Sermon quotes on God’s Presence
Augustine of Hippo
Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you! Lo, you were within, but I outside, seeking there for you, and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong, I, misshapen. You were with me, but I was not with you. They held me back far from you, those things which would have no being were they not in you. You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped, and now I pant for you; I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace.
William Barclay
Here is an eternal truth. Life cannot be divided into compartments in some which God is involved and in others of which he is not involved… The fact is that God does not need to be invited into certain departments of life, and kept out of others. He is everywhere, all through life and in every activity of life. He hears not only the words that are spoken in his name; he hears all words; and there cannot be any such thing as a form of words which evades bringing God into any transaction. We will regard all promises as sacred if we remember that all promises are made in the presence of God.
Mark Batterson
You cannot be in the presence of God and be bored at the same time. For that matter, you cannot be in the will of God and be bored at the same time.
Bernard of Clairvaux
Jesus the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.
Brother Lawrence
The most holy and important practice in the spiritual life is the presence of God – that is, every moment to take great pleasure that God is with you.
Frederick Buechner
There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not . . . because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
Listening to Your Life, HarperOne
Francis De Sales
Several times during the day, but especially in the morning and evening, ask yourself for a moment if you have your soul in your hands or if some passion or fit of anxiety has robbed you of it…. If you have gone astray, quietly bring your soul back to the presence of God, subjecting all your affections and desires to the obedience and direction of His Divine Will.
Francois Fenelon
The Presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose.
Spiritual Progress, Or, Instructions in the Divine Life of the Soul.
Craig Groeschel
What if drawing closer to God, developing genuine intimacy with him, requires you to bear something that feels unbearable? To hear him through an ominous utterance, to trust him in the moment of doom, to embrace his strength when you’re weak with a burden? What if it takes real pain to experience deep and abiding hope?
Thomas Keating
We rarely think of the air we breathe, yet it is in us and around us all the time. In similar fashion, the presence of God penetrates us, is all around us, is always embracing us.
Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel, A&C Black.
Helen Keller
Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts.
The World I Live In and Optimism: A Collection of Essays, Courier Corporation.
Craig Keener
If we must “feel” God’s presence before we believe he is with us, we again reduce God to our ability to grasp him, making him an idol instead of acknowledging him as God.”
Gift & Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today.
Peter Kreeft
Prayer is essentially the practice of the presence of God, and that is the road to Heaven. There is no alternative. God is the only game in town. All other roads are dead ends. Since we must give our all to the one true God, we must not give any part to idols, to the many false gods that now bite away at our lives.
Anne Lamott
If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.
Help, Thanks, Wow: The First Essential Prayer, Hachette UK.
C.S. Lewis
We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.
A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
C.S. Lewis
The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.
A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
C.S. Lewis
We only learn to behave ourselves in the presence of God.
Max Lucado
Don’t equate the presence of God with a good mood or a pleasant temperament. God is near whether you are happy or not.
Twitter post from Sep 07, 2013.
Alexander MacLaren
Peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God.
MacLaren’s Commentary- Expositions of Holy Scripture, Delmarva Publications, Inc.
Thomas Merton
God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.
Thomas Merton
Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.
Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, University of Notre Dame Press.
Armand Nicholi
We may ignore, but we cannot evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend.
Henri Nouwen
Joy and laughter are the gifts of living in the presence of God and trusting that tomorrow is not worth worrying about.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.
Teresa of Avila
We are always in the presence of God, yet it seems to me that those who pray are in His presence in a very different sense.
N.T. Wright
To recognize that the Psalms call us to pray and sing at the intersections of the times–of our time and God’s time, of the then, and the now, and the not yet–is to understand how those emotions are to be held within the rhythm of a life lived in God’s presence.”
Augustine of Hippo
Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you! Lo, you were within, but I outside, seeking there for you, and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong, I, misshapen. You were with me, but I was not with you. They held me back far from you, those things which would have no being were they not in you. You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped, and now I pant for you; I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
Jesus the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.
Frederick Buechner
There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not . . . because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
Francois Fenelon
The Presence of God calms the soul, and gives it quiet and repose.
Spiritual Progress, Or, Instructions in the Divine Life of the Soul.
Francis De Sales
Several times during the day, but especially in the morning and evening, ask yourself for a moment if you have your soul in your hands or if some passion or fit of anxiety has robbed you of it…. If you have gone astray, quietly bring your soul back to the presence of God, subjecting all your affections and desires to the obedience and direction of His Divine Will.
