanding, many followers of Jesus (even those raised up in church every Sunday) in their minds, reserve the presence of God for a few of the most holy people. Somewhere along the way, it’s been communicated and accepted that ordinary Christians have to stand by and hear thrilling testimonies of the ‘super Christians’ in their circle about the pleasure of God’s presence and not experience it for themselves.
Paul didn’t see it this way. He wrote, “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ …And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4-6). The presence is available to us.
You and I are seated with Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit abiding within us. The presence of God is very available.
So, first of all, the problem is one of believing what the Bible promises us. We either believe it or we don’t. But even if we believe it, we may be thinking that we’d need some sort of spiritual GPS to navigate our way to it.
We’ll get to that second problem next time.