Meeting God in the Now: A Simple Guide to Finding Peace in the Present Moment
Getting Out of Your Head and Into Your Heart
We often assume that a relationship with God is mostly about thinking the right thoughts, believing the right doctrines, or trying harder to be spiritual. But Chapter 2 of Choosing Presence offers something more intimate. It suggests that meeting God is not first a mental exercise. It is an inner experience—something that happens when we stop living in memory and anticipation long enough to become present.
Jim Heaney returns to a simple but piercing truth: many of us are looking for God “out there,” while God is waiting to meet us here. The present moment is not just a spiritual technique. It is the only place where real encounter can happen. As the chapter puts it, “Only the present moment is real, and only in this moment can we be truly aware of God’s presence.”
Why the Present Moment Matters
So much of our inner suffering comes from living somewhere other than now. We replay the past until guilt hardens into identity. We project ourselves into the future until fear feels like reality. But neither place can hold God the way the present can. Heaney writes that “the future is a fiction of the mind,” and in the video transcript he says it even more plainly: “The future is not real now.”
This is why presence matters so much. When we are attached to the past, God cannot free us from what we keep rehearsing. When our hearts are consumed by future fear, God cannot teach us what only stillness can reveal. But when we become present—when we slow the compulsive inner dialogue—we begin to notice something deeper than thought. We begin to notice Spirit.
God Is Not Far Away
One of the most beautiful movements in Chapter 2 is the shift from striving to receiving. Heaney recalls discovering through Thomas Merton that God does not merely tolerate us from a distance; God loves each of us personally and uniquely. That realization moved from his head to his heart and changed everything. It gave him not just belief, but freedom.
That is the deeper invitation of presence. It is not simply self-awareness. It is awareness that God desires to find you. And when that becomes real inside, shame begins to loosen. Guilt stops being the loudest voice in the room. The inner life becomes less isolated and more connected. As the transcript says, through stillness we begin to feel “worthy of love,” not because of what we do, but because of “what is being done to us as we become consciously present.”
The Martha Problem We All Share
Chapter 2 also gives us Martha and Mary, which may be one of the clearest portraits of modern spiritual life in all of Scripture. Mary is present. Martha is distracted, anxious, divided by everything that still needs to be done. Jesus does not shame Martha, but he does name the problem: “You are worried and upset about so many things, but only one thing is necessary.”
That line lands because it is still true. Many of us are physically in the room but inwardly somewhere else. We pray, but our minds are racing. We go to church, but our thoughts are making plans, replaying conflict, or scanning tomorrow. Presence is the turning of the heart back to what is here. And according to Heaney, that return is where peace begins.
A Simple Practice for Today
If you want to begin living Chapter 2 instead of just agreeing with it, start small.
Pause for one minute.
Take a conscious breath.
Then ask yourself the three questions Heaney offers at the end of the chapter:
Am I present now?
How do I feel inside?
Do I have a sense of peace within at some level?
You do not need to manufacture a spiritual experience. You only need to become available to one. The point is not to force peace. The point is to stop long enough to notice that God is already here.
Book Club Discussion Questions: Choosing Presence – Chapter 2
To help your group dive deeper into the themes of "Meeting God in the Moment," here are a few questions to guide your conversation:
Heaney says many of us look for God “out there” rather than inside ourselves. Where do you most often look for reassurance, worth, or peace outside of the present moment?
The chapter says “the future is a fiction of the mind.” Do you agree? How does that phrase challenge the way you relate to anxiety?
Martha is worried and Mary is present. Which one feels more like your usual spiritual posture these days, and why?
Heaney suggests that only an inner experience of God can truly change us from the inside out. Have you ever had a moment when God felt not only near you, but within you? How did it affect you afterward?
Try the three reflection questions at the end of the chapter. What do you notice when you stop and ask them honestly? Does even a brief pause change your internal state?
This article is based on the insights and teachings found in Chapter 2: “Meeting God in the Moment” from Choosing Presence by Jim Heaney. The themes of present-moment awareness, freedom from past and future, intimacy with God, and the three-question practice are drawn directly from those sources.
