Jesus Permanently Placed the Presence of God

What Did Jesus Do?

Don’t you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
1 Corinthians 3:16


I was praying Saturday with six other men who had gathered on heaven’s doorstep (That’s that chapel at The Cove, the Billy Graham Training Center just outside of Asheville, NC, for those of you who didn’t know. I’m serious, it’s just a local call for Dr. Graham when he talks with God you know. Anyway…). I asked the Lord if he would give me the heart and mind, not of Dr. Graham, though that would be wonderful, but rather of Brother Lawrence. Brother Lawrence? Who is Brother Lawrence?

Nearly four hundred fifty years ago Brother Lawrence, a humble man who became a Lay Brother with the Carmelites in Paris in the late 17th Century, wrote these words, “After having given myself wholly to God, I renounced, for the love of Him, everything that was not He; and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world.” WOW! First of all, few of us who pose as followers of Jesus can truly claim to ever having given ourselves wholly to God. And, if we’ve done so, have we actually taken the additional step of renouncing everything that is not God?

What would it be like to live as if there were none but God and you in the world? I believe it wouldn’t mean that we would ignore everything and everyone around us, tuning in exclusively to God. Rather, if we were perfectly dialed in to God, then we would earnestly seek Him with our whole heart (Jeremiah 29:13), and find Him, sense His presence, in everything and everyone we encounter. More, we would have a growing awareness of Him, not just all around us, but within. With every conscious breath, and I know most of us pay little attention to our breathing unless it is hard to get, but with every breath that we are conscious of we can and should be aware of Him. Same thing for the beating of our heart. Unless you are one very unique person who makes your heart beat by virtue of your own will, it’s God, his very Spirit, beating in your chest.

Just imagine how different everything we take in with our eyes would look if we understood that no matter where our gaze falls, we beheld God. I can’t help but feel that we would think, speak, act, live very differently. And, Jesus came into the world so that we would know that God is indeed with us at all times in all places. The knowledge of God with us, within us, transformed the lives of those who encountered Jesus in the First Century, and it is transforming lives still. The bottom line is that in his presence is where we belong, now and forever. Permanently placed in the presence of God. That’s what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4