Hosting the Presence of God
One of the greatest privileges in life is to learn to be a person that God will rest upon. Let me explain. He already lives in every born again believer. But He does not rest upon all of us. One way I have heard it said, “He is in me for my sake, but He is upon me for yours.” When He is upon us, it especially changes others around us. Jesus modeled this lifestyle in the story of His baptism in water.
When Jesus was baptized, He came out of the water, the heavens opened, the Father spoke, and then the Holy Spirit came upon Him as a dove and remained. “John testified saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him” (John 1:32 NASB). If, in the natural, I have a dove sitting on my shoulder and I want to go about life without it flying away, how am I going to live? Every step would be with the dove in mind.
As Kingdom citizens we learn how to become faithful in hosting the presence of the Lord, it is important to understand that there is a tension between two realities: He has been given to us without measure, yet what we enjoy on a daily basis has been “measured” to us according to our faithfulness. In other words, we have access to the unlimited measure of God’s presence, but He doesn’t entrust Himself to untrustworthy people. All of the measurements are set-up on our end of the equation. He typically entrusts us with the measure of the presence we are willing to guard (read that sentence again).
We are to become His resting place – the place from which the exploits of heaven are accomplished. For when the Lord rests upon a person, there is actually an atmospheric shift that takes place wherever that person goes. How do you think Peter’s shadow healed people? Our shadow will always release whatever overshadows us. When we learn to host the presence of the Lord, we get more breakthroughs by accident than ever used to happen on purpose. That is a possibility for every believer every day. This is the reality of being a citizen of the Kingdom of God.
One of the conflicts we face in learning to host God’s presence is sometimes found in the very lessons we learned from the previous seasons. We are to use principles to plan by, but we must learn to live from the presence.
If you live entirely by principles only, you will make assumptions in certain moments and seasons that are entirely based on Scripture, but they will be in conflict with the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who knows how we are to respond in each particular season or in a given situation.
If you live entirely by presence only, you will miss out on Biblical laws that God has put into motion. For example, what we discussed in our “Kingdom Come” series. There are principles God has put into place for giving, access or opportunities. Where you might not initially sense His presence, you could miss the open door.
We are supposed to be well grounded in what God has said so we can discern what He is saying. It is the presence of God that gives me access to continuous ongoing faith, because faith comes by hearing, not having heard. “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:1). Learning to host the presence of God provides the atmosphere of the heart where faith becomes natural and normal.
With much love,
Pastor Taylor Chapman