So I did hear a story recently about a Sunday school teacher who walked into his Sunday school class and he asked his students, he said, Hey kids, I wonder if there's anyone here this morning who can tell me where God is. He might even know where God is located. And three kids hands went up, and so he was excited that they knew the answer, or had answers to this question. And so he called on the first one and said, hey, where do you think that God is? And the first kid said, Well, God is in heaven. And he said, Yes, that's right. Very good. Good job. And so he called on the second person and said, Well, where do you think God is? And and she said, Well, God is in my heart. And he said, Yes, that's right, too. And then he got to the third little boy, and he said, and where do you think God is? And he said, Well, I know that God lives in my bathroom. Said, Now hold on, time out there. Where in the world did you get that idea from? How? Why is it that you think that God lives in your bathroom. And he said, Well, every single morning while my mom is in the bathroom, my dad bangs on the door and he says, My God, are youstill in the bathroom?This kid may have had a little bit of a misunderstanding of that situation. However, his answer was not technically incorrect, and the reason why is because of the attribute of God that we are talking about today in week three of this message series, which is this God's attribute of omnipresence. Now when we're talking about omnipresence, you'd see this little word Omni right here. And this word is the beginning of three different attributes that we're going to talk about today and over the next two weeks. And it comes from the Latin word omnis, which means all kids. If you're following along, that's in your bulletin. You can write that down right there. It means all present, all present, or everywhere present, that God is every where present. Now, when we see that, we ask the question sometimes, well, how do we know that to be true? I mean, is that just something that we kind of think about is true about God? Or did someone tell us? I mean, how do we know that God is omnipresent? And the answer to that question is that God reveals it to us. He he tells it. That's what it takes. We talked about this the very first week, that God is the one who has to take the step to reveal Himself to us, and he does that through general revelation, special revelation. And we find this special revelation in the scriptures. Jeremiah, 2324 says, Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? Declares the Lord. So it's the Lord saying this, do not I fill heaven and earth again, declares the Lord. The Lord reveals to us that he fills the heavens and he fills the earth, that there is no secret place that you can go to on Earth where he is not this isn't the only place we see that in Scripture, King David recognized this to be true about God, and he wrote this in Psalm 139, he says, Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there, your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say surely, the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me. Even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. King David recognized God's omni present, that he's all present, that he's everywhere present. He's present in the heavens. He's present on earth. If you go to the far side of the sea, he's there even in the dark. I mean, the dark is the place that we go to hide from people. We play hide and go seek, sometimes in the dark, because people can't find you there, and it's really difficult to find people in the dark. But it's not difficult for God. He always knows where you are, because he's there as well wherever you go, God is always there, and he even tells us why. Here's how we this can be true in the very opening verse, right here, of verse seven, he says, Where can I go from your spirit? God is Spirit. He doesn't have a physical body. Body like we do. He doesn't have the limitations that a physical body has. Jesus even said this in John chapter 424, remember he said, God is spirit, therefore we worship in spirit and in truth, God is Spirit, He does not have the same limitations. He's not limited to a particular geographical or spatial location, he's everywhere, present all of the time. Now, when we talk about God's omnipresence, there are sometimes some misunderstandings of what we mean about that. And so we want to be clear about what is true and what is not true when we talk about God being all present. And the first thing that we want to talk about today, when we talk about some of the misunderstandings that people have is this, that when we talk about God being present everywhere, it's not like he's so spread out, that part of him is here and part of him is over here. What we're saying is, if you say that that is true, that he's spread out so much so, that part of God is here and part of God's there, then that means that you can walk into some places, and less of God's presence is available to you there, and you can walk into other places, and more of God's presence is available to you there, and that's not what we mean when we talk about God's omnipresence. The 19th and early 20th century theologian a H strong defines God's Omnipresence this way, God in the totality of his essence without diffusion or expansion, without multiplication or division, penetrates and fills the universe in all of its parts. I love this God in the totality of his essence fills the universe in all of its parts. That means that there is not less of God in one place and more of God in another. That is sometimes a lie, a deception, that