The “God’s Presence” Issue

By Fred Pruitt

Another issue that came up was the issue of “feeling God’s presence.” Again, we stressed faith, simply remaining in our confession and not going back on it, that we who are joined to the Lord are “one spirit,” (1 Cor 6:17), and as such we walk around being ourselves with maybe no special feelings or “sense” of God, because as we mature in Christ everything settles into an inner “knowing” that is ever present, whether we have warm or intimate “feelings” of God or not. In our early days the Spirit did make Himself known often by that way to us, meeting us on the level of our needs. But as we have grown up in Him, we live in something much deeper than transient feelings or a sense of God’s presence, which is there sometimes and sometimes not. We need to know God is ALWAYS present, not just when we “feel Him.”

Too often believers think they must do something special to “get God to come down” and be with them, when exactly the opposite is true. To be blunt, that idea that we must “do something” to make God act, is really Christianized heathenism. God is ever present in our innermost selves, and as we come into this inner awareness of oneness with Him (see John 17:11; 21-23), we realize to the uttermost that we living is He living. We are one. It is a continuous reality and therefore we do not have to “do” anything to be ourselves. We simply are. And through the Cross and Resurrection and our subsequent receiving Him, He has joined Himself as One Person with us so that we simply “are” ourselves (how could we be anything other than ourselves?) and this “ourselves” that we are is also He. We don’t need to “feel” our own presence. He is embedded so deep within us that He is beyond feelings or senses. God is Spirit, and those “feeling” things are really flesh things, flesh feelings, flesh sensations, which God often uses in our beginning days. But we grow into a more mature love that does not need those kind of assurances any longer.