As you practice God’s presence in the secret place eventually you learn to become aware of His presence wherever you go. God is not desiring to confine His presence to your prayer closet alone, but He wants to flood your whole life with His glory. Think about Jesus, He is our example to imitate: He never leaves the presence of God, He is in perma-glory. We should seek for the same, instead of having an encounter here and there, we can live in an ongoing encounter. This comes first from learning to keep our attention on God habitually, keeping our mind on His presence within us releases a continual flow of that river. “I have set the Lord always before me.” (Psalm 16:8) Make it a habit of turning inward to His presence moment by moment, drink as much as you can! You can do this anywhere: a simple continuous inward turn to the Holy Spirit will awaken a constant flow of glory within you.

The second thing that goes with our attention is expectation. When Jesus said, “Let it be done according to your faith,” (see Matthew 9:29) He essentially said, “you get what you expect.” If you expect God’s presence to show up in your prayer closet, then that’s where He’ll manifest, if you expect Him to fill you at some conference at your church, then it will happen. Expectation is closely linked with faith, and we know we receive everything by faith. Therefore if we want to increase our experience of God, we need to expand our expectations. As we expand our expectations our experience of God will grow in tandem.

Begin expecting God to show up when you’re washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, doing paper work, driving your car, or even taking out the trash. Stop limiting God’s presence to the prayer-closet box by only expecting Him to show up there, rather engage your expectations for His presence to fill and manifest in all the little things of life. He wishes to erase the line between secular and sacred, your whole life can be worship unto Him.

When Jesus said abide in Me, He was speaking of being continually immersed in the presence of God, and radical obedience to His word. We abide in Him through developing an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit which requires a lifestyle of prayer in pursuit of His manifest presence.