Closer to GodSample

Why Can I Experience God’s Personal Presence?

We were created with a desire for a deep life with God. Our souls long to know and be known by God, to be in an intimate relationship with Him. We were made to both stand in awe of His holiness and relax our shoulders in the safety of His love and to commune with Him as we go throughout our day. His presence is not reserved for mountaintop moments. His presence is for every moment. We can pursue Him and converse with Him as we go throughout our day and fully expect to encounter Him.

This is the priceless gift that was made possible through Jesus Christ.

I know it’s tempting to skip right to how we can experience God deeply. But first we need to appreciate why we can have an intimate relationship with a perfect and holy God.

Without the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, we would still be “enemies” of God, deserving wrath, spiritually dead in our sin.

The apostle Paul doesn’t dance around this truth when he writes: as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10)

I’m giving the bad news first. (But stay with me. It gets really good!) Not a single one of us is righteous on our own merit. Show me the most saintly person you know—still not righteous enough to experience relationship with God.

Sin, which means “to miss the mark” through our deliberate decision to disregard God’s perfect standard of holiness, entered the world in the Garden of Eden and severed the relationship—a broken relationship caused by our rebellion.

And there was nothing we could do to bridge the gap between His holiness and our unholiness and between His perfection and our imperfection.

But Jesus! He took the full brunt of our sin. He was crucified on the cross, His sinless life given so that we might not only have eternal life but also enjoy personal, intimate relationship with Him on this side of heaven.

We have been invited into intimacy with the Father through Christ’s perfect obedience to the Father. Jesus did it all. Intimacy with the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit) is a free gift given to every person who puts their trust in the finished work of Christ.