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all there present presenceYou’ve been there: Whirling into a coffee shop or dinner with friends. Or talking on the phone while your kids fight in the other room (#methisweek) and you try to remember whether you’ve added salt to the recipe you’re cooking, dang it.

But somehow, the person looking you in the eyes, or on the other end of that phone call has the ability to just…

Be there.

Ever conversed with a person who just really makes you feel heard and received? Who’s undistracted, and all there?

I wrote in the last post that real presence with other people actually begins, I think, with the way we’re present with God.

Take Paul’s words in Philippians 2:

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy…Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Our ability to be truly present with other people—undistracted, wholly there—begins first in having comfort and affection from God. We’re able to set aside image-management (more consuming than being on my phone, if you ask me) to be focused and with someone.

Even more, as I’ve thought about presence, I’ve been curious as to how present I am in my most central, overarching relationship. My attention is sucked away by schedules and material stuff and worry: the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful (Mark 4:19).

The noise in my life…chokes God’s presence in my life; my ability to listen.

Here, tips on being “all there” with God.

1. Don’t be duplicitous.

This one can seem almost laughable–who would try to fake it with God?–but I find it to be really challenging. Jesus accused the Pharisees of being two faced: They spackled up the outside, “but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27).

Sometimes I’m pulling out my Bible and spending time in prayer, but am totally preoccupied by what I need to do for work, or my anxiety about one of my kids, or wondering about a social situation. Rather than bringing those things to God and allowing him to interact with me, I’m putting on–pretending to be there. 

It’s the beauty of the Psalms, to me, that the writer can be both totally with God and totally himself. He both listens to his soul and preaches to it in light of who God is.

Even when I’m alone, the “outside” of my mind can be participating in a spiritual discipline, but the inside isn’t engaged. I’m not meeting God with my whole self.

The Psalmist prays, Unite my heart to fear your name (Psalm 86:11). I wonder if I was on God’s mind when he penned this one…because my heart can be going in about 167,856 directions at once.

I’m just not all there.

I’ve got conflicting desires (check out James 1:5-8 on this one). Scattered attention. My heart isn’t “pure” in the sense of being of one substance, of being undivided. But it’s the pure in heart who see God (Matthew 5:8): in one sense, those whose hearts are all there with him.

It’s one way we see him.

But as for him? The Lord our God, the Lord is One. I need him to bring myself all together, under the leadership and worship of One.

That said–

2. Don’t cover up.

It’s interesting to me how many of God’s questions to humans seem to beckon them toward engagement (What do you want me to do for you?), and sometimes–like Adam and Eve in the Garden–out of hiding. Where are you?

This fascinates me, because God knew exactly where they were. He knows what we want before we ask (Matthew 6:8). So he’s actually asking not for information, but to relate to us.

I tend to hide from God what I’m uncomfortable with: Anger. Fear. Sadness.

But presence means surpassing my first inclination of shame, of hiding when I’m with God. Jesus is my shame-lifter. So I don’t have to hide anymore.

3. Don’t just exchange information.

Date nights are one of my favorite things.

But what would be a really bad date night? To spend the entire time just exchanging information, checking off the list of things we need to cover as parents and people who administrate the same household.

If my husband and I don’t enjoy each other and receive each other and connect, what’s the quality of our date night? We had a business meeting with good food. Or we sat beside each other to experience a movie.

I want more than this with my man. And I want it with God, too. If I’m coming to God’s Word just for knowledge, I’m missing the one who wrote it. It’s become more important than him. (Again, the Pharisees were legendary with this.)

4. Allow your core to be affected. Changed. Touched.

Similarly, there are times when I’m going through the motions–yet not really emerging having interacted with the most high God.

Maybe in that date night scenario, it’s the picture of the man or woman who’s with their spouse, but doesn’t go away having been impacted at all by the relationship. We’d see a husband or wife in those circumstances as being cold or detached.

But all of us have had “time with God” in which nothing really penetrates us. It’s where we check off a box, but don’t allow ourselves to know and be known. Remember what God says:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 

…And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ 

-Matthew 7:21-23

present presence all there

5. Be aware of presence everywhere.

There have been times in the last two years–an emotional/spiritual(/life) slump for me–where sensing God’s presence has been marked by doubt and distance.  But God tells me he’s everywhere:

Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
…Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.

-Psalm 139, The Message

So part of my task is simply to see him. (Please don’t miss this post if you’re grappling with this, or with struggling to see him and see joy.)

Think about trying out the ancient prayer of Examen. Here’s my modern wording (print it free here!):

6. Be willing not to grasp.

Philippians 2 mentions Jesus didn’t count equality with God something to be grasped–a distinct contrast to the narrative of Lucifer, who wanted to make himself like the Most High (Isaiah 14).

I’m reminded that in the Lord’s Prayer, before we ask for anything, we acknowledge God’s presence and identity: Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done…

We come to God like Jesus in Gethsemane: completely transparent about what we want, but holding it with open hands. Not my will, but yours be done.

 

I’d love to hear your voice.

What’s one way that helps you to be all there with God?

Comment below.

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