we can fall into. Many of us would probably tend to think that more of God is present in a church building than he is at Walmart across the street. But according to God's attribute of Omnipresence in the totality of his essence, filling the universe in all of its parts, that means that God is not more present here than he is across the street. At Walmart you have access to all of God all of the time. Wherever you go, you have access to all of God all of the time. You are never, ever alone. Turn toyour neighbor and say, That's good news.Here's the next misperception that we fall into sometimes God's Omnipresence is not pantheism. Now you may not necessarily know what pantheism is, but you've probably heard people talk about or to use language around that that, again, is a misunderstanding of God's omnipresence. Elisa Childers talks about God's or, I mean, pantheism in this way, says one of the core principles of the new spirituality. We're talking about this new spirituality, this new age movement people are open to more spiritual things in the world is that everything in the universe, including you and me, is made up of the same substance and reality. In other words, there is no separation between you, your dog, and the tree outside. This worldview is called pantheism, and believes that God is a type of divine consciousness or energy that is one in the same with the universe, something we can tap into as we become more enlightened. And so maybe you've heard people use the language of you know the universe is speaking to me in this moment, right? Or I'm gonna tap into the power of the universe. And it's this idea of, okay, God's omnipresent, and so maybe he's in or a part of everything. It's just the universe is God, and I can find God in everything and draw from that this energy or this consciousness. And that is not what we are talking about when we're talking about God's omnipresence. This is not the God of the Bible. God's creation reflects God, but the creator is not the creation there we see that, right? I mean, we see that on the opening ages of pages of scripture in John. Genesis, it says God took nothing and created everything. He didn't just spread himself out or take himself and just throw he took nothing and he created everything. God exists separate from his creation. And so when we look at creation, and it's amazing and beautiful, and there's design in it and all of the above. It's a reflection of God, but it's not God Himself. We do not worship the creation. We worship the Creator, the Creator God, and so when we're talking about omnipresence, we're not talking about this idea of him being a conscious or divine consciousness or energy or a part of everything in the universe, and all that comes with this idea of pantheism. The third misunderstanding that I think we sometimes have is that God's presence is oppressive. And what I'm saying is it's not I want you to understand the truth that it's not oppressive. When some people think that God is present everywhere, then it can have a tendency to make them scared. Oh my gosh, if I can't ever get away from God, if He is everywhere, present all the time, and I can't hide from him and hide some of the things that I'm doing from him, if I can't run far enough to get away from him, then that is a terrifying reality, and so we live our lives in fear. Now the truth is, is that? I mean, of course, if you begin to recognize that you are a sinner in the presence of a holy and an all powerful God, then that can be a healthy fear, that that can be a frightening thing to wonder what would happen to you as a result of that, but even God allowing you to see that is His goodness, and that's the reason we talked about that attribute last week. If you were here, we talked about the attribute of God's goodness. The reason I opened with that, or it was one of the beginning ones, is because we need to understand that as we get into a number of other attributes of God to help us understand those attributes about him. And so what we talkabout is that okay,if there is someone in your life who is an all powerful dictator, then you may do things that they want you to do out of fear, but you won't give your heart to them. You won't love them. God is an all powerful being, but he his heart is for you, and He wants your heart to be for him. So he recognizes that if he if his heart isn't for you, and He wants your heart to be for him, then he can't just create it where you wouldn't know that he is good, where he could just control you like robots, because you would never give your heart to Him. There had to be free choice and free will involved with that. And you have to understand God's attribute of goodness. And when you begin to understand that he's good, then that is when you'll begin to see, oh, his heart is for me, and I want to give my heart to him. And so we've got to understand that when we talk about God's Omnipresence is it's not a fearful thing. It's not a scary thing. We we see His goodness in the fact that he let Jesus, His one and only Son, leave the glory and the riches of heaven to come here to suffer and die, so that our sins could be forgiven. Why? So that we could be in his presence, so that he could be with us and we could be with Him forever. And so we see His goodness in that, and it's not something then, then we have to live in fear about, and we have to constantly be worried about. For the believer in Christ, His constant presence is not oppressive. It's something to be a comfort to us, it's a blessing to us. It's something to be thankful for and celebrated. And so we look at some of these