“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make by bed in the depths, you are there.”
Ps139:7, 8
“God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in all His works…The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. The whole universe is alive with His life.”
A W Tozer – The Pursuit of God
The omnipresence of God is the momentous truth that God is everywhere present and nowhere absent. He fills all time and space equally. He is nowhere closer or farther away than anywhere else. This seems hard to grasp, yet mere reason concerning the things we know to be true of God demands that this must be true as well. How can God be infinite and not be everywhere? (See Ps 139:7,8 above.) How can God sustain everything if He is not everywhere? Colossians 1:17 states “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” How can He be sovereign without ruling over everything? (See Isa 66:1,2.)
I think the distinction must be made as it has been by John Bevere, Bill Johnson, and A. W. Tozer that although God is present everywhere, that are times when we feel His presence more than other times. We call this the manifest presence of God. This difference is not one on God’s side of the equation, but one on our side of it. God is equally presence everywhere. It is our awareness that changes. I think too many Christians feel His Presence is only for special occasions and places like church and worship time. We lose sight of the fact that God’s presence is always here. Can God really make Himself less or more potent than He already is? I think not. He says “I am that I am” and He says “For I am the LORD, I change not.” It is our understanding that needs to change. It is our experience that needs to be different. It is a matter of our faith and our desire for Him that must change. “Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently search for him.”
Yet we don’t feel His Presence all the time, so many times we must confess as Jacob did in Gen 28:16, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.” We must get away from the idea that we must pray for God to come close as if He were somewhere (heaven) far away and needed to travel to us in order to be next to us. We must get away from the idea that the Holy Spirit must be invited to come into our meetings. He is already there. We must ask Him to make us aware that He is there. We must get away from the idea that God is somehow more present in church than He is in our living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens. We must get away from thinking of God in spatial terms. God fills all time and space but He transcends time and space. Think of a glass representing all time and space there is, ever has been, and ever will be. Now picture God as the ocean. Drop the glass in the ocean and you have a picture of how God fills all time and space yet He is bigger (much bigger) than just that.
We need to understand that it is our openness to Him which makes Him feel closer. It is our response to His eternal, equilateral presence that determines how close to Him we feel. It is the Christian disciplines which prepare us to feel more of Him or experience more of Him. We need to acknowledge with David in Ps139:7, 8 “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make by bed in the depths, you are there.” And we need to understand with Jeremiah in Jer 23:23, 24 “‘Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.” Doctor Luke shows us clearly in Acts 17:27 “God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.” Indeed God is always not far from each one of us. If you have asked Jesus to be your Savior, then the Holy Spirit lives IN YOU. So our experiencing the manifest Presence of God is not so much a matter of God traveling from somewhere to be with us as it is Him quickening our Spirit-Man or Inner-Man to understand better the truth that He is here and to allow our physical senses to ‘feel’ His Presence with us. Now surely God can, in His Sovereignty, impress His Spirit upon us so heavily that we have no choice but to feel it. But this is not the norm, hence our experience of not feeling His Presence more often.
If, however, this is our desire, to feel His Presence more often, there are things we can do to make ourselves more receptive to experiencing His Presence. “Draw close to God and He will draw near to you.” James tells us. Again here are the Christian disciplines leading the way. Reading the Bible inspires our faith (Rom 10:17), and faith allows us to believe God is and is a rewarder of those who earnestly seek Him (Heb 11:1,6). Here we see that there is a principle of the Kingdom of God
Oh God, give us the passion for your Presence again. May You become more important than anything else. Take Your place of prominence and preeminence which you so rightly deserve. Let us not by the senses you gave us, fall into the trap of thinking you are far off. Help us to draw near to You and experience You drawing near to us. Help us to live in the continual awareness of Your Presence. Help us be disciplined and earnestly seek You. For you declare, “‘Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord…” Jeremiah 29:12-14. God help us to seek for you with all our hearts and let us be found byYou.
Resources:
Bevere, John. Drawing near. Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson, 2006.
Johnson, Bill. Strengthen Yourself in the Lord. Shippensburg: Destiny Image Publishers, 2007. The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible New International Version The Old Testament and The New Testament Thompson's original and complete system of Bible study A complete numerical system of chain references, analyses of books, outline studies of characters and unique charts, with pictorial maps and archaeological discoveries. Ed. Frank Charles Thompson, et al. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1983. Print.
Tozer, A. W. The Knowledge of the Holy: the Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. 103-107. Print.
Tozer, A. W. The Pursuit of God.
