Manifest Presence of God

A.W. Tozer distingished between the universal presence of God and pantheism. He pointed out that nature and God are not one. God is not the sum total of all created things. Though God dwells in His creation and present in all of His works...He is transcendent above all His works even while He is present within them. God is here. Wherever we are, God is here. There is no place, where He is not. There can be no place where He is not. No one is further from or nearer to God than any other person is.

When Adam sinned he tried to do the impossible. He tried to hide from the presence of God. When David sinned he also intertained the idea of escaping from the presence of God and then considered it an impossibility.

He wrote, "Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend up into heaven, you are there: If I make my bed in hell, behold you are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the most distant parts of the sea; even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me."

If God is present everywhere and if we cannot be where He is not, why then is His presence unrecognized in the world?

The patriach Jacob answered this question after seeing  a vision of God and cried out in wonder, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. That was his problem, and it's ours. Men do not know that God is here.

The presence of God and His Manifest presence are not the same.

There can be one without the other. God is here even when we are completely unaware of it. He is manifest only when and as we are aware of His presence. He wants us to know when He is near so that we will see and hear Him when He is near. His presence is tangible.

Israel experienced the manifest presence of God "in the pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night." (Ex 13:21) The Ark of the Covenant was the living, breathing manifest presence of God in the midst of the Israelites.

When Moses said to God, "Show me your glory" he was expressing his desire to know Him. Moses was praying, "Father, reveal to me who you are." (Ex. 33:18)

The answered Moses' prayer. First, He instructed Moses to hide himself in the crevice of a rock. Yet, when Moses waited for the glory of to appear, he heard no thunder, saw no lightening, felt no shaking of the earth. Rather, God's manifest presence came to him in a simple revelation. God allowed Moses to see His glory that he might be changed by the sight of it. That His faith and trust in Him might be increased and that he might lean more fully on His arm of strength.

Our need is the same. We, too, need His manifest presence.The more we come to know Him the more we will serve Him, love Him, worship Him, trust Him, read His Word and be filled with Holy Spirit.

 God still reveals His glory to us who love His presence, so that, by seeing, hearing and touching Him, we might be changed into His very image. The Apostle Paul understood the purpose of seeing the manifest presence of God. He saw it as an experience to change the beholder...to revolutionize the life of every follower of Jesus.

"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Corinthian 3:18)

There must be a yielding; a giving of ourselves to the Spirit of God, for His work is to show us the Father and the Son. If we co-operate with Him in loving obedience God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal (cultural Christian and a life radiant with the light of His face.