things and we think, okay, yeah, again, God's Omnipresence is, is not all of these things that we talked about here, but what is it? What are the good things that we need to know and help us understand that impact our life today. And that's this for the believer in Jesus, again, all of God dwells in you.This was not always the case.As soon as sin enters the world, and you look at scriptures all throughout the Old Testament, one of the things that we see is that God was present. He's always been here. He exists everywhere. Omnipresence was still true, and he was revealing himself to people. He was revealing the conditions of people's hearts. But there was something that God was. Up to that was a mystery that had not been revealed yet completely. It was hinted at. It was prophesied about. People understood pieces of it, but it hadn't been real revealed completely, because that didn't come until Jesus came. Here's what I mean, the apostle Paul in Colossians one verses 25 through 27 says this. He says, I have become its servant. By the commission God gave me to present to you the Word of God, in all its fullness, not holding back anything. Now, right for the mystery. Here's our language, the mystery that God has kept hidden. So there were times where people didn't know this to be true, hidden for ages and generations, but is now, now is disclosed to the Lord's people. Is what To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery. What is it? Christ in you, the hope of glory in the Old Testament, God was with them, omnipresence. Was there? People could see God in different ways, but the mystery that hadn't been revealed until Jesus came is that now not only is God going to be present with you, but he's going to dwell in you. Christ, all of the living God is going to come and dwell inside of you again, not just part of God. Remember, we're talking about the totality of his present being with you. All of God comes to dwell in you. How because you enter into this spiritual union with Him, and you begin to encounter his presence in a way that the people of the Old Testament were not able to experience when you open up your Old Testament and you read about King David, a man after God's own heart, you read about Moses, you read about Abraham, and these key people all over the Old Testament, these big names in Scripture that you see they were not able to experience the presence of God in the same way that you and I get to experience the presence of God in our lives. After Jesus' death, resurrection, ascension and sending of the Holy Spirit, you get to experience God in a more full and complete way that they don't get to experience now, the thing is, we talk about and use that language a decent amount of time, that God lives in you. The little kid goes, Yeah, God lives in my heart. And we say that language, and I think sometimes we don't really fully understand what we're talking about, or if we do, we don't really capture the wonder and in mystery and all of it, or we have a tendency to sometimes forget those things. And so I want to read to you something that Teresa of Avila wrote in the 1500s this is good for us to be reminded that Christianity has been around for over 2000 years, that people have been experiencing God and His presence in their lives way longer than you and I have been. And so we need to be reminded of the things where God met them at and what they said and how they still apply to us today. This is kind of paraphrased of what she said in more modern language, but she said this, there is a secret place, a radiant sanctuary overflowing with the 10,000 beautiful things, worlds within worlds, forest rivers, velvet coverlets thrown over feather beds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars, bountiful forest, a universal library, a clarity so complete you will never again forget this magnificent refuge is inside you believe the incredible truth that the beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being, because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation.Do you hearthe wonder and the awe that she is experiencing of Christ in her the hope of glory, the beloved dwelling place, the core of your being, the most beautiful place in all of creation. Sometimes. Times, we tend to get this idea again in our heads, of God's present up there somewhere, and we're down here, and there's this distance, and we're trying to close the gap, or I wish I could find or experience more of God, and he's right there at the core of your being, the most beautiful place of all creation. Believer in Christ, don't lose the wonder, the awe, the majesty of Christ in you, the hope of glory. If you've put your faith and trust in Him for salvation, then you have access to God's refuge, his safety, his joy, his peace, his rest, his healing, his wisdom, His power and His abundant life. It is available to you at the very core of your being. It's not something you're missing. It's not something you need to look for. It's not something you need to go find through religious activity, it is there at the core of your being, because that is where God dwells. And so as we think about this attribute of God's omnipresence, His indwelling presence, Christ in us as a believer. Let's talk a little bit more about some of the applications that that has for us as we leave here in just a little while, some things that we can take away from us. And the first one is just something to know, to carry with you and to make sure that we know and that is this, that you are never, ever alone. I just I love what AW Tozer says about this in the application of this is