Being with God: What the Bible Actually Says About Resting in God’s Presence

Pastor Amos began with a picture from home. With two little ones in the house, there are rare moments — maybe once or twice a week — when the kids get fully absorbed in their playhouse or their bikes and forget their parents exist. For five or seven minutes he and his wife sit down wherever they are, put their phones away, and just enjoy being together. It is not the time for a long conversation or the week’s schedule. And it refreshes him like a cold drink of water on a hot summer day.

Prayer can be like that. The series so far has walked through talking to God, talking with God, and listening to God. Those are not steps to master but layers that circle back on each other. This is the last one, and it is the easiest to skip: being with him. It doesn’t have to be a deep, heavy conversation or a whole prayer list. It can be the couch, the drive to work with the podcast off, or the moment your head hits the pillow.

Charles Spurgeon called it one of the shortest psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn. Tim Keller described prayer as both conversation and encounter with God. Three weeks went to the conversation; Psalm 131 is about the encounter.

It is a song of ascents, one of fifteen in Psalms 120 to 134, sung by families on the long road up to Jerusalem for the feasts — tired feet, kids in tow. It is a song for people on the move, which describes most of us: home for five minutes before the calendar dings for the next thing.

Scripture does not say when David wrote it — perhaps while hunted by Saul, perhaps when Absalom took his kingdom. Either way, here is a man with every reason to be anxious and every reason to be proud. So how does a king like that learn to rest like a weaned child? David shows us in three verses.

First, lay down what is too big for you — which, against our pride, is most things. Pastor Amos had everyone clench their fists, breathe in, and let go on the exhale. Some of us live clenched spiritually and emotionally for so long that it starts to show in our posture.

When a king says “neither do I exercise myself in great matters,” it sounds like a red flag. Great matters are a king’s job description. But David is not abdicating responsibility. He is saying there is a King of kings who can carry far more than he can, so in God’s presence he stops acting like the big king. You can come to God without every question answered or every outcome settled. Quit coming to him too big for your britches.

Most of us would never say we are trying to be God, but our actions say it: “I can do it.”

Our knowing of God is tied to our stillness before him. When you are constantly on the go, God still knows you, but you will struggle to know him — and knowing God is more than knowing verses about him. In a productive culture, that time will sometimes look wasted. Better that than wasted on scrolling.

Some of us refuse to cast our cares, not from pride or busyness but because we do not think he actually cares. It is too big for you, but you assume it is too small for God. That is not the heart of the Father.

Second, settle into the Father’s arms. Once your hands are empty, you have room to be held. In ancient Israel a child was probably weaned somewhere around two or three. A weaned child who climbs into its mother’s lap is not there to be fed. It just wants to be with her.

Too often we come to God only to be fed: miserable until he gives us something, happy once he does, gone until the next time. There is a place for that, but it is young faith. Mature prayer says, “I’ve been fed enough, Lord. I’d just rather be with you.” David says, “I have behaved and quieted myself.” He chose the quiet, and you can too.

Scripture shows people doing exactly this. “Then went king David in, and sat before the LORD” (2 Samuel 7:18). When Moses left the tabernacle, “his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle” (Exodus 33:11). Nobody asked him to. And unlike Israel, we do not need a tent: the Holy Spirit dwells with us, so we can stop right where we are and be with him.

There is an old story of a retired farmer who spent hours sitting alone in an empty church. Asked why, he said, “I look at him, and he looks at me, and we are happy.” That is a content believer who has been fed by his King for a lifetime and now just wants to be near him. “In thy presence is fulness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).

You cannot stay in God’s lap forever. The kids find you. Monday comes. So David ends by looking outward: “Let Israel hope in the LORD from henceforth and for ever.” What he found in the quiet, he hands to everyone else. That is the third movement: carry God’s peace into your day.

Letting go does not mean laying a burden at God’s feet and picking it back up on the way out. Nor does it mean handing it over and leaving — “Thanks, God, see you tomorrow.” You let it go, you let him hold you, and you walk out carrying his joy, peace, and hope instead. Then your family doesn’t get the anger and anxiety you left at his feet. They get the overflow of his presence.

So if you snapped at your spouse or your kids this week, the answer is not just “stop being bad.” It is to recognise you haven’t been spending enough time with God, and to take that pent-up anger and sit with him until you can walk out with his peace. You will still fail sometimes. But a Christian life without the presence of Jesus is an impossibility.

If you are lacking God’s presence, you may not be trusting him. You have been trusting your own power, spirituality, and righteousness, and those only take you so far. And the change his presence makes is not something to point at.

Moses didn’t know. He just went back to work, and everyone else saw it. A. W. Tozer wrote in The Pursuit of God that faith is not a once-done act but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God. Here is a simple shape for your time with him — an invitation, not a rule:

• Pray: talk to him, and bring him your needs and the people you love.
• Open the Word: let him feed you.
• Listen: ask him to speak as you read.
• Stay: before you close your Bible and pick up your phone, sit in his presence for a few minutes, like a child who has just been fed, wanting nothing but him.