Jim Van Gelderen: I’m broadcasting here from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Just a few weeks from now, our team will be getting ready to go. The War Special Forces team and several Christian schools this fall and next spring, and we’re certainly excited about that and thankful for the opportunity to continue to preach total surrender to the will of God and total dependence on His grace. Well, I had just about a week ago the opportunity to preach at a camp at over 10,000 feet in Colorado on the Grand Mesa. And something wonderful and special happened there.

It was just a week where God was working, but there wasn’t a lot of response. And on Friday we came down to the final message. And I remember after preaching the message, inviting young people to come to the front who really wanted to depend on the Lord for His strength to keep the decisions God had led them to that week. Most of the campers came, I’m guessing about 80. We began a prayer meeting just crying out to the Lord and asking Him for the strength to live the Christian life and what I would call declarations of dependence.

I need you God prayers. And boy they started coming and started a little slow but then it picked up. And I don’t know we probably went 15, 20 minutes. I turned it over to the camp director. We were going to head to a camp fire service.

I think it was going to be an inside camp fire service because of a burn ban at a place where there was a fireplace. But he said no let’s just stay right here. God’s working and we stayed for another hour plus, and there were far more people who prayed. There were three things that characterized that prayer meeting. An hour and a half, if you can imagine that.

Pretty much just teenagers, a few sponsors and counselors certainly prayed as well, but it was largely young people, teenagers. And there’s, I basically say there are three things that characterized that prayer meeting. Number one, there were prayers of dependence. God, I can’t live the crush on life without you. I need you.

The second one was brokenness over sin. There was some confession of sin just out loud, praying to God. It was almost holy ground as you heard young people just calling out to God, confessing sin, saying, God, I need to get right. That was wonderful. And then thirdly, there were prayers for other people to get right, people to get saved, parents to get saved, relatives, neighbors, etc.

I can’t remember all the relationships, but people burdened for others to either get saved or get right with God. And I’ll be honest with you, if I had to describe that hour and a half, I’d say it was like a little bit of heaven on earth. Now why was it heaven on earth? That’s what I’d like to address here, and I believe it was heaven on earth because of the presence of God. This coming February or March actually will be at my home church, Falls Baptist Church.

We have an annual victory conference and this year’s theme is Manifest Presence. And you may even want to consider coming. We’re going to about three days really look at this topic of living in the presence of God. Now when we talk about the presence of God, what in the world are we talking about? Well there’s many passages we could turn to.

I’ve chosen Psalm 80. And in the third verse, it’s actually found three times in the psalm, pretty much the same comment, turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. In our modern culture, we forget about the significance of the face. You can use FaceTime, Skype, and you can see somebody even though they’re miles away. And that was not the case, of course, in Bible times.

If you saw someone’s face, you knew they were near, that you were in their presence. So when the Bible talks about God’s face seeking his face causing his face to shine I believe that at least an element of that is we’re asking for the presence of God Obviously when you see someone’s face, you know, I’m in their presence. I Fortunately do not have to be away from wife and my wife and family very much. They travel with me Of course, my girls are not in college. So they’re gone far more but the point is that although I could Skype or FaceTime that is no substitute for their presence when I finally get in their presence and I’m able to give them a hug and just to be a fellowship, there’s no substitute for someone’s actual presence and so it is with God, the presence of God.

Now friend, I’m asking you today on this podcast, are there moments where you walk with God? Do you know his presence? At our Baptist College of Ministry final testimony time just a few months ago, we were having testimonies and a young man stood and quite humbly said something that really struck me. He said, last year I can honestly say I met with Jesus. But he said, this year I can honestly say that I’ve walked with Jesus.

And I’ll be honest with you, a statement like that is challenging, stirring, but it’s also convicting. Do you walk with Jesus? What I mean by that is, do you know his presence every day? Do you have a sense that God is with you? Now when we’re talking about the presence of God, it’s important to understand that we’re not primarily looking for an experience, although the presence of God is experiential.

For instance, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, etc. Those things affect our experience. But it’s not something that we look for in the sensory. We live in a world that is absolutely asphyxiated with the sensory, the things that our senses assimilate, sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch. And that’s how we assimilate reality through our senses.

That’s physical reality. But you cannot assimilate spiritual reality through the senses. That is through the Spirit. God is the Spirit, John 424. And they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

The key to connecting with God is understanding that we find Him in the spiritual realm. And that’s the truth when we’re filled with the Spirit, that that’s the realm we’re talking about. Now you may ask, well, what… What does that feel like or what does that look like? And that’s a question that’s hard to answer because it’s a spiritual reality.

And it’s not, again, we’re not trying to frame it up in sensory terms, although in the Bible God sometimes uses the sensory in a spiritual sense to help us understand that the reality, the spiritual reality of His presence. But the point I guess this podcast I want you to really concentrate on is, is do you want God’s presence? As a freshman in college, I remember coming across a book, I read it, A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God. And I read that book and something burned in my heart.

And I remember as a freshman in Bible college, I thought to myself, that’s what my life is, I want it to be, a pursuit of God. And I’ll be honest, I’ve certainly not lived it perfectly. But I can honestly say that from that point on, there was a change in my life. I was pursuing God, I wanted God. And although I know there’s miles to go.

There have been moments where I know God has shown up in my life. There’s times where I know God was there. And yet that’s the way God wants us to live all the time. Now you come back in the next podcast and we’re gonna talk out of Psalm 80 with some more things that will help us as we really pursue fellowship with God. First John chapter number one calls it fellowship with, fellowshiping with God, walking with God.

Galatians calls it a walk as well. And so friends, let me, encourage you to come back next week. And in this intervening week, would you think about this? Do I know God’s presence? Do I really fellowship with God?

Is he more than an intellectual concept? Is he more than theology? Is he more than facts? Do I know him? And friends, God wants you to know him.

That word knowledge is often in the Bible talking about experiential knowledge, a relationship. Knowing him as a friend, knowing him as a companion, as a comforter, the reality of His spiritual presence. And I hope that your heart will burn in you and you’ll have the heart of the psalmist who said, My soul followeth hard after thee. Does your soul follow hard after God? Do you want God?

Because I will tell you friends, if you’ll seek him, you will find him. So the presence of God, it’s gonna be a theme we’ll probably hit from time to time this year, particularly up to our conference, we’ll be thinking about it. We’re burdened about it. We want people to walk in the presence of God. Now let me conclude with this.

I will say that as I’ve studied revival history over the years, There is one thing that marks revival historians, and that is this, is when there is revival, they will describe it as this, a conscious reality of the presence of God. And I will tell you, friend, there’s been a few moments in my life when I’ve been in a corporate setting when God showed up and everyone knew it. But friends, this is what we desperately need. We need God. We need him in our hearts and lives, and we need him in our families, our homes, our communities, our churches.

Would you join us next week as we talk about this pursuit, this pursuit of God? Thank you so much for listening and let me encourage you continue on total surrender to the will of God and total dependence on His strength.