There is a beautiful celestial object that glimmers in the night sky. It is called the Orion Nebula. It is the nearest “star factory” to Earth and is a bright, stellar nursery where hundreds of new stars are being born. It is visible with the naked eye unless there is light pollution, cloudy weather, or a problem with our eyes. No matter what the weather is like, no matter at what point in the earth’s rotation we are positioned, and no matter at what point in the revolution around the sun we are coasting, the nebula remains there.
According to Psalm 139:7-10, that is how it is with the Holy Spirit. God’s abiding presence is not determined by the weather in our hearts that may obscure or reveal His loving activities in our lives. His presence is not determined by how we are feeling on a particular day of the year, or how we are faring during a particular season of our lives. The Holy Spirit is always present, active, and in reach.
In Psalm 139:1 David established his thesis: “O Lord, You have searched me and known me.” God is like a doctor giving us a physical. He is like a psychiatrist exploring our inner depths. He is like an intimate friend who probes us until we reveal everything to Him. As a result, He knows us. He lays his hands upon us. His hand guides us. He holds us fast. He does this whether we know it or not and whether we like it or not. If we love God, we are right where we are supposed to be.
The phrase, “My sitting down and…rising up” is an Old Testament expression depicting the routines of life. Whether a person is at rest or at work, God sees and knows. The phrase “you understand my thoughts” probably overwhelmed David. God cares about every detail of every person’s life. He is not distant in glory. God is near. What’s more, He is immediately accessible wherever His children go. God sent His Son into this world as a living picture of who He is and how present He is—Immanuel, God with us. There is no place where we can go where we won’t be near His Spirit. If we go up into heaven, God is there. If we go to hell, He is there. We are guided and protected, held by God, wherever we go. We can’t even hide in the darkness.
Once we are known by God we can’t flee His presence. He is everywhere, and He will pursue us wherever we go. We will run into Him at every turn. We can’t escape Him in the darkness, even the darkness of our own souls. The word translated as “hell” refers to “the grave” or “the place of the dead” rather than the place of eternal punishment for unbelievers. David asserts that God is, in fact, everywhere. Death cannot separate the believer from Him. When His people worship Him, they have an incredible sense of His manifest presence.
Every person who runs away from God eventually runs into God. That’s because there is no place we can go away from His presence. For example, when Jonah ran from God, he found that God will use anything-the wind, the waves, a storm, a fish-to declare His presence and His intent to restore. In times of overwhelming shame, when our natural instinct is to hide from everyone, we can be sure that God never needs or wants us to hide. He is always with us in self-imposed prisons.
No place is without God’s presence. Even when we run away from God, we run into God’s hands. In the heights, God is there; in the depths, God is also present. God knows each of us fully, but God’s knowledge of us is liberating, not judging.
People who have images of a mean and punishing God may never find comfort in hearing that God is as close to them as their every breath at every moment of the day. In that case, God’s promised absence would be sweet relief, as it offers a respite from the anxiety of always being watched and judged.
One of the most important pieces of spending time with God is encountering His presence. His presence is meant to be at the core of all that we do. God so hated separation from us that Jesus was sent to pay the ultimate price.
God selected our personalities before we were born. God didn’t drop us into the world defenseless and empty-handed. We arrived fully equipped. We were sculpted from nothing into something. God wants to be involved in every decision we make. How does this work?
- We have to stop talking to ourselves and start talking to the Lord.
- We have to go to the Bible and ask God to give us verses to guide us in our decisions. If some verse or verses pop out to us, we have to pray over it and ask God to make His message clearer through that verse.
How do we encounter the presence of God? How do we experience His nearness? Encountering God is similar to encountering another person. We don’t seek an experience with a friend. We simply seek to know God by spending time with Him and gain an experience as a result. We don’t want to seek the voice of a friend. We simply engage in conversation with Him as an act of wanting to know Him and hear His voice as a result.
When we yield our lives to Him and submit to His ways, it is no longer unnerving that God knows us so intimately. Instead, it is a great comfort that God knows all about us and loves us regardless. There is great peace in knowing that He is always present with us. We are fully known and never alone.
When Adam and Eve sinned, why did God curse them with an emptiness that nothing would be able to fulfill? Life was going to be hard enough out there in the world, banished from the Garden of Eden. It seems unkind, even cruel.
He did it to save them. Their hearts shifted at the Fall. Something sent its roots down deep into their souls-that mistrust of God’s heart and resolution to find life on their own terms, so God thwarted them. In love, He blocked their attempts until, wounded and aching, they turned to Him for their rescue. Jesus has to thwart us too-our controlling and our hiding, the ways we seek to fill the ache within us. Otherwise, we would never fully turn to Him for our rescue.
When a storm hits, it will reveal whether our lives are built on a solid foundation or on sand. Storms give us an opportunity to honour God in a better way than at any other time. We don’t invite storms, but we can face them because we know that God’s grace will be sufficient.
In business, corporations have long recognized the value of an independent audit. Any financial wrongdoing is brought to light, and all assets and liabilities are clearly identified. This kind of honest, rigorous assessment makes positive change possible. In the same way, through the process of confession, God “independently audits” our souls. When our wrong doing is revealed, we are pierced to the heart with our sin, and keenly conscious of our need for forgiveness in specific areas.
We can ask God to audit our lives and show us the results. We can start by reading the Ten Commandments and asking the Holy Spirit to convict us of specific sins. We can also consider the seven deadly sins-laziness, gluttony, greed, lust, envy, anger, and pride-and ask God to show us how we have allowed them to take root in our heart. When the audit is complete, we can agree with God concerning our sin.
Our purpose in life is chosen by God. It is not negotiable. It is like calling water wet. There is no changing that fact, and there’s no changing God’s purpose for our lives. While we may not fulfill the purpose for which God made us, we still have a purpose that God intends for us to fulfill. That doesn’t mean that there is one highly specific niche for us to fulfill and that if we miss it, too bad. We can achieve our purpose in many different and creative ways.
Bibliography
- Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; pp. 798-799)
- Williams, D., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 14: Psalm 73-150 (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1989; pp. 470-472)
- Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
- MacArthur, J.F. Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
- Lucado, M.: The Lucado Life Lessons Study Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson; 2010; pp. 837-840)
- “Stop Talking to Yourself.” Retrieved from Christianity.com@crosswalkmail.com
- Dr. Ed Young, “Can’t Find God?” Retrieved from ministry@winningwalk.org
- Dr. Ed Young, “An Independent Audit.” Retrieved from ministry@winningwalk.org
- “From Shoots to Leaves-Attention to Attunement.” Retrieved from wakeupcall@seedbed.com
- “God Knows You.” Retrieved from Oneplace@crosswalkmail.com
- “Hemmed In.” Retrieved from dailyreadings@randomesheart.com
- Dr. Ed Young, “Morning is Coming.” Retrieved from ministry@winningwalk.org
- Os Hillman, “Fulfilling Your Purpose.” Retrieved from tgif@marketplaceleaders.org
- Libby Howe, “Three Musings on Psalm 139.” Retrieved from newsletter@christiancentury.org
- Bruce Epperly, “The Eighth Sunday in Pentecost-July 23, 2023.” Retrieved from www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadaventure
Sermons From My Heart 