As a pastor, I occasionally provide marital counseling. Here is my observation about couples seeking counseling: Many couples, by the time they seek counseling, are simply two people living under the same roof but really living on two different planets. Their marriage has come to a place where they are merely roommates. Not helpmates, not lovers, not one flesh, but roommates.
I know relationships are complicated and messy. I also know that there are no easy four-step plans to bringing connection to a relationship, but over the next several weeks, we are doing a series called The Thing About Relationships. We hope to jumpstart conversations between couples to strengthen and fortify your relationship.
This morning, I want to talk about the power of presence, not the gift you give but the gift of yourself, being with someone.
Specifically, becoming less distant, more present.
Less Distant, More Present
How can we be less distant and more present with our friends, our family, and, most significantly, with our spouse? If you’re married, this message is especially for you this morning.
If you’re not married, this is still for you. The principles still apply to other relationships; perhaps you will marry someday. I wish someone had told me these things before I got married.
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But before we talk about the horizontal relationships between us and the people around us, we need to examine the vertical relationship between us and God. The vertical relationship between us and God and the way He models presence is a roadmap for how we relate to those around us.
The phrase “I will be with you,” appears 26 times in the bible.
Two of those are times Jesus said this as a warning of his departure. He said, “I will be with you for now, but soon I will leave you.”
The other 24 times, God said this as an enduring promise to you, “I will be with you.”
Wherever you are, whatever you are going through, God will walk with you. He is present with you.
“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.”
― C.S. Lewis
Whether you see Him or feel Him or are aware of His presence, He is with you.
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What are some ways that God models His presence to us?
God the Father is over us.
God the Father is watching over us, protecting us, and providing for us.
Heb 13:5-6 (CSB)—Keep your life free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for he himself has said, I will never leave you or abandon you. Therefore, we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?,
God provides for us like a parent. He cares for us. I have children who are 27 and 30 years old. You never stop being a parent. I still want to provide for and take care of my kids. God is over us, he cares for us, and he gives us what we need.
Some of you think, “I know that with my head, but I still feel alone. I feel like that is not enough.” God understands.. That is why God sent His one and only Son to be with us.
Jesus the Son is with us.
The prophet Isaiah said this 700 years before Jesus was born in Isaiah 7. Matthew quotes him at the birth of Jesus in Matthew 1:
Matt 1:22-23 (CSB)— Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated “God is with us.”
God is with us. He has walked the road we all walk. He knew loneliness and hardship. He knew temptation and hunger. He knew sadness and betrayal. He experienced all the things we experience, and He felt everything we feel.
Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross so that we could be found and we could be free. On the night before Jesus sacrificed Himself for us, He said to the disciples, “I will be leaving you soon.”
Jn 14:15-17 (CSB)—“If you love me, you will keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever. He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive him because it doesn’t see him or know him. But you do know him, because he remains with you and will be in you.
The Holy Spirit is in us.
I will send you another Counselor. This word counselor can be translated several different ways. Maybe a better way to think of the Holy Spirit is as our Coach. Because the Holy Spirit wants to comfort you but He wants to direct you and empower you.
When I was a Jr. High student, learning the bible for the first time and I read this verse from John 14, I thought what Jesus was saying is that the Holy Spirit’s presence is conditional. In other words, if I obey His commands, then the Holy Spirit will be in me. What I have since come to understand is that it is just the opposite. The Holy Spirit lives in me so He can empower me to keep His commands.
We discussed this a couple of weeks ago when we talked about the ways that God whispers to us. He is that still, small voice that reminds us of the things He taught and gives us direction when we are wondering which way to go. When we are contemplating doing something we should not, the Holy Spirit is the one nudging us in the right direction.
The Holy Spirit in us is that overwhelming peace amid our hardships. He is the source of our courage, empowering us to do hard things. His presence is enduring. He lives in us when we give our lives to Christ and become children of God, and He will never leave us, even when we wander and ignore His presence.
God is over us. Jesus is with us. The Holy Spirit is in us.
This is a model for us as we seek to be present in our relationships.
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There are three words that theologians use to describe the nature of God. Track with me for a moment and you’ll see how this connects to what we are talking about.
The first word is Omnipotence. God is omnipotent or omni-potent. Omni = all, potent=power.
God has all power. He has the power to create the universe. He has the power to part the Red Sea. He has the power to raise the dead and heal the sick. He is all powerful.
The next word is Omniscience. God is omniscient. Omni=all, science=knowledge. He knows all things; He has all knowledge.
His omniscience is personal. God knows you, and He knows everything about you. Psalm 139 says that God knit us together in our mother’s womb. Luke 12 says that God knows the number of hairs on your head. Hebrews 4 says that God is the discerner of our hearts’ intentions.
God is omniscient, He knows you and everything about you.
The third word is Omnipresent. Omni = all, present = present. It means God is everywhere. That may seem vague. But what it really means to us is that God is here. He is here right now. It doesn’t matter if you are watching from home by streaming video or if you are in this room right now, God’s omnipresence means he is here, right now. God is with you, now and always.
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What does that have to do with us? How does that teach us about being less distant and more present. Let me start with this:
You can’t be present without being available.
If I am honest with you, I can relate best to the presence of God the Father over us in His provision for us. Providing for my family has always been a high priority. There were a lot of years when we were barely living paycheck to paycheck and things were tight!