Armand Nicholi
We may ignore, but we cannot evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend.
The Question of God
Saint Patrick
I rise today
with the power of God to pilot me,
God’s strength to sustain me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look ahead for me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to protect me,
God’s way before me,
God’s shield to defend me,
God’s host to deliver me,
from snares of devils,
from evil temptations,
from nature’s failings,
from all who wish to harm me,
far or near,
alone and in a crowd.
Saint Patrick’s Breastplate
Gordon Smith
It is inconceivable to think that God would give us so much to do that we can no longer spend extended time with Him.
On the Way: A Guide to Christian Spirituality (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2001), 72.
Edith Humphrey
The great pattern of life is the ecstasy and intimacy of God, who went out of the self to the extreme point, and so dwells among us in an intimacy we can hardly imagine.
John of the Cross
Live in faith and hope, though it be in darkness, for in this darkness God protects the soul. Cast your care upon God for you are His and He will not forget you. Do not think that He is leaving you alone, for that would be to wrong Him.
Augustine of Hippo
You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you; I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace.
Ruth Haley Barton
Discernment is an increasing capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and activity of God—both in the ordinary moments of our lives and in the decisions we face.
Taken from Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God by Ruth Haley Barton Copyright (c) 2018 by Ruth Haley Barton. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Ben Patterson
God always comes alongside us in our waiting and suffering. But it is rarely to explain what is happening to us. Rather, he comes to speak of his love for us, to assure us that he is near and to tell us what he requires of us as we wait and as we hurt. Taken from Waiting: Finding Hope When God Seems Silent by Ben Patterson Copyright (c) 1989 by Ben Patterson. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
John of the Cross
Live in faith and hope, though it be in darkness, for in this darkness God protects the soul. Cast your care upon God for you are His and He will not forget you. Do not think that He is leaving you alone, for that would be to wrong Him.
John Climacus
The friend of silence draws near to God.
The Ladder of Divine Ascent (London: Faber & Faber, 1959), 135.
Brother Lawrence
I still believe that all spiritual life consists of practicing God’s presence, and that anyone who practices correctly will soon attain spiritual fulfillment…. There is no sweeter manner of living in the world than continuous communion with God.
The Practice of the Presence of God (New Kensington, Pa.: Whitaker House, 1982), p.29.
Thomas Merton
Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows himself everywhere, in everything- in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without him. It’s impossible. The only thing is that we don’t see it.
Life And Solitude (tapes)
Thomas Merton
Contemplation reaches out to the knowledge and even to the experience of the transcendent and inexpressible God. It knows God by seeming to touch Him. Or rather it knows Him as if it had been invisibly touched by Him…. Touched by Him Who has no hands, but Who is pure Reality and the source of all that is real! Hence contemplation is a sudden gift of awareness, an awakening to the Real within all that is real. A vivid awareness of infinite Being at the roots of our own limited being. An awareness of our contingent reality as received, as a present from God, as a free gift of love. This is the existential contact of which we speak when we use the metaphor of being “touched by God.”
Rick Richardson
We have immense difficulty practicing God’s presence and keeping God’s reality before our mind’s eye because we have dismissed or denigrated our capacity to intuitively and imaginatively apprehend and encounter God. We have lost the power of imagination and intuition.
Experiencing Healing Prayer (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 55.
Andrew Arndt
I love that line. “Surely the LORD is in this place,” Jacob muses, “and I was not aware of it.” Isn’t that, more or less, the story with most of us, most of the time?
All Flame: Entering into the Life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, NavPress, 2020.
John Calvin
Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. When we see those who previously stood firm and secure so quaking with terror, that the fear of death takes hold of them, nay, they are, in a manner, swallowed up and annihilated, the inference to be drawn is that men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God.
Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Jacob Milgrom
[Describing the system of animal sacrifice in the Old Testament]
In essence, the system of sacrifice provided a metaphor, a method, for the Israelites to reach God, responding to the deep psychological, emotional, and religious needs of the people. Indeed, this is the meaning of the Hebrew word for “sacrifice”; it comes from a verb meaning “to bring near.” Thus a sacrifice is that kind of an offering that enables us to approach God.
Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 17.
Thomas à Kempis
O Light eternal, surpassing all created brightness, flash forth the lightning from above and enlighten the inmost recesses of my heart. Cleanse, cheer, enlighten, and enliven my spirit with all its powers, that it may cling to you in ecstasies of joy. Oh, when will that happy and wished-for hour come, when you will fill me with your presence and become all in all to me? So long as this is not given me, my joy will not be complete.
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