Sitting Before God

I Chronicles 17:16
II Samuel 7:18
And David the king came and sat before the Lord..........

It is not necessary to point out what a busy life style we all lead in maintaining a marriage, raising a family, going to a job five or six days a week, and if there is a ministry, performing as we believe that God would have it the calling that he has put upon us. When all of this is said and done, we look for some time to just sit and rest or meditate. We often think like David and say "And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest." We might take a lesson from David when he made the aforementioned statement; "And David the king came and sat before the Lord....." When is the last time that you or I have determined to just do as David said and sit before the Lord?

I worked with a Pastor 'Buddy' Garret in McAlister, Oklahoma who taught me more about this concept than any other preacher that I have been privileged to know. It is very easy to be 'doing' at the expense of 'being.' Both are absolutely necessary and both are fruitful and sometimes it is not easy to see where the balance should be between the two of them. Pastor Garrett knew and practiced the presence of God. He spent hours sitting before the Lord and knowing him. The apostle Paul expressed in Philippians 3:10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; Paul's greatest desire was not that he might be a great preacher or missionary, or evangelist, or teacher, but that he might know Christ. Pastor Garret's greatest desire was to know his Saviour. When he preached it was very evident that he had accomplished this goal in his life and ministry. Brother Garrett taught me more than any other pastor than I have known about the presence of God. When you are privileged to company with a man of God such as this you never forget it.

I would like to add at this point that what I am saying about Pastor Garrett does not in any way take away from the importance that I place upon my current pastor. Bro. Baker is exactly what God designed for my present needs as my pastor. At the time when I was under the leadership of Bro. Garret, I need the unique ministry that was available from his perspective and of course was affected for life, even as I am affected for life by my present pastor.

There are so many wonderful projects and ministries and people in need and things to attend to and budgets to maintain and souls to win and on and on and on that we end up by saying; well Lord, I have no time to sit before you today, maybe tomorrow. We go out then with no presence of God, no confidence in the Spirit, no heart preparation and we find ourselves chopping with a dull ax and hacking on a tree that is unyielding to the dull spirit that we possess. Where is the power? Where is the confident boldness of the Spirit of God? Left in the place where we should have been sitting before the Lord as David did.

Paul expressed over and over again his sweet fellowship and close relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 3:8-9 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

We cannot affect people to God unless we are first affected by God. We cannot bring people to God until we have been to God and sat before him and gazed upon the crucified one and been changed by him. 2Co 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. A story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne titled 'The Great Stone Face,' a young man named Earnest spent many hours gazing on a rock formation of a huge face which had such a countenance of peace and tranquility that he was fascinated by the effect that it had upon him. After years of returning to the same place to look upon the face and meditate upon it, it was said that Earnest had become himself a picture of the tranquility exuded by the image.

Paul the apostle said, BE ye followers of me. That little word 'be' is so very important; to be must proceed to do. If we have not been with him and sat with him and learned him we will not affectively be able to do. Obviously both are absolutely necessary and we cannot attend to one to the elimination of the other; both are vitally important. When Joshua had watched his troops defeated by the little nation of Ai and fell on his face before God to find what was wrong, God reproved him telling him to get off his face and find out what was the cause of the failure and correct the problem and then do battle.

Do we have the spirit that David the sweet psalmist had? Is our greatest desire to know him as the apostle Paul said? Have we sat before him today, or do we rush out with our dull ax and begin to swing again and again without the power or the confidence that comes with knowing him? Let's determine today that we will not begin our day without first giving ourselves to him and waiting on him to prepare us for what we will face in each day of our lives. Let us sit before him.