God is Here Now

In the God Is book, I talk about how one of the last things that music icon Elvis Presley ever wrote was a note that he crumpled up and tossed away the night before he died. When he was found dead, one of his assistants retrieved the note and uncrumpled it, and it read in part, "I feel so alone sometimes. Help me, Lord." Alfred Hitchcock, another icon of the 20th century, spoke these words, some of the final words that he spoke on his deathbed. "I am lost in a sea of alone." Albert Einstein, the most recognized face of the 20th century, according to social historians, said, "It is strange to be known so universally, and yet to be so alone." What do they all have in common? Three icons, three of the most famous people of the last century, and yet every one of them said that they felt so alone. My guess is, you can often relate.

Mother Teresa observed years ago, "Loneliness is the poverty of the Western world." Some of you might be thinking, "That was the 20th century. The 21st century is different. We got Facebook, right? We got social networks. Nobody need ever be lonely again." According to a recent research paper by the Carnegie Mellon Institute, the more time people spend online, the lonelier they perceive themselves to be. So despite the popularity of social networks, the feelings of loneliness are actually getting worse. And this is serious. It's not just about your feelings. "Oh, you feel lonely." Well, a medical study concludes, "Lonely adults have a death rate twice as high as adults who are not lonely." As Dr. James Lynch puts it, "Loneliness is a lethal poison. We are simply not designed to be lonely."

So what's the cure? I mean, if people as popular as Elvis, Hitchcock, and Einstein still felt lonely, then there must be more to curing our feelings of loneliness than simply finding human companionship, right? I mean, all those people had what you'd call a huge posse, you know, lots of hangers on, but they were still lonely. We seem to be longing for something more. And I believe deep down we're all longing for a connection to the one who will never leave us or forsake us. We're longing for that connection to God. We all long to know that God is here now with me and with you.

Grab the message notes in the middle of your bulletins as we continue our study in the God Is series. Excuse me. In this series, we're studying the attributes of God. And if you are here for the first time this weekend, you chose a great time to get involved because you can still plunge into this. We're still in the early weeks of the study, and we designed a book as kind of curriculum to go along with the Sunday morning messages in our God Is book. There are daily devotional thoughts and scripture passages to read that tie into each weekend's topic, and you can pick these up at the information desk this morning. I encourage you to get involved.

And also, we have small groups meeting in over 100 places all over the county on every single night of the week. I'd encourage you to get into one. We've got the meeting in the morning, at noon, at night. We've got some that have dinner, some that don't have dinner. There's one that fits your lifestyle. We'd encourage you to plug in. You can get a list of the open small groups at the info desk as well. It really is a lot of fun. I do a small group on Wednesday nights up at Mount Hermon, and there's a woman who's been coming to our small group. She's never been to a small group before in her life. She's come down two times, and after the last small group, she told me, "This is so much better than I thought it would be!" She said, "It's like a party, only you're talking about God!" And I thought, "What a great description," and I hope you're able to plunge into those as well.

Well, today I want to talk about what theologians call God's omnipresence. God is omnipresent. If you really get what the Bible teaches on this, you will leave today so much more secure and confident. To say God is omnipresent means God is everywhere, and the Bible talks about this a lot. In fact, right now, let's read the key verse for today out loud together. This is just one of many, many verses that I could show you. This one's from Jeremiah 23:23–24. Let's read this out loud. "I am a God who is everywhere, and not in one place do you not know that I am everywhere in heaven and on earth."

Now, this might seem like an easy concept, but there are a couple of very common misconceptions about omnipresence that can make God seem more remote, not closer. So watch out for these. First, this does not mean God is everything. That is pantheism. But the Creator is not the same as the creation. God is the artist, and all of creation is his masterpiece. It doesn't mean God is everything, but it does mean God is fully present everywhere. God is fully present everywhere.

And I brought a prop to show you what I mean by this. There's a common misconception in the world about God's omnipresence that goes something like this. I've got a globe here with me in my backpack this morning, and this will represent the earth. Now, a lot of people think of the omnipresence of God like this. God is so big that he's like a blanket that covers the world. Of course, you can say that God is omnipresent because he's so big, he's everywhere. Like this blanket kind of smothers this globe, God kind of smothers our world with his presence. There's a little piece of God over here with us. There's a little piece of God up by the North Pole. There's a little piece of God in China. But that's not omnipresence. That's just immensity.

