God's Nearness
Pause:
Before you start reading this devotional, take a moment to stop what you’re doing, slow down and focus on Jesus.
Pray and ask him to open your eyes to see as you read the Scriptures, and to open your ears to hear as you wait on the leading of the Spirit.
Read:
Psalm 139:1-16:
“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.
3 You observe my travels and my rest;
you are aware of all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue,
you know all about it, Lord.
5 You have encircled me;
you have placed your hand on me.
6 This wondrous knowledge is beyond me.
It is lofty; I am unable to reach it.
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.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me,
and the light around me will be night”—
12 even the darkness is not dark to you.
The night shines like the day;
darkness and light are alike to you.
13 For it was you who created my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise you
because I have been remarkably and wondrously made.
Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well.
15 My bones were not hidden from you
when I was made in secret,
when I was formed in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw me when I was formless;
all my days were written in your book and planned
before a single one of them began.”
Going Deeper:
God is nearer to us than anyone else—in fact, nearer to us than any human being could possibly achieve. He has not only “placed his hand on us,” but he has “encircled us,” or as Paul quotes in the book of Acts, “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). As one of our own poets, Alfred Tennyson, has said, “Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”
There is nowhere we can go that is far from God. Even if we “make our bed in Sheol,” in the darkest and emptiest place we can fathom, He is still with us. He “saw us when we were formless,” knows us and our thoughts more intimately than we know ourselves, and knows every detail of our futures. He knitted us together, and counts every hair on our head. There is nowhere that we can go where his presence is not with us. After all, his own Spirit dwells within us! It is impossible for God to be any nearer.
It’s easy to imagine God as far away. Media all the way from Renaissance art to 2020 TV portrays God as an invisible, unknowable being on a throne lightyears away. Yet, that’s not the picture that Scripture paints of God. Scripture reveals God as a Father that teaches us how to walk and who bends down to give us our food (Hosea 11:3-4). Scripture says that “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
If David experienced this nearness of God so vividly and intimately, how much more can we experience God’s nearness now that we are in Christ? David knew that God was always with Him. But if we are in Christ, we can now have full assurance that God always looks at us with perfect love, full approval, no condemnation, and unlimited grace. God is not only literally near us, but we can now draw near to him without fear or hesitation about our own sin. No matter how far we fall short or how unworthy we are to stand in God’s perfect presence, Jesus gives us the possibility of being close with God: “But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13).
Let us conclude with this final picture of just how close God is to us:
“Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus— 20 he has inaugurated for us a new and living way through the curtain (that is, through his flesh)— 21 and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water” (Hebrews 10:19-22).
What would it look like for us to draw near to God without hesitation or fear, often and boldly, fully convinced of just how near He is?
Pray:
Respond to God in prayer by speaking to Him about what stood out to you from this passage this morning.
Listen:
What is the Holy Spirit saying to you this morning?
Apply:
What are you going to do in response to what God is saying to you from the text and by the Spirit?