Transformed Through Abiding in God’s Presence
Daydream with me for a moment about what it would be like to be one of the most popular influencers in your generation. Imagine you’re at the height of your ministry with large crowds following you wherever you go.
Signs and wonders become commonplace as you regularly lay your hands on the sick, and they recover to full health. People are hanging on your every word — awestruck by your wisdom. If this was you, what would you do?
The answer appears to be simple — the fields are white for the harvest and now is the time to labor night and day in the field for souls. Any moment spent alone not engaging with a hurting and broken world would seem to be a selfish use of time. But Jesus didn’t think so!
After healing a man with leprosy, word got out about Christ’s miraculous ministry.
Luke 5:15 reports that “the news about Him was spreading even farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses.”
Jesus was making a dramatic impact on thousands of people as He ministered the gospel of the kingdom. But something unexpected is mentioned in the very next verse. Instead of going into detail about the incredible exploits of Christ’s ministry, Luke felt it necessary to reveal how “Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray” (Luke 5:16).
What Would Jesus Do
This may come as a surprise to you. If you’re like me, you may be wondering why Jesus would leave such a fruitful time of ministry to be alone with God. He has the rest of eternity to be with the Father, so why squander so much precious time on earth to go meet with Him in the wilderness?
Jesus understood that His time connecting with God was just as valuable as His time performing miracles and teaching about the kingdom. In fact, the time He spent alone with the Father was paramount for Him to fulfill His mission of discipling others in His earthly ministry.
If this is true for God in the flesh, then it is undoubtedly necessary for those of us who follow Him today. Discipleship is not just about working with other people. Discipleship must begin with us being so in tune with God, that like Jesus, we can tell people that “the words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.”
Remember, it is God who ultimately disciples people. Without being intimately connected to Him, we cannot be used effectively in the lives of others.
Prayer is Discipleship
I remember meeting with a pastor who was concerned about the house of prayer that we had recently started. He believed it was good to call people to prayer but thought we were placing too much emphasis on a believer’s personal relationship with God.
He argued that if people were spending a lot of time in the prayer room, how would they fulfill their responsibility to make disciples? With so much of our attention focused upward, how were we going to affect the lives of those around us?
This pastor is a wonderful man and came with the best of intentions, but his perspective was flawed. Like most people in the church, he had a preconceived idea of what discipleship was “supposed” to look like, and what we were engaging in did not fit that mold.
He was coming to the table with a humanistic mindset, believing the primary way to experience discipleship was in the context of relationships with other people. It’s almost as though we have inverted the pyramid. God is meant to be the base of the whole structure and we sometimes act like He’s the cherry on top — after we get everything else done —not realizing how vital He is to literally every breath, every success and struggle.
No doubt, relationship with others is a massive aspect of discipleship and one that we will devote the following two chapters to, but our relationships with others are only a piece of the discipleship puzzle.
Many people believe the only way to affect another person is by physically engaging with them. Therefore, the ministry of intercession is rarely considered a worthy discipleship endeavor. Even in the church, the concept of prayer is exalted, but its practice is greatly lacking.
Our actions prove what we really believe.
If we believed Christ’s words that “if you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it” (John 14:14), we would all be spending far more time on our knees. But the truth is, many of us do not believe these words. This passage in the book of James rings true for far too many Christians: “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2).
Too Busy to Pray
To be fair, every Christian I have met has experienced the pain of praying for something that did not come to pass. But this cannot deter us from pursuing prayer. We can never allow our experiences in the natural to trump the truth found in God’s word.
Prayer has an element of mystery to it, and there are conditions God places on us in fulfilling our prayers. Yet, instead of searching out these areas, many have concluded that prayer simply does not work. So, if God is not going to do something to affect the life of the person I have been praying for, I better pick up the slack.
We then begin working in the flesh to strategize and come up with a solution on how we are going to fix someone. Of course, God can still use us in the process, often asking us to engage with the person He has called us to disciple, but any growth that comes from that relationship is not by our doing, it is by God’s.
We are quick to acknowledge that our salvation was entirely due to God’s divine grace, yet after this initial gift, we often feel we need to strive in the flesh to accomplish God’s calling on our life.
This is not how God intended us to live. The Galatians fell prey to this works-based mindset, resulting in a sharp rebuke from the apostle Paul in Galatians 3:1-7,
You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.
Only God Can Cause a Soul to Grow
Another instance where Christians praised the talents of men instead of giving proper credit to God is found in the church at Corinth. When confronting the Corinthians regarding their ignorance about human leadership, the apostle Paul said,
What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth (1 Corinthians 3:5-7).
The Corinthians were so focused on the men God was using that they forgot that God was the one ultimately at work. We accomplish nothing on our own accord for “every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).
If God can use the loving relationships of flawed human beings to accomplish His purpose, He can certainly work outside those physical interactions to accomplish His purposes through our prayers.
Discipled by the Holy Spirit
So far, we have focused on how engaging in prayer can affect the lives of others. This is a glorious outcome of our time spent in intercession before the Lord, but I have found that most of the impact of prayer occurs in our own spiritual journey.
You must understand something; God wants to transform your heart and mind far more than you desire change for yourself.
The Father is eager to see you walking in the fullness of what He made available by sacrificing His son for you. The limiting factor in our sanctification is not God … it’s us!
We may desire to become more like Jesus, but the time, money, and energy we devote to this process is the actual litmus test of our personal longing.
In one sense, our ability to grow through prayer is dependent upon us. God wants to disciple us through the wisdom and power of the Spirit, but He will not force Himself upon anyone. We have a responsibility to position ourselves to receive the teaching and training of the Holy Spirit.
Our growth is hindered whenever we place a higher priority on the things of this world than the things of God. I’m not suggesting that we need to spend every waking moment studying the Bible, but I do believe we should remain constantly available to the Spirit’s promptings.
I think this is what Paul meant when he encouraged the people of Thessalonica to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). He was not saying that these Christians needed to be speaking prayers to God constantly. What he meant was that the gaze of our heart must remain upward in everything we do.
In Colossians, Paul encourages believers by that,
Since you have been raised with Christ, strive for the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:1-3).
Transformed Through Abiding in God’s Presence
One of the primary missions for every believer is to abide in Christ! Abiding in Jesus is our only hope of making any positive impact in our lives and the lives of those around us.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing (John 15:4-5).
This process of abiding is simple, but it is not easy. Bombarded by the numerous distractions of modern society, it can be challenging to constantly abide in the Lord. Abiding in Christ is not something that just happens in our life. We must be intentional in cultivating this type of relationship with the Holy Spirit.
One of my heroes of the faith has taught me much about continually abiding in God’s presence. Brother Lawrence, a French monk who lived in a Carmelite monastery in the 1600s, was a stirring example of a man who treasured the presence of God above all else.
Though he served in the kitchen of the monastery, he attempted never to live a moment of his day unaware of God’s presence with Him. Speaking of his duties in the kitchen, Lawrence said,
“The time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I posses God in as great a tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”[1]
This man understood that there is no such thing as a sacred or secular activity. When done for the glory of God, with our hearts consumed with His presence, everything becomes a holy endeavor. The apostle Paul hints at this when saying, “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all things for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
Practicing the presence of God is the most critical aspect of being discipled by the Holy Spirit. Most of us have jobs, families, school, hobbies, etc., that consume much of our time. Even a monk like Brother Lawrence was busy with many activities outside the realm of typical spiritual disciplines.
Most Christians are a product of our 21st century: far too busy and distracted. This inevitably results in insufficient time to be alone with God. But this doesn’t mean we’re supposed to erase our entire schedules so that we can do nothing but pray and read the Bible all day.
God is not asking us to stop all our activities, He simply wants us to include Him in everything we do. The truth is because God is omnipresent — present everywhere at all times — He already is with us every moment of the day. The question remains, are you recognizing and partnering with Him in every aspect of your life?
[1] Bill Gaultiere, “Brother Lawrence Writings (His Story),” Soul Shepherding, accessed April 27, 2021, https://www.soulshepherding.org/brother-lawrence-writings-story/.