LAWS GOVERNING THE PRESENCE
Walter Beuttler

Comments:

1)       All scriptures are from the KJV except where noted.

2)     This message has been transcribed word for word (from Walter Beuttler’s own teachings) as accurately as possible (due to the quality of the recording).

3)      Walter Beuttler had his own dictionary of favorite words he used throughout his messages, and they have been transcribed and spelled out accordingly.

4)     Spelling on certain proper names, airports, hotels, locations, etc. may not be exact.

5)      Messages were spoken late 1960’s, early 1970’s.

6)     Walter Beuttler was a Bible teacher at NBI (a.k.a. EBI, Eastern Bible Institute) for 32 years traveling worldwide since early 1950’s until a year before he went to be with the Lord in 1974.

“Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight; and consider that this nation is thy people. And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.”  Exodus 33:13-14

The presence of God brings rest.

Now I want to make a few comments first on the matter of the knowledge of God.  In Jeremiah 24:7, God said to Jeremiah:

“I will give them an heart to know me.”

Please do not think that I am anti-education or anti-knowledge.  Only a fool would do that.  Do try to understand what I try to say, and it is this: that in the final analysis, the true knowledge of God is a matter of the heart much more than it is a matter of the head.  We need to be informed; we need to be well informed, no question about that, but the true knowledge of God simply does not come by mere information.  I said, “mere,” I didn’t say information, I said, “mere.”  We need that information, but in the final analysis, the true knowledge of God is a matter of experience.

What I see here and have felt for years is this, that in our Bible schools, there is a paramount need, and that need is that our students, sometime or another, have a personal encounter with a personal God.  All our book learning is ever so valuable, but it cannot take the place of a personal experience where we personally meet God and come face to face, so to speak, and have a personal encounter.

I had that in CBI when I was in my last year.  I had a wonderful time with God throughout the Bible school career.  I didn’t fool my time away like the rest.  I sought the Lord.  I was in this country all alone with nobody to help me.  It was sink or swim, that was all, either Beuttler had to sink or swim.  Well, I swam; at least tried to.

Graduation neared and I didn’t know where to go after graduation.  I had no home, no relatives, no close friends.  I didn’t want to be a burden.  A few weeks before the end of school, a student walked into my room, a big husky fellow.

He said, “Walter, where are you going to go after graduation?”

I answered, “I don’t know.”

He asked, “Are you going to go west?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Are you going to go east?” he asked.

I still answered, “I don’t know.”

He then asked, “Do you think you’ll be a pastor?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“You might be an evangelist?”

“I don’t know.”

He said, “Man, what do you know?”

I said, “Well, I guess I don’t know anything.”

Then he straightened up, brought his chest out and said, “Boy, I’m glad I’m not like you.” And I still see that disdaining wave of his hand, “My father is the superintendent of the Kansas district” - which was correct - “and he’s also the personal friend of the general superintendent in Springfield.  Boy, when I get out of school, I don’t have to start at the bottom like you fellows.  I’ll be starting at the top.  My father’s going to give me a church, and it’s going to be a good one.  Boy, I’m glad I’m not like you.”

And he walked out of the room and shut the door with a bang, and the full impact got into my heart.  I felt awful and said, “I guess he’s right.  Where will I go?  What will I do?”  I knew I had a call, but that’s all I knew.

I dropped down on my knees at my cot (they weren’t big, just a cot), pointed my thumb toward the door and said, “Father, did You hear what he said?”

All of a sudden, like the bat of an eye, the snap of a finger, God gave me a revelation.  It came like this (he snapped his finger), and I had the whole thing.  You have to accept that, or understand it or not understand it; I can’t change it.

This is what the implication was of that personal encounter.  I have to put it in words, but the whole thing came all at once.  It was as though God were speaking:

“It is true that his father is the superintendent of a district.  It is furthermore true that his father is the personal friend of the general superintendent of Springfield.  But it is also true that I am the superintendent of all superintendents including the superintendent of Springfield, and I am your superintendent.”

In other words, He was the super superintendent.

I turned around, because I had moved to sitting on the cot, and I turned around and dropped back on my knees and said, “Father, from this day, I’m making You my personal superintendent.”  And He has been a good one.

That was an encounter where God and I, so to speak, came face to face and it has been the backbone of my ministry ever since.  I have credentials in my pocket, but they are not my basic credentials.  I have credentials from Him.

