Week 2: Gather in His Presence
To have a strong and consistent Christian walk, we need to gather together with other believers. Hebrews 10:24-25 instructs us to exhort one another not to forsake our assembling together. We may understand that it's important to gather, but fail to grasp the benefits of this practice. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at what the Bible reveals about being gathered into the presence of Christ Jesus and its impact on our Christian walk.
One significant benefit of gathering together with other Christians is that when we are gathered in the Lord's name, He is in our midst. In Matthew 18:20, Jesus tells His disciples, “For where there are two or three gathered into My name, there am I in their midst.” This verse shows us that when we gather together in the name of Jesus Christ, we’re brought into His presence. When we have the Lord’s presence in our gatherings, we receive particular light, refreshment, and blessing. Nothing can replace our personal fellowship with the Lord, but when the Lord Jesus gathers us together with other believers in Christ, we receive something from His presence that we could never gain on our own. So, what is the Lord’s presence, and how can we experience it with others?
The presence of Jesus Christ is simply Christ Himself. For His disciples, to have the presence of Jesus was simple. They just needed to be where He was. As believers in Christ, how can we be where Christ is? This question helps shed light on a mysterious but fundamental truth revealed in the Scriptures. Through His resurrection from the dead, Christ became Spirit. First Corinthians 15:45 explains that through resurrection, “[Christ] became a life-giving Spirit,” and Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “And the Lord is the Spirit.” This does not mean that Jesus Christ ceases to be the Son, but that just as He changed in form when He came into the world as a man, He also changed in form through His resurrection. The Apostle Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15:44, “it is sown a soulish body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a soulish body, there is also a spiritual one.” This explanation helps us understand how, in John 20:19, with every door shut, Jesus was suddenly and unexpectedly in the midst of His disciples. Once with them, John 20:22 tells us that “[Jesus] breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Since Jesus Christ is within us, in our spirits and hearts, whenever we turn our heart to Him, the Scriptures tell us that “the veil is taken away” and we can behold the Lord and be in His presence. (2 Cor. 3:16-18) When we are by ourselves, it’s easy to be “veiled” by many things. Sins, entertainment, relationships, and even our necessities can become a temporary barrier between us and Christ, causing us to lose His presence. When we meet with other believers in Christ, the Lord Jesus gathers us out of everything else and to Himself. As the Spirit, He is like the air; He can be in us, and we can be with Him. When we turn our hearts to the Lord and contact Him in our spirit, we get into the name, the person, the Spirit, of Jesus Christ. To be gathered into the name of Jesus Christ is to be gathered into His person.
When we’re gathered together in the Lord’s name, He’s able to supply us and lead us for His purpose. The presence of Jesus Christ was the prerequisite for His disciples to move and act according to God’s will and for His purpose. (Luke 24:36; John 20:19) The same is true for us today. The move of God in our personal walk with Him and His move over the whole Earth is predicated on our having the presence of Jesus Christ.
An excellent picture of the importance of God’s presence to His people can be found in the Old Testament book of Exodus. After God saved His people from Pharaoh and brought them out of Egypt, they wandered in the wilderness. This mirrors the experience of every genuine believer in Christ. We’re saved from the tyranny and judgment of God’s enemy, Pharaoh, and brought out of the world, Egypt. What follows is our Christian journey; our daily walk with God. As the Children of Israel traveled, they were led by God, in a pillar of cloud by day, and fire by night. (Exo. 13:21-22) These pillars represent God’s presence, which became a living roadmap to God’s people. Similarly, as believers in Christ, Jesus tells us, in John 14:6, that He is “the way.” We may have realized that Christ Jesus is the only way to God, but not have seen that He is also our moment-by-moment way. He’s the spiritual GPS for our Christian walk. As long as we have His presence, we can be assured that we’re on the right path. We frequently use the phrase “walk with Christ,” but may not have realized that this strongly implies the necessity of remaining in His presence. When we gather together with other believers and Jesus Christ is in our midst, His presence “re-centers” our spiritual walk. We recognize where we are and where we’re going.
Moses, a man who was close to God and knew God’s heart, understood the importance of God’s presence for His people. At the conclusion of their wilderness journey and before God brought His people into the land of Canaan, God reassured Moses, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.” To which Moses responded, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here.” (Exo. 33:14-15) Moses realized that it was better to wander with God than to merely receive an outward blessing, even one as unfathomably rich as the promised land. He recognized that what made God’s people distinct from every other group of people on the Earth was God’s presence. (Exo. 33:16)
If we see the importance of having God’s presence, we’ll surely desire it and seek it. We may be inclined to think that since God is omnipresent, His presence is with everyone all the time. But the word presence in Hebrew is literally “face.” Consider the distinction between being in the same room as someone and sitting across from them, face-to-face. Yes, Jesus Christ is always with us, but do we always have His face before us? Our experience testifies that when we’re gathered together with other Christians and turn our hearts to the Lord, we spontaneously sense the presence of Jesus Christ. In His presence, we feel His love toward us and His love in us for others. In His presence, we sense that He is indescribably sweet and lovely, our faith is strengthened, and His leading is clear. When we’re gathered into the name, the person, of Jesus Christ, He is undeniably real.
We hope that this post causes you to desire to be gathered together with other believers and brought into the presence of Jesus Christ. The next time you hear about a Christian gathering, whether it be a Bible study, fellowship, or weekend conference, hopefully you’ll have a response similar to the psalmist in Psalm 122:1, “I rejoiced when they said to me, Let us go into the house of Jehovah.”
