Throughout my career, at various points, I would have spent most of my day largely with one person. In later years, I worked from home. I might be “with someone” in the sense that they’d be the person I interacted with most.
But, perhaps some would work with mainly one person throughout their whole lives, such as Gilbert and Sullivan, Simon and Garfunkel and Laurel and Hardy. You would need to get on though 😀.
So, who do I spend most of my time with? Nowadays, at a human level, it’s my wife.
At a spiritual level, it’s God. Why do I say that?
Well, God is with me every moment of the day, whether or not I’m aware of His presence. But I think I am aware of his presence most of the time. It can feel like that with humans too. You might not be in the same room all day with someone, but if they pass away or become unavailable, you feel their absence.
God is Omnipresent
Psalm 139:7-8
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
Omnipresence is an attribute of God. He is present everywhere. That’s why we can pray to him anytime. There’s nothing to suggest that we can contact humans or angels in Heaven. That’s why I pray to God alone. But the Bible teaches that there are three persons in the one God. I won’t go into depth here, but for a thorough theological explanation, here are lectures by one of my favourite theologians, Wayne Grudem. Four of the lectures cover the Trinity.
On the night before he died, Jesus mentioned that all three persons of the Trinity will be with us. Here, he says that the Father and he himself will make their home with us.
John 14:23 – “Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’”
And just before that, he told his disciples about the Holy Spirit:
John 14:16-17 – “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”
The way I relate to the Trinity is that I generally pray to the Father, as this is the New Testament pattern. I pray in the name of Jesus, and I feel the presence of Jesus with me as I pray. And, of course, I can worship Jesus, as the angels in Heaven do, generally through music:
Revelation 5:12,13
In a loud voice they were saying: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” 13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!”
. To quote a modern hymn:
You're my friend,
And you are my brother,
Even though you are a King
I love you more than any other
So much more than anything
And the Holy Spirit is the one who makes all this real to me. He inspired the writing of Scripture and He make it alive to us when we read it. He manifests the presence of God. Jesus promised that He would send the Holy Spirit after he returned to heaven, and you can see how the presence of the Spirit transformed the early disciples in the Book of Acts. He’s not an impersonal power, He is a person, just as the Father and Son are.
Spirit of God, descend upon my heart,
Wean it from sin, through all its pulses move.
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as you are,
And make me love you as I ought to love.
But Hang On — Isn’t God up in Heaven?
Yes, when we pray, we pray Our Father who is in heaven. So, he is in heaven. But he is also with us. Maybe a good analogy would be speaking to someone on the phone. They might be thousands of miles away, but they are with you. On video or virtual reality, you have a greater sense of them being with you. I think the reason that the Lord’s prayer emphasizes God being in heaven is that in heaven, he manifests his presence in a much stronger way than down here. We always strive to be heavenly-minded people. We’ll be there in the future, and it’s our true home.
Even on earth, our sense of God’s presence can vary. That might be because we aren’t making the effort to draw near. But there are times when God does manifest his presence in unusually intense ways. We long for such manifestations. Many hymns touch on this. Here are some examples:
Heaven came down and glory filled my soul (filled my soul)
When at the cross my Saviour made me whole (made me whole)
It’s strange that the writer seems to suggest that his own experience and the cross happened at the same time. But they key point is that his personal experience came about because of what Jesus did for him at the cross. And when he trusted in Christ, it was applied to him personally.
Be still for the presence of the Lord,
The Holy One is here
Come bow before Him now,
With reverence and fear
At a human level, we can have a sense of someone’s presence even when they’re not with us. They might even have passed away. A good example of this is Let it Be by the Beatles. I used to think that the song was about the Blessed Virgin Mary, but it was about Paul McCartney’s own mother. And it’s true that we can feel the presence of lost loved ones long after they’re gone. Another example of that is U2’s Iris, which is about Bono’s mother. He uses the analogy of a star that’s already gone, but the light continues to reach the earth. So he still feels her with him.
But with God, it’s more than that. He really is with us.
Matt 28:19-20
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
And for those loved ones who belong to Jesus, we will see them again.
1 Thess 4:13
13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen aslee
Hibernia Gospel 