Would you like to know what happened? About a week before graduation (only a short time later), I got a letter from a pastor on Long Island.  How come? I don’t know.

“Brother Beuttler, if you don’t know where to go or what to do after graduation, come east and give us a week of meetings.”

Apparently my superintendent went to His phone right away and called up Long Island to let this pastor know to write Beuttler a letter.  I was there and the pastor said, “Brother Beuttler, the people would like you to stay another week.  Could you?”

“Sure could,” I answered.

Next week a pastor walked in and said, “Brother Beuttler, where are you going next week?”

I said, “No place.”

He said, “Could you come to my church?”

“Yes,” I said.

“All right, that’s good,” he said.

I stayed a week and he asked, “Could you stay another week?”

“Yes,” I answered.

Next week another pastor walked in, “Where are you going next week?”

“I don’t know - no place,” I answered.

He asked, “Could you come to my church?”

That was in 1931 and it’s been going on ever since, that is to say, God has opened doors all the way down to this very day.  I had a personal encounter with a personal God, and that encounter has lasted to this very date.

My heart is in Bible schoolwork, you understand that, and I am greatly concerned that students have a personal encounter, something like Ezekiel had, we’ll say in principle.  He said, “The heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.”

Now it’s one thing to have an open library and an open encyclopedia, and I despise neither libraries nor encyclopedias as I’m a student by nature, but we need more than an open encyclopedia.  We individually need an open heaven where we come in personal contact with God and receive something from God for our own lives.  Don’t carry this on into the visionary now.  I’m not talking about visions; I’m talking about a personal encounter with God in some way.

So often students now get a vision of Shakespeare, of Plato, of Socrates, what have you.  It has its place, but in this work, a primary importance is a personal revelation of a personal God in our hearts.

“I will give them a heart to know me.”

Thank God for all the information.  We can acquire useful information, but it will not carry the ball in the ministry.  You can know all about different subjects, and I’m sure you’ve heard this from others.  But in the final analysis, it’s what we’ve got from God in here (pointing to heart) that is going to carry the ball for us, much more our personal relationship to Him than what we have acquired by way of knowledge, though I certainly do not despise that by any means.

What I’m talking about is a personal encounter with God, and that is a matter of the heart.  I’ve had numbers of encounters, but we have no time, and it’s not necessary to explain.

I’d like to touch on Matthew 11 for a moment to point out to you a truth there that I think is quite pertinent.

“At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, Oh Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.  Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.”  Matthew 11:25-26

Do you notice here that there are things, truths, which God deliberately withholds from some people?  Jesus had just been teaching and then He said, “Father, I thank you that you hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed (disclosed them, shared them) unto babes.” There are truths which God deliberately withholds from some people, and deliberately shares those very truths with others.  Withholds from whom?  Jesus said, “The wise and the prudent.”

That raises a question, “Who are the wise and the prudent?”  Some think the educated, but I don’t think so.  I don’t think God has anything against good, sound education in its place.  I don’t think so at all.

What you have here is an expression that refers to the smart alexes.  There are no smart alexes here, but we’ve had them in NBI - The intellectual snobs.  They come to class and know more than the teacher.  Maybe sometimes they do in some points.  I have learned some things from students.  But there are people who think they know everything.  The fact is that they know so little; they don’t know enough to know that there is more to know.  The more you know, the more you know how little you know in comparison to what there is still to be known.  The more we enlarge the circle of our knowledge, the more we enlarge the awareness of how much there still is that we do not know.

To Einstein was said, “My, you know a lot.”

He answered, “I don’t know anything.”

That was Einstein!  Well, what did he mean?  That man knew so much that he knew enough to know there is so much more he didn’t know, that what he did know was very, very small in comparison to what he didn’t know.  The more we know the humbler we ought to get.

Here we have the conceited, the snobs, the know-it-alls, the unteachables, the critics, and the Lord says, “All right Father, I thank you that you have hid these truths from the snobs.”

Now people who are uneducated can be snobs too.  I don’t think that has anything to do here with education.  It has to do with an attitude, a critical, snobbish, know-it-all attitude.

“Hast revealed them unto babes.”

Who are the babes?  I would say the humble, the simple, the open, the responsive, the hungry, the uncritical babes.

Have you ever watched a mother nurse her baby?  Does a 4-week-old baby say, “Hey Mom, before I drink this white stuff I want a chemical analysis?  I want to know the proportion of fat and protein, water and phosphorus.”  No, the baby just goes to work.  God, at creation, has put something in there, and the baby just goes to work and drinks it.  Oh God, give us simplicity, and I don’t mean we should be simpletons.  “Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,” but that’s a different subject.  We’re dealing with another area now.

