God Is With You

A Few Thoughts to Consider

Do you ever feel like God is a million miles away?

You pray but hear nothing. You do your best to be faithful, but it’s like he doesn’t even care. Sometimes, you wonder if he’s actually real or if you’ve just bought into a cultural lie to cope with your sorry existence. Such are countless Christians’ thoughts, questions, and doubts throughout the centuries.

As if anticipating this struggle, Psalm 139 serves as a wonderful refresher in the total knowledge, presence, and power of God. The psalm is divided into four stanzas of six verses. The first six deal with the omniscience of God, verses 7-12 with his omnipresence, verses 13-18 with his omnipotence, and verses 19-24 containing a supplication.^[1]

In verses 1-2, the psalmist David says, ¹ “Lord, you have searched me and known me. ² You know when I sit down and when I stand up; you understand my thoughts from far away.” As Willem VanGemeren writes, “The presence of God is everywhere; hence he perceives all things in all places.”^[2]

David adds in verses 7-10, ⁷ “Where can I go to escape your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? ⁸ If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. ⁹ If I fly on the wings of the dawn and settle down on the western horizon, ¹⁰ even there your hand will lead me; your right hand will hold on to me.” Thinking on these words, the fourth-century Bishop Hilary of Poitiers wrote,  

My mind, intent on the study of truth, took delight in these most pious teachings about God. For it did not consider any other thing worthy of God than that he is so far beyond the power of comprehension that the more the infinite spirit would endeavor to encompass him to any degree, even though it be by an arbitrary assumption, the more the infinity of a measureless eternity would surpass the entire infinity of the nature that pursues it.^[3]