Tag: Presence of God

The Virgin’s Responsibility

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Jonathan Cahnby Jonathan Cahn

The Hebrew Almah Miryam is the Virgin Mary. We have so many songs about her. It’s been the theme of art and music for two thousand years. However it rarely goes deeper to the truth. It wasn’t just Virgin and Child. It was Virgin and Responsibility. We tend to downplay that part. If you’ve received the Lord’s new life, then you have the newborn presence of God in your life. If you think that it’s going to be all Christmas Carols, you’re in for a rude awakening. That seems to be the problem with many of our walks. We want the Christmas experiences, but we don’t want the responsibility. We want the new life but we don’t want anything to take care of. We don’t want the sacrifice involved with having a treasure. If you want the life and presence of God, then you have to take the responsibility. You’ve got a newborn. That means you have to take care of this life, cherish, protect, sacrifice for it, and treasure it. You’ve been blessed with the greatest of blessings, but remember, life isn’t neat and blessings must be treasured.

Today’s Mission – What responsibility has God entrusted you with? Seek to fulfill your charge with more passion and excellence today – For with the blessing comes the responsibility.

by Jonathan Cahn

The Concentration of Personal Sin

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Oswald Chambersby Oswald Chambers

Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips… —Isaiah 6:5

When I come into the very presence of God, I do not realize that I am a sinner in an indefinite sense, but I suddenly realize and the focus of my attention is directed toward the concentration of sin in a particular area of my life. A person will easily say, “Oh yes, I know I am a sinner,” but when he comes into the presence of God he cannot get away with such a broad and indefinite statement. Our conviction is focused on our specific sin, and we realize, as Isaiah did, what we really are. This is always the sign that a person is in the presence of God. There is never any vague sense of sin, but a focusing on the concentration of sin in some specific, personal area of life. God begins by convicting us of the very thing to which His Spirit has directed our mind’s attention. If we will surrender, submitting to His conviction of that particular sin, He will lead us down to where He can reveal the vast underlying nature of sin. That is the way God always deals with us when we are consciously aware of His presence.

This experience of our attention being directed to our concentration of personal sin is true in everyone’s life, from the greatest of saints to the worst of sinners. When a person first begins climbing the ladder of experience, he might say, “I don’t know where I’ve gone wrong,” but the Spirit of God will point out some definite and specific thing to him. The effect of Isaiah’s vision of the holiness of the Lord was the directing of his attention to the fact that he was “a man of unclean lips.” “He touched my mouth with it, and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged’ ” (Isaiah 6:7). The cleansing fire had to be applied where the sin had been concentrated.

by Oswald Chambers