God Is Here

"But no one asks, 'Where is God my Maker, who provides us with songs in the night'" (Job 35:10, HCSB).
"Yes, You are a God who hides Himself..." (Isa. 45:15, HCSB). 
"'I was sought by those who did not ask.'  I was found by those who did not seek Me.  I said:  Here I am, here I am..." (Isa. 65:1, HCSB).
"What can be seen on earth indicates neither the total absence of God nor his manifest presence, but rather the presence of a hidden God."  --Blaise Pascal

Jesus' name is Immanuel or "God with us" as interpreted.  Christian faith can be reduced to knowing Christ and making Him known, done by living for Christ and having a consistent testimony that isn't jeopardized.  We know God well enough to recognize His presence and the moving of the Spirit.  Francis Schaeffer said that Christianity is about the God who is there!  It's not just believing in God, but God in us!  We must believe in God as He is and not as He isn't; i.e., in truth!  There is another Jesus, another gospel, and another Spirit to beware of (cf. 2 Cor. 11:4).  We don't just believe there is a God but believe God!

The point is that God resides in every believer via the presence of the Holy Spirit, and Christ in us is the hope of glory.  We are His heart to spread love, His ears to listen to those in need and troubled, His hands to do His work, His voice to speak up for Him, and His mind to think His thoughts and explain or defend God to the unbeliever.

One prof wrote GODISNOWHERE on the blackboard and asked his students what they saw:  most thought it meant that God is nowhere! It should be:  God is now here!   We see what we want to see or are conditioned to see, and if we have no faith in God we will not believe He is here!  Surely, the presence of the Lord is in this place!  As Francis Schaeffer postulated:  "He is there and He is not silent."  Don't rule God out of the picture, for only He sees the big picture! God is ubiquitous or omnipresent and has no interstellar address!  He literally fills the heavens!  His immensity refers to the fact that all of His attributes are everywhere present, not limited or bound by space or time.  Think of God as dwelling in another dimension in which we are unaware.  But we know He exists because of the things He does just like we know the wind exists by its effects.  This explains William Cowper penning his hymn:  "God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform."

We need not wonder of God's whereabouts, for He's always as close as the mention of His name--He is no man's debtor and will authenticate Himself to everyone who diligently seeks Him (seek and you will find!). When the skeptic asks, "Where is God?"  Reply, "Where isn't God?"  The believer sees God in all of creation from the sub-atomic to the interstellar with everything in its order and design according to the Designer.

God is both transcendent and immanent!  He is"not far from each one of us" (cf. Acts 17:27), yet He dwells in the heavenly spheres (cf. Isa. 57:15). He is present through the ministry of the Spirit and works in each of us according to His will.  Since God created the time-space continuum, He is not obliged to be limited to it nor defined by it but can suspend its power and act outside its forces.  Christians are more fortunate than contemporary believers who didn't have the resident Holy Spirit and the complete canon of Scripture to be our plumbline.

In summation, we should all be like famed Bro. Lawrence, a French Carmelite monk, who practiced the presence of God even doing the mundane chores of dishwashing and wrote The Practice of the Presence of God, a good-read and classic study in the discipline of one's prayer life.  NB:  "... [A]nd the name of the city from that day on will be: Yahweh [the LORD} is There" (Ezek. 48:35, HCSB). I'll close quoting Francis Schaeffer again:  "He is there and He is not silent."     Soli Deo Gloria! 

GODISNOWHERE!

"I permitted Myself to be sought by those who did not ask for Me; I permitted Myself to be found by those who did not seek Me..." (Isaiah 65:1, NASB)
"Sow with a view to righteousness, Reap in accordance with kindness; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD Until He comes to rain righteousness on you" (Hosea 10:12, NASB).  
"What can be seen on earth indicates neither the total absence of God nor his manifest presence, but rather the presence of a hidden God."  (Blaise Pascal, French mathematician/philosopher).


