Experiencing God's Presence #158 - The One Year Experiencing God's Presence Devotional
Experiencing God's Presence #158
When all the people of Israel saw the fire coming down and the glorious presence of the LORD filling the Temple, they fell face down on the ground and worshiped and praised the LORD, saying, “He is good! His faithful love endures forever!”
2 Chronicles 7:3
We’ve read these words of praise before: “He is good! His faithful love endures forever!” The first time was right before God filled the Temple with His Presence (2 Chronicles 5:13). The cloud of His glory came in response to the Israelites’ praises. Now their praises for His goodness, faithfulness, and love are a response to His Presence. In their encounter with Him, the natural reaction to His glory was falling facedown and worshiping. Their sense of His goodness and love was tangible. They had to cry out.
This is why we can legitimately say our faith is a relationship rather than simply a belief system. Our worship is not a monologue. God’s acts are not a unilateral intervention in human affairs. We speak to God, He answers, we respond back to Him, He responds back to us. And on and on. His covenants with us are two-way interactions. Our praises are a response to His invitation to love Him and an invitation back to Him to grace us with His Presence. Anything less is not much of a relationship.
That’s what we see in this Temple dedication—a dramatic conversation between human beings and a God who zealously seeks to live among His people. The implication for each of us is that when we express our worship to Him, we are setting the room at a temperature in which He is most at home, and He comes in. When He does, our response to Him is the same one we started with: worship. And an amazing conversation has begun.
Lord, let me never see my words to You, or Yours to me, as a one-way street. I know Your Spirit fills our conversations, even when I can’t feel it. May those conversations become more and more saturated with Your Presence.