I remember having a conversation with my girls when they were grown and on their own and I appologized to them for having to grow up so poor. Their response surprised me. They said, we didn’t even know we were poor growing up. It never felt like we went without. It felt good that my family always had everything we needed.
Even though my wife and my girls will tell you that I have always worked hard to provide for my family, I have not always been present.
When I was working as a Youth Pastor in Lebanon, OR, and our girls were still pretty young, my wife said to me, and I will never forget this conversation, she said you need to make a decision, are you going to raise other people’s kids or are you going to raise your own?
That hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t present. I was being a good provider, but I was not available. So I scaled back, but she still has to remind me sometimes when I am not available. I can be home but I’m still answering phone calls, returning emails, and responding to text messages. I may be physically present, but I am not available.
Physically providing for my family is not enough. Simply co-habitating under the same roof as my wife is not enough. I have to be available.
God the Father understood this. It’s why He sent Jesus to be with us.
Jesus, God with us, entered our world and participated with us. He felt all the things we feel and experienced all the things we experience. He came down to our level so He could become a sacrifice for us.
Until we, like Jesus, enter into the lives of the people that we have relationships with and enter into their world we will never understand the things they are going through and we will never understand them.
Men and women are very different! Can I get an amen? I don’t always understand my wife, so unless I am available and take the time to enter into her world it will be impossible for us to connect.
We need to be like Jesus and enter the other person’s world to listen from their perspective and try to understand their experience. No marriage will survive until both of you act like Jesus, enter the other person’s space, and sacrifice some of your own desires and preferences. Until you do that, relationship will not work. You have to be available.
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You can’t be present without being available and …
You can’t be available without being vulnerable.
We all enter relationships with baggage from our past. No one comes into a relationship without some hurts and brokenness. This is true of all us, but where this begins to damage our relationship is when we fail to be honest and vulnerable about our past hurts and the brokenness it has caused in us.
You can be like the Holy Spirit in your relationship. You can be the cheerleader, the encourager, and the one who empowers, always there to help your family when they need you. However, all these things you do in your relationship can become a way to hide your needs and brokenness.
We put on these masks to hide all of the ugly stuff. We hide who we really are and our true selves from the people we are closest to. The problem is that when you are not vulnerable, you aren’t available.
When you wear these masks and your spouse does something that hurts you, not only do you feel the pain of the hurt from that action, but you also feel the compounding hurt from your past brokenness. And that pain and hurt continue to compound and grow exponentially because you have not dealt with that past brokenness. Your hurt becomes a toxin in your marriage that slowly grows until it becomes fatal.
We need to be open, honest and vulnerable about who we are in our most intimate relationships. Unless I am open, honest, and vulnerable, I will never truly be known, and true connection is impossible.
Now, when I’m talking about being vulnerable, I’m not talking about being vulnerable to future abuse; I am talking about being honest about your past pain. Because only then can the person you partner with know how to react and how to respond to you.
We need to be like Jesus. Jesus was our model for vulnerability. He entered our world declaring his purpose, to seek and save the lost. He didn’t hide who he was, knowing full well the risk.
Phil 2:5-11 (NLT)—You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Had He not been vulnerable, giving up His place in heaven to become one of us, He would never have completed His mission to seek and save us.
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Why is all of this so important?
The Bible is an incredible book. Not only does it reveal to us the character of God, it is also an amazing resource for understanding who we are. There are actually three words for presence in the New Testament.
Two of them simply mean face to face, being in proximity to another person.
You will recognize the third Greek word. It is Prosthesis.
We borrowed this Greek word to describe an artificial limb attached to an amputee. We call it a prosthetic. It is something that is attached to your body, that you have come to rely on as if it is a part of your own body.
I actually think that is a great description of marriage. I have come to rely on my wife. The Bible describes us as one flesh; we are one person. When we are not present because we are not available and we are not vulnerable then we risk loosing the use of that which is a part of our own body, and it causes us tremendous pain. God’s design for our marriage is that we are truly one flesh.
The second reason this is so important is because your marriage tells a story. Ephesians 5 says that your marriage relationship is an illustration of Jesus and His relationship with His bride, the church, the body of Christ.
Your marriage, whether you realize it or not, is telling a story about God, to your kids, to your neighbors, and to your friends. No one is going to tell this story perfectly. We all have problems and we all have struggles and so the story is going to be messy at times. But it is also a story that we need to get right because it is the story about God and His church.
We cannot neglect being present in our marriages.
Most relationships don’t fall apart overnight. It happens slowly-because we avoid the hard conversations. We’re afraid of the conflict. We’re afraid of the discomfort. We’re afraid of what might happen if we tell the truth. But avoiding confrontation doesn’t protect connection-it kills it.
—Danny Silk
To have healthy relationships sometimes we need to have hard conversations. That’s what we will be doing over the next few weeks.
I want to give you three challenges that will help you develop face-to-face presence in your marriage:
Face-to-Face Challenges:
Daily challenge: No screens around the dinner table.
Weekly challenge: One night a week no T.V. and no screens.
Monthly challenge: One day date a month.
A typical date might be dinner and a movie. A movie is not face to face. Instead, do something like go for a hike. Go to a museum. Go for a drive somewhere. Go do something together that requires you to be face to face.
Chris Hankel 
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