Do you long to see more of God’s presence in your life? I suspect we all do.
I heard a phrase this week that stood out to me about this. It was a line in a prayer asking for grace to yield to God’s will and to yield to His presence in our lives.
I am drawn to the second phrase. A request for help to yield my will to God is familiar. But I’m not sure I have ever thought to pray that I would yield to God’s presence in my life.I am captivated by this idea. It suggests that I need to have eyes to see more of His presence with me.
People seem to have pretty specific ideas about what God’s presence looks like. Often, we expect monumental expressions of His presence. I think of the phrase you sometimes hear about God really “showing up and showing off.”
That has always struck me as an odd expression, as though God was just wandering about and decided to drop in for a bit to show off. Is it just that we don’t perceive His presence if He isn’t remarkable, full of spectacle and grandeur?
I am grateful for inspiring stories and experiences of God’s dramatic rescues and revelations. These things are encouraging to our souls, drawing us nearer to Him in trust. It is easy to yield ourselves to that sort of presence of God.
But are we only on the lookout for Him in big ways? And if so, what do we lose in terms of worship, relationship, intimacy, or understanding of Him?
What if the evidence of God’s presence isn’t remarkable, but is simply mundane? Do we yield ourselves to that presence? Do we even notice Him? Sometimes my days seem particularly ordinary. The routine and the regular, however, are surely just as filled with Him as the exceptional and extraordinary.
I am not sure my eyes are trained to see Him as well in the every day. How about you?
I suspect if God doesn’t show up in our lives the way we expect, we might be tempted to think He hasn’t shown up for us at all. We might be tempted to believe His love for us is somehow diminished. That seems like a a ploy God’s enemy would love to have unfold.
For that reason alone, it strikes me as important to ask God to help me to yield to His presence in my life. And to ask Him to help me see how constant and faithful that presence is. Every moment contains Him. His omnipotence is a fact of His being. His presence is with me whether I notice it or not.
Maybe God’s presence is manifested to us through things we might prefer not to have in our lives, like a parent with cancer or the loss of a job. Hard places can cultivate in us the gift of dependence upon Him. But if we only expect Him to show up in specific ways, hard places might cause us to doubt Him. Or we might not see His presence with us at all. We need eyes to see. Lord, help me to yield to your presence in my life even when I don’t understand or enjoy the paths through which you choose to reveal yourself to me.
Maybe God’s presence is manifested in our lives in His constancy, a faithfulness that is so reliable it becomes almost invisible. How often to we thank God for the sun coming up? Or for the fact that by His command our planet is poised in the perfect location within our solar system to sustain life? We need eyes to see.
Lord, help me to yield to your presence in my life even when it is so ordinary I might take you for granted.
I want to notice God’s presence more. I also want to yield to His presence in my life more. I want to align myself with God, not only when He shows up in the way that I expect, but especially when I am blinded by my own preconceived notions of Him.
I invite you to consider the prayer of yielding to God’s presence in your life. This phrase has helped me realize there is a different type of submission I can offer the Lord.
May He guide you to see more of His presence with you this week.