Word of Encouragement (07/13/2022)

Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD, saying, “I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him. The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his name....” (Ex. 15:1-3)

Moses praises God by calling Him “my song”. What a wonderful thing to say about God! We can write a song about anything and everything, I guess. But when do we write (or want to write) a song? When we are deeply affected by something, whether joy or sorrow. This reminds us of the weightiness of God: when we think of God, it should evoke the deepest emotions in us. How can it be otherwise?

Why do we travel? Isn’t it to be amazed? We want to see something we have not seen before, or something we have only seen in pictures, that is awesome enough to take our breath away. We want our deepest affections of wonder and amazement to be stirred inside of us to jolt us out of our mundane, monotonous existence. To keep it in our memory, we take photos and videos. But when we are moved enough, we write in our journal what we saw and how we felt. We may even try to write a poem about it or, if we are talented enough, a song. But whatever ode we want to attribute to these things should ultimately go to God, who created them, shouldn’t it?

But is that how it is with our relationship with God? We see the beauty of God’s creation all around us (especially in San Diego!) but rarely do we get taken aback by it. We read God’s revelation to us—God opening up His mind and heart to us—and we get bored. We are allowed into the presence of the most holy God when we pray but we often doze off. (Can we imagine doing this in the company of someone we deem important?)

Of course, we know why. God is not visible to us. We often can’t feel His presence with us. So, we act and think like He is not with us. The doctrine of His omnipresence remains only in our minds; it rings hollow in our hearts. The problem is that we want to experience God’s presence as we experience the presence of other human beings with flesh and blood. But God is a Spirit without a body like ours. Then, we should expect that our experience of His presence will be fundamentally different from being with other people. How are we to experience God’s presence with us?

Think about this: do you feel someone’s presence only when he is physically with you? Not necessarily. There are times when you feel someone’s nearness even when he is far away. How? It is through our mind—by our memories, knowledge, and images of him in our minds, his voice that rings in our ears, etc. For the physical experience of someone’s presence, we don’t need to think; we can just feel it with our senses. But for the “mental” or “spiritual” experience of someone, we need to use our minds and hearts—our personal knowledge of that individual. And this is one way we experience God’s presence. There may be times when the Holy Spirit moves our hearts to feel His presence deeply in a mysterious way. But most of the time, we feel God’s presence through our reflection and meditation on God—the excellence of His being and His mighty deeds recorded in the Bible and performed in our lives, the generosity of His promises, the clarity of His commands, the comfort of His assurances, etc. The Holy Spirit can use such things to communicate God’s presence to us. It is easy to see how important it is for us to have a solid knowledge of God’s word.

As we grow deeper in our knowledge of God, He will be our song more and more in all situations and circumstances. And when we are made aware of God’s presence and goodness to us, let us sing songs of gratitude and praise to Him! What can you sing about God today?

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