Changed by His Presence

God has given us the prescription for supernatural change. He has said that as we all, behold “as in a glass the glory of the Lord, [we] are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18 KJV).

How do we behold the glory of the Lord?

We behold His glory by getting into His presence!

“Okay, Sister Hammond,” you may say, “I understand that I need God’s manifested presence to change me. But how do I find that presence?”

Deuteronomy 4:29 gives us the answer to that question. There, God says, “…you will seek (inquire for and require as necessity) the Lord your God, you will find Him if you [truly] seek Him with all your heart [and mind] and soul and life” (Amp.).

Hebrews 11:6 says that God “is the rewarder of those who earnestly and diligently seek Him [out]” (Amp.).

What those verses are saying to us is this: God manifests His presence to those who are hungry for Him. He comes in presence and in power to those who desire Him enough to go after Him.

I’ve noticed this over the years. God fills our hunger. He satisfies our desire. If we’re hungry for Him in a big way—if we’re desperately, ravenously hungry—He manifests His presence and fills us in a big way. If we just have a small desire for Him, He meets just that small desire.

I’ve also noticed this. Our desire follows our attention. If we give our attention primarily to natural things then our spiritual hunger will begin to dwindle. But if we’ll give more attention to God by attending to Him in prayer and in the Word, our hunger for Him will increase.

I’m telling you, we have to watch over our spiritual hunger. If we want to experience greater measures of God’s presence, we have to watch over ourselves and make sure that our desire for God isn’t choked out by other things.

It can be, you know. Mark 4:19 says it can be choked and suffocated by “the cares and anxieties of the world and distractions of the age, and the pleasure and delight and false glamour and deceitfulness of riches, and the craving and passionate desire for other things” (Amp.). Although God gives us richly all things to enjoy, we have to be constantly on guard making sure that we don’t become so satisfied with God’s blessings that we lose our hunger for Him. We have to make sure our lives don’t get so crowded with the busyness of life and ministry that our passion for God Himself begins to fade.

It’s crucial that we keep ourselves hungry—especially right now—because we are living in a time when God is pouring out His manifested presence in wonderful ways. Churches everywhere are experiencing moves of God. If you aren’t very hungry for God, you can walk into those churches and walk out unchanged. But if you go crying out with all your heart, “Change me, God!” you will most assuredly be transformed again and again.

Just One Dose Is Not Enough

Recently, I heard a testimony of just that kind of transformation. I heard about a lady in another city who lived very close to 16 family members. She said they were always in strife with one another. There was terrible division and constant fighting in that family. It was a mess.

But this lady’s church began to experience a move of God and she and her family members got hungry for God’s presence. Over a period of 18 months, all of those family members began to come to that church. She said, “We came for the presence of God because we knew we could not change on our own. We also knew it was going to take more than one dose so we kept on coming so we could be continually saturated with God’s presence.”

Do you know what happened? When Christmas came last year, the whole family got together and, for the first time in their lives, the strife was gone. Instead of fighting, there was a spirit of love among them!

The presence of God not only changes minds and souls, it can change bodies as well. I remember when a man came to the church in Alabama that my sister attended. This man was totally blind, but he came to church every night. Every night, he encountered the presence of God and he had hands laid on him for healing. Every night he said, “I will see.”

Sure enough, at the end of three months, he was totally healed.

Now you might be thinking, Why doesn’t that kind of thing happen to me? I go to church all the time. I get in the manifested presence of God, but I’m not changing as much as those people did.

Maybe it’s because you’ve stopped being hungry. Maybe the presence of God has gotten so familiar to you that you’ve stopped expecting it to change you. Maybe you’ve stopped releasing your faith, and you’ve just let yourself be satisfied to stay like you are.

If that’s the case then, bless God, do something about it!

Stir yourself up. Turn your heart toward God and start seeking Him with greater fervency. Ask God to make you hungry, desperately, ravenously hungry.

Cry out to Him and say, “Change me, Lord! Just change me!”

Then get into His presence. Get into prayer. Get into worship. Get into the Word. Get with other hungry believers.

Then get ready to be changed from glory to glory. Get ready to be changed into another person because God has a glorious destiny for you.