We know that our relationship with Jesus enables the Spirit of God to inhabit us as the temple of the Holy Spirit. But what is it when He does more than inhabit us and tangibly enters a room with us? According to Scripture there is a difference between God's omnipresence and His manifest presence. No matter where we go we cannot escape His love and His presence. God will even go places that He detests, just to be with us.
But the manifest presence of God is a different thing. It has degrees. The Hebrew word for God's glory literally means the heaviness of God's splendor. The weight of God's glory can increase and decrease. In I Kings 8 we see the dedication of the temple where God's glory fell and was so heavy that it pressed them down to the point the priests could not continue ministering. Many of us have experienced this at different levels of weight in different circumstances; probably never to the point we see in that passage. When God's manifest presence comes it is always comforting, inspiring, intimate, and most powerful.
The Ark of the Covenant represents the glory of God on earth. It was the literal throne of God among God's people and everywhere it went the glory of God went. Worship sets an ark within us. It sets up the throne of God within our hearts. Because we have chosen, at God's invitation, to make our hearts His throne.
Charles Finney wrote the following in The Revelation of God's Glory:
The original meaning of the term glory was brightness, clearness, effulgence: from that it has come to signify honor, renown; and again, that which renders honorable, or demands honor, or renown, reverence, adoration, and worship - that which is worthy of confidence and trust. The glory of God is essential and declarative. By essential glory is meant that in Him which is glorious - that in his character which demands honor, worship, and adoration. His declarative glory is the showing forth, the revealing, the manifesting, the glory of His character - His essential glory - to His creatures: the laying open His glory to the apprehension of intelligences. And this is what Moses meant - that God would reveal Himself to his mind so that he might know Him - might have a clear and powerful apprehension of those things which constitute His glory.
Is it your desire to know the presence of God's glory in both your personal worship and the worship of your church? mjm
