The Rock Weekly – July 9, 2025

 

Living In The Present…Or In The Presence?

“You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”  (Psalm 16:11)

You may be wondering, what’s the difference between Present and Presence?  I’m glad you asked!  😊  Over the past two weeks and especially during these last 3 days of fasting, the Lord has been speaking to me about remaining in His Presence and I want to share some insights.  Let me start with a few Scripture verses…

Rom 1:17, Gal 3:11, Heb 10:38   “…The righteous will live/walk by faith.”

2 Cor 5:7  “We live by faith, not by sight.”

Psalm 89:15  “Blessed are those…who walk in the light of your presence, LORD.”

Psalm 140:13  “Surely the righteous will praise your name, and the upright will live in your presence.”

Do you see the connection between Faith and Presence? 

When we live in the “Present”, we live by sight…from the ‘truths’ that have been established by our world’s system, or said another way, by the wisdom of this age and by the things of this world.   This positions our focus on what we see in the natural and our efforts then go towards making our current situation better and getting us more things.  It becomes a striving to bring comfort and peace into our current situation, but we never arrive at the place of comfort and peace, because true comfort and peace ONLY come from the Lord – from the Holy Spirit.  And so we stay in a state of striving or ‘restlessness’.    And this, in a sense, keeps us from putting our trust/faith in the Lord and is a perpetual downward spiral.  But 2 Corinthians 5:7 tells us that we are to live by faith (in the presence of the Lord) and not by sight (in the present).  Faith positions our hearts towards HOPE (Heb 11:1) and this hope sets us in His Presence!  For God’s ‘hope’ is not in the temporal things of this world, but in eternal things that are unseen. (2 Cor 4:18)  This hope is not a worldly disappointing hope that we see when we say, “I hope the Rockies win.”  🙂   The Bible tells us in Romans 5:5 that “this HOPE will not disappoint us”!    This is because God’s ‘hope’ is eternal…it is the assurance that we will have our eternal salvation (Rom 8:24 & 1 Thess 5:8b) and so we can rest in that assurance as we live by faith…in His Presence!  But if we live by ‘sight’…in the Present, this will be short-lived. And eventually we will come to the realization that everything we have lived for was momentary – like “a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes”. (James 4:15)    

Though our faith is in Jesus and our hope is in ‘things above/eternal’, we also see God move in the supernatural…on earth as it is in heaven!  When we look at the life of Jesus with the disciples, they most often didn’t have the resources, finances, or wisdom to manage their situations.  They had to put their hope in Jesus.  When they couldn’t feed the 5,000, Jesus provided a supernatural way through a few fish and loaves of bread. When they couldn’t pay their taxes, Jesus provided a supernatural way through a coin in the fish’s mouth.  When the Lord gave Gideon 300 men to fight an army of 135,000 swordsmen, Gideon lived by faith and not by sight and supernaturally defeated the enemy!  When the Israelites went into the wilderness, they had no food, no water, no extra clothes, no protection from other armies, and no direction of where to go.  They had to walk by faith and not by sight and God provided supernaturally!   Moses knew that their only way to survive was with the Presence.  “If your presence doesn’t go with us, don’t send us up from here.” (Exodus 33:15)   As we live our lives by Faith with a Hope of our eternal salvation with Christ, we will experience the Presence of the Lord in our lives and live in His supernatural provision and protection. 

Lord Jesus, Help us to live by faith and set our heart and mind on the heavenly things (the Presence) and not on the earthly things (the Present).  May we remain in you and in the hope of your glory which we will experience when You return for your bride! (Col 3:1-4) May your Presence sustain, strengthen, and lead us as we live by faith and not by sight and have our assured Hope in you alone.  Amen!

We love you!
Pastor Mike and your Rock Staff

 

 

 

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