We live our lives in a compartmentalized way. There are compartments holding our work stuff, personal stuff, and God stuff. We further break these compartments down into even smaller ones until we are juggling all these little boxes, unable to keep up and too tired to give any one of them our best effort. In the bustle and progress of modern society, we’ve lost the practice of spending time with God.
Because our attention is so fractured and fragmented, we never seem to have time for our King. Spending time in His presence is at best a dream and is more often than not forgotten entirely. Somewhere between our declaration of His Lordship and our present reality, we’ve lost our love and fascination with Jesus.
The way we live reminds me of Jesus’s letter to the church in Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7). What He held against them was they had abandoned their first love. Like them, we are often guilty of neglecting or even forgetting about our love for Jesus. How is it we seem to make time for so many things in life except for spending time in His presence?
We’ve got to stop compartmentalizing God and learn to see Him in everything that goes on around us. As long as we remain focused on ourselves and our concerns, we won’t recognize His presence in everything we do. We espouse God is omnipresent but then live as if He isn’t around. God is everywhere at all times. Jesus is constantly at work arranging the good from Himself and the bad from the devil in such a way as to accomplish God’s sovereign will. That should both comfort and fascinate us.
We can honor God in everything we do by recognizing His presence in that moment. Imagine how your choices and behaviors would change if you internalized the fact that you are always in His presence. He is where you are, seeing what you see, and aware of what you are choosing to do with the life and resources He entrusts to you. I think we would all make better choices and better use of our time if we could only keep this in mind. God will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5), so why do we so often abandon Him?
We must aspire to live every moment in His presence. No matter what you are doing, pray and ask Him to reveal how He is working in that moment. Look for ways you can be the hands and feet of Jesus in every situation. No matter where you are, make every effort to bring glory to Him. God is here in this moment and in this place. There is never a time when He is not right here.
Even when we neglect to spend time with Him, we are still in His presence. How sad that we waste so much of our lives failing to acknowledge God’s faithfulness and our part in His mission. Don’t compartmentalize your life. Recognize you are in His presence every moment of every day.