You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
Many of you are wanting to live out the reason for which I made you so you have cried out to Me, “Father, You made me for a reason, live it through me!” I am now answering your heart cry by taking you on a journey through the Scriptures—psalms, proverbs, and teachings and life stories of people in the Bible, of Paul, of Joshua, of Jacob, and then of Joseph. Let us start with Psalm 16, the ending, how I make known to you the path of life with fullness of joy in My presence.
Do you recall the words of Jacob when he spent the night at the hill that later became Temple Mount, the place I put My Name? “This place is none other than a house of God and a Gate of Heaven,” for he had a dream and an encounter with Me there as he went to find a bride. This is walking with Me everywhere you go, you are surrounded and encompassed by My presence, like the two of us are one, the special connection of My presence where we are one in living life, and wherever you go I am with you and you feel the joy of My presence flowing into you, surrounding you, blessing you in every move, in every place, in every situation that you are in, there you are in My divine presence so real that it’s joy unspeakable filled with Glory, the cloud of witnesses is around you, it is not a lonely place, it is filled with Heavenly Grace- a place of visitation and revelation, the place of answers, the place of grace in which you now stand.
O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. Psalm 139:1-10.
It is the promise of His abiding presence.
As for the promise which I made you when you came out of Egypt, My Spirit is abiding in your midst; do not fear! Haggai 2:5.
You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own special treasure among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ Exodus 19:4-6.
Let Me open My heart to your heart as I reveal to you how to live out the reason for your life—the path of your life.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. Psalm 139:16-18.
Do not be a detached and unfruitful branch. Attach deeply and irrevocably by remaining in My Word and My Word remaining in you. When you love Me you keep My Word and I come to make My abode with you.
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” John 14:23.
Jesus came for many reasons, primarily to save you from your sins, redeeming you all from the curse of the law by His crucifixion, death, resurrection and ascension back to Me, but He also came to cast the fire of love upon the earth into every heart reconciling you to Me. He is the Word made flesh revealing to you My heart.
My apostle Paul, through revelations from the risen Lord Jesus Himself and his visit to the Kingdom of Heaven in the Spirit, was awed by My unfathomable love that is manifested to you in the gift of Jesus Christ. His ambition came to be to please Me by living out the calling that I had placed on his life from when I formed him in his mother’s womb. But he knew there was only one way he could live it, and that was in, through and with Jesus Christ.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20.
How do you do My works? The works Jesus did and greater? The people of Jesus’ days on earth asked Him the same and He gave them an answer they did not expect.
Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” John 6:28-29.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. John 3:16-17.
When you believe in the good news of your salvation and receive Jesus as your Lord, I seal you in Christ by the Holy Spirit as a pledge of your full redemption of spirit, soul and body. You are clothed in Christ and you are holy, righteous, and blameless before Me by the purifying Blood of Jesus. And everywhere you go or are I am with you.
As you walk in My presence united with Me, you watch My will unfold before your eyes, each step you take and person you encounter, everything becomes a divine encounter as you walk with Me.
Isaac blessed his son Jacob with the Blessing of Abraham as he left home to find a bride from the house of Rebekah’s father, more particularly, a daughter of her brother, Laban. But because Jacob’s desire was for Me above all else, I was with him.
Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your seed. Your seed shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first. Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you.” Genesis 28:1-22.
Now let us consider the story of Jacob’s son Joseph, for I was with Joseph, so in each earthly encounter, whether the person was good or bad or indifferent, whatever their motives were, that he contacted or came into his life, catapulted him to the next level of My plan for his life because he stayed in the parameters of My word in his response to each person and situation—like a branch on the vine.
You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11.
Remember in Proverbs 3:16 in My right hand there’s length of days, that is wisdom speaking and her ways are pleasant and her paths are shalom.
Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob and this made his eleven brothers intensely jealous of him. And if that was not enough fuel to stoke the fire of jealousy, Joseph had two dreams from Me in which he saw his entire family bowing to him and he shared these with his brothers. His brothers got even with him by believing they had eradicated him out of their lives by selling him in slave trafficking headed for Egypt (Ishmaelite traders brought him from the brothers for 20 pieces of silver).
Joseph was sold in Egypt as a slave to a man named Potiphar, but that is not the end of the story. Joseph did everything he did with excellence for he was very conscious of My presence in his life, so he was the best slave Potiphar ever had. He was loyal and hardworking and conducted himself with integrity. He took nothing of his master’s except what Potiphar gave him.
He prospered Potiphar’s farm as it had never prospered before. My Blessing was at work where Joseph was. Acknowledging this, Potiphar put him in charge of his whole household, for I was with Joseph, and made him a prosperous man.
Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. The LORD was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. His master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the LORD blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the LORD was on all that he had, in house and field. So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate. Genesis 39:1-6.
Potiphar’s wife ended that season, (like Elijah when the ravens stopped the food and the river dried up, it catapulted him to the next step as a path of life was made known to him) by trying to tempt him into adultery with her. But he refused to do that in My sight and in a lack of loyalty to his master Potiphar.
But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, with me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house, and he has put all that he owns in my charge. There is no one greater in this house than I, and he has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great evil and sin against God?” Genesis 39:7-9.
She then lied to Potiphar that Joseph had attacked her. And Joseph ended up in jail, taking a step down from being a slave. It did not look like a promotion but because Joseph refused to hold any unforgiveness or bitterness, he just continued with Me walking out the path of his life.
So Joseph’s master took him and put him into the jail, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined; and he was there in the jail. But the LORD was with Joseph and extended kindness to him, and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer. The chief jailer committed to Joseph’s charge all the prisoners who were in the jail; so that whatever was done there, he was responsible for it. The chief jailer did not supervise anything under Joseph’s charge because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made to prosper. Genesis 39:20-23.
So the jailer promoted him to take care of the prison and there he encountered the baker and the cupbearer and interpreted their dreams and then, after two years, the cupbearer remembered him before Pharaoh; and then Pharaoh came into his life and catapulted him into the place of authority to move a nation and feed the entire Middle East and secure the Messiah’s line in a seven years of extreme famine. He had come into the reason I made him and found his place of rest in Me and he lived and worked from that place.
The apostle Paul was the same: “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:11-13.
But in all these places Joseph found himself in through the evil intent of wicked people, Joseph had fullness of joy whether his circumstances were good or bad in the world’s eyes, for I was with him. You know he never told what his brothers did to him to anyone. All he told the cupbearer was:
Only keep me in mind when it goes well with you, and please do me a kindness by mentioning me to Pharaoh and get me out of this house. For I was in fact kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon.”
We know he was full of joy because he asked the other prisoners why they were so downcast. Genesis 40:6-8.
He was happy even in the prison because I was with him so it became a place of grace for him.
“Why are you so downcast O my soul, why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence.” Psalm 42:5.
My abiding presence. John 14:23. I am with you always, I never leave you or forsake you.
I love you. Wherever you go, I am with you, for you are “a house of God and a Gate of Heaven” because the Holy Spirit dwells in you who believe, making known to you the path of life as you walk in the joy of My presence forever.