“Am I only a God nearby,” declares the Lord, “and not a God far away?
Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 23:23-24 NIV
In the verses for today, Jeremiah records some questions from God. There were false prophets in Jeremiah’s time and they were preaching that Israel’s God was a god that was only present at certain times and otherwise was absent. That He was only in certain places and not others. These false prophets were doing their best to help people believe that there were things that they could do and say that God would not know about.
The false prophets wanted the Israelites to change how they behaved, believed, spoke so they would follow them and not God. The false prophets were not accepting that God was seeing and knew what they were doing and continued to believe that they could do anything in secret and would be fine. God was aware of what they were doing and He was going to deal with them, just as He does with us when we sin and refuse to repent.
Being human, I have always thought that I had the ability to do things in secret. That only I would know what I was thinking or only the people involved with what I was doing would know what I had done. And while this may be true that as humans being we are limited and are not able to know what others are thinking because we cannot read their minds, it is not true for God. God is not human and He does not have the limitations that we have. He is able to see everything because He is everywhere.
So the idea that no matter were I go or what I do, God is always there and knows, used to scared me. I was afraid of making a mistake and getting in trouble because if I made enough mistakes, I believed that God would be done forgiving me and just walk away. In my life, I have done, said, and thought things that I am not proud of. I have tried my best to remember all of them so I can ask for forgiveness for those things from God.
Here is the wonderful news. Even though I have done those things, said those things, thought those things and felt those things, God has not walked away. I have come to Him with true sorrow in my heart, asking for forgiveness and He has forgiven me. He knew about them before I ever brought them to Him and He still wanted to listen to me and forgive me. That is a relief that my God is understanding, wants to be in a relationship with me and is willing to forgive me, because I am human and make mistakes.
The longer that I have been a believer, the more I have matured in my faith, I have come to realize that I have changed my feelings about God being everywhere. Now, I view the idea of not being able to hide, as a comfort. No matter what I think, feel, say or do, I know that God knows about it. So I try to not sin but when I do, because I am going to, I ask for forgiveness. I know that I don’t have this secret I am hiding from God because He already knows, and He is willing to forgive me. I am thankful for that.
I also view the fact that He is everywhere as an aide at times. Knowing He is everywhere helps me to resist temptations at times when I feel less than strong enough to do it on my own. It took me a while to think of His presence in that way and not as a threat and I feel comfort now knowing He is everywhere with me.
My question for you today is………Does His presence everywhere bring you comfort or dread? I pray that it is comfort but if it is not, I hope you would be willing to look at changing how you think about God being everywhere with you because He is.