Reread that title and realize it can be deciphered two ways:  God is now here; God is nowhere. Probably you may preconceive your own interpretation due to prejudice! The query shouldn't be, "Where is God?" but, "Where isn't God?"  The truth is that God is everywhere, even in Hades (though not in His compassion, but only justice).  When we are looking for God, it is not He who moved, but we moved!  We cannot escape the presence of God, as David prays in Psalm 139.

We are commanded to look for God and to search Him out at His invitation:  "You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart" (Jer. 29:13, NASB).  We are to seek Him while He may be found in Isaiah 55:6 and to find Him while He is near!  When you find God, you realize He was there all the time!  Mention His name and have a sincere, expectant, and obedient heart.

"Truly, You are a God who hides Himself,..." (Isaiah 45:15, NASB).  Job had reason to wonder: "Oh that I knew where I might find Him,..." (Job 23:2, NASB). Sometimes God seems MIA or missing in action, but He is there, and it's likely our sins have built a chasm from fellowship or a breach of our relationship due to the cleavage from our unconfessed sin.  Psalm 66:18, NASB says it eloquently: "If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear." Sometimes God is playing a low profile and doesn't want to be so obvious:  "How long, O LORD?  Will You hide Yourself forever? ..." (Psalm 89:46, NASB).

Yes, the whereabouts of God isn't meant to be a mystery, but He is available to all who call upon His name in penitent, sincere, obedient faith.  Sometimes it seems to others that God has forsaken us, but Jesus promised He never would do that even to the end of the age He would be with us--don't let it get to you if they taunt you saying, "Where is this God of yours?" Because we know He is always here, they are just blind and are turning a deaf ear; only the saved see the kingdom of God and if they want their eyes opened they must repent and believe in Jesus.

God doesn't deal in triflers, and His pet peeve is that people aren't seeking (cf. Rom. 3:11). God is more ready to authenticate Himself to you than you are prepared to meet Him!  "Prepare to meet thy God," He says in Amos 4:12.  Pascal said he wouldn't have found God, had He not searched for him. Everyone has their chance, you might say, and the world has never been without witness (cf. Acts 14:17).  As Christians, we have it better than the Old Testament saints because the Lord dwells within us and whenever two or three are gathered together in His name, there is a special blessing of His divine presence.

Finding God isn't so much as to go where God is, like to church expecting He'd have to be there; it's an individual thing, and if you know the Lord you will indeed find Him.  But the Hound of Heaven pursues us and like a Good Shepherd is constantly seeking out the lost sheep (the believer who has lost his way).  Because of God's transcendence, He fills the cosmos, and because of His immanence, He is also nearby to aid us in our troubles and bless us.  "'Am I a God who is near,' declares the LORD, 'And not a God far off? ... Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?' declares the LORD"  (Jer. 23:23-24, NASB).  God is irrespective of the time/space continuum and location is no object to Him because He is Spirit and not material like us who have bodies to limit us--Jesus is both Spirit and body in His incarnation.  Some believers will be known by saying regretfully, "He was there all the time, and I knew it not!"

Jesus' name is called Immanuel and that is to mean that God is with us and when we have the resident Spirit of Christ indwelling us we never have to lose track of where God is--He will never leave us nor forsake us and will abide with us in a personal sense. We have all the tools necessary to find God, the Word, the Church, the abiding Spirit; so we have no excuse not to be filled with His Spirit and to know Him privately and personally.  Only in our faith do we claim the potential to know God and that God is personal.  "Acquaint now thyself with him and be at peace..." (Job 22:21, KJV); "Yield now and be at peace with Him; Thereby good will come to you" (Job 22:21, NASB).

To level with you, most believers are not moved by the Holy Spirit, nor have the discernment to awaken to His presence, simply because they have too much of the world's spirit within them and God cannot fill a space already full!  Before filling, in God's economy, comes emptying!   In sum, it is a boggling affair to know the Lord and to put things into that perspective.  Soli Deo Gloria!

