Psalms 16:11: You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of Your presence and the pleasures of living with You forever.

Do you find it difficult to set aside the time to be in God’s presence? The enemy fights us so that we don’t invest more of our time in the Lord’s presence. Imagine for a moment what a plant that is dependent on sunlight would look like if it never got to soak up the sun’s rays. Just as a plant grows because of the nutrients from the sun, Christians also thrive when we take the time to be in God’s presence.

As we delight ourselves in His presence and worship Him, He opens our hearts up to receiving understanding. Just as plants respond to sunlight, our body, mind, and spirit respond to being in His presence. If this seems a little strange to you, let me remind you about the teaching of Jesus in John 15. He tells us that we are the branches and He is the Vine. If we abide in Him and He abides in us, we will begin to bear fruit. Further, Jesus tells us that when we abide in Him and His Words abide in our hearts, we can ask whatever we desire and it shall be done for us.

Now we can better understand why the adversary of our soul doesn’t want us to take the time needed to refresh our souls in God’s presence. Being in His presence releases the blessings and power of spiritual life into our souls, which causes us to flourish in the natural realm. Jesus said that we will bring glory to the Father through the fruit that we bear, and we will be His disciples, indeed. If, as a Christian, you’re not accustomed to taking the time to get alone in the presence of God and worship Him regularly, I challenge you to begin today. Set aside a part of your day to be with the Lord and receive refreshment from Him.

After a while (be consistent), you will begin to see the results in your life. Your time and energy level will be blessed, and you will be able to accomplish more things. The benefits are limitless. In order to track the progress of your investment of time, I suggest you begin to keep a record (every day) of the blessings you receive. At the end of one month, take the journal, look back over what He has done for you and through you, and you will see how the Lord’s presence has increased favor and grace in your life. You’ll discover that God’s presence yields high dividends, and you really didn’t have to do all that you thought you had to do. Other than the natural blessings that you will receive, there’s one more added benefit to you taking the time to be in God’s presence: you will become a stronger believer in your walk of faith, and others will recognize that by your countenance. Moses was in God’s presence for forty days, and his face was illuminated to the point that he had to wear a veil over his face. Now that’s power!  —submitted by Asa Dockery, US