The Presence of God

“You should have been at church yesterday! God was really present!”

Really? Isn’t God really present every Sunday, as well as Monday through Saturday?

One of the characteristics of God is that He is omnipresent. That means everywhere at once. Now He is either omnipresent or He isn’t. He cannot be everywhere at once one minute and not the next. Neither can He be present everywhere and only certain places all at once.

So, what makes some worship services seem as though “God is really present?” Could it be that it is not a function of God, but of the mood of the worshipers? Of course it could, and it is.

When worshippers arrive at church, the Holy Spirit is always already present. The question is not whether God is there. The question is about whether our hearts prepared to allow Him to work in our lives.

Sometimes we mistake excitement for worship. Certain music is designed more to create energy and to wake people up than it is to prepare people for worship. That is true whether the music is classical, standard or contemporary in nature.

One of the issues is that we have come to consider praise the same thing as worship, and it is not. Praise is an exultation of God. It is celebratory in nature. Worship is reverent honor and homage paid to God and being awed in His presence. We need both, but they are not the same thing. Worship services often emphasize praise over worship to their detriment.

Praise is a key element of a Sunday service because we are supposed to be celebrating the resurrection of Christ.  In fact, we worship on Sunday for that very reason, a joyous proclamation of a risen Lord.

We are also gathered to worship a holy, majestic and awe provoking God. Too many Sunday services either omit this element or substitute prayer for worship. While we can both praise and worship in prayer, prayer is not, in and of itself, either praise or worship.

The inclusion of all of the elements: worship, singing, praise, prayer, Scripture, submission, and the presentation of the gospel will go a long way toward assisting worshipers realize the presence of God.