Presence Carriers – David ShearmanUddrag

Shaped by His Presence

It has been said that you can teach people what you know, but that you reproduce who and what you are. If this is true, and we want to see ourselves with a secure identity, we should look no further than Jesus as our role model. His security and confidence in who He was, is wonderfully exampled in the story of Him washing the disciples’ feet (John 13). When He sat down after His “servant work”, before explaining to them what He had done in setting them an example, He said, “You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘Lord’, and rightly so, for that is what I am.” (John 13:13). He knew who He was and what He was about.

It is critically important in knowing who we are that we understand the biblical principle that we are not fully human (in other words, we do not truly know who we are) until we find a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Our knowing Him helps us to “know” ourselves. Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian monk, in his profound book Loving God describes four degrees of love:

1. Loving ourselves for our own sake.

2. Loving God for His gifts and blessings

3. Loving God for Himself alone

4. Loving ourselves for the sake of God

The highest degree of love, for Bernard, was simply that we love ourselves as God loves us – in the same degree, in the same manner, and with the very same love. How many people have I met, old and young, strong and weak who, alongside the damage of sin in their nature and the hurts and harm of negative experiences, continue to be less than God created them to be because they refuse to believe how much God loves them, cares for them and has provided everything they need to become the man or woman of His original design?

They say the longer you are with someone, the more likely it is that you will become like them. This is especially true of married couples who have shared a long life together. Maybe it is also true of the Bride of Christ, so that the more we are with Him the more we want to be like Him? I know the opposite is true. When love is low and hearts are cold and our walk with the Lord Jesus is distant and indifferent, then our attitudes are harder, our compassion less sensitized. We are less like our Lord. We should therefore guard against anything that takes us away from Him.

So whatever it is, including the busyness of our Christian service, our fears or failures and our successes and substitutes, if it has blocked our path to enjoying more of God’s presence, pray for a "clearance" and keep journeying onwards to become a carrier of His presence.