God's Presence Is Right Where You Are
And "ordinary" encounters with God can bear extraordinary fruit
Freshman year of college I made the terrible decision to take a summer job selling reference books door-to-door. (Apparently at least one company still thought this business model was viable in the early 2000s.) I wound up in North Carolina, which, to a kid from Montana, might as well have been a foreign country.
The whole thing was a fiasco, and a short-lived one at that. But it produced one warm memory. A sweet elderly lady who had no interest whatsoever in my books welcomed me into her house, invited me to sit on the couch, gave me a tall glass of iced tea, and asked,
“Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”
Having grown up Catholic-lite, it wasn’t a question I was used to. “I’m still working on that,” I stammered. I thought it was a polite enough brush-off, but her face drooped with disappointment.
A handful of years later, after Jesus opened my eyes, her disappointment finally made sense to me. Encountering and truly knowing the living God is extraordinary beyond words.
And yet even today, while I’m completely on board with what she meant, I admit I still wince a little at the “personal relationship” language. I’m not against it. I know a lot of wonderful Christians for whom those words emerge as naturally as breathing. I just have a (no pun intended) personal hang-up with the phrase. Maybe it’s because it has a “Jesus is my boyfriend” ring to it. Maybe it’s because it’s grown stale from overuse. I don’t really know.
But today I’m gonna run with the “personal relationship” idea. Whatever (real or imagined) flaws it may have, it does point to a practical, ever-ready, not-very-mystical way to understand God’s presence. Think about it this way: if you enter into the presence of a human being, what happens next? Usually, it will be one of two things. Either you’ll talk to each other, in which case you’ve begun a relationship. Or you’ll endure an awkward silence together.
With that in mind, let’s consider God’s presence. Yes, you can encounter God on top of a fourteen-thousand foot mountain. And you can experience Him in a cathedral or a monastery. But you can enter His presence just as reliably on your living room couch. The key to doing so is simply talking to Him. Communication, relationship, and presence are all interconnected.
This is why I’m such a proponent of praying the Bible. It’s a practice many others have encouraged, and one I’ve written about before. It’s as simple as reading something like this:
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of His glory.
(Isaiah 6:3)
And then praying something like this:
Lord, thank you for reminding me that you’re holy. You’re set apart from the sin and the mess of this world. And yet somehow you’re still right here with us. Thank you, God, for letting us see you in the things you’ve made. You put your goodness and your glory on display everywhere. Help me to see more of you. And to be filled with more of your holiness.
Or maybe just praying something like this:
Wow, Lord. You’re amazing.
Praying the Bible offers an active means by which to know God. It’s as effective as it is remarkably simple. The Lord speaks to us in His Word. And we answer.
This exchange is downright miraculous. The problem is that it seems so ordinary. It won’t usually coincide with a supernova or angels descending. Similarly, an encouragement to pray the Bible can seem very mundane. Some have even experienced that urging that as a well-meaning, if off-putting, shove.
Remember to read your Bible!
Don’t forget to pray!
How’s your Bible reading been going lately?
There’s a certain type of church where prayer and Bible reading are the only spiritual disciplines that ever seem to come up. (And it’s not one where you’ll hear the term spiritual disciplines.) Alas, seeking God in prayer and Scripture can just seem. . .too obvious.
Meanwhile, other options for Jesus-followers abound. In Practicing the Way (2024), John Mark Comer encourages periods of solitude. Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines (1988) offers celebration as a possibility. In Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (1991), Donald Whitney proposes that simply reading for lifelong learning can be a spiritual discipline.
Each of those books also, to be clear, urges prayer and deeply investing yourself in Scripture. And as their varied publication dates show, interest in spiritual disciplines isn’t all that new. Comer’s mega-bestseller has upped the buzz there recently. But Christians in every generation look for practical ways to grow in Christlikeness.
This desire is a great thing. But even good desires can lead to disappointment. If you dive into the literature mentioned above, you could soon find yourself planning a 15-point overhaul of your spiritual life. If you can sustain something like that, I’ll be the first to congratulate you. But most who try that route will sputter out after about a week. The truly tenacious might make it two.
Praying the Bible has the horsepower to drive tremendous change in your life long-term. It’s also not too hard to stick with. This is especially true if you can bring friends or others in your church into it with you. If you already have decent Bible-reading habits, it can feel more like fine-tuning than jamming another practice into your life. And yet, you’ll find it occasionally nudges you to try other spiritual disciplines. Like a tributary flowing into a larger stream, it can gradually, sustainably, lead you into the kind of life you wanted when you lunged for the 15-point overhaul. Because if any practice can be genuinely described as a spiritual discipline, surely God’s Word will point you to it sooner or later.
It will also point you to God’s grace. “We love because He first loved us” is a powerful reminder of what makes any of this possible (1 John 4:19). All of our human efforts, whether or not they show up on a list of “official” spiritual practices, need to flow out of God’s love and grace. And the love Jesus showed us by laying His life down for our sins opens the door to our faithful response.
The sequence of God’s grace, followed by our response, is wonderfully captured in the pattern of praying the Bible. As with grace, Scripture must be received as a gift. No human is its ultimate author, after all. And as the Word itself reminds us, it’s a gift we respond to—by talking plainly and honestly with the Giver. And what better place to start? Every great relationship, after all, begins with good conversation.
Since I encountered it, I have not gone past Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy - for a Catholic he provided language which lucidly exposed the meaning of so much Christian living in and in relation to the Triune. His rewording of the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm in the context of the ever presence of the kingdom of the heavens is still resonating years later.
Good word & encouragement, David!
I think any phrase that’s repeated enough can become cliché, overused & lack value to others. Even “praying the Bible,” which could become another cliché itself. Serving overseas where English was a 2nd or 3rd language for people, I had to learn to “hear” what people meant with their learned “Christianese” phrases. I needed to listen to their heart while they spoke in my language (bcuz I was ignorant of theirs).
As I commented before, I think a lot of these phrases we use are meaningful to certain generations or groups, but maybe not so much for ourselves. Then we need to listen to the person’s heart beyond their words. George Mueller (famous missionary to England in 19th C) would pray with his Bible open on his lap. I don’t know that he used the expression used now, but he certainly practiced “praying the Scriptures.”