Gateways to his Presence   (taken from "Worship and the Presence of God" by Dave Bilbrough)

  On a ministry trip to Ghana in West Africa, I, along with my colleagues, was very flattered to receive a personal invitation to visit the King of Ghana at his palace in Accra. Naturally, this was considered an immense honour, so with great anticipation we arrived at the palace to be ushered into a large ornate hall for afternoon tea with the king. As the king made his entrance and took his seat a few feet away from us it was explained that tradition did not allow us to engage the monarch directly in conversation. The custom was for us to address his servant who would convey our message to the king, who in turn would then reply to his servant mediating for us. As you can imagine, this made for rather stilted conversation with long gaps in the dialogue! Pauses and brief exchanges were very much the order of the day.  
   Then suddenly, after what seemed an eternity, the king turned to us and announced that we had proved ourselves worthy companions for afternoon tea. He would talk to us directly now; protocol had been dropped. We all relaxed. The free flow of conversation lasted well into the afternoon.  A relationship had been formed.  
   Through faith in Jesus, we have faith that we have the privilege of direct access to our heavenly Father.  Accepted and loved, we come to God knowing that He desires an open, intimate relationship with us. ‘Come on out into the deep,’ says Jesus.  Our pursuit of the presence of God can take us into some pretty deep places if we allow Jesus to be our guide, yet often we allow a false image of God, feelings of inadequacy and a sense of failure  us from to robexperiencing His presence.  The good news is that God is good and kind and as we learn to put our trust in Him rather than ourselves we can enter confidently into the presence of the King.  Out of relationship with Him comes real revelation. 

    Relationship involves a level of self-disclosure.  Just because I’m sitting next to somebody on an aeroplane doesn’t mean to say we are enjoying a relationship.  We can both be wrapped up in our own worlds.  It’s only when we communicate and converse that we become present for one another.    

    Some years ago I was involved in a teaching/worship event involving over 5,000 people in the East of England.  It only took place one week a year and one particular year that I was there leading worship the main organiser of the conference came to see me on the last day and said “It’s been great, can we book you for next year?”  So I wrote the dates in my diary 

   The year went by and I started to choose and learn the new songs needed for the impending event.  Soon the time arrived that we had to set off.  Those readers with a young family (as I had in those days) will appreciate the stresses involved in getting ready to go away when you have young children in tow.  When you’re also providing the music at the place

you’re going those stresses can be magnified, but there we were on the Saturday morning squeezing everything into the car, getting everything together, checking for the 30^th time just to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything, and finally setting off for the journey to East Anglia.

  The week was held in a big country showground and the year before there had been AA signs to guide people to the right location.  This year the roads seemed strangely devoid of signs, but we kept going and then found a sign for the showground itself so we followed that.  The previous year the showground was buzzing and there was a great stream of traffic heading there.  This year it seemed peculiarly quiet and we just sailed through.  Maybe there weren’t as many people attending this year?  Quite soon, however, we reached the showground and drove onto… a big empty field.  There was nothing there!  No tents, no stalls, no cars, no people! I was really confused. I’d been working at this for months, learning all the songs, preparing for a great week and now I didn’t know what was happening.

  This was in the days before mobile phones were so ubiquitous, so we drove off, found a Little Chef, parked up and I went to a callbox to phone the organiser and find out where everybody was.

I managed to get him on the phone and he asked, ‘‘Where are you?’’ ‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘I’m here, at the showground.’’ ‘‘You’re there?’’ he replied, perplexed. ‘‘It doesn’t start till next week!’’ Yes, I had done all the preparation and planning, but a week ahead of time. We hadn’t been in touch very much and the dates had actually been changed. From the brief conversations I’d had with the organiser I had assumed that the dates I had were correct. It was simply because we weren’t in regular communication that I’d got into this problem.

      The quality of our communication with God improves the more time we spend with Him. Prayer is one of the major gateways for us to develop a life of worship in His presence.

taken from  "Worship and the Presence of God",  Published by New Wine Ministries, Chichester.  © 2007 Dave Bilbrough

 

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