Bigger than Big

Whither can I go from you presence?
(Psalm 139:7)

Have you ever pondered the immensity of God? Consider that everywhere He is He is there in His fullness. He can give you His undivided attention while still giving it to someone and everyone else at the exact same time. He has billions upon billions of events all going on at the same time, yet He has everything under control, and is using everything to orchestrate every facet of His holy will (Ephesians 1:11). Nothing can take Him by surprise. We cannot understand it fully but that is what makes Him God.

Far from being an unknowable, utterly transcendent, hands-off God like imagined by the Deists, we see the Lord involved in creation at the beginning (Genesis 1) and also management of His creation with the presence of the Spirit beyond the original six days. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth (Psalm 104:30). The Spirit of God makes the person of Jesus Christ immanent to our lives today, but there is an important distinction to be made, as we see in Psalm 139:7 which highlights God’s immanence in relation to the creation.

The Holy Spirit, being God, has the same incommunicable attributes as the Father. Here we see the omnipresence of God. However, there is the danger that if we start imagining God as being immanent only, rather than transcendent and apart from His creation, we may fall prey to what is known as panentheism. An important point to made is this: God is not “distributed” throughout the universe He is separate from it. There is a critical difference between omnipresence (everything is in the presence of God and He exerts controlling force upon it), and God being present in everything (panentheism, which is akin to the Hindu and New Age religions). This is a crucial distinction. God is close enough to enter into your little world, but He can also handle any problem; He is still bigger than big.