The Valley of Vision (5)

The prayer titled, God the Source of All Good, begins on page 6 with:

“O LORD GOD, WHO INHABITEST ETERNITY, the heavens declare thy glory, the earth thy riches, the universe is thy temple; thy presence fills immensity…”

On page 7 it ends with, “Impress me deeply with a sense of thine omnipresence, that thou art about my path, my ways, my lying down, my end.” (The Valley of Vision, Banner of Truth Trust).

Throughout the Bible we see the point and counterpoint of the omnipresence and immediate presence of God; He fills the universe and yet He is here with me. In Christ, not only is He here with me but He has come to live in me. As Psalm 139 points out, God knows all about me; my words, my thoughts, my steps – He has always known me.

There is no place I will go today, or tomorrow, where God is not already there. There is no journey I’ll take without Him. There is no decision I’ll wrestle with that He will not know the thoughts with which I’ll struggle.

God inhabits eternity, and in Christ we are called to live in eternity. An element of our growth as the sons and daughters of God is learning to view life from eternity past to eternity future and within that framework to view the present. (Yes, eternity is eternity without past or future in one sense, but in another the Scriptures speak to us of before the foundation of the world and also of that event that will see the heavens and the earth pass away. Who can really think and speak of these things without using the language of time and space?).

“Thou hast made me what I am, and given me what I have; in thee I live and move and have my being…” (Page 6).

He created me to be me, not to be somebody else, and the same is true of you. Yet, how often do we want to be someone else, at least in some measure? Certainly our world and our economy fosters and cultivates this desire within us – we want to look different, act different, have different innate skills and talents and abilities, have different possessions. Our economy operates off our dissatisfaction with ourselves and our experiences and our possessions.

While because of sin, there is a sense in which I am not the person God created me to be; when I come to live in Christ and when Christ lives in me I become a new person in Christ and a process of restoration begins, hence in our prayer we have; “Let me know the need of renovation as well as of forgiveness…”

If we think that initial redemption and forgiveness is the Gospel we are mistaken, the Gospel is so much more – included in the Gospel is our transformation into the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29) with all that entails. Yet, sadly, so many of us escape Egypt only to camp on the other side of the Red Sea, never moving across the Wilderness and into the Promised Land. There is more to life than escaping Egypt, than leaving behind a life of sin and death and idols – we do not cleanse and sterilize a canning jar for the sole purpose of getting it clean, we do it to fill it and seal it (Ephesians 1:1 – 12). Frankly, we cannot leave behind a life of sin and death and idols unless Christ lives in us and we live in Christ – unless He is willing and working in us His exceptionally good pleasure (Philippians 2:12 – 13).

O the glory of living life in the God who fills all in all – including ourselves in Christ.