The Power of His Presence

Writen by Mike Verkaik

I pray that you being rooted and established in love, may have POWER, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long, and deep and high is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of ALL the fulness of God.    Eph. 3:17-19

This past spring I taught a New Testament Bible class on proximity to God and people. One requirement was to memorize seven verses from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Not wanting to miss out, I joined the class and chose Paul’s prayer including the verse above. Memorization isn’t the easiest for me, so I practiced by reciting the verses to Dawn while we ran errands and on our way back from bringing our son home. As I quoted it she had to continually remind me of two words I kept missing: POWER and ALL. It really became comical. I’d be in mid-sentence and she’d interject, “POWER,” then later, “ALL.” Being competitive, I didn’t always take the interruptions graciously, but through the failure of recollection God highlighted the depth of His presence in me, and engaged my heart and focused my prayers for the Kingdom Encounter we just finished leading in South Africa.

As I continued to memorize and reflect on those missing words, I was reminded again of how passionately our Father pursues intimacy with us. So much so that He is willing to equip us and pour out every attribute of Himself into our lives. This enlightened me to ponder again Paul’s joy in his weakness. It actually makes more sense in light of the truth that in our weakness God’s power becomes more active and noticeable.   (2 Cor. 12:9–10).

Over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing the evidence of His POWER and ALL the fullness of His presence through the words of the students who participated on the trip. We will highlight short testimonies of what they saw, how they were changed, and how God met them in weakness with His overwhelming strength.

This week is the reminder of the connectedness of His fullness in all of us. The connectedness that gives us eyes to see, ears to hear what was previously unknown.  On the first day of our encounter the students climbed up Elsie’s Peak to spend time alone with their Abba Father.  At the top they were challenged to journal the expectations and hopes they’d brought with them from God, read letters written by prayer partners, and dwell on John 14:15-27.

On our way down I asked a student how his time of journaling went. He said, “Mike, it was an amazing time of affirmation. God has already answered my desire. After I wrote my hopes, I read a letter from a student I don’t even know. As I read it was like he knew my heart and desires. Everything I journaled he sensed the Holy Spirit telling him to pray for while I was here. Details no one else could have known.” That moment beautifully illustrated our spiritual connectedness. How the same Holy Spirit lives in all believers, moves between us, and reveals and answers our deep longings. I was struck by the tenth grader’s courage and his willingness to obey what he sensed the Spirit saying.

And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.  Romans 5:5

Oh, how our Father desires to be heard by His children. May Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3 be our prayer for one another as we seek more of His power and all of His fullness. Stay tuned for more student testimonies from our South Africa trip in the coming weeks.