Psalm 63:1-2 (NIV): O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
When David was in the wilderness hiding out in no-man’s-land from the forces of Saul, what really kept him going was his recollection of those times when he had been tangibly in God’s presence. When all support felt far away, when hope seemed gone, he could still go back in his mind to those watershed moments when he had been in God’s sanctuary and beheld His power and glory firsthand. And those recollections gave him the steadiness and stability that he needed to keep his faith strong, even in the hardest of circumstances.
But many of God’s people today lack the memory of that kind of watershed moment. When they accepted Jesus, they said a prayer, or acknowledged a doctrinal position, or they submitted to baptism. But few of them can point back to a moment when their experience of God’s actual presence became so real that it provides a constant and secure bulwark against every storm that life throws at them.
After people become Christians, it seems that most of them are immediately sucked right back into the busy routines of their normal day-to-day lives. Normally they are not instructed about the necessity of setting aside the best part of their day to spend consciously in God’s presence, praying, listening, reading the Bible, listening, and receiving directly from God wisdom, and strength, and power. Even in these “devotional times” God can make His presence so strongly felt that he becomes more real in our experience. Those times when God’s people come before Him, when we consciously focus and quiet our hearts and minds, when we actually hear His voice speaking to our deepest hearts, these times also become watershed moments; times when we receive so definite a sense of God’s presence that when the enemy comes and whispers to us that He is unreal, or uncaring, or that our salvation is a hoax or a mistake, then we can answer firmly, “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.” (2 Timothy 1:12 NIV)
Father, thank You for the number of these watershed moments that You have built into my life. They truly are solid foundations that keep me from doubt, from even the mere idea of every turning away from You. Amen.