Jeanne Stewart - "The Joy of His Authoritative Presence"

The Joy of His Authoritative Presence

Jeanne Stewart, Oklahoma

My dad instilled in me authority in my early years. He was a door-to-door salesman for a major bread company. He would allow me to tag along with him in his bread truck as he made deliveries of bread products for those families on the flatlands of Kansas. Living in “Tornado Alley” I remember tornados very well, and for years, I carried a fear in me that intensified just by hearing the wind. One day as we delivered bread, we noticed that an old-fashioned Kansas thunderstorm was building in the west, black and scary. As the morning changed to afternoon, those clouds erupted into a dangerous storm moving toward the area we were driving. The wind came up and the trees along the dirt road began to twist and turn violently. Suddenly, one tree actually crashed across the road a short distance ahead of us, blocking our way. We were stuck! The rain was so intense that we could see the road washing away under us. I remember the fear that gripped me and made the air heavy to breathe. My small hand held my daddy’s fingers so tightly that it probably cut off the circulation in his large hand. All I knew, though, was I was safe and my daddy would do everything possible to keep me that way. From his hand, both safety and discipline came, and I found joy in my father’s presence. Seasoned with respect, his authority, and a trust in him as a loving parent, I developed a genuine admiration for my father over the years.

Today I have found trust in my heavenly Father’s loving hand, as Zephaniah 3:17 expresses: “The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save, He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love ...” It is within our heart that our God comforts and gives us strength. It is within our soul that He wipes away the tears and gives us courage to move on. God is sifting motives today. He is sifting our hearts. He is cleansing and purifying. He so desires to move us to a new level in authority, and there is only one way to reach it. It is by allowing His presence to deepen our walk and our trust in Him on a daily basis.

Let us look back into another time when Almighty God showed Himself to His chosen children who knew not His name or authority. Living in captivity over 400 hundred years, they had lost more than their freedom: they had lost the holy hush of knowing Jehovah as God. Slaves to a government controlled by idolatry and divination, Israel walked away into freedom by the mighty hand of God, led by Moses. Three months later, we see them camping at the foot of Mount Sinai, with Jehovah God at the center of their camp. From Exodus 19, we learn that they stayed at the foot of the mountain for nearly eleven months and experienced fearsome thunderstorms, wind accompanied by earthquakes and supernatural trumpet blasts. The mountain capped with terrifying flames of fire as God Almighty presented His law and established His authority as the one true God to a people infested from generation to generation with an idolatrous mindset. God had to get their attention with the supernatural sound of a “shofar,” the Hebrew word meaning, among other things, “a call to gathering together; a call to repentance.” It ushered in His supernatural presence.

Two interesting verses in Exodus chapter 19 reveal His authority. Referring to verse 13, “...only when the ram’s horn sounds a long blast may they go up to the mountain.” And again in verse 21, “...warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord.” These were commands from God Almighty not to come until He called. He was teaching them about His authority and the moving of His presence. Obedience and honor brought blessing from His hand, but irreverence and dishonor brought judgment. Please notice, dear ones in Christ: God’s holiness will either destroy or sanctify. In 1 Samuel 6, we see how the Lord struck down those who dared approach His presence irreverently. Yet in Psalm 24:3-6, we see how obedience and spiritual purity allow us entrance to “...ascend the hill of the Lord...” and “...stand in His holy place.”

Today we are called by His Spirit unto true worship. With hearts cleansed by the fire of change, we may join with Him, to radiant His presence to others we are near each day. This is not possible because of whom we are, but for whose we are. Do we come before Him too quickly? Do we come unprepared to lay down everything for His fire to cleanse? Do we come before Him and treat His manifestations with doubt and unbelief? Are we uncomfortable with the volume of God’s supernatural trumpet blast, our wake-up call? Learning to move in the flow of His Spirit takes a sincere heart listening for the Spirit’s wooing and timing. Because your heart is pure, stepping out means going higher and sometimes making sincere mistakes, but knowing He will correct the mistake. Sincere worship searches the motives of our own heart before the mountain of Almighty God. Any new move in our ascending God’s holy hill may seem difficult for our flesh to accept, but when we lose ourselves in His manifest presence, we begin to understand His great authority of being the one and only true God.

Some 500 years later in 1 Kings chapter 19, we see how God, on the same mountain, revealed Himself to Elijah without the previous spectacular methods. But rather, He spoke clearly by His still, small voice. The same mountain witnessed two very different moves of God. One instilled a holy fear, while the other produced a holy trust. As we come and are quiet before the feet of our Lord, let us remember that the thunder is the voice of God awakening us, and the lightning is the fire of God illuminating all that is not His. The earthquake shakes and breaks away areas in our lives needing sudden change, coming forth fresh and with a new beginning from the bondage and brokenness of life. After all the supernatural cleansing has washed away, we are still holding tightly to His grand hand, hearing clearly His voice of authority tenderly speaking. We shall find a holy joy being in His presence where fear once gripped our hearts. We stand in honor as well-sharpened tools in our Master’s hand. Tools ready to be used—sharply sounding a clear voice of His truth to a world that has lost the holy hush of God saying, “...come up into my Presence.”

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