Do you want to be blessed? Of course you do. God tells us in Psalm 89:15 that those who walk in the light of His countenance will be blessed. The word countenance in the Hebrew is “paniym” which means face. God wants to have a face to face relationship with us. He loves us to look at His face and He loves to behold our faces. He wants nothing to come between us.
The HCSB (and other translations) say: “They walk in the light of your presence.” There is no greater blessing in life than to live in God’s presence. In His presence is fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11). The Knox translation speaks about living under God’s smile.
The Bible expositor, by Alexander MacLaren, calls it living in continual sunshine. You’ll enjoy reading what he says:
“There is only one thing that breaks the continuity of that blessedness, and that is our own sin. We carry our own weather with us, whether we will or no, and we can bring winter into the middle of summer by flinging God away from us, and summer into the midst of winter by grappling Him to our hearts.
“There is only one thing that necessarily breaks our sense of His Presence, and that is that our hearts should turn away from His face. A man can work hard and yet feel that God is with him. A man can be weighed upon by many distresses and yet feel that God is with him and loves him; but a man cannot commit the least tiny sin and love it, and feel at the same time that God is with him.
“The heart is like a sensitive photographic plate, it registers the variations in the sunshine; and the one hindrance that makes it impossible for God’s light to fall upon my soul with the assurance of friendship and the sense of sweetness, is that I should be hugging some evil to my heart. It is not the dusty highway of life nor the dark vales of weeping and of the shadow of death through which we sometimes have to pass that make it impossible for this sunlight to pour down upon us, but it is our gathering round ourselves of the poisonous mists of sin through which that light cannot pierce.”
Were you challenged by those words, “We carry our own weather with us.”? It’s not our circumstances (good or bad), but our relationship with God that enables us to live a blessed life.
Dear ladies, your life does not depend on the difficulty or hardship you are going through. Or even the frustrations and overwhelmingness you are facing in your home today. You can experience God’s sunshine even when life is tough. Look up to Him. Thank Him for His presence with you. Thank Him that He is smiling upon you.
May you live in the sunshine of God’s presence,
Nancy Campbell