The Presence of God

 

It is interesting that you should ask

My view on the presence of God,

I rejoice in the fact of its reality

And the Spirit’s presence I applaud.

Most feel there’s a spiritual presence

Of something, of someone or the other

But whether it is God, Allah or Buddha,

For some that is not a bother.

That spiritual dimension is daily seen

In the way we live and act

And given the way we bury our dead

Spirit is an undeniable fact.

Burying the dead is more than hygienic

There is a sense of something beyond,

Far deeper than burying an animal

Regarding of which we were very fond.

No ceremony regarding any animal

Animals are just interred in the ground,

However, when it comes to a human

So much more in our minds resounds.

For one there's a certain expectation

We will see that someone again

And though the loss may be hard to take

This certainly helps to ease the pain.

This has been so in all societies

Of the distant past and the present

And the idea of life beyond death,

Only a relative few resent.

This speaks to the way we live life

And the way we prepare for death,

Even though we may often refer to it

As going to our final rest.

Regarding the spirit in a man

The Bible is clearly explicit on this:

There are only two spirits that exist,

This is a point we should not miss.

  

There’s a good spirit and an evil spirit

Between the two we vacillate,

In Romans 7 the Apostle speaks to this

As how to these spirits we relate.

There is the regular urge to do the good

But right then evil presents itself,

And we often follow the latter prompt

And this indicates our spiritual health.

A natural disposition to do the evil:

That is the spirit in the natural man,

However, there is also the Holy Spirit

That has to do with Almighty God’s plan.

The “born again” according to St John 3

Is indwelt by the Holy Spirit

And in his walk with the good Spirit

Doing the good becomes his daily habit.

God is ever present with this believer

And such is seen in his daily walk,

This is evidenced by both his life and lip

And of course by lip I mean his talk.

We talk about practising God’s presence

And what this really means I’m not sure

But I know if the Holy Spirit indwells us,

We will be like Jesus more and more.

It is an unmistakable fact

That the Trinity indwells the “born again”,

Jesus himself points out this

Concerning when the Spirit comes to reign.

Jesus in a discourse with his disciples

Found in John chapter 14 verse 23

Assures them of his and the Father’s presence:

A hint to Pentecost’s coming reality.

And so if the Holy Spirit indwells us

God’s presence is progressively clear

And as such we conform to the image of Christ

Whose Holy Spirit we also bear.

Stewart Russell © March 2019