Is God really Omnipresent, or is He somehow limited in His omnipresence by the sight of Christians?
It seems to me that we’ve fallen into a trap of limiting the presence of God in some way! We know either in our heart or in our mind that God is everywhere at the same time in some way in which we can’t fathom, but our actions say that we don’t really believe it!
Over the years I must have heard countless testimonies about how people have seen God’s presence in the beauty of creation. I know I have given a few myself! Then we have the whole thing of being in a wonderful worship service and when talking about it say that we had great worship and “then God turned up!” as if in some way He wasn’t already there. We also talk about ‘taking Jesus’ to other communities, again as if in some way He is only where Christians are.
Now I know that the majority of this is more due to our use of language than anything else, but I do think there is an underlying problem. It really is as if we only see God where we expect to see Him! Consequently we fail to see Him amongst the very people that Jesus showed us we should work with. I sometimes wonder whether we actually have started to equate wealth and success with God as well, because we often celebrate those things as a sign of God’s blessing!
Yesterday was the farewell meeting of our current Regional Commanders and the first Bible Reading he used was Habakkuk 2:14
, which to my mind sums up what I’m trying to get at.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
The knowledge of the glory of God! The key word there is knowledge as the glory of God already exists throughout the whole of His creation. Nowhere is there a place where God cannot be found if only we seek Him out!
So let’s stop limiting God through our careless use of language. Instead of talking about taking God to places, let’s talk about helping people see God where they are. Instead of only seeing God in the people we expect to see Him in, let’s search for Him in the most unlikely people and through them learn more about the glory of God ourselves.
I did some thinking through on this a while back after I read this by AW Tozer
“Ten million intelligences standing at as many points in space and separated by incomprehensible distances can each say with equal truth God is here. No point in nearer to God than any other point. It is exactly as near to God from any place as it is from any other place. No one is in mere distance any further or any nearer to God than any other person.”
A few months ago a prison officer asked me why as a Christian I bothered to work in such a “God forsaken” place as a YOI. Far from being God forsaken I have often felt that rather than take God through the gate with me I have met him in the kindness of the “bad lads” I work with.
But it occurred to me that the presence of God and the manifest presence of God are not the same. God can be with us and we can be totally unaware of him. There are times when we battle through the distractions to as Harry Read put it in his song,”become aware of him” There are also times when God chooses to reveal or manifest his presence in a more obvious way or in an unusual way. The times when that has happened in my experience are very precious but often impossible to describe to others.
But it also occurs to me that although we are promised that our Lord will never leave us or forsake us there are times when he hides from us, for example, Isaiah 64:7
“NO one calls upon your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you ahve hidden your face from us and made us wates away because of our sins.”
Anyway just some thoughts
God bless
Carol
[quote post="180"]it also occurs to me that although we are promised that our Lord will never leave us or forsake us there are times when he hides from us[/quote]
Thanks for that bit Carol. I hadn’t really thought along those lines that much. The verse you quote tends to suggest that it is the sins of humanity that makes God hide his face. This is really encouraging to me as I am more and more convinced of our need to be beacons of light to the lost communities of our world. By being a living example of God’s kingdom we can start to shine the light of God into the lives of those around us which in turn starts to show the dark places of sin in those lives.