Closer to GodSample

How can I Experience God’s Personal Presence?

To begin, I want to acknowledge how putting the word intimacy and God in the same sentence makes some of us squirm because of the physical, even sexual, connotation that intimacy carries. So I am going to give us several synonyms for intimacy to normalize it.

Words and phrases similar to intimacy include:

• close familiarity
• friendship
• fellowship
• companionship
• togetherness
• belonging
• love
• nearness
• mutual affection
• closeness

This is what you were made to enjoy with God! And the enemy of your soul will stop at nothing to keep you from it! But I don’t say this to scare us. I say it to spur us into openness to God’s Spirit who dwells within us and was given to us to bring us into the intimacy of the Trinity!

The work of the Holy Spirit is to ensure you know to whom you belong and to help you enjoy the benefits of this belonging! We get to live in intimate relationship with God the Father because of God the Son through God the Spirit.

The Good News doesn’t end at Jesus’ death and resurrection that reconciled us to God.

Forty days after His resurrection, Jesus ascended to the Father, but before He left earth, He said this:

"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you." (John 14:16–17)

Sure enough, Jesus did as He promised. He always does. Ten days after His ascension, He sent His Spirit, not only to dwell with us, but also to live in us.

Jesus, during His ministry on earth, had the full power of His Spirit in Him. And then, after He ascended to the Father, He sent that same Spirit to live in and operate through us! The same Spirit who filled Jesus fills you and me today. Come on, that’s wild!

We freely receive salvation and the Spirit—new birth and new life. We are now Spirit-people—filled with the Spirit, led by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, and transformed by the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit makes our relationship with God vibrant and dynamic. And this kind of relationship is available to every person who calls on the name of Jesus to be saved!