To say that God is omnipresent means something different. Imagine that you could crumple up this blanket so that all of it fit into one spot. To say that God is omnipresent means that God is everywhere at once, like this. All of God is there in Russia. All of God is right there in China. All of God is right there in Fresno. He's absolutely everywhere focused and concentrated. That is more like the biblical idea of omnipresence because God is not limited by our three dimensions, right? Because he's infinite. Because he exists outside of time and space, all of God is everywhere at the same time. All of God is with me right now as I'm talking. And all of God is there with you. It's not like there's a blanket of God covering this space and I've got part of God here and you've got part of God. We've all got all of God with us. All of God is here now.

I like the way John Orpert puts it. God is closer than you think. That sentence is one of those sentences that is always true. No matter how close you think God is, he's closer. Because just as he is infinitely powerful, he is infinitely close. Three thousand years ago, King David discovered this in Psalm 139. That's the passage I want to focus on today. I love the message translation of these verses starting in verse five. I look behind me and you're there. And then up ahead and you're there too. Your reassuring presence coming and going. This is too much, too wonderful. I can't take it all in. Is there any place I can go to avoid your spirit, to be out of your sight? If I climb to the sky, you're there. If I go underground, you're there. If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon, you'd find me in a minute. You're already there waiting. And then I said to myself, oh, he even sees me in the dark. At night I'm immersed in the light. It's a fact. Darkness isn't dark to you. Night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you. Oh, yes, and you shaped me first inside, then out. You formed me in my mother's womb. I thank you, high God, you're breathtaking.

Now think of what David says here. From the highest stars to the farthest ocean horizon and even all the way back to the womb. There is no place and no time in your life that you cannot say God is here now. Now this is beautiful and kind of trippy, but what does this mean to me? How does this help you and I get through life? Well, let's go through Psalm 139 section by section, the verses we just read. First, God is with me in the dark places, the dark places. In this Psalm, David imagines trying to run away from God. Verse seven, where can I go from your spirit? In the NIV version, where can I flee from your presence? He wants to get away from God. And then skip to verse 11. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you.

I want to ask you a question. Show of hands. How many of you have ever tried to, in one way or another, even for one second, tried to run away from God so you could kind of do your own thing? Anybody here ever tried to do that? Well, I have for sure. When you do, David says, guess what? God is right there next to you. I don't know about you, but that is a huge motivation right there for me not to give in to temptation. How many of you have noticed that it is so much easier to control yourself when you know you are being watched? Have you noticed this? Sometimes we go to Fresh Choice, you know, with the family after church on Sundays, and I don't know about you, but I go there and I see that huge bowl of chocolate mousse, and I often think, I'm going to take the whole thing. And I begin to just heap it onto my plate, and then I look and I see an attractive, slim person standing next to me, and they're looking at me like, what a pig. And I heap it back into the bowl, right? Why? Because somebody's watching.

But you ever forget that God's there? Ever become what I call a temporary atheist for some reason or another and live as if God wasn't there with you? I told you before about the time I went to a Niners game with my wife and family, and the guy right behind us was using a certain colorful adjective that you can't say on television for every other word in every sentence. He was using it as an adjective, as a verb, as a noun. It didn't matter if he was mad or not. It was bleep the bleeping refs, bleeping coaches. Hey, bleeper, pass the bleeping peanuts. I mean, it was just on and on like this. If they'd had to beep him for TV, he would have sounded like R2D2. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, because that's all he said.

And he gets furious. And I'm pretty sure because he had a few sheets of the wind, he did not understand what I meant by the term "adjective." And so he stood up and he does this. He says, "What? I'll break your scrawny chicken neck." Just like that. Like, what? He was driving me nuts. And then I look behind him about three rows, and I see two security guards, and I started to put two to two together, and I looked at him and I said, "You know, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." No, that's not what I said. In fact, I became a temporary atheist. I wasn't thinking of God at all. What happened was I decided to win. I saw the security guard and I decided, I know security is strict to candlestick. You know, these days you can't even touch somebody else. You'll get thrown out. I've been hearing about it on the radio, so I decided to get him thrown out of the game.

And so I smiled and said, "Really? He'll break my chicken neck? Try it." There it is. Try it. Come on, touch me. Touch me. I dare you. Come on. Come on. Touch me. I dare you. I dare you. Oh, I can be pretty annoying when I choose to be. Finally, he can't resist. I see the security guard coming closer and the bleeping guy grabs my coat lapels like this, and I said, "That's it, buddy. You're out of here." And the guard promptly grabs him and tosses him out of the game. And I turned around and I looked at my wife and I'm chuckling. My victory chortle, right? Basically, it was my way of going, "Me alpha male, right? You know, village chief, not always strong man, but clever man." Like this, right? And she looks at me like this and I go, "What?" And she says three words, "What about God?" And I go, "Oh, yeah, God!" Right? And I turn around, "Jesus loves you." And she's being dragged away.

