January 6

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My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. Exodus 33:14

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🔊 The Presence of God can be sensed and experienced.  If this were not the case, then our experience of God would be merely theoretical.  If the Presence of God made no difference, then all the great promises of God would be empty talk.  The truth is that there is a spiritual dimension to all our lives.  We live with an underlying sense of ‘something’.  For the sinner, there is a sense of futility, of emptiness, of meaninglessness; he or she feels these things, sometimes strongly, sometimes very weakly.  Often such feelings lie in the subconscious, but they are never far from the surface, and can sometimes well up and sweep us away.  But here God’s promise is that His Presence can become the great bedrock of our existence.  This Presence will be our constant companion, but also there will be moments when this Presence will sweep us away into indescribable joy.  This is the joy that is without any sting in its tail.  It is a joy without a crash to follow it, because it is of a completely different order from all other joys.  ‘Presence’ implies that it covers and drowns out other ‘presences’.  This means that I am not the centre, He is.  This is the Christian’s secret, our hidden source of hope and faith, which are constantly nourished from within.  Moses understood this when he replied, in effect, ‘If your Presence does not go with us, then what is the purpose of going anywhere?’  Let God be your life; let Him swallow you up in the consciousness of who He is