Graham encourages us that we should be a people who value God's presence. That this should be something which we continue to make a priority as we gather. He looks at Exodus 33 and shows how Moses valued God's presence so highly and that we should do the same! 

He reminded us that what can often happen is that worship can be seen as a warm up to the preach, the is a trap. We worship because God has commanded us to do so! We gather to worship and honour Him, we give space for God to speak to us during our times of worship as well as during the preach.

All of these things are about experiencing God’s presence afresh in our lives, hearing from him and being disciples / followers of Jesus.

Our aim in worship isn’t just to get through a set of songs, it should be “God, we are here for you, you can do anything as we focus on you!”

In Exodus 33 we see that Moses didn’t settle for the angel God promised, in fact Moses said, if you aren’t coming with us, we don’t want to go anywhere. We won’t go to the promised land.

Moses wasn’t prepared to settle for something less, only God’s presence set them apart, only God’s presence was enough for Him.

Moses realised that without God’s presence nothing marked them out, if God wasn’t with them they were exactly the same as any other people. Moses didn’t just want to have an angel, he wanted the manifest presence of God, a sense of encounter with Him.

We are now the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16), His spirit lives in us, it’s not about a building or structure, Paul says ‘you yourselves are where God lives’.

He actually uses a phrase which we can’t easily translate into English, it’s effectively the word ‘yous’ ie. you as a community.

We as a community are the carriers of God’s presence, that’s what marks us out. As we gather we must continue to priorities encountering the presence of God!

Within this, as we gather we should come with the attitude, “I wonder what God wants to today?” and “I wonder how God want’s to use me”.