the knowledge that we are never alone calms the troubled sea of our lives and speaks peaceto our soul.Amen. What does that mean?Well, that means that when you feel lonely, you feel like no one cares about you, that God is there with you. It means that when you get cut from the band or the basketball team, God is there with you. When you get made fun of or bullied at school, it means that God is with you. You are never, ever alone. It means when your boyfriend or girlfriend breaks up with you or cheats on you, that God is there. It means that when you're walking through a difficult time in your marriage, God is there when you face tough parenting challenges with your kids. God is there when you look at your bills in your bank account, and there's more bills than bank account. God is there whenever you have to make big life decisions about your career and buying a home and moving to another city or marrying someone, God is there. It means that when you're feeling anxious, worried, depressed, and don't want to get out of bed that day, that God is there it means that when your country bombs Iran and you're worried about the future, and what that means for you. God is there. It means that when you walk into the doctor's office and they say that you have cancer, God is there. It means that when you bury someone that you love, and you find yourself sitting at home after being married to them, potentially for 40 or 50 years, and you feel all alone, that God is with you there. There is never a time that you are alone. You have access to all of God all of the time, wherever you are and through whatever it is that you are going through. Now, this is a truth to know, but Christianity is not just a knowing. We don't want to know a lot about things and declare that we know truth about God. We want to experience them. God didn't create us just to know them. He created us to know them. So then we can begin to experience them. So what do we do if God is present with us all the time? We practice the presence of God being in us and with us all of the time. Brother Lawrence, again, several 100 years ago, wrote, I cannot imagine, I cannot imagine how religious persons can live satisfied without the practice of the presence of God. And you can't, you can't live satisfied in that way. You will not be able to experience all of those things that we talked about, his refuge, his wisdom, His power, His peace, his abundant life, his joy, all the things that you have in Christ, but you can't enjoy them if you don't turn towards him and begin to experience those things in his presence and. Is, this is something that we we can grow in. This is something that we can learn more about and begin to experience over time and begin practicing the presence of God. I don't know if you're familiar with with Jean Guion. I'm sure that's exactly how you say it. Guillaume Guion, I took Spanish in high school, not French, and I probably still wouldn't have known how to pronounce it anyway. But she is what is known was a French mystic, and here's what she says, this is this is so good. Says your your spirit instructs your soul that since God is present deep within you, he must be sought within and he must be enjoyed there. Therefore, from the very beginning, you find great joy in knowing that your Lord is within you, and that you can find him and enjoy him in your inmost being. When you are thus turned toward God, you find it easy to return there again and again. The longer you continue to turn inward to God, the near you are drawn to him, and the more firmly you adhere to him by moving into that inmost sanctuary again and again, it becomes natural, even habitual, to live in the presence of God. And where is God's presence? God's presence is where he lodges deep within.She says, it becomes natural,it becomes habitual to live in the presence of God, to practice the presence of God dwelling in you. She uses the language turning towards God. There's this turning Well, which way do you turn inward? Because he dwells in you at the very core of your being. And the more you turn inward, the more you experience Him, and the more natural and the more habitual it becomes. Well, how do you do that? How do you turn inward? Well, let's talk about that in two different ways. The very first way is that we practice the presence of God through solitude. I was meeting with some church leaders recently, and I just asked them the simple question, how do you experience God? How do you experience the indwelling Christ in you in kind of your conversational, intimate way? How do you experience a relationship with him? What does that look like here were some of their answers. When I'm in nature and on a hike, when I'm listening to worship music and making it a prayer, the lyrics that I'm listening to when I'm when I'm mowing the yard, whenever I'm walking around my neighborhood, whenever I'm sitting still early in the morning, just dwelling on scripture in praying to Him, every single one of their answers had one thing in common.They were all alone.They were all in solitude. Now we certainly experience God in community. We talk about that all the time, and living in authentic community. See the early church Acts two, all of the things that God was doing in and through community, and that is so important. But we also see Jesus get into this rhythm of what in his own life, of stepping back out into solitude to meet with the Father, and then moving back into community. He and the Father were one. In order to experience the oneness with the Father, He removed himself from community and got away by himself and dwelt in the