Times of Refreshing in God’s Presence

<p>TIMES OF REFRESHING OF GOD’S PRESENCE Acts 3:19 Now change your mind and heart towards God and turn to him so he can cleanse away your sins and send you the appointed times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.</p> <p>The appointed times (Kairos) of refreshing (anapsyxis; a recovery of breath, revival) from the presence of the Lord speak to us firstly about the sovereign outpourings of the Holy Spirit as seen throughout the history of the Church, and they also speak to us about our practice of personally abiding in the presence of the Holy Spirit through our faith. </p> <p>The sovereign outpourings of the Holy Spirit for the Church began with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, and they have continued in the many revivals in different times and in different places throughout history including those moves of God that have occurred in living memory over the last couple of generations.  The personal times of refreshing for us is the practice of abiding by our faith in the presence of the Holy Spirit through a desire to draw close to God with a conscious focus of our mind and heart upon his nearness to us. This is beautifully typified in David’s remarkable Old Testament heart to heart experience in the Psalms where he yearns for the presence of God in his life. And even though David did not have the New Testament gift of the Holy Spirit as we do, his experience was prophetic of our abiding with Jesus and the Father through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.</p> <p>Adam began life dwelling constantly in the presence of the Lord until he was tempted by darkness to put God out of his mind and act as if God was not there, or that God could not see him. He acted in an independent self-determination in his own self interest to foolishly take for himself what only God could give him, a mature knowledge of good and evil (Hebrews 5:14). He ate the fruit of the tree of good and evil and in disobeying God this way he took to himself a darkened and distorted interpretation of what was goo