“You will delight yourself in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the high places of the earth.”—Isaiah 58:14
Throne Experience Delights in God’s Presence
In the last blog, I shared about “throne experience,” actualizing throne life in our lives. Tozer calls this throne experience, “The interior journey of the soul from the wilds of sin into the enjoyed Presence of God.” He explains:
“Though the worshipper had enjoyed so much,
still he had not yet entered the Presence of God.
Another veil separated from the Holy of Holies
where above the mercy seat dwelt the very God Himself
in awful and glorious manifestation.
It was this last veil which was rent
when our Lord gave up the ghost on Calvary,
and the sacred writer explains that this rending of the veil
opened the way for every worshipper in the world
to come by the new and living way
straight into the divine Presence.
Ransomed men need no longer pause in fear
to enter the Holy of Holies.
God wills that we should push on
into his presence and live our whole life there.
This is to be known to us in conscious experience.
It is more than a doctrine to be held,
it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day.”
Tozer invites us, as ransomed people of God, to realize that we can live in the Divine Presence of Almighty God! Not just visit, mind you, but LIVE in His presence. This is what the old monk Brother Lawrence called “Practicing the Presence of God.” We abide in His presence in the heavenlies moment-by-moment, day-by-day. Daniel Whittle expresses this thought well in his 19th century hymn:
Moment by moment I’m kept in His love;
Moment by moment I’’ve life from above;
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine;
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.
Life from above—moment-by-moment—this is throne experience, gaining our life, our strength, our enablement day-by-day by being connected to the Vine—by having the life of Jesus flow through us.
Abba Father—Experiencing Intimacy with God.
To many of us, God the Father is like a stern old man difficult to get to know, distant from us. The concept of God as the “numinous,” the “wholly other,” though true, often keeps us from realizing that God is not only transcendent, awesome and fearful, but that He is also personable, approachable, and desires a close personal intimate relationship and fellowship with Him.
A.W. Tozer calls that intimacy of the Holiest “the sacred gift of seeing, the ability to peer beyond the veil and gaze with astonished wonder upon the beauties and mysteries of things holy and eternal.” Fanny Crosby understood personally that throne intimacy with God, relating it in her classic hymns “Draw Me Nearer” and “Blessed Assurance”:
“O the pure delight of a single hour that before Thy throne I spend.
When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God, I commune as friend with friend.”
“Perfect submission, perfect delight,
visions of rapture now burst on my sight.
Angels descending, bring from above,
echoes of mercy, and whispers of love.”
May your eyes be opened to see into the heavenlies today and to enjoy the manifest presence of God!
Excerpted and adapted from Come Up Higher by Paul L. King (available at paulkingministries.com)
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