Common Question #1--How Can God “Show Up” When He’s Everywhere all the Time?

By David Hobbs

There is a lot of confusion in the Body of Christ (the church) over sayings like “God showed up,” as in the statement “we were in the middle of the worship service when God showed up and all kinds of things started happening.”  Or “I need to pray-in God’s presence.” Isn’t His presence everywhere? So aren’t we always in His presence?  Why do we have to "pray it in?" This can be confusing, especially to those new to the Holy Spirit,.

We need to get clarity on God’s omnipresence (present everywhere at the same time) and His omnipotence (all powerful). Think of it this way. Though God’s presence may be everywhere and He is all powerful, that still does not mean that His will is being done everywhere. Satan is called “the god of this world” in 2 Cor. 4:4 (KJV), and it’s his will that is being done most of the time in the earth (which is why everything is so screwed up!). That’s why Jesus taught us to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We are to pray for God’s will to be done in the earth instead of the devil’s.

So how is it that God’s presence is everywhere but his will is not being done? And why, if God be all powerful does He not force His will to be done? And while we’re at it, how can God’s presence be even in the midst of Satan’s demonic councils where he schemes to kill, steal, and destroy?

We might have to adjust our thinking or it doesn’t make sense.

Think of it this way: God’s presence is everywhere in the sense that He knows what’s going on everywhere at all times, even things that are not His will. It’s like He has cameras and recording devices throughout all of creation recording every word, every thought, every action. He may not be in control of it now, but it will all be played back at the judgment: every word, every thought, even every motivation of the heart. He is omnipresent in the sense of knowing everything going on, even things He doesn't approve of.

But contrast that to when “God shows up” in a worship service. There God’s actual presence, in the person of the invisible Holy Spirit, comes into the meeting--a specific place at a specific time. Now His will is being done. That’s what the Psalmist is referring to in Psalm 16 when he says, “In thy presence there is fullness of joy.” He is talking about the specific, manifest presence of God. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise. There is not fullness of joy everywhere in the universe, only where God’s presence manifests itself and His will is being done.

Likewise when we pray. God hears every prayer. But it can be like sending an email out into cyberspace. We know we sent it and we know it was received, but we don’t know what effect it had and may not know for a long time. 

But when God’s presence “shows up” in our life, it’s like holding a conversation with someone. There is interaction back and forth. The Bible shows this when it says that Moses "spoke with God face to face like a man speaks with his friend." How could that be possible unless God could manifest His presence in a specific place at a specific time?

I’ve prayed lots of prayers out into space as it were. But there have also been times when God has manifested His presence to me. Look at my post for Feb. 12^th of this year, “The Mountain was Quiet” for one such time.

These are the greatest experiences in a Christian’s life, when God comes to him during worship or prayer. That’s what it means to “have a personal relationship” with the Lord. How can you have a personal relationship with someone you never interact with?

The fact that God's presence is everywhere all the time might make the demons nervous, but they continue plotting and working against God's people anyway. But when God's manifest presence shows up, the demon's react in terror! [Mt. 8:29]

Prolonging the California Drought

By David Hobbs

Man was made in God’s image, according to the Bible. So where does man’s greatest God-like power lie?

Well, first, what is God’s greatest power? It would have to be His power to create. God created the worlds out of His spoken word; He spoke everything into existence ex nihilo (out of nothing). Likewise, man’s greatest power lies, not in his brains but in his loins, where he can create new life, and in his mouth.

Proverbs says that life and death are in the power of the tongue (Prov. 18:21). Jesus spoke a curse over a fig tree and it shriveled up from the roots. He told His followers that if they had faith, they could similarly speak to a mountain and cast it into the sea (Matt. 21:21).

In the Book of Revelation, Jesus shows up at the Battle of Armageddon to fight against the beast, the kings of the earth and their armies. Though He has His own army with Him, He alone fights and defeats them with the sword that comes from His mouth--in other words, His spoken word (Rev. 19:21).

So how are we doing at exercising this great power? Not well. We “damn” this and “damn” that, crucify people with gossip behind their backs, and in our anger say bitter and hateful things that shrivel children’s spirits and can’t be taken back. (“You’ll never amount to anything, do you hear me? NEVER!”)

Recently we had another example of negative speaking in our civic life. California has been in a prolonged drought. Since millions of people and the richest agricultural area in the nation depend on the winter rains and snowpack, people were concerned. Then after three dry years, this year the pattern suddenly changed to a wet one. We tapped into a river of atmospheric moisture streaming up from the subtropical Pacific. In one month there was a weather station halfway up the mountains that recorded almost 40 inches of rain!

So what was the problem? After every storm, no matter how big, our newspaper, in its coverage, kept up a steady drumbeat—“the drought’s not over.” “We just had a great storm, but it didn’t end the drought.” No matter who they quoted: meteorologists, state water officials, reporters, editors, it was always the same: “The drought’s not over.”

Guess what happened? They spoke the drought back into existence! After an incredibly wet December, the pattern shifted back and January was the driest on record, in what should have been the biggest rainfall month of the year. San Francisco went the entire month with no recorded rain! The drought returned with a vengeance! But we can’t blame God, or global warming, or any number of other factors. We did it! The creative power of the spoken word: we cursed ourselves.

The heavens responded to the words being spoken by officials who, like it or not, speak for us. They prophesied to the heavens, “The drought’s not over!” So the heavens brought it back. Who knows when our next chance will be?