You know, what happened there? I literally became like a temporary atheist. I was so consumed with the moment. I couldn't have cared less about God or that man's soul or anything. Have you ever had that happen to you? You get so mad, maybe when you're driving, or so worried when you're up at four in the morning worrying in bed, or so lustful, or just so busy that you forget about God. It's like he doesn't exist. You become a temporary atheist and then hours later it's, "Oh, yeah, God." David is saying, "When I stay intentionally aware of the fact of God's presence, it helps me to maintain more self-control. I'm so much more alert to the things I say, to the things I do." And here's the thing, he's not just there to be big brother, right? Kind of like the creepy Santa Claus song, "He knows if you've been sleeping, he knows if you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so you better be good." And I used to think when I was a kid, I took it like, "Or Santa Claus will come and beat you up." It freaked me out, that song.

And we think of God's omnipresence that way sometimes, but he's not there just to watch. He's there to help. Jesus said, "The Comforter will be there to remind you of everything I have said and to teach you and guide you." And can you ever have that experience? You're in the dark. You want to do something wrong. You're being tempted. And all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit taps you on the shoulder and says, "Hey, remember me? Hi!" Right? He's just fulfilling the promise of Jesus Christ, that you are never alone in the dark places. I am so grateful. That would be enough for me, but it gets better.

David says, "God is with me in the low places." Low places. Some of you right now, you cannot resist thinking of that song, "I got friends in low places." Right? You can't resist. Well, you do. David says, "If I make my bed in the depths." You're there. Interesting word used for depths here is literally the Hebrew word "sheol," which has been translated "the deep," "the grave," and even "hell." In the original language, it conjures the image of a dark pit in the afterlife, where the soul goes after it's dead. And I love that David uses this word because he's poetically expressing the fact that, "As low as I can possibly go, God is right there."

You ever felt so spiritually low, maybe because you feel like I've been backsliding, or I just am so depressed that you feel like, "When I pray, my prayers never get above the ceiling." Have you ever thought that to yourself? "My prayers are so weak. They're not going very far when I pray." Well, David is saying, "God's below the ceiling." God is right there next to you. You don't have to be so spiritual that you feel like your spiritual batteries are so charged, you've been so holy last week, that you're able to launch these turbo supercharged rocket-powered pairs that blast off from Earth and get a million light-years away up to God on his heavenly throne. He's right here with you. You just think it. He knows it. Because all of God is here now, even in the pits.

See, the Bible never promises that there won't be low times. In fact, most of the Bible was written by people during their low times. But this is what they discovered. "Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." Now notice, it doesn't say, "I feel you with me." It says, "You are with me." Statement of fact. I don't always feel it, but I put one foot in front of the other, believing it's true. And times are tough right now, and some of you are going through some very low times, and you're ready to give up or to give in. But God brought you here today, and I feel like I want to look you in the eye and promise you that no matter what it feels like, God is here now with you. As low as you feel like you are, God is right here.

And it gets even better. Because third, David says, "God is with me in the new places, the foreign places, the distant places, the new places." Some of you know my wife surprised me with a trip to Hawaii for my 50th birthday this year. It was awesome. But knowing that I would eventually be preaching on the omnipresence of God in Psalm 139, there was a place over there in Hawaii, on Maui, that I really wanted to go so I could take some pictures for you and show you for this message. I decided I wanted to try to find Charles Lindbergh's grave. It was a little hard for us to find. Vines have overgrown the road, and the sign to the little church where he's buried is all rusted, as you can see. But we finally found it and got there, and here's why I was so interested.

In his life, Lindbergh had traveled all over the globe, flying across the Atlantic, flying across the continent, achieving rock star status in an era before rock stars for making these daredevil solo airplane flights. Yet, he spent the last few years in the tiny town of Kipahulu on the jungle-like coast of Maui, his only public appearances. Every Sunday, he and his wife went to this tiny church. And then when Lindbergh was told by doctors that he was dying and only had about a month left to live, it was cancer, he sat down at a drawing table and designed his own simple gravestone. It has only his name in Psalm 139:9. Here it is. "If I take rise on the wings of the morning, if I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea," the first part of Psalm 139:9. He was saying, "God was with me when I settled here on the far side of the sea. God was with me when I flew to the far side of the sea, and God will be with me on my final trip." Because the next verse in Psalm 139 is, "Even there, your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast." The original writer, David, 3,000 years before Lindbergh was imagining journeying to the far side of the sea. And to the ancient Israelites, this was scary. They were not an ocean-going culture. David was saying, "In the most foreign place I can imagine, you are already there."