Do you know we can be so analytical with truth, that with our over analysis, we destroy the truth?  Yes sir!

You go into the area of the presence of God and try to analyze everything:  “Now what is the difference between the awareness of His presence and His omnipresence” (or what have you)?  You can go and try to divide there, and before you know it, you’ve torn the real truth up and lost the experience.  There are some ramifications I do not pursue because the farther they are pursued; the more you destroy the thing.

Last summer I was walking along the street in Bangkok, Thailand.  I think it was providential, although I wouldn’t want to affirm that.  I was walking along to the Siam Hotel from the hotel where I stayed because I liked the Siam better for eating.  On my way I found my favorite flower in the Far East, the lotus.  It was lying on the side, a nice purple, cup-shaped lotus.  Don’t ask me how it got there.  I can only think somebody carried a bunch of those flowers and lost one.  Anyhow, I found it.

The lotus interests me very much and I thought, “I’m going to take this thing and analyze it.”  I took it and opened up the petals and looked on the inside, and what a beautiful symmetrical arrangement.  It was just delightful to examine.  I broke the thing apart, cut it apart, looked here and there.  What a marvelous, marvelous organism you have there.  I found out what I had wanted to know, some of it anyhow.  Some I still don’t understand.  But when I got done, I had no lotus.  I had pieces.  I knew a little more than I did before, but I had no lotus.  We can carry analogies so far that we destroy the flower, destroy the truth.  We know more and have less.  Do with that what you like.

Turning back now, particularly in this matter of the presence of God.  Someone asked me on the way back the other night, “Brother Beuttler, what are you going to do when you don’t have the presence of God?”

At the time I didn’t want to discuss it because I was weary and thought I’d get back into the subject again in another meeting.  Now here again we have a theological difficulty, but I leave it alone.  There is such a thing as the awareness, a consciousness, a sense of the reality of the presence of God, but when somebody says, “Well, what do you do when you don’t have the presence?”

Uh!  Well, I wouldn’t put it that way, I would say, “What would you do when you don’t ‘feel’ the presence?”  There’s a big difference, you know, between feeling the presence and having the presence, so I would change the question and say, “What do you do when you don’t ‘feel’ the presence?”  That’s very simple.  I praise God for the presence, still I fall back on the Book, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee” and “Do not I fill heaven and earth.”  God is with me and with you just as much when you don’t feel His presence as when you do feel it.  You see, you go right back into the Word, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”

Like we said this morning, “And thy Father which is in secret.”  I don’t have to feel His presence to believe He is in secret.  The Lord loves to do things for us.  I think I better take you to John 14:21.  You know the Lord’s a great lover.

“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”  John 14:21

Now here you have a unique love.  In this verse, the love of the Father for you and me is conditional; it is based on our loving Him: “Those who love me, I will love,” the implication being, “Those who don’t love me, I won’t love.”

Now here we have to rightly divide the word of truth, of course.  “God so loved the world that He gave.”  God loves all humanity without prior condition, and yet here it says, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father.”  So here is something unique.  What you have here is this: In the first place, our love for Him is not proven by what we say, but by what we do.

We can sing, “I love Him,” but that doesn’t prove anything to Him.  Our love is proven by our obedience.  That’s what He says, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them: he’s the one that loves me.”  “If he loves me by keeping My commandments, the Father will love him and I will love him.”

This has nothing to do with the general love of God for all people.  This is somewhat of a lover relationship.  The Father and the Son will reciprocate our love for Him as demonstrated by obedience.  What He does here, He tells us, “I will give such a one the tokens, the reciprocation of My love for him by means of, and will manifest Myself to him.”

I do my studying with different translations.  I think I have about two dozen or so different translations that I use.  I found this word “manifest” most interesting.  You have translations like this:

“I will make Myself real to him;”

“I will disclose Myself to him;”

“I will make Myself known unto him;”

“I will show Myself to him;”

“I will plainly show Myself to him.”

I know what this is, for I’ve seen the Lord on two or three occasions.  Once in response to fasting and prayer for a week, but I can’t go into that.

If you take the Pulpit Commentary (I think it’s the Pulpit Commentary), and check on this verse, it says that this word “manifest” in the Greek is so strong as to mean nothing less than a manifestation of the Lord perceivable by our physical senses.  You can check on this yourself.  I’ve had the experience, so I’m very much assured of it.  Here the Lord will give us tokens of appreciation for our appreciation of Him.

