“The Lord inhabits the praises of His people.”  Psalm 22:3

One of our main goals when we come to church is to experience God…to be encouraged by God!  To be refreshed, renewed – – by the Presence of God!

When Brian and I were first married, and were involved in a wonderful Baptist church…It was a great church!  However, we never expected God to show up at a service, or thought about actually experiencing God.

As a kid, I grew up in a mainline church where we also didn’t expect … anything. I had become a follower of Jesus when I was in 5^th grade, because I was afraid of going to hell.  My mother led me in the sinner’s prayer.  I received Jesus in my heart, but I had not yet fallen in love with Jesus.  I had not “experienced” God.

Later, when I was in the youth group, some of the youth got to meet with the senior pastor for a while… and when we met with him, he wanted to… collect stamps….  I didn’t learn much about Jesus, although I did get some cool stamps.

I knew nothing about experiencing the “pneumas” of God.  Expecting God to show up never entered our minds.  The Bible says in Psalm 22:3, “The Lord inhabits the praises of His people.”  “Inhabits” is the word, “Yashab” which means to “sit down, dwell, remain, abide, settle.”When we sing and worship, God sits down among us!  He “settles” on us.  He shows up… and it’s fantastic!

I Kings 8:10-11 (NAS), says,   ¹⁰It happened that when the priests came from the holy place, the cloud filled the house of the LORD, ¹¹so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD.

That is the “Pneumas” of God!  The Presence of God came and settled among them!

Why does God sometimes do that?  The fact is, God loves to hang out where people want Him!

It is kind of like on a natural level – – who do you like to hang out with?  Those who love you, or those who don’t?  I believe this is one reason why God “settles upon us” when we worship Him.  He loves to hang out where He is invited!

Choose to “hang out” with the One who loves you most!

Blessings,

Thora