God’s omnipresence means that He is fully present in all places at the same time. We cannot hide from Him because He is with us always.

Have you ever wished that you could be in two places at once?  Maybe you double-booked yourself, and had to make a decision between attending two equally important events.  Or maybe, like me, you live far away from family and wish that you could be both here at home and there with them.  It’s hard when we have to choose between being in two different places, but unfortunately our physical bodies limit us to being in only one place at a time.

We have discussed many different aspects of God’s character, but one thing we haven’t really talked about is the fact that God is a Spirit, as we see in John 4:24, which says, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”  God does not have a physical body, so He is not limited to being in one place at a time.  Joel James says that God is “an infinite, boundless, unlimited, invisible omnipresent spirit Being.”  God is omnipresent, which means that He is everywhere at once.

There are a few things to remember about God’s omnipresence.

God is fully present in every place and in every time.

First, we see that God is fully present everywhere.  He’s not playing a cosmic game of Twister, where His right hand in on Europe while His left foot is on South America.  Nor does He do some kind of mad dash to get from one place to another whenever He’s needed.  Because He’s Spirit, He can be fully present in each place.  All of God, His complete Being, is in every place at the same time.

He is also in every place, without exception.  He’s here with me as I write this, and He’s in the room with you as you read it.  He’s in every single part of our country, and all over the Earth.  His complete Being is also on Jupiter and in the farthest reaches of the universe.  There is no place in existence where He is not fully present.

He’s also fully present in every time.  God is outside of time, because time is a created concept.  So, God sees the entire timeline, from creation to the end of the world, at the same time.  He is just as present in the past as He is now and as He is in the future.

You can’t escape from God’s presence.

Psalm 139:7-10 sums up this point quite well:

Where shall I go from your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from your presence?   If I ascend to heaven, you are there!  If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

In this passage, King David is pointing out, in poetical form, that God is present no matter which direction you look.  First, he talks about ascending to heaven.  Where is heaven?  It’s up, which would be north.  Next, David talks about Sheol, which is another word for hell or the underworld or the grave, all of which we consider to be down, right?  So that is south.

  Next, David refers to the “wings of the morning.”  In which direction does the sun rise?  To the east.  For the last reference, we need to understand a bit of geography.  David mentions dwelling “in the uttermost parts of the sea.”  To the west of Israel is the Mediterranean Sea.  I’m not sure how much they knew about what was beyond that.  For all they knew, that may have been the edge of the world. 

So, in this passage in Psalm 139, David is basically saying that, even if you go as far as you can in any direction, God is still there.  No matter which direction you travel, you can’t get away from God.

Can you think of a story in the Bible that illustrates this point?

Jonah!  He foolishly tried to flee from God by going as far as He could in the opposite direction from where God sent Him (Jonah 1:3).  But God was there, even on a foreign ship in the middle of the sea.  When Jonah was thrown overboard to save the ship from being destroyed in the storm, God sent the fish to swallow Jonah (1:17).  Now, if there’s anywhere that you could think of that God might not be, it would in the belly of a fish in the bottom of the sea.  However, God was even there, as Jonah discovered:

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.” (2:1-2)

God is transcendent.

I mentioned earlier that God is outside of time because time is a created concept.  In the same way, God is outside of space.  Although He is present everywhere, He is not part of the created world.  Psalm 123:1 says, “To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!”  God is far above or far removed from any of His creation in the sense that He’s so totally separate and different.  This is part of God’s majestic holiness.  He is above and outside of His creation as the only Uncreated One.  God is in a class by Himself, totally different than us, totally unique, unlike anything we’ve ever experienced, as we see from the following verses:

• Isaiah 6:1
• Ecclesiastes 5:2
• Isaiah 57:15

God is immanent.

That last verse, Isaiah 57:15, says that God dwells in the high and holy place, but also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.  That shows that, although God is separate from His creation, He chooses to dwell among His people.  He is with us no matter where we are, and no matter what we are going through.  He wants to be known and loved by us.  So, He makes His presence known to us.  We see this in the following verses:

• Deuteronomy 4:39
• Jeremiah 23:23-24

Implications of God’s Omnipresence:

We can never escape His presence.

This can be both convicting and comforting.  It’s convicting because we can never hide our sin from God.  Knowing that He’s always right there watching us should lead us to be more cautious in our behavior and more diligent in our effort to rid ourselves of all sin.

However, it’s also comforting to know that He is always with us, guiding and protecting us.  No matter how far off the path of righteousness we wander, He’s still there.  No matter what tough situation we find ourselves in, He’s there as well.  He will never leave us or forsake us.

We can trust our loved ones to Him.

We may not always live near those whom we love.  Distance may keep us from being able to be there when they need us.  But God is there with them, protecting them in the same way that He’s here protecting us.  When we can’t be there for those we love, we can find comfort in the fact that God is always there.

We can pray with confidence that He hears us.

I’ve heard people say that they feel like their prayers never get farther than the ceiling.  I’ve felt that way myself.  However, when we think that way, it’s with the assumption that God is far off in heaven, and our prayers have to get all the way to Him.  I have this vision of writing our prayers on a paper, folding it into a paper airplane, and throwing it up into the air, hoping that it will fly all the way to God.  That’s an absurd thought, but it’s how we act sometimes.

A more appropriate image would be sitting in chair addressing our prayers to the chair next to us, as if we’re chatting with a friend.  Because God is always with us, He always hears our prayers, no matter how we feel about it.

---

This post is part of a series entitled Seeking God’s Face: Discovering the God of the Bible, which is based on a Bible study I’m teaching at my church. In this study, we’ll be rethinking our impressions of God by searching the Scriptures to find out who He really is. You can find other posts, as well as additional Bible study resources, here:

SEEKING GOD’S FACE: DISCOVERING THE GOD OF THE BIBLE

The information in this post was based on the following resources:

None Like Him: 10 Ways God Is Different from Us by Jen Wilkin

Taste and See that the Lord Is Good: A Study of the Attributes of God by Joel James

The Attributes of God DVD by Steven Lawson

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.