How is God Present With Us?

It seems to me that God must be all we can imagine and far more than we can imagine. He simply will not stay in any box we put him in, in our current experiences. I am amazed how our perception of him changes in our life time.

In a worship service several years ago, I was musing how we viewed the presence of God with us throughout my life time. It seems this has shifted some from one decade to another. In earliest years we imagined that God was able to be everywhere and so could be around us and see us and knows all things about us. As we became Christians, it was Jesus the Lord and Savior who was our companion. He promised in the Great Commission to be with us always and we felt he was in his Divine person who used to be human earlier. As the Charismatic movement came along, God lived within us by His Holy Spirit who filled us, empowered us for service and to live the Christian life. Later in my teachings in Belize, it was that Spirit who was really the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ and I wondered for some years if the Holy Spirit had any other identity than that of being the outreach of God and Jesus. Only two persons of Divinity and one Spirit for them. I have never read this confirmed by any writer nor anything in Scripture to indicate other wise. Now most recently, in the last month, I again experience Jesus as a person who speaks and makes his presence known and felt in my spirit as well as emotional if not physical feelings. I can’t quite describe or explain this, but it is like the real Jesus, close to the historical Jesus is present and speaks to us in our hearts and minds and clearly doesn’t want us to let him out of our fellowship. Several months ago I was asking myself if I loved Jesus. I had little feelings although I had a strong commitment to follow him in all ways, including living a life of obedience and no compromise with sin. Now, this Jesus is near and it is such a great experience, I can say I know I truly love him and never want to have him leave me in the way he is present presently. I would cleanse my life from anything to make him feel at home with me. It is also an emotional thing where I had to cry tears the other morning as I reviewed some of his many kindnesses to me in my life. I hope Jesus stays with me always in this way. I would do anything to have him stay. I believe he wants to stay close.

Yet since I wrote the above about 3 years ago, God is still showing himself in new ways. When I read about the vastness and supposed age of the universe, I just wonder how he would even want to keep contact with each person even in one world such as ours. But I wonder if he can still think of us also, what a wondrous God we have. It is mind-boggling also to read of our amazing body, (Reader's Digest, September 2013) “100 billion neurons, ( or brain cells), which each “fire” (talk to each other) five or 50 times per second” traveling as fast as 270 miles per hour so that we can recognize an object and identify it, i.e. a cat or ball. It is equally hard to imagine that each DNA molecule may have 80,000 distinct parts, scientist being proud they can a map them, but each hold information equivalent of a set of encyclopedias. Or a heart that can beat 100,000 times in day for many years. I am beginning to wonder if life goes on like a clock God made and wound it up, or whether God is the life where ever it exists. In all this, is God still personal caring for me? I just get the feeling I know a lesser amount of all he is than ever in my life. Do I know one percent of who he really is? I don't know.

Yet when I start talking to him in prayer each morning, he becomes so real my eyes water as I set before him my concerns for the day for me, my acquaintances, as well as my concerns for the Middle East and all world problems which only he can solve. He has made me and all his faithful children partners to help him bring in his Kingdom where the world once more will be as he originally intended. I don't know what side of God I will see tomorrow and the day and year after that. I doubt that I will ever see all of God, probably not even in the next world. But I only know, He will be more than..!