Down at school around 1950, the Lord had given me a tremendous hunger to seek Him.  I had that many years before, but didn’t follow through, but then it came back.  I sought the Lord in between all my schoolwork.  Schoolwork is heavy, and I’m out in ministry all the time.  Every weekend I’m somewhere.  Still, I sought the Lord in every crack of time I had, especially by night.  I get up during the night, many times in the middle of the night for no other reason than to seek Him, to worship Him, to sit in His presence (unfelt presence), simply sit there.  That went on for some time, then the Lord began to reveal Himself.

One night, He walked into our cottage.  I heard Him step by step as He moved through the cottage; heard Him turn around and then spoke to me in an audible voice.  On one of those nights, I was sitting there simply admiring Him.  I got up about 2:30 admiring Him, keeping Him company.  I said, “Lord, so many of Your people are asleep now, and I want to get up to spend a little time with You to keep You company.”

I had the clearest perception of the Lord walking toward me from behind.  I didn’t see Him, but had the perception of it.  It was as real as could be.  I perceived Him bending over me from behind, and literally felt a sensation of drops falling on top of my head.  I instinctively knew this sensation was the teardrops of His appreciation for somebody that would get up in the middle of the night for no other reason than to keep Him company.  Now that happened only once, tokens of His appreciation.  The Lord loves to do that.

Now God hears what I say.  I had sought the Lord for hours upon hours during the night, deprived myself of sleep.  I wanted Him.  I sought no experience, simply Him, out of a great hunger, when one night I was awakened by a man singing, a man’s voice singing in my bedroom.  It woke me up; the voice awakened me, and there stood the Lord by the window, full size, in white garments, looking my way, singing two stanzas for me a song that I had never heard before or since.  And then He was gone.

“I will manifest Myself to him; I will disclose Myself to him; I will show Myself to him, I will plainly show Myself to him.”

This is a wonderful thing we’re getting into here, I mean the experience.

Different people have different attitudes.  Some love to hear me speak that way; some hate to hear me say it.  Different people take a different attitude, but I just do my knitting.  Anybody that likes it can like it; anybody that wants to lump it can lump it.  I know what it is; I was there.

Do you remember in Genesis 3:8?

“And Adam and Eve hid themselves from the presence of the Lord.”

Now I think they made, a very transparent excuse when God made inquiry, “Well Lord, you know we forgot to wear our bikini.”  Now I will get in trouble!  I don’t think that was their real reason.  There could be differences of opinion, and I don’t argue.  I just share and go on.  I think the real reason was, at least the basic reason was, that they were no longer in a right relationship with God.  They had a sense of guilt.  Believe you me, when we have a sense of guilt because of transgression, it is very, very hard to be comfortable in the presence of God.  There is an instinctive urge to shy away from the presence of God.  A bad conscience, guilt, is not a comfortable thing in the presence of God.  I think they hid themselves more from guilt than the other reason.

There are some people today who have no use for the presence of God, and I would not be a bit surprised if, in many cases, there is something, somewhere out of harmony with the holiness of God.  Such people simply feel uncomfortable in God’s presence, and so to speak, hide themselves.

In Genesis 4:16 we read:

“And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.”

Actually, as you know, he was sent out.  He was not allowed to remain in the presence of the Lord because he slew his brother.

Today Christians do not kill their brother or their sister with a knife, but we can do it with the tongue.  We have to be so very careful what our tongues say about other people, because sooner or later, it will cost us the presence of God.  Using our tongue maliciously against God’s other children, however seemingly justified our argument might be, is not compatible with maintaining the presence of God.

Cain slew his brother.

I learned a hard lesson when I was a young pastor.  A lady in the church was talking about me.  She was dead wrong, and I won’t take time to explain, as I want to use the time elsewhere.  I thought, “Well, she’s talking about me, I’ll talk about her...bla...bla...bla...bla,” which of course, was the wrong thing.

The Lord gave me a dream.

In the dream, I stood behind the pulpit.  My tongue came out of my mouth about a foot long.  It came to a sharp point.  I also saw a hand with a pair of scissors in it that were opened.  The hand with the scissors came over my tongue and clipped it off.  It dropped on the platform, and there it still kept going, wiggling, yapping away.  I woke up and knew God was speaking.  I knew what He meant, “Beuttler, you need your tongue cut off.”

