Practical Application of God’s Omnipresence (Part 9)

b. Practical Application of God’s Omnipresence

Today we come to some thoughts of application concerning the attribute of divine omnipresence. What application does it have to our lives to know that God is everywhere present? Let me just mention a couple of things.

1. It means that we can contact God at every location. No matter where we are we can call upon God and he is there. You may remember when you were in grade school, the teacher would sometimes call the roll and each student would respond “present” when his name was called. That is similar to our ability to call upon God. No matter where we are, we call upon his name and he answers “present!” If you are in San Francisco, God calls out “present!” If you are in Munich, God answers, “present!” If you are in Rio de Janeiro he says “present!” there as well. Everywhere that we need to call upon God we will find him present there.

I must say that when Jan and I first began to travel abroad and to live in Europe, I wondered how would it be. Would God be equally real there or would we have left him behind in the United States? It may sound like a silly question, but I did wonder. What we found was no matter where we traveled and lived, the Lord was present there equally as we had known him back in the United States. So God can be contacted. He is present. He is available at every place that you are.

2. That implies that we should practice the presence of God. We should be aware and constantly conscious of his presence with us. I am not talking about trying to crank up some sort of emotion, but just a kind of awareness that God is there. He is not some distant being far away. He is there with you. In particular, when we are tempted to sin we need to realize God is there and he’s watching. That would, I think, make it more difficult to sin flagrantly right in his very presence. Yet, he is really present there when we are tempted to sin and fall away. We need to be constantly practicing the presence of God as we go through life.

I think that we should thank God for his presence. We should thank him for being there with us. So often people will pray for folks by saying, “Lord, be with us today in Defenders class” or “Be with so-and-so.” I used to be somewhat impatient with that type of prayer because I thought you don’t need to pray that God will be with you. You don’t need to pray that God will be with someone. God already is. Therefore, we ought to thank him that he is here with us, or thank him that he is with a person. But I think I’ve come to see that the intent of those prayers is not to simply pray that God’s presence would be with them but rather that God would be there for them in the sense of standing by them to encourage them, strengthen them, convict them if necessary, help them to persevere. I would just suggest that sometimes, if that is what we mean, that we ought to say that. When we pray for someone, think of what he needs. Is it encouragement? Is it strengthening? Is it guidance? Pray that God would do that for them if that is what we mean when we say, “God, be with them.” Because his presence is already with them, what they need now is some extra measure of grace like encouragement, guidance, strengthening, or whatever.

The last words of the Gospel of Matthew – Matthew 28:20 – are the words of Jesus, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” So we are never alone as Christians. Christ is with us. God is with us. Whether we are at work, whether we are studying, whether we are engaged in witnessing or ministry, he is there with us. That also includes times of persecution, illness, and even death. God is with us then as well. The words of the psalmist in Psalm 23:4 are our comfort: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil for thou art with me.” This is the comfort that we as Christians can claim in virtue of God’s omnipresence.