Carrying the Presence of God

This is a piece of writing I submitted to my church's newsletter in June. It’s nothing current, but I decided I want to post it anyway.

Just yesterday I was in the supermarket with two friends. We were there to do a little late-night Bible study at the food court tables. As we walked in we met a gang of college-aged men standing by the help counter waiting to redeem some beer bottles for an extra dollar so they could have enough cash to buy another case for their party. After an extremely friendly exchange between the two parties, mine went on its way to the tables, leaving the gang to go off and have their fun. I remembered thinking how wasteful it was to redeem bottles to buy more alcohol, and then to go drink it all in one night, forgetting about everything by the next day.
It made me sad.
Just after that we encountered two old friends from high school, both unbelievers, whom we had not seen in quite a long time. They passed by us at our little table, and then we decided to track them down to talk with them when they were at the checkout line (just behind the gang of guys buying beer). We saw that they were buying a bottle of drink mix—the bright blue syrupy stuff used with vodka.
Our party of three didn’t spend much time with them in the checkout line, but we did find out where the party was. They left and we went back to our little table to have a snack. My friend Aaron and I—the two who didn’t have work early in the morning—decided later to go to that party to see how our friends were doing.
Before we departed from our table the three of us prayed, asking the Lord to go with us. It is a futile effort to go into ministry without the presence of God. Yes, it’s true that we can help people and preach to them on our own volition, but it all amounts to nothing if we haven’t brought the presence of God with us. We (that is, all who have received the Word) are carriers of His presence, just as the Levites once carried the ark of the covenant. Where they went with the ark, people feared God and experienced His presence. Imagine if they had gone out into the battlefields before the promised land without the ark. Disaster! Imagine if an evangelist meets someone who desperately wants an encounter with the living God but the minister can’t give it to him because he hasn’t encountered God for himself. Disaster! We wanted our friends to experience the living God, not simply our fellowship. So we prayed. And the Lord was with us.
We dropped our friend off so he could be rested for work tomorrow. Aaron and I drove over the party and quietly snuck through the front door. It was a quiet party when we arrived. Quite boring too. A few people were in the back playing pool. A movie was playing though no one was watching. Some people were calling around to find safe rides home for later in the evening. At this time of the night most of the people had their buzz, and it would only take a glass or two more of bright blue vodka drink to set them over the edge. Aaron and I could tell one friend was drunk and tried to discouraging him from continuing to down his drinks. He didn’t listen, and I became very discouraged.
Aaron and I wandered around the pool table for a while discussing the horrors of alcoholism. Honestly, it felt like we got nothing accomplished. We were bored. I wanted to scream at the people and start casting out demons, but that would have been no help, because none of the people there wanted to let go of their demons, and it would only be a matter of time, as the Scriptures explain, before seven more returned and took another stranglehold. So after a time, when the party started to grow louder and older people started to roll in with beer, we left quietly, saying goodbye only to the two we had met in the supermarket.
As I sat in my van at Aaron’s house, parked in his driveway, I cried because of the overwhelming sadness. The horrors of alcoholism were very real to me then. Aaron and I spoke about prophecy and people and our hearts' longings for one of the men there especially—the one who had the most to drink at that point. As I cried out to God, he gave me a vision, and it’s this vision that has inspired me to write this story down.
I remember saying to God, “He’s not even going to remember us. We could’ve even prophesied to him and rocked his boat, but he wouldn’t have remembered anything.” I was so discouraged from the entire experience.
The Lord answered me with the vision. I saw the room with the pool table. I was seeing it from the perspective of the man I was praying about. Everything was so dark and shadowy. The entire scene was dark and many of the colors were inverted. This was what his life was like as he fell deeper into drunkenness. But then, as he looked to the doorway, two figures of glowing white light burst through. Aaron and I were the two angels. Nothing specific happened. I just remember the vision ending with that image: two radiant men standing in a world of twisted darkness. And the Lord said at the end of the vision, “This is what he will remember from tonight.”
Then Aaron and I knew we had carried God’s presence into that party. And my spirit was lifted to know that our efforts were not in vain.

As I wrote above, my reason for writing is to relay that bit of encouragement I had from the Lord. If you are walking in obedience, the enemy will try to convince you that you are useless and ineffective. But trust the Lord. Abide in His presence, in love. Have faith and keep His commandments. As a minister of the word, there is nothing more essential for you than to move in the Spirit, and to carry the presence of the living God to dying people.

Copyright © 2006 Philip Mohr.