In 1 Kings 18, when Elijah was praying to end a 3½  year drought, he sent his servant to observe the ocean. Six times he returned saying nothing was happening. The seventh time he saw a cloud the size of a man’s hand rising out of the sea. Elijah didn’t say, “What? How could that end the drought?” Instead he quit praying, told the servant to get everyone off the mountain before it turned to mud, and ran for town. Before he could get there a deluge from heaven overwhelmed them all (1 Kings 18:41-46).

America has become clueless about the ways of God and how things work in that invisible, spiritual realm that affects us all.

When God Says, "Enough!"

By David Hobbs

Isa. 40:2--“Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” 

 As Christians, we are all familiar with the dealings of the Lord in our lives. We get trials that seem to go on forever. We pray and pray for things that in many cases never seem to happen, We might get prophetic words over us of promise for our futures that never seem to materialize, We pray and pray for revival that never seems to come. Instead people write books like Why Revival Tarries.

Personally I have been praying, believing and hoping for revival almost since I was saved 40 years ago, when I came in on the tail end of the Jesus’ Movement. I saw a lot of wondrous and exciting things, but not compared to the stories I heard of what God had been doing only a few years before.

God is patient and long suffering; we know that. God is more concerned about  our development than the trials we might be going through; we know that. God has His own timetable for dealing with na-tions, with His ancient people Israel and the church; we know that. But it can sometimes seem like we’re always in a waiting mode: “keep on keeping on.” So we pray, “Lord, when will revival get here? When will the church wake up? When will this physical infirmity be healed? When will the money come in? When will I get victory over this besetting sin?” When we read the Psalms we realize we are not alone. How many times did the psalmist cry out, “How long, O Lord?”

 There is an end to every trial; there is a fulfillment for every promise; there is a time in God, as long as we keep following Him, when every condition will be met. Therefore it can be comforting to search the Scriptures for the times when God said, “Enough!” Look at the life of Noah. He was doing what God commanded him to do (building the ark) for 100 years through the scorn and ridicule of his neighbors who had never seen it rain. It was a gargantuan task, if you consider how huge the ark was. But there came a day when God said, “Enough! Move into the ark, you and your family, and I will start sending the animals.”

“But Lord, I’m still trying to finish this crown molding and I’ve got a few stalls I want to 'cherry out' with some stained ‘chair-rail’.”

 “ENOUGH!”

“Yea Lord.”

Here is something most people miss. After the flood, and they’ve been on the ark over a year with the stinky animals, they set down on a mountain, Noah takes off the ark’s cover, and sees that the ground is dry. That happens in v. 13 of Genesis 8. In the next verse, God tells him to leave the ark. But if you look at the timeline, v. 14 happems one month and 27 days after v. 13. So apparently Noah had to sit nearly two months cooped up in the ark feeding the restless animals while the earth was beckoning him. He had to remain beached on the mountain two excruciating months for God to say, “Enough! Now you may go.”

 Peter explains it so we can understand the ways of God. In 2 Peter 3:8 he says:

But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

 At a thousand years to a day, time moves slowly! But no matter how slowly it passes, the day will still come when God says, “Enough!” and pulls the plug on this wicked world. When that happens, it will be so sudden that it will be too late for the fence-sitters and procrastinators to jump in. The Bible is full of stories of people who weren’t ready and missed out, from the foolish virgins to Esau who “found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” [Heb. 12:17 KJV]

Consider Enoch, one of my heroes. The Bible says Enoch walked with God and God took him so he never tasted death (a picture of the Rapture?). Enoch had the distinction of fathering the man who lived longer than anyone else on earth, Methuselah. After Methuselah was born to Enoch at age 65,  Enoch started walking with God and continued for 300 years until God took him. Think of it: walking with God for 300 years, longer than the U.S. has been a country--from 1715 until now!--until the day God said, “Enough, come home with me now.”

 On the other hand, in Gen. 6:3 God says “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever… yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” God will only deal with man and sin for so long until He likewise says, “Enough!” At the end of that 120 years He sent Noah’s flood and drowned every living creature.

Why do I say all this? To encourage God’s people that there is an end to every trial, every infirmity, every stressful situation, every period of mourning. Though it tarry long, allow God to have His way in your life and take you through it, though you have to slog through a day, an hour, or even one tear at a time. God is faithful. The time must come when He will say, “Enough!”

Jacob, when he thought he lost his son Joseph, said he would go down to the grave mourning for him (Gen. 37:35), but God had a better plan than that. Though it took 20 long years, suddenly Joseph turned up very much alive and in charge of all Egypt! And during that 20 years, Joseph went through some things himself. Though he had done nothing wrong, first he was sold into slavery in Egypt, then, because he feared God and wouldn’t sin with Potiphar’s wife, he was thrown into the dungeon where “they hurt his feet with fetters, he was laid in irons” [Psalm 105:18]. Even the butler who was supposed to help him get out, instead forgot him, adding 2 more years to his incarceration.

But still, the time came when God said, “Enough!” and suddenly, in one day he found himself 2nd in command to the Pharaoh himself! The Bible is full of stories like this: David running for his life from King Saul for 13 years (but then becoming king for 40), Abraham waiting 25 years for the promise of a son to materialize, Isaac and Rebekah waiting 20 years for Jacob and Esau to be born, Israel going through the 400 silent years before John the Baptist appeared, and on and on. Do we see a pattern, here?

 The Bible says in James 1:4 we are to “let patience have its perfect work, that [we] may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” And in Heb. 10:7—“For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry.” That “little while” the writer was speaking of has stretched into 2000 years! But it’s still just as true today as it was then. “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish.”