Why doesn’t God just give us what we need to be able to discern His Presence?

Here are some of the ways we reject the Lord’s overtures without even knowing it:

We miss Him because He comes to us Unwanted

Jesus wants to be wanted. Though the odds are that all of us say that we want to know the Lord, we may only want to know Him on our terms. But how He comes to us is for Him to decide. He doesn’t take too well to being dictated to. As we learn to wait on Him, He begins to reveal to us things that we want MORE than we want Him! We want to control our time, our circumstances, and how and when He speaks to us. Part of the process of learning to wait brings us to the point of wanting to know the Lord simply because we want to know Him, not for what He does, says or how He makes us feel.

We miss Him because He comes to us Unexpected

Just as Jesus wants to be wanted, He also wants us to know His character enough to know that He will respond to our waiting. He wants us to have confidence, excitement and patience for His coming. He is not under our time restrictions, and makes Himself known in the manner and timing of His choosing. But He doesn’t want us taking Him for granted. He wants us to wait for Him with anticipation.

We miss Him because He comes to us Unrecognized

What does hearing from the Lord, knowing Him look, feel, sound like?  It is more important that we have our senses tuned to be able to recognize His Presence than to have memorized ways to evaluate whether it is the Lord or not. We recognize Him because we know Him and know the sound of His Voice.

We miss Him because He comes to us Un-Understood

Likewise, even if we want, expect and recognize Him when He comes, we must also learn to understand what He says or does. What He says and does will not necessarily line up with what we already “know.” To understand Him, we will have to relinquish our understanding.