Ever been in a foreign place, a new place, new school, new town, new job situation, and you felt so lonely? And even if you're not moving, the ground is always shifting beneath your feet anyway, because life never stops changing. You're always headed into new territory. There's a death, or there's an economic situation, or there's a relationship change, and it's new territory. So how do you deal with all those new places? You might really need to hear this right now. You might be sitting here, and the most scary question to you right now is the question, "What's next?" Because life has been throwing you nothing but curves lately. Well, check out this verse. Moses is speaking to the Israelites, and they're literally on the border of new territory. And Moses says, "Well, the Lord himself goes before you, and at the same time will be with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged."

Let me ask you, shout it out. What does it say the Lord will never do here? Leave you or what? Leave you or forsake you. I won't ask for a show of hands here, but you may have been left or forsaken by a human, a human father or mother, a boyfriend or a spouse, but God is not like them. He will never, ever leave you or forsake you, ever. And then finally David says, "God is right here with me in the first place, right at the beginning of life." David says, "You knit me together in my mother's womb. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place." In the God Is book, I talk about Christian counselor David Siemens. He once counseled a woman named Betty, and Betty never felt really wanted. Her parents got married only because her mom was pregnant with her. Her father took off almost immediately, and she carried this sense of being an unwanted accident with her whole life.

And then one day at the end of a counseling session, Dr. Siemens gives her some homework, and he says to her, "I want you to imagine the very moment you were conceived in your mother's womb. Where was God at that moment?" And Betty said she took the assignment home with her and didn't work on it the first day or the second day, because she thought it was just kind of weird. And finally the third day, she sits down and starts to think about it, and is just overcome with tears. And she writes this in her journal. Let me just read you a couple of paragraphs that she wrote. "Oh God, my heart leaps with the thought that you, my loving father, have never forsaken me. You were there when I was conceived. You were thinking of me in my mother's womb, molding me. You were there when my mother gave birth to me, standing in the vacant place of my father. You were there when I cried the bitter tears of a child whose father has abandoned her. You were holding me in your gentle arms all the while, rocking me gently in your soothing love. Oh, why didn't I know of your presence? God, my dear, dear father, my heart had turned to frost. But the light of your love is beginning to warm it."

And it goes for you too. Anything you went through, God was there. Anything you're going through now, God is here now with you. Anything you will go through in your future, God will be there too. There is no place that you ever go that you cannot say, "A hundred percent of God is here now with me." So if this is true, then how do I live in the reality of God's presence? Because if I really lived like I believed this, my whole life would change, right? I got to show you something Adrienne Moreno showed me. This is from YouTube. There's a woman who is 29 years old and very recently she posted this online. She wrote, "I was born deaf and eight weeks ago I received a hearing implant." This is the video of them turning it on and me hearing myself for the first time. Watch this.

There you go. It's beeping. So now technically your device is on. Can you tell? Oh, that's exciting. Here, you can put it down for a second. Just get used to the sound. What does it sound like? Do you want to press the issue? I want to hear myself cry. Can you hear me? Can you hear your voice? Is your voice on pretty loud? Um, no, not really. Well, that's good. You'll get used to all of that over time. Do you want to hear your husband say something? Isn't that beautiful? The sound waves were always there all around her the whole time. It didn't just suddenly start to have sound in her life. It was always there. But now she's able to hear it. Now she's tuned into it. And something very similar happens with the presence of God. God is always here now with you. But when you live aware of that fact, like her, you suddenly become sensitized, attuned to a reality that you had never been paying attention to before.

So how do you live like this spiritually? This is very important. You have to start at the beginning and ask Christ in to your life. Ask Christ in. See, even though God is all around us, right, we humans perceive a distance between us and God. And the Bible has a word for that distance. The Bible calls it alienation. God is always with us, but our sin alienates us from a relationship with our holy God. It's kind of like this. Imagine this scene. You are sitting right next to your wife or husband or friend or a child in the car, and yet you are alienated from them. You're right next to them, but things are frosty. Show of hands, how many of you have ever experienced something like this? How many of you experienced this on the way to church this morning? Can I see a show of hands? Really? How many of you are just embarrassed that you just raised your hand just then?

