Psalm 16:11 “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” This episode talks about how to practice remaining in the fullness of the Lord. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
In Your Presence There Is Fullness of Joy
Psalm 16:11 “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
We talked a lot on Tuesday about how God directs our steps. God has a plan for our lives and it is an amazing plan. He has plans for our good. We also talked about how we sometimes don’t wait for God to direct our steps. Sometimes we don’t take the path that God is trying to show us because we run ahead of Him. God has our lives perfectly timed and we don’t want to wait for His timing. We think we know better and we are sure our timing is perfect. So, instead of patiently walking side by side with God, we run ahead. Then when we reach a fork in the road we don’t pause to turn around and ask Him which way to go, we just pick the way that looks the best and then run full force down it. Then we wonder why things go wrong. We wonder why we aren’t happy. Sometimes we are living the exact life we dreamed about living and yet we still aren’t happy.
I think this is explained in the next line of this verse. “In your presence there is fullness of joy.” We aren’t happy when we reach the things we wanted to reach because we ran ahead of God. We didn’t bring Him along for the journey. The fullness of joy is found in the presence of God. It doesn’t say the fullness of joy is found in your job, it doesn’t say you will find the fullness of joy when you make a lot of money or reach your wildest dreams. It says the fullness of joy is found in God’s presence. If we want to have joy we need to remain in the presence of God.
In John’s gospel Jesus says, “remain in Me” frequently. What does this mean? How do we do this? How do we remain in the presence of God? I decided to look this up online to see how we could remain in the presence of God. I found an awesome video from Father Mike on YouTube. Father Mike says, getting right down to it, remaining in the presence of the Lord is inviting God into everything we do. Whatever the next step we are going to take is, we just ask the Lord, “Could you come with?” Hey Jesus, I am going on a run, do you want to come with? Hey Jesus, I am about to make dinner, do you want to come with? We invite him to come with because this is what you do with someone you love you invite them to come with you. How do we do that? How do we invite someone along with you? First, you ask them. Second, its when you gaze upon Jesus in that interior gaze. Where you just know that Jesus is there with you.
Father Mike then explains about the Practice of the Presence. He says it is something we have to learn. If we want to live a life where we remain in the presence of God we will need to practice. It is not something that will just come automatically. He talks about a book he read where the author wrote about the practice of the presence of God and the author said the way he does this is to remind himself every time he touches a key on his computer Jesus is with him. He doesn’t do this in a burdensome way. He doesn’t get upset with himself if he forgets. He just tries to remind himself throughout the day that God is with Him, in everything He does. Even if he needs to remind himself a hundred times a day. The first way was to ask God to come with you. The second was to gaze upon God. The third way is to speak to Him because He is present. When we are running, cooking, working, whatever you are doing talk to God. God is always present to us, and when we invite him to come with we are being present to Him. Remember, remaining in God takes practice. Don’t beat yourself up if we don’t get it right the first time or the 100th time. Just keep coming back to it and keep practicing it.
We might wonder, when we invite God to come with, what will that feel like? What will we experience? Father Mike explains that we never know. God is free. He is not an ATM where we punch in the correct code and we get the same thing each time. God is not robotic in how he loves us. Sometimes it might feel great, and we might experience great blessings, sometimes we might feel nothing, sometimes it may be difficult. He always loves us how we need but He is free to love us how he want to. So, how will God respond, what will it be like? It will be exactly what you need because God is free and because He loves you very much! I will post a link to Father Mike’s video in the show notes so if you get a chance you can watch it. It is really good. (CLICK HERE for video)
The last line in this verse says, “In His right hand is where we find pleasures forevermore.” I looked up the meaning of this because I didn’t really know what to say about this part and because I know the right hand is a place of honor and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some important meaning. As always, I am so glad I did. I love when I can get a deeper meaning of the scripture. I will place a link to the article I found because it talks about each part of this verse. I am just focusing on what the author wrote about this last part. “Christ is at God’s right hand. We are in Christ at God’s right hand. This is a place of great priority in the heavenly courts. The pleasures that come to us from the hand of God in Christ are the kind that are eternal, rather than temporal. Sadly, even Christians will trade the eternal pleasures of God for the temporary pleasures of sin. It is so wonderful to understand that God has eternal pleasures for us that are so far above what the earth has to offer. It is the pearl of great price that is worth a man or woman’s whole life in trade (Mt 13:44). Lay down your life for what he has for you.” (CLICK HERE for full article)
I am glad I found this because this line takes on a whole new meaning to me now. When I first read it I thought it sounded nice, God has pleasures for us. I didn’t key in to the word forevermore. Or, maybe I did think about it, but I thought about it more like forevermore in this life. I didn’t connect the dots that God was offering us pleasures that are eternal versus what the world is offering us which is temporary. It makes so much sense know that I have read the explanation. I can see how we are always choosing the temporary pleasures of this world over the eternal pleasures from God. I don’t know that we are consciously making this choice. I think if we thought about that before we made the choice we might choose differently. If every time we were about to choose a temporary pleasure we remembered that it is one or the other. We can’t constantly choose the things of this world and then have an eternity with God, we have to pick one or the other. If we knew that was our choice, I don’t think we would choose the temporary pleasure of sin so easily.
The problem is, we aren’t really choosing it consciously most of the time. We have all formed habits and a lot of the time we go through the day on auto pilot and we just do what we have always done and don’t ever give it a second thought. If we want to choose eternity with the Lord we need to be better about intentionally choosing Him and letting Him lead us. We need to do as Father Mike and practice being in the presence of the Lord every day. If we keep practicing we will slowly but surly replace our bad habits for good ones and we will spend more and more time in the presence of the Lord. This will help us grow stronger in resisting the temptations of the enemy. Eventually we will be strong enough to choose what is eternal versus what is temporary. Will you join me in practicing being present with the Lord this week?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to be in your presence. We want to find the fulfillment of joy in You. We want to follow the path you have for us. Help us to do so. Lord help remind us to practice being present. Show us what to do. Give us the strength we need to choose your eternal rewards instead of the temporary ones the world is offering us. Help us to see what the world is offering us comes through sin. Help us to see if we want to spend eternity with you we constantly have to choose you. It is not just a choice we make once and we are good to go. It is a decision we make hundreds of times a day. Help us make the right decision Lord. Lord you are awesome. You are the bread of life and the blessed and only ruler. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!