Has there ever been a time you felt like God was far away–that he was not really there? I am sure we have all felt this way at some point in our lives. Perhaps it was during a time you, or someone close to you, were battling a disease like cancer. Maybe it was during a time of intense struggle with your spouse that ended in the dissolution of your marriage. Whatever the circumstance, God’s presence evaded you. You felt alone, empty, and directionless.
David, a man after God’s own heart, felt like this at times. He wrote in Psalm 13:1, “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?” (Ps 13:1; NASB). He cried out again in Ps 88:14, exclaiming, “O Lord, why do You reject my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me?” David was the special anointed king of Israel and yet he felt abandoned by God. He could not feel or experience the presence of God.
But later in Ps 139:7-10, David could elaborate poetically the personal presence of God. “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?” he asks. His answer is confident and definitive: “If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.” In other words, there is nowhere David could go and God would be absent. God is everywhere. Theology calls this the omnipresence of God (omni, meaning “all”; presence, meaning “present”). There is no place in the universe where God is not. God is present in your home. He is present with your family. He is present during times of joy and occasions of turmoil and darkness.
We are just like David. During times of oppression, depression, anxiety, trials, and tribulations we all feel as if God has left us. It is always during troubled times we question where God is. But just like David, we too can affirm and easily feel the presence of God when times are good. The challenge is to remember the latter (God’s presence) when facing the former (trials).
Thankfully, we know that God is always present with us no matter the circumstance and that it does not depend upon our feelings or experience of him. Surely we desire to experience God and feel his presence, but in a fallen, sinful world this is not always possible. We, therefore, need to rely upon our faith that he is always there. We must believe, trust, and have confidence in what we know to be true about God: he is omnipresent.
Interestingly, it is through the trials that we actually grow closer to God and we are in his presence the most. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthian church that he was “well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then a I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). In short, Paul is the strongest in Christ when he is weak, experiencing trials. Even our faith becomes stronger, being purified as with fire (1 Pet 1:7).
The seventeenth century French monk, Brother Lawrence, once commented in his famous book The Practice of the Presence of God that “we must remember that we have been living in the world, subject to all sorts of miseries, accidents and poor dispositions within. The Lord will cleanse and humble us in order to makes us more like Christ. As we go through this cleansing process, we will grow closer to God.”*
The next time you face a difficult circumstance, remember: God is present with you. In fact, he is in you via the Holy Spirit. He hears you. He sees you. He is holding you in his arms. You can declare with David, “If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.” Yes, God is there!
Pastor Pete
*Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1982), 22; emphasis mine.