HIS PRESENCE AND WILL

 I was headed to pick my daughters report card from school and on the way there, I begin to pray and shortly after, the Spirit of God begins to communicate with me ( I am learning to pray and listen because effective communication with God is me and Him talking to each other). While talking, I had a disturbing incident in my head and so I begun to ask Him for clarity. Follow through😊. 

Look at Abraham. The will of God for him was to get a son with Sarah for Isaac was to be the child of promise. We know the story. They look like they decided to help God and so Sarah gives Abraham Haggai who brings forth Ishmael. Abraham tells God in Genesis 17 that he hopes Ishmael will live and serve Him and God sternly tells Abraham no. He tells him what He told him before, that you will have a son with Sarah, name him Isaac, he is the one to carry your name. Was Ishmael blessed by God? Yes. In this same chapter, God blesses Ishmael. What God did not do, is change His will because of man, or say okay, so since Ishmael is born let him take Isaacs place. No. God still followed through to fulfill His will over the lives of Abraham and Sarah. The plan and will of God cannot be thwarted and one thing about God is when He gives His Word, He is faithful to keep it. I love that Abraham and Sarah did not choose to walk away from the will of God just because Ishmael came like some of us do, they followed through to accomplish what God desired to do in and through them. As I pondered on this journey the Spirit of God was taking me through, He said: My children celebrate the blessing, or what looks like a blessing to them, they do not care if it is my will for them. It may be a job one is praying for, but if it is not THE job He had set apart for you, you are outside of the will of God and so I will leave us with one question....Is the blessing your pursuit, or His will?

Despite God giving instructions to Abraham, they still got Ishmael. God did not necessarily close Haggai's womb. In the same manner, God may choose to let you walk into what was not His for you because you want it so bad and there is no stopping you. What a sad state, to be in what you call blessing that He calls the place of disobedience. This reminds me of the Israelites who made God angry and God told Moses, I will send my angels with you into the promised land but not my presence. He wanted to faithfully fulfill His promise to them(His will for them) but would go without them and Moses knew, His Presence is essential for us and to us in His will. See friend, you can be in His will because of His faithfulness without Him😢(His presence) and you can be out of His will without Him too. Make a choice to be with Him, in His will for you. This is the thing, unanswered prayers do not always equal to not His will and answered prayers do not always equal to His will.

God is not the author of confusion and so if we find ourselves confused, we know God is not in it. We are wandering like the Israelites because even when the Lord shows us His will for us in His presence, we do not trust Him, we murmur, we complain, because most likely, how God moves and thinks is not how we do. Apart from knowing His will and willingly refusing to trust Him, most of us do not know what God wants us to do and where He physically wants us to be. A man that refuses to be led by God is a man that refuses to be with and in His presence. Can two walk together unless they agree? Absolutely not. We always choose to withdraw from His presence because there is no way a man with and in Gods presence will walk with and in confusion. As long as we are outside Him, we will never do what is His and what pleases Him, in other words, we will never know and accomplish Gods will outside of His presence.

God loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die on the cross for our sins and looking at The Word, He saved us for Himself. He wanted us to be His. He wanted us to have Him. He wanted us to be where He is. He wanted to live in us and looking at all that, He wanted us to have His Presence. He wanted us to be His and to have Him so that we can not just represent Him right on earth but also exude His presence. He wanted to live in us so that the Presence we exude is Him. He wanted His presence to be what sets us apart and He wanted us to live daily in His presence. David learnt this and prayed in Psalm 27:4- That one thing he desired of the Lord and sought after is that He will dwell in Gods presence all the days of His life, to behold His beauty and inquire in His temple. That is why for David often times inquired of the Lord in His presence on what to do and in one instance where he did not, Uzzah died for touching the ark of the covenant since it was forbidden. David did not inquire of how to handle what represented Gods presence then and casually managed the whole process, he was so out of Gods will that he did not remember that there were strict instructions on how to handle Gods presence. Transferring the ark was a great idea, not inquiring of the Lord was not. 

For us, we are visitors of His presence and because He ought to live in us, it is like we give Him breaks, especially on things we feel like we can handle by ourselves. David was a great man of war, he still inquired of God even when their enemies took their wives and children. If we were devoted men of Gods presence, would we really ever be out of Gods will for us? Definitely not! So then, His presence must mark our entire lives because there is a surety that as long as you are in Him, you'll do as He wills and says. You will be able to please Him in all doings because you know what He expects and requires of you. Romans 12: 1-2 are verses we often read but never ask for enlightment on what it really means. A man of His presence is a dead man, dead to the world, dead to its customs, fashions and principles. This man presents his body as a living sacrifice(dead to sin, alive to Christ), holy, pleasing and acceptable in Gods sight and the reason he is so is because there is no conformity to the world in Him. It continues to say that this man is renewed in his mind so that he knows and can prove the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.  That means, if we are in states of confusion of what is of God for us and what is not, if we do not know what is Gods will for us then it means we are walking with unrenewed minds. If we are walking in this manner, it means that then we are conforming to the principles of this world and so are not letting the mind which is in Christ be in us. If we have unrenewed minds, it means, we are not in His presence, we are not lovers of His Word, we have not presented every faculty of our bodies to God. It then all boils down to....where are you at?

We cannot fulfill purpose or accomplish His will outside of His presence. We cannot be in His will if the world still defines who we are and where we ought to be. As a business person, as an employee, a teacher, a mother, whatever it is God has called you to do and be, we will know you are in His will for you if  you exude the presence of God with every expression that comes out of you. Quit coming into the presence of God as a place of emergencies when all things fail. Stop being the one person who comes into Gods presence only when life has weighed you down and you need a way out. The presence of God is not a place to just relieve pressures of life, it is a place of pleasure. Psalm 36: 8 says that in His presence, we feast in the abundance of His house, and we drink of the rivers of His pleasure. In His presence truly is fullness of joy and life forevermore! We cannot be unsure of what God wills for us to do and be. We do not guess His will, we know His will! 

It is in His presence that He positions us where He wants us to be. Until we have died to the world and distinctively yielded to the Lord. we will live for many other things apart from for God and His purposes.  This year, refuse to be a born again Christian who acts and functions like the natural man in 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 who does not want the things of God and regards them as foolishness. Refuse to be one who does not and cannot understand the things of God because you are not spiritually discerning. Walk in Spirit and refuse to gratify the flesh and its desires, let the Helper lead you. A good friend once told me: To hear God is to listen with a deliberate choice to obey Him. This year, do not just seek to plainly listen or hear God, listen with a choice, that whatever He says, I will obey Him!

 You have the mind of Christ! In you, is the ability to know His will, the power to continually walk before Him and with Him, yea, to be in His presence forever. 

With love,

Imani