Okay, here's the thing. Proximity does not guarantee relationship. Would you agree with this? You can be sitting very close to somebody and yet be alienated from them. And that's how it is, the Bible says, between you and God. Proximity does not guarantee relationship because we are all sinners. There's that distance, that alienation, yet God desires a relationship. And so God does something about this. Colossians 1:22 says, "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body." He's saying that Jesus Christ came to earth, remember he was called Emmanuel, God with us, to bridge the relationship gap.

But you want to know something tragic? Although this is true, and many of us here in this room believe this technically, and we could live daily in the presence of God because of what Jesus Christ has done, ending the alienation, we don't. And that's a tragedy. Because we're living for all intents and purposes as if there was still alienation. Now listen, if God went to all those lengths to remove the alienation, then surely he would want you and me to live in the reality of his presence, enjoying a relationship, right? So how do I do that? Well, the next two bullet points there in your notes. I need to affirm the truth of his presence daily. And this is biblical, I could show you a hundred verses, but there's a story in the Old Testament where a man named Jacob says, "Surely the Lord is in this place." And I was not aware of it. And that's often our problem too, so stay aware of it.

In fact, here's a homework assignment. Try saying this phrase everywhere you go this week. "The Lord is in this place." In fact, let's practice, say that phrase with me right now. "The Lord is in this place." Say it again. "The Lord is in this place." And then say it throughout the week. Every time I point my finger at you here in this next section, I want you to say it out loud, okay? Watch this. You're in the parking lot here at Twin Lakes Church, leaving after this service, and somebody in front of you annoys you because they're not moving faster. "The Lord is in this place." You remind yourself of that. Later on in the week, there's a traffic jam on Highway 1. "The Lord is in this place." You're at work and you're being mistreated. "The Lord is in this place." Late at night, you're worried about all kinds of things. Remind yourself, "The Lord is in this place." It's always true. So stay aware of it.

And then look for signs of his activity daily. The Bible says, "The whole earth is full of his glory." So choose to see it. His presence is on display all around you. The book, "The Prince of Tides." It's not a Christian book, but it's interesting. One character in the book looks back on their life and says these words. Listen, "I would so like to have walked this world thanking God for oysters and porpoises, praising God for bird songs and sheet lightning, seeing God reflected in pools of creek water and the eyes of stray cats. I would have liked to have talked to fellow travelers also intoxicated with the love of God. I would have loved to have seen the whole world with eyes incapable of anything but wonder and with a tongue fluent only in praise." Why look back on your life and think, "I would have loved to have lived like that." You know what's better than this? Living like it.

So here are the three important truths. Ask Christ in. Affirm the truth of His presence with you. And this week particularly, try to get into the habit, develop the habit of looking for signs of His activity because here's the big idea today. I'd like you to read this last verse out loud with me. David said in Psalm 118:9, let me hear you. "And so I walk in the Lord's presence as I live here on earth." He's saying, "You know what? God is always right here with me, so I'm going to learn to walk in His presence daily, intentionally living in the reality that God is here now will change the way you experience your life in a very good way."

Let's bow our heads in a moment of prayer right now. With everybody's heads bowed, let me just say this to you. For those of you here who are tired or discouraged or hurting or afraid or worried or sick or depressed, God is here now. Some of you need to take the very first step that we talked about and say, "Jesus Christ, come into my life right now. This is your moment." Say, "Jesus, come into my life. I know you're all around me. You're beside me, but I want you inside me in my life." Now, I want to ask you to take a step right now. While everybody else's head is bowed, if you prayed that prayer for the first time today, "Jesus, I invite you in," I want to ask you to make kind of a declaration just between you and me so I can pray for you. I want you to raise your hand right now. If you took that step today for the first time, let me see your hand. Just slip it up right now. Thank you. We've already had so many people thank you. Lift up their hands Saturday night. A wonderful crowd of people praying that prayer for the first time, thank you.

Father, you see these hands raised. These people are asking you to come into their lives as their Savior and Lord. You reconciled them to God by pardoning their sins on the cross. And may they learn to just walk daily in your presence. And now with everybody's heads still bowed, some who have prayed that prayer maybe years ago need to pray this. "Lord, help me begin a habit this next week to see that you are always right here with me. Help me to realize that there is no point I will ever be that I cannot say the Lord is in this place. God is here now." Thank you so much for the confidence and the comfort that that gives us in every moment. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.