The Whereabouts Of God

"... While they say to me continually, 'Where is your God?'"  (Psalm 42:10, ESV).
"And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart"  (Jer. 29:13, KJV).  
"Seek the LORD while He may be found; 
Call upon Him while He is near"  (Isaiah 55:6, NASB).  
"... Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"  (Joel 2:17, NIV).
"... Why my enemies continually taunt me, saying, 'Where is this God of yours?'"  (Ps. 42:3, NLT). 

Have you ever felt abandoned by God like Job?  He wondered that, too:  "Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat!" (Job 23:3, ESV).  Job was desperate and was confident it wasn't his fault or that he deserved it, but God was MIA to his reckoning.  Sometimes God withdraws from us to see what is in our heart!  Our faith is more precious than gold and must be tested, to see if we are going by feeling or faith; faith is what pleases God, not feelings or sentiment! We must learn to walk by faith and not by sight (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17).

 Sin separates us from God (Psalm 66:18 says, "If I regard iniquity in my heart the LORD will not hear me"), and God is not the one who moved, you did!   Even Job didn't realize that his sin was self-righteousness if you look at his boasting in Job 31.  In the end, he found repentance at the revelation of God's greatness and it humbled him.

The fact of the matter is that "he is actually not far from each one of us"  (cf. Acts 17:27, ESV).  God is never further than the mention of His name, but even some believers don't know Him by name--His name isn't "God!"  People often mock believers because it seems like their God has abandoned them, but the fact is that He will never leave us nor forsake us (cf. Heb. 13:8).   Jesus said in the Great Commission:  "...I am with you always...." Jesus name is, in fact, Emmanuel, and that is interpreted as meaning that "God is with us"!  That God is nearby is called the immanence of God as per Isaiah 57:15, which says, "This is the high and lofty One [re the transcendence of God] says--he who lives forever, whose name is holy:  'I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.'" In short, God is above and beyond, yet approachable! 

People often sarcastically inquire where God was in a disaster like 9/11, but people who were there will testify that Jesus was there all the time.  When they ask you where God is, simply ask them where He isn't!  Where was the church?  We don't need a mirror to see that we are walking miracles and, since everything is caused by God, miracles are only unusual events caused by Him, or they'd be called "regulars." There is a God-shaped blank or vacuum in our souls that only God can fill according to Blaise Pascal, and when God lives in our hearts we can communicate and fellowship with Him--that's why we are created in the image of God!  (We alone have the will to obey, the heart to love, and the mind to know God.) Animals never wonder about the whereabouts of God, nor ask, since they are oblivious to the spiritual world and knowledge.

Pascal said that in nature we don't see the manifest presence of God, nor the complete absence of God, but the presence of a hidden God. God wants us to find Him and doesn't show Himself to triflers, but those who seek with their whole heart (cf. Jer. 29:13; Isa. 55:6).  Isaiah announced, "Truly, you are a God who hides yourself..."  (Isa. 45:15, ESV).   It is not a matter of God hiding, but of whether we are looking for Him and seeking His face (as Jesus said in Matt. 7:7, "...[Seek] and you shall find...")! Take comfort in Jesus' promise that whenever two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is among them (cf. Matt. 18:20)!  Sometimes you may honestly wonder where God, is but then you might be finding out where the devil is!

If you think that they had it good in Jesus' day when He was with them, or that some people are more blessed by having had visions, we have it better than they did because we have the resident Holy Spirit and the complete canon of Holy Writ to guide us and for God to speak to us through.  You can find God's presence:  "I permitted Myself to be sought by those who did not ask for Me; I permitted Myself to be found by those who did not seek Me, I said, 'Here am I, here am I,'...." (Isaiah 65:1, NASB).  Christianity is not belief there is a God, but believing in the God who is there!  As Francis Schaeffer said, "He is there and He is not silent!"  In sum, ponder the song:  "Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place...." (cf. Gen. 28:16).    Soli Deo Gloria!