presence of God, the Father, experiencing him, and then moved into community after those things, guys, there's just so many distractions. There's so many deceptions out in the world, and it's in these moments of solitude and quietness that we can turn more easily our attention inward to Jesus, where we can talk to him, where we can more easily see his activity and hear his voice speaking to us in those particular moments. And so if you're not in the rhythm of doing that, that's the application. You want to experience never being alone. You want to practice the presence of God and experience the fullness of your relationship with him. Then get away. Be by yourself. Remove the distractions of social media. Don't take your phone with you. Turn it off. Make sure you're not getting notifications and news or anything else. Begin to read scripture, listen to worship music, pray, meditate on it. Go on a grad walk of gratitude. Close your eyes and begin to meditate on what it is that you're reading and just speak. Slow down. Sometimes even when we go, okay, I get alone. I'm reading through the Bible in a year, and I had 17 chapters to read, and I read them all, and then I and then I moved on. What did you remember one thing that you just read? Did you read a bunch of information, or did you encounter the living God while you were reading? Sometimes, maybe I'm not saying reading through the Bible in a year isn't a great thing. We need to read all the way through it and understand it all. But maybe sometimes we just need to sit still and read one or two sentences and go, Okay, God, is my fortress and refuge? Well, what does that mean? Close your eyes and just picture that you're in a fortress. Can you picture the fortress. Can you picture the shelter and the arrows of the enemy coming at you, and they're just being deflected? There's peace, there's there's quietness, there's calmness, there's security, there's nothing that can attack you from the enemy. There. You sit there, and you dwell and you imagine that, and all of a sudden you begin to now feel safe, even feel secure from all of the things that are going on, but you got to be quiet. You got to be still. You got to look for it, and it becomes natural over time. And in it, sheused the word habitual.This has been a normal practice of mine for a long time, but not necessarily slowing down enough to really experience God in these ways. And lately, it's been a lot more of that. There are moments now when I begin to go to bed and my last thoughts are I can't wait to get up in the morning and spend time in solitude with Jesus like I just can't wait. It's gonna be so fun, because I've experienced him in it. It's so real, the love, the joy, the security, the peace, the patience. And I'm going, I can't and then as we move into the day, it begins to set the tone that God is with us, and that's what we talk about next, then practicing the presence of God through now actively looking for God's presence everywhere. Because it's not just with you when you're alone, it's not just in you. I mean, wherever you go. God's in there, and he's going to be with you wherever you go. But if he's omnipresent in the totality of his essence, then God is out in the world, moving and doing things that's not directly involved in your life. So now, after the solitude time I'm going and I'm being aware that God dwells everywhere that I go, and he's up to things in his kingdom, work in the world. And so practicing the presence of God means looking for this presence. Where is he at work? What's he doing in this area? Open my spiritual eyes to see your activity. Open my spiritual ears to hear what it is that you're saying to me in these areas of your activity in the world. I don't know if it helps, but we're all familiar with Wi Fi. And Wi Fi is, you know, sending radio signals out that you can't see and and there's things in here that are sending radio waves out over Wi Fi to you with information and things. And if, if you don't have a device in your pocket that can capture that and encode it, then you'll never experience the information that is in your presence right now, all around you, being sent out constantly through you. But if you have one of these and you actuallythere's a little peppermint on that,push the Wi Fi button right that it's open now and it's receiving and connecting to it then, now you can begin to experience what is present all around you in the form of radio waves that you cannot see. You can't do that, but now you're engaging with it, and you're participating with it in that way. And when we begin to think about God and His presence in the world, and we can't see him, and he's all around us, but we're our Wi Fi is turned on. We're the we're the conduit, we're the we're the phone, we're the this connection of the Spirit and His Spirit. And there's a turning towards his activity. Then now that gets encoded right in some way, and he begins to reveal to us what he's doing, and now we can experience it in a different way. So when we talk about God's omnipresence, these are the things that we are talking about. And so let's slow down. Let's practice his presence in solitude. Let's turn our attention inward towards him. Let's look for his presence in all areas and places of your life, and then you'll begin to experience that joy, refuge, wisdom, power, rest and abundant life that are again all yours in your spiritual union with Christ. All the time they're there. You have access to them, but now you begin to experience all that you already have in Jesus, because you're turning your attention towards what is there. Let's pray.