05 Apr Psalm 139 Scripture Memory Challenge 2011: Verses 6 and 7
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? Psalm 139:6-7
Have you ever tried to flee or run away from God? Seriously. Certainly we’ve all at one time or another tried to run away and hide from Him? Or maybe just me. But just suppose you ever have, when you stop and think about it, it’s really ridiculous to think that we even could. I mean, after all, God is omnipresent (and that’s your big-girl word for this week). It means He’s everywhere! Not in a Forest Gump kind of way. God is the Omnipresent God; His Spirit is present everywhere at the same time. (Forest was definitely not everywhere at the same time.)
He is also “Emmanuel” – God with us, His presence is therefore personally with each one of us at the same time. Here’s another way to think of it: For the believer, there is never a time when God’s Spirit is not with her. Never, ever! But I think that most believers struggle with the reality that God’s personal presence is with them all the time. We may even have the idea that He’s really just a hide-and-seek god, or a god who plays “hard to get”. Perhaps we feel that God is not with us because we’ve actually been running and hiding from Him…
Like Adam and Eve when, after taking the bait, they made the wrong choice and disobeyed God:
“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” (Genesis 3:8-10)
Or like the famous fugitive, Jonah, who didn’t particularly care for the job God assigned him so he ran as far away as he could get, only to wind up in the depths of the ocean in the belly of a whale where, yes, God’s presence sought him out:
“But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.” (Jonah 1:3)
The thing is, there are no hiding places from God.
Where are you trying to hide from God?
In your work, your career, your social activities?
In your family obligations?
In your recreational activities?
In your ministry?
Could your hideouts and hideaways be in-
Self-pity?
Unforgiveness?
Stubbornness?
Pride?
And so we run from God when we should actually be running to Him. We hide from Him when we should really be hiding in Him. Yes, the Biblical reality is that it is God Himself who is our hiding place (Psalm 32:7), our refuge and our stronghold in times of trouble (Psalm 9:9); our shelter (Isaiah 4:6) from the heat and the storms of life. He is the one we are to run to with everything. Everything! No matter how big the sin or the screw up, He says, “Come now, let us reason together; though your sins are like scarlet they shall be white as snow…” (Isaiah 1:18).
He’s big enough, He’s God enough, He’s God Almighty… and He is the only One who can do anything about everything that concerns you!
Beloved, you can’t run away from Him and you certainly can’t outrun him. So, whatever your situation, run to Him.
Pressing on in His relentless love!
xo – P