If you are a believer, the Holy Spirit lives within you. This means that when you look in the mirror, the Lord is there. He’s invisible, but he is just as present with you as that scar on your forehead or the mole on your cheek. You just can’t see him, because the invisible Holy Spirit lives invisibly within. He is Immanuel, ‘God with us.’ (John 14:26)

But many will say “I don’t feel the presence of God.” That doesn’t change the fact that he is with you. You don’t often feel the presence of the air, or radio waves, or the blood coursing through your veins, but they are there. Still, I believe you can feel God’s presence at times. I want to remind you of five practical practices, none surprising, that can help you to experience his presence daily.

First we experience his presence through his Word. As you spend time in the Word you begin to hear his voice, not literally, but as a certainty in your soul, and often as an inward thrill, a heart acclamation of the truth from God and about God. He speaks through his Word, and when he speaks he is present.

Second, through prayer. Prayer is conversation: you talk and God talks, and the words you hear will always echo the truth of Scripture (hence the importance of the first point). If God is real and prayer is real, then when you pray you’re in his presence, through the Holy Spirit who lives within you. So why limit prayer to ten minutes in the morning. Can you breathe for ten minutes in the morning and survive the day?

Third, worship. Corporate worship, where we lift our voices or at least the thoughts of our heart together in one thought and one voice, is consciously, I hope, in the presence of God. But this is also true of personal worship. Music has the ability to touch our souls, and when that music is combined with truth from the Word and from the lives of God’s people, it has power to mediate God’s presence directly to our hearts and minds.

Fourth, community. When you are with people in whom God is, when you talk of spiritual things and pray for each other, when you serve each other and do the work of the Kingdom, then the reality of his presence is multiplied to you.

Finally, I believe we experience the presence of God when we tell ourselves the truth. The enemy would like us to believe the lie that God is not here, that he is far away or non-existent or uncaring or hostile to us. The enemy wants us to hide from God’s presence as Adam and Eve did in the Garden. We counter those lies by telling ourselves the truth from Scripture. The truth about God – his love, his sacrifice, his Son, and the truth about ourselves, sinners, but saved by faith, forgiven, cleansed already by the water of life, renewed, restored and indwelt by the Spirit.

“For behold I am with you always, to the very end of the age,” Jesus says, and that’s the truth we need to tell ourselves. (Matthew 28:20)