Created to Experience God’s Presence

“Thou has formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”

I am reminded of these famous words of St. Augustine as I think of the deep intimacy of relationship with God each and every one of us is created to enjoy.

What stands out to me at this moment is the word, “restless”. We are living in a time of great restlessness. We are an agitated generation, driven by an insatiable craving for instant gratification. This is an age of ‘texts’, ‘tweets’, ‘breaking headline news’, hyper-driven media, a steady assault of technological advances pushing us into ever faster updates, upgrades, tools, toys, and gadgets. The result is that many have no paradigm for the Word that says, “Be still (stop striving) and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 46:10)  Sadly this is as true for those in the Church as for those outside of her.

The remedy for this restlessness is, of course, found only in the Rest of God.  God is not restless, nor is He ever agitated. Eternal Peace beyond all comprehension flows from deep within His heart. Therefore, all restlessness and agitation ceases when we enter His Rest. It is not just possible for those of us who are in Christ to experience this Rest, it is the very core, or center, of our being. It is the place from which we are created to live.

However, we, as I’ve said,  are an agitated, restless people. Why? The reason is simple: we have moved off of our center.

Our restlessness and agitation is because of a shift within us away from the heart of God. It is not a directional move of distance like when a child moves away from home, for instance. God is everywhere present in the universe; and, He is always fully present within us. Therefore, it’s impossible to move away somewhere apart from God. This move, or shift, I speak of is one of alignment. We have literally moved “out of phase”.

That phrase means to be “unsynchronized or uncorrelated”. In physics, it is used of waves of energy that are not aligned or in sync. The effect is a loss of unity and harmony. We experience this as a distortion of frequencies, or agitation in the energy field.

We can think of this as it relates to our relationship with God. Any movement away from the center of God’s heart causes within us a loss of unity and harmony at our deep, spiritual level of being. It is a shift of the frequency of energy, whereby we are not resonating with His heart and experience it as agitation and restlessness. Therefore, to begin to experience His Rest there must be a realignment within us. This, I believe, is at the heart of repentance, or the ‘returning’ of our innermost beings to correct alignment with the heart of the Father. It is not, as much of religion suggests, a desperate plea of a separated sinner toward a distant, holy God; but, the adjustment within the eternal, spiritual realm of our beings resulting in a renewed unity and harmony. It is the turning of the Beloved to the Lover in deep intimacy.

Of course this does require something of us since it is we, and not God, who have moved or shifted from the center of all being. And, while the requirements take some discipline they soon permeate our entire lives. What are these requirements? It is no secret at all.

Woven into the fabric of Scripture are the golden threads of PRAYER and MEDITATION. We must not slip into religious formula when it comes to these; however, we dare not ignore them for they are beautiful keys that open doors of ever deepening experience of God’s Presence.

The prayer and meditation I speak of is not merely a set ‘time to meet with God’ and then coming out of this set time to go about our daily lives on our own; but, cultivating a lifestyle that is lived from the place of His Heart. Any dedicated times of prayer and meditation, which are good and needed, must only be a platform from which we are continually engaging the Lord in every aspect of life. Scripture is filled with the examples of men and women who understood this. Their lives were saturated with the reality of God. They walked and talked with Him as simply as with any other person. Their lives are examples of prayer and meditation, of conversation and focus, as a natural way of living. Life was a dynamic flow of God’s Presence, miraculous and powerful.

I realize this is not revelatory for most, but it is a good reminder.

At any moment, when we are feeling restless or ‘out of sorts’, upset by the energy around us that is keeping us on edge, we need only turn within and fix the eyes of our hearts upon Christ Jesus. This looking within will realign us in the Rest of God. Just as the adjustments made by a master sound engineer bringing out of phase frequencies back into a place of unity releases the purity of music to the listening ear, so too will our lives release the healing Sound of Heaven to a restless world.

We were created for this.