Believe you me, I took heed and kept still.  Cain lost the presence of God.  He was sent out because he slew his brother.

“But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”  Jonah 1:3

Jonah ran in disobedience.  He ran away.  You cannot flee from God’s omni-presence.

What did David say, “If I go to the uttermost parts of the earth, you are there.”

There is no escape from the omnipresence of God, but there is an escape from a certain relationship that we have with God, an awareness of His presence, that I, for myself, cherish so greatly; that wondrous presence, comforting, soothing, and assuring.  It is so enjoyable and I love it.

We find David valued God’s presence in Psalms 51:11:

“Cast me not away from thy presence.”

David here valued the presence of God and did not want to lose it.  I myself am trying to be very careful that I do not lose the awareness of God’s presence.

I lost it one year in Europe.  The Lord asked me to go to Berlin, and I wouldn’t go.  I came from Africa, had to go to Iceland, and I said, “Lord, I’m not stopping in Berlin.  I’m tired.  I have had enough traveling.” I wouldn’t go.  Whew!  Did God ever get after me!  I felt like God was “a million miles away.”  He left me out in the cold, and I had some time to get the awareness of that presence back because it was willful disobedience to the leading of His Spirit.

Psalms 16 says, “In thy presence there is fullness of joy.”

There are those that rejoice in the presence of God.  Now I would like to come to the aspects of this presence.

Briefly, I’ll take Psalms 71:3:

“Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort.”  Psalms 71:3

Although the word presence is not used here, the thought is there.  David used the presence of the Lord as a resort.  You know what a resort is.  It’s a place where you go to for refreshing, for relaxation, for rest, for recuperation.

I have resorts all over the world where I go to in my travels.  If I don’t, I can’t keep up the ministry.  I have places where I go one day, two days, maybe three days.  Nobody knows where I am.  It’s a resort.  In Thailand it’s Hat Yai Beach; in Hong Kong, it’s Macau down the South China coast a bit, 4 hours steamboat from Hong Kong; and other areas of the world where I go for a little retreat, to be all alone, quiet.  Nobody asks you, “Where did Cain get his wife?” (It’s an easy question to answer.  Obviously, he married his sister.)

It’s a resort where you get recuperated.  As far as I’m concerned, I use the presence of God for the same thing.  I go about, a sense of the presence of God steals over me.  I got it the other day in Rochester.  I went over to get some travel business done, and had a nice presence there.  I was walking on Main Street or something, had a presence steal over me, so I went down to the Holiday Inn.  I know they have nice, comfortable chairs and nobody bothers you.  I just sat there, “Hallelujah.” (under his breath).  It was a resort.  It’s an oasis in the desert.  I don’t know what I would do without it.

Students, I would recommend to you the awareness of the presence of God as a resort, as an oasis to which you can flee and recuperate in His presence.

Students, we’ve got to walk straight in this kind of a thing.

Down in Buenos Aires, I stayed in the suburb with a missionary, and had to take a train downtown to a rail station, the subway across town to Constitution Square, take another train out about 40 minutes where we had our Bible school.  I had my ticket all the way, but there was no conductor, so when I got there and came back, I had a completely valid ticket.  They’re useable both ways.  I didn’t say, “Hallelujah! The Lord knows how to supply your needs.  He didn’t let the conductor come and pinch the ticket.  Glory! I got another ticket.” Oh no, I went to the ticket office, there was a trash box, and I took a good ticket, tore it up, threw it into the trash can and bought another one.  In the natural, people would say, “What a dumb fool,” but not so.  Who can stand this presence?  We have to go straight with this thing.  (I’ll also boil this down without boiling it up!)

In Psalms 15:1, David asked a question, “Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?”

Different translations read differently.  For instance: “Who shall consort with thee?”  I like that! Who will be your consort?  Who shall find a home in the presence of God?

You see folkses, the presence of God is my home all over the world.  I take this home with me.  I don’t know what I would do without it.  Wherever I go, I want that presence.

Now David answers the question:

“He that walketh uprightly (a reference to the feet), and worketh righteousness (a reference to the hand), and speaketh the truth in his heart (a reference to the tongue as well as to the heart).  He that backbiteth not with his tongue (again the tongue), nor doeth evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor (a reference to the ear).  In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the Lord.  He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.  He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent.  He that doeth these things shall never be moved.”  Psalms 15:2-5

Here is a reference to the feet, where they walk; to the hands, what they do; to the tongue, what it speaks; to the ears, what they pick up; a reference to the eyes, what they behold.

