We used to have a commercial that plays here on American television (yes, I do have non western readers! TYVM!), for the Visa credit card. In the commercial, they would say “It’s everywhere you want to be.” They were saying that you could always be assured of access to spending power anywhere you wanted to go. If having spending power is the sort of thing that you feel you have to have, then being assured that no matter where you went you could use it would be a great comfort. Might that suggest you have an idolatry of money and control going in your life, too?
But money is not the focus today. We are in a series of articles about how great God is. And He is really great! Yesterday we saw He is great because He knows everything about me, totally and absolutely. That’s really amazing when we proces that. We can’t run, and we can’t hide. We are bare before Him. And that can be a great comfort. It provides the basis for truly honest living, because we know, and should operate, on the knowledge that we cannot get away with anything! And with that, it also means I can do good things even when its hidden, because we know God sees and rewards what we do.
But it gets even better today. We are still reading Ps 139, but today we are in vs. 7-12.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
There is no place that we can go where the Spirit of God is not. In the last entry we talked about the Omniscience of God. This is the Omnipresence of God. It can be defined as “God is everywhere.” But some have formulated it a different way: “Everywhere you go, God is.” Sort of like Visa claims to be, right?
If your “thing” is making sure you have to comfort of always having spending power to control your circumstances, you will be disappointed. As much as Visa says that it is everywhere you want to be, you will find times when the card does you no good. I live near a town where most transactions are still done “Cash only.” I went to lunch one time, and pulled out my visa card only to hear “Sorry sir, we don’t take credit cards,” and the waitress pointed to the sign that says “cash or check only.” Thanks be to God, I was with someone who picked up my tab! Visa had let me down!
Not so with God. He is truly omnipresent! He is in the hard places as well as the good ones. He is not a fair weather friend who abandons you when the going gets hard. He is with you “even in the valley of the shadow of death.”
David wrote this psalm in a day when everyone believed that their gods were confined to a locality. David discovered, when He was on the run, that God was with him everywhere he went. He discovered that God guides even when he is far away from God’s temple (10). Even in the darkness of the caves where David was forced to dwell God was there(11-12).
I am unemployed right now and money is tight. Is God still walking with me? What about you? Maybe you or a loved one are walking a road that includes stops at the cancer center. Is God still there? Maybe a loved one has died. Is God still in that darkness? Or the darkness of depression?
Yes, He is.
When you are struggling with temptation, is God there for you in that spot? Yes, He is. When you are talking bad about your pastor, is God there? Yes. When you are doing that secret good thing, is God there? Yes.
Just another reason why we have a truly great God.
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