…expect The Lord. – Psalm 27:14, AMP

When we are in God’s presence and we are right with Him, there are so many wonderful things available to us. There is peace, joy, patience, kindness, safety, and goodness, just to name a few. When we are not right with God, being in His presence isn’t too inviting. Rather than gladness and peace, we meet up with conviction, sorrow, fear, and trembling. The difference between finding joy and finding sorrow in God’s presence is heavily dependent on one thing: whether or not we expect to be in God’s presence.

There is an old saying that states, “When the cat’s away the mice will play!” There may be no better human example of this proverb than college students. With little or no expectation of having their parents show up at school to say, “Stop doing that!”, many young people throw off restraint and engage in horrible behavior. But, very often, authority of some kind (whether parental or not) shows up when least expected, and when it does, play time is followed by judgment day.

So it is with our relationship with our Heavenly Father. If we have no expectation of being in God’s presence, we throw caution to the wind and engage in horrible behavior. But when we remember that God is always with us and watching us, we restrain. To prove the point, flash back in your mind to the last sinful choice you made. When you made that choice, did you even consider that the God of Heaven was right there with you, watching you make that horrible decision and angry that you cared more for your sin than you did for Him? If you are like me, the answer is “no.” But when we do consider that God is always there, His presence tempers our passion, and righteousness wins the day.

As Oswald Chambers wrote in his tremendous work My Utmost For His Highest:

Having the reality of God’s presence is not dependent on our being in a particular circumstance or place, but is only dependent on our determination to keep the Lord before us continually. *

Expecting to be in God’s presence is not something that just happens; it is an act of will. We must determine to remember that we are at all times in God’s presence. When we do so, we’ll enjoy the peace that passes all understanding, not the sorrow that accompanies guilt and shame.

* My Utmost For His Highest, July 20 entry, utmost.org

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