About a year and a half after I got saved, I experienced God's Glory for the first time in a tangible way. I remember worshiping the Lord in a prison cell, just loving on Him, when suddenly my hands started tingling all over in an awesome way. As I continued to worship Him, the tingling sensation increased more and more, moved up my arms and intensified greatly. Waves of what can only be described as incredible peace began to wash over me. Wave after wave. This experience lasted for about half an hour and has been followed by dozens upon dozens of similar experiences, some longer, some not so long. Sometimes His Glory has been more intense and other times not so intense. Each time I've encounter His presence, I've received a greater desire to want to know Him more. His presence is incredible, amazing and beautiful and better than any high that this world has to offer.
What is the Glory and it's purpose? Can we as believers, experience God's glory and learn to walk in it? First, let's find out what the Glory is, through the Word of God. One of the original herbrew words used to describe "Glory", is "Shekinah". The definition of the Shekinah Glory is God's heavy, weighty presence. God's glory, is His presence and whenever we read of God's presence within the pages of the bible, we're reading of God's Glory. His Glory is heavy and weighty and can be experienced and felt, by our five physical senses in a tangible way, Just as I did and continue to do, to this day.
Another time, I was worshiping the Lord in prison, with a couple of my fellow Christian friends. As we worshiped God, His presence just seemed to manifest in a very tangible way. The very atmosphere was thick with His presence. Suddenly the cell door opened and a prison officer came in asking after me. As he entered the cell, it was like he walked into a wall of God's thick weighty Glory. He was experiencing God's Glory, but didn't know what to make of it. He shook his head with a very confused look on his face, sort of stammered something and walked out of the cell. Glory to God!! When we get consumed with His presence it saturates us and overflows and even affects the unsaved around us.
When I experienced His Glory, I also experienced His peace, which is part of His Character. In the book of Exodus (33:18), Moses asks the Lord to see His Glory and in return, God let's all His goodness pass before Him. God's goodness, is related to His character and nature and encompassed within God's Glory is the very essence of who He is. What is God's nature? His nature is love, peace (I experienced His peace within His Glory), joy, compassion, mercy, grace and all the qualities that are found in His character. God's Glory is God Himself and when we experience His Glory, we're encountering the very God of the universe who created us and loves us.
So, God's glory, is His very presence, which is tangible and also His character and nature, which is who He is. The Glory of God is also described as a cloud and also as a fire. 1 kings (8:11) tells us "the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud, for the Glory of Jehovah filled the house of Jehovah" The ark of the covenant contained God's glory, His presence. The ark of the covenant was kept inside the tabernacle of the tent of meeting. When the israelites moved the tent of meeting in the day, the cloud of God's Glory would cover it. When they moved it in the night, it would be covered by the fire of God's glory. The fire and the cloud spoken of in the bible are also representative of God's awesome Glory. To recap, the Glory is God's presence, His character and nature and also described as a cloud and a fire.
God's Glory is real, because God is real and desires us to experience Him in a deeper way, through being saturated and consumed by His Glory. Praise God for His Glory!
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