Stages of Learning and the Presence of God

I have have been having some fun thinking of being in the presence of God in terms of the four stages of learning. The four stages of learning may be presented as a quadrant like this:







We start out as an unconscious incompetent. We don't experience the presence of God and we don't even know that such a thing is possible.


In the next stage, we learn that it is possible to walk in the presence of God, but we also realize that we are not experiencing His presence. We are now a conscious incompetent.

As we seek to walk in the presence of God, we become conscious competents. We experience His presence, but it takes concentration and effort on our part.

At some point, though, being in the presence of God becomes second nature to us. We no longer have to think about it. We are now unconscious competents. In the Apostle John's choice of words, we are now abiding in Christ.

Using this framework, here are a couple of thoughts that may be helpful:

1. Learning to walk in God's presence is a natural process that includes a lot of trial and error, especially in the transition from being a conscious incompetent to a conscious competent. God designed it that way, just as He designed how we learn to walk. Therefore, there is no need to get upset at ourselves as we struggle. The struggle is an essential part of the process. And whether we realize it or not, we are learning something valuable each time we try.

2. The enemy would like to discourage us or cause us to feel condemned by our failures. In truth, learning to walk in God's presence is a process and not an event. Therefore, there is no guilt or shame in failure, just as a child learning to walk has not guilt when he or she falls.

3. The conscious competent stage is characterized by work. In that stage, staying in God's presence is a matter of doing. In the unconscious competent stage, however, doing falls away and we enter into the act of being in the presence of God. In effect, learning to walk in God's presence starts out with our focus on ourselves and our efforts, and it ends when the focus shifts to God's love and His keeping us in His presence.

4. Most writings about experiencing the presence of God are written without a sense of growth in mind. As a result, we may feel like our efforts are futile if they don't result in mountain top experiences that we read about. In fact, those efforts are all very valuable because they take us along the path into even deeper places in the presence of God. It just takes time and perseverance.

5. It seems that many who want to walk in the presence of God get discouraged and quit when the going gets hard. They read about how easy it is to be in God's presence and decide that it must not be for them. When we realize that each stage experiences the presence of God differently and that the struggles we face today will bring us to a point of breakthrough, then there is good reason to keep pressing in.