Now really, David is saying, “Who shall find a home in the presence of God? Who shall consort with thee? Who will be the guest of God?”

And there are laws that govern the presence of God.  There are laws that govern our faculties: that govern our feet, where they walk; laws that govern our hands, what they do; laws that govern our eyes, what they behold.

There is no room for pornography, not in the presence of God.  That’s out.  It’s out anyhow, of course.

There’s a reference to the tongue in what it says.  There’s no room for foul, dirty, off-color language.

There are laws of the presence of God that govern the tongue.  There’s no room for smut.

There are laws that govern the ears; that do not lend themselves to gossip.

I was on a field riding with a missionary, and he came to a red light.  While he was there, a woman walked up rapidly, spoke to him and spilled the beans.  I won’t explain what beans they were, but they weren’t navy beans.  That missionary was all flustered.  The light changed, but she held him.  I sat there and couldn’t help but hear what she said.  Finally he went.  He said, “Brother Beuttler, did you hear that?”

I said, “I couldn’t help it, but don’t worry.  I’ll never take it home.” And I never did.  He would not be a missionary today.  He’s a good missionary, but he fell into something.  She spilled the beans.  I kept my mouth shut.  I don’t tell on people.  You’d be surprised what I run into.

Before the Lord sent me away, the Lord gave me some special training on how to travel for Him.  Included was a passage from Isaiah 42:

“Seeing many things, but thou observeth not; hearing many things, but he heareth not.”

In other words, “Beuttler, don’t see, pay no attention, don’t pick up any reproaches.”

One year Springfield said to me, “Brother Beuttler, we’re having trouble on such and such a field.  Will you keep your ears open and bring back a report and tell us what you find.”  I found out all right without looking.  I don’t snoop, but some things you just run into.  I never wrote.  The man from Springfield visited us at home and said, “Brother Beuttler, you never gave us a report.  Why not?”

I said, “The Lord sent me to teach not to report.”  And I never told them what I found out.  It’s a wonderful thing to keep your mouth shut.

There are laws that govern His presence, govern our faculties that we need to conform to.  Believe you me; a traveling man has a thousand and one ways to go wrong if he wants to.  It’s a mighty good thing to know the laws that govern the presence of God.  Of all the opportunities that come your way in a summer’s ministry - all kinds.  These laws govern in Bible school.  We have to do it straight, be honest, be on the level.

Down at school we had a snow, and a pretty head was looking out of the upper window - a she head, I mean.  A fellow takes a snowball and sends it up to that head.  The head ducked and the snowball went through the window and hit the other one, and nobody did it.

The dean of men wanted to know, “Who messed up the wall? Who broke the window?” They were all saints!

“Do you know who it was?” he asked.

“No,” they all said.

“Well, it was one of you fellows.”

“It wasn’t me.”

The law of the presence would require that when a student does damage to the building, he ought to go to the office, make the fact known, and after school make repairs and pay on the spot.  Don’t look at me so mad.  That’s the law of the presence.

There are laws that govern our feet, where they walk; our hands, what they do; our tongue, what it says; our heart, what it thinks; our eyes, what they’re allowed to behold; our ears, what they pick up.

“He that doeth these things shall never be moved.”

In other words, there are laws of the presence of God that govern our human faculties.  If we want to be the Lord’s consort, and He ours; and we want to find a home in the presence of God (not merely an occasional visit, but an abiding presence), we must comply with the laws, which govern the home of the presence of God.

I suppose you have rules like we have rules.

We had a girl come in one year with a big bushel head and said, “Where is my telephone?  Where is the carpeting in my room?”

The dean of women said, “There isn’t any.”

“Where is my private bathroom?”

“Well, we haven’t got any.”

“What kind of a place is this?”

“That’s the place that is.”

“I think that I shall go home right away.”

And the dean of women said, “That would be a good idea.  I agree with you, miss.”

She had no intention of complying with the laws of the home.

If we do not have any intention to comply with the laws of the home of the presence of God, we will not have His abiding presence.  We might have an occasional visit, but we will not have that abiding presence.

“He that doeth these things shall never be moved.”

He shall never have to vacate the home of the presence of God.

“Show me now thy way, that I may know thee.”

And again may the Lord be able to say to every one of us:

“My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.”

These are some of the fragments of the laws on maintaining a home in the presence of God.