WHERE IS GOD?

Guess who is not around anymore, according to the world! Apparently, God!

“How can you say that?”

He was sidelined in our constitution. We are now a ‘secular’ state. He is no longer allowed in our schools (and there’s plenty of evidence for that!). Our young people’s behavior is hard on the heels of their American counterparts who kicked God out decades ago. Criminal behaviour in the schools is on the increase, including rape and murder.

He is not in the mass media. Read a fashion magazine or a ‘scandal rag’. People take the gifts and talents He gives and the resources He pours into their lives and use them to magnify themselves.

God is absent from most of our TV programs. His name is only mentioned as a swear word, His holy standards are ignored, and wickedness is paraded on our TV screens in the name of ‘entertainment.’

Did He leave because we shut Him out of our constitution, because we shut Him out of our schools, courts, and public life? Not according to the Scriptures. The government may reject Him, the media ignore Him and the world sideline Him, but He did not leave. God is still God and He is universally present.

The first man on the moon realised that God was there!

David’s contemplation of God led to him to this conclusion…

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you. Psalms 139:7-12

We have the promise of Jesus that He will never leave us. He lives in His church. He has elected to make us His dwelling place. The church may be ailing but it’s not dead. The world may act as though God does not exist, but Jesus is alive and at work in His church.

The newspapers are full of bad news. The church is full of good news. I heard recently in a sermon that many of the Olympