Experience vs. Presence

Sometimes we can mistake experience for presence. An experience is a moment, a snapshot, an isolated captured event. Presence is an ongoing journey. As Christians we can choose to seek an experience with God or we can seek His presence. An experience is attending a service, hearing the sermon and then leaving and not applying the message to our lives. We can do this often without even realizing. We can get so bogged down with life and the next thing we need to do that we can miss the treasure that has been given to us. Unfortunately this can become a pattern all to easily and it can rob our lives of what God has for us. When we instead seek His presence we invite a back and forth ongoing relationship with God. We respond to His offer to journey with Him. We open the door to Him continuing to pour into our lives . You can share moments with total strangers but you journey life with family. Consider this you can stand next to a total stranger at a concert or a sports game and for the moment you are both caught in the experience of that event. You may cheer together and even high five one another but at the end of the event you leave and you know nothing about the person, their hopes, dreams or lives. When you share presence it is intentionally designed to connect and intertwine relationships and lives. It is an ongoing life journey. Let us be intentional as we seek presence instead of experience. It will lead our lives in most spectacular paths and we will receive blessing and fulfillment we could never imagine. God is not a God of religion but of relationship; He desires to journey with us. How amazing that the heart of the God is moved by the mere thought of you! Will you seek His presence? “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.” ‭‭James‬ ‭1:23-25‬ ‭NKJV‬‬