Living with the Conscious Awareness of God's Presence.

The present moment. We hear people say "seize the moment", "live in the present", but what does living in the moment really entail? Living in the moment involves living consciously, but it also means coming to a deep awareness that God is with you and the kingdom of God is within you all the time!(Luke 17:21).

When I am conscious of the fact that God is with me and working through me, I can begin to be "present" in my circumstances. I can allow my fears and defenses to begin to take a back seat, as I come into full consciousness of what that actually means to me.

Psalm 139:7 states, " Oh Lord you have searched me and have known me. You know my downsitting and my uprising; You understand my thought afar off. You sift and search out my path and my lying down, and You are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue [still unuttered], but, behold, O Lord, You know it all together. You have beset me and shut me in -behind and before, and You have laid Your hand upon me. Your [infinite] knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high above me, I cannot reach it. Where could I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend up into heaven, you are there, if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

....How precious and weighty also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I could count them, they would be more in number than the sand. When I awoke, [could I count to the end] I would still be with You..."

God is with you right now. Right now he knows everything about you. He thinks about you constantly. Right now the kingdom of God is within you, operating and moving.

Allow your mind for a moment to take that in fully. Pick a circumstance you are having trouble with. Imagine now that God's thoughts to you in this situation are precious and weighty and vast. What does that mean to you? What does it mean that He has infinite knowledge about your situation, that He is acquainted with all your ways, that there is not one word on your tongue that He does not know!

We have to learn how to live with the understanding that this is true for us all the time! We have to settle this in our hearts, come into the present moment with God and know these facts to be true. Allow all of our senses to become aware of what He has spoken. The word that God speaks has to go from head knowledge to heart knowledge. This can only happen if we allow our whole being to encompass it.

Living consciously to me means, I allow myself to become aware of what I am believing, thinking and feeling and then I find out if this is a Godly belief and if it is not, I use all of my senses to line up my beliefs with the Word of God.

Today, read Psalm 139. Meditate on it, become mindful of what those words actually mean, see them over your circumstances in every way. Let the words wash over your being and notice how your being responds. Maybe you feel more peaceful, maybe more confident. Allow yourself to sit for awhile in those feelings, remember those feelings. Then do it again, and again and again. That is renewing your mind, that is living consciously aware of the fact that the Great I Am is always with you.

-Christina Samyan, MSW, LCSW