Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You. (Psalm 139:7-12)
Where is God? Our intellectual answer could be, “God is everywhere.” We might pull out a theological term like omnipresence, which means God is everywhere at the same time. Yet, David, who wrote Psalm 139, probably would not be impressed. To the ancient Hebrews, we don’t know something until we experience it.
I say, “God is everywhere.” Your reply might be “Yeah, I know.” The ancients might answer, “Do you? Have you experienced the everywhereness of God?” “Where can I go from Your Spirit?” is not just a question, but a reality God wants us to experience. It is not an idea that is glorious, but beyond our reach. It is a statement that grasps us and challenges our perceptions.
God is Omnipresent
God’s presence is everywhere. It is inescapable, and if inescapable, it is something we never lack. Yet we sometimes view ourselves and others as far from God. We call some places sacred or near to God. Other places we perceive as absent from God, maybe belonging to the Devil. How can this duality exist if God is everywhere all at once?
I have preached to tens of thousands of people over the years at Thorncrown Chapel. Some are more memorable than others. One Sunday, a man sat glaring at me during the whole service. I figured I said something to make him mad. Of course, people disagree with me, and sometimes I can tell, but rarely does it drive them to the rage I saw in this man’s eyes.
After the service, I was up front talking with people. He stayed at the back, pacing back and forth, still glaring at me. I was in no hurry to meet him. Finally, he wrote something on a piece of paper, threw it in the offering box and walked away disgusted. I was curious and walked back to read it. It said, “I felt the Sprit leave the building when you didn’t preach from the King James Bible!”
Did God leave, or did this man’s judgement close his eyes to God’s glory? Our biggest problem with God’s presence is perception. Nothing blinds us to God’s glory like self-righteousness, the thought that God’s nearness is earned. Often, our efforts to reach God alienate us from God. This is one of the great ironies of relationship with the Lord.
Self-righteousness comes in two forms. Either we reckon we are more worthy of God’s favor than others are, or we assume others are more worthy than us. Self-righteousness can bear both the fruit of pride and of shame.
At times, we misunderstand the nature of temptation. We view it as resisting bad behavior. Thus, repentance is a return to good behavior. We define the Devil as one who is constantly trying to get us to choose disobedience over obedience. From Mount Sinai (Old Covenant), this appears the proper view of things. God is all about good and evil, and to be on His side, we must be good.
The view from Mount Zion (New Covenant) is different. From here, Christ is the measure of who we are and what we have. Our union with Him defines us. Therefore, the nature of temptation is not necessarily found in good and evil, but in the conflict between Christ and self.
When we fail, Satan (or our own ego, as the case may be) comes to condemn. “Look at you! Look at what you have done.” Shame follows. The ego responds by thinking it must become worthy again. The means are remorse and a promise to do better. This is a picture of the Old Covenant repentance, a worthy apology and the return to the Law.
New Covenant repentance has a different framework. It is a return to Christ. Who is your righteousness, self, or Christ? When we fail, the temptation is to return to self as the source of our identity. This turning is defeat. Victory comes when refuse to let anything, but God’s grace define us, even on our worst day.
Temptation comes on our best day, too. “Look at you. See what you have done!” If we listen, we return to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, only we are on the good side of the tree. Its roots are in self, whether in good or evil. What follows is judgement towards others who don’t have an identity as worthy as ours.
We might assume such a viewpoint makes what we do or don’t do irrelevant. Yet, when Christ is the source of our identity, Christ-like behavior follows. In the New Covenant, the source of our behavior is knowing God, not the commandment.
In the first century, the greatest revival ever seen was happening. Its nature was not the journey from evil to good, but from Mount Sinai to Mount Zion (Law to Grace). It was repentance based, but it was turning from self as the source of identity to Christ. This letting go was for those who were evil and those who were good.
Perhaps this is why revival tarries in our day despite noble efforts to “move God.” There are prayer revivals and repentance revivals, all based on what we do to get God to be with us. Such efforts have a fading glory, but it is the glory of Sinai, not Zion.
True revivals are awakenings, not doings. As Paul said in Ephesians, “I ask that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know the hope of His calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and the surpassing greatness of His power to us who believe.” (Ephesians 1:18-19). The apostle understood the church at Ephesus needed to see something before they could ever do what God called them to do. With Paul, knowing always came before doing.
The view from Zion differs greatly from the view from Sinai. Under the Law, we are always incomplete and always needing to do more, ever striving but never arriving. If we are always trying to do a little more to move God, we are living in the Old Covenant relationship with the Lord. Fear of rejection is the master at Sinai.
From Zion, everything looks different. God is one who is inescapable, and His nearness is certain. From there, we see we are complete, never needing to do more or have more to be full. We share Christ’s completeness and the power of His death and resurrection. There is no fear in Zion; perfect love has cast it out.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,” even the night shall be light about me; Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to You. (Psalm 139:11-12)
David gives us a glimpse of the mind of God. I see darkness, but God sees only light. I see myself as far from God on my bad days, and near to God on my good. God sees only never changing nearness. We experience the everywhereness of God when our mind matches His. Like David, we proclaim: “Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?” Near and far are dualities that don’t exist for us anymore. Nearness is reality. Farness is the ego’s illusion.
In the thoughts of God, there is ever only one thing that defines us and that is Christ. We are ones created in His image. Any separateness that remains is a thought lifted against the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:5). God has given Himself to us, and His infinite gift defines us and the moments of our lives.
God is Omnitemporal
We are creatures of space and time. We live in the three dimensions of space, but also in the dimension of time. Einstein said, “People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” In other words, in the realm of space/time all we have is the moment. We do not live in the past or in the future, only now.
God is not like us. He inhabits all of time all at once, past, present, and future. As John says of the Lord in Revelation 1:8, “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and was and is to come—the Almighty. Here we see God inhabits time, and the word “almighty” (pantokrátōr) gives the sense of ruling over time or transcendence. He is in all things at all times, but He is also above all things.
And without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)
Why did God create space along with time? I am not a physicist, but it is obvious to a conscious being that space + time = experience. If there was only space, we would experience nothing.
Some say life is an experience of the finite. It is an endless flow of good, bad, and ordinary experiences. We occasionally might encounter God, and when we do, we pray He has a blessing in hand. We want Him to make our finite experience better than it is. Life is a river of the good, the bad, and the ordinary, but is it more than that? Is there a higher way of defining existence and even reality itself?
If God inhabits time, this suggests God has a much greater experience for us than bad, good, and ordinary. Every moment has the potential of being and experience of who God is. It also suggests that what defines the moments is not circumstances, but God Himself. Therefore, the point of life becomes not just knowing a good life, but knowing the Lord. All that happens to us is just the backdrop for this glorious unveiling. Everything has the purpose of knowing at its center, even the terrible stuff. Space and time are the place God created for us to know Him.
How does such knowing come? There is a great difference of opinion on the matter. Some say space/time is a place where God is earned. Others say it is a place where God is a gift.
Hebrews eleven helps us to discern the answer. It says, “without faith it is impossible to please God.” A Hebrew person in the first century might wonder if this is a misprint. They were people of the Torah. Certainly, it should say, “Without works it is impossible to please God.” We have to do something worthy before God will let us experience Him.
That it says faith and not works sums up the extraordinary change that was coming in the New Covenant. The word “faith” implies God is a gift. Every moment has the potential to be an experience of who God is. All we need is faith. Faith is for experiencing who God is in all of life: the good, the ordinary, and especially the bad. The Lord created the entire universe to be the place we realize His love and love Him in return.
The story of the prodigal son illustrates the Lord’s intent. It is really the story of two sons. Both had relationship problems with his father. One son was good, and the other was bad. We might conclude behavior was the problem. Yet, good and bad were not the source of their problems with their father. Both presumed their father’s love was earned, and this misconception led both to alienation. One was alienated by his shame and the other by his pride.
Why did the father love His sons? Because He did. He loved his sons because of who he was, and who he was defined his sons and their lives. Performance was not the only issue the sons had with their father. The second problem was their expectations. Both wanted a good life. The younger turned to evil to find it. The older brother thought his father would give it to him, and he became incensed when his father didn’t. Neither of them understood their father’s love. The father’s love gift was himself. This is the love gift our Father gives to us at every moment. There is not one second separated from His love. If we fail to realize the Father’s heart, our lives will be a mystery.
We have many metaphors for life:
A roller coaster ride
A battle
A journey
A box of chocolates!
A game.
These explain life for many people, but not for us. Like Paul said, our life is Christ (Phil. 1:21, Col. 3:4). While you might experience these metaphors and more, they do not define our lives. The good things that happen to you or the bad things do not define your life. Your life is Christ, and you experience Him when life is good and especially when life is bad.
We associate repentance with changed behavior, but even more so, it is a changed mind. Are the moments of your life defined by what is happening to you, or are they defined by who God is? Are they merely an experience of good and bad, or are they an experience of God? Change your mind about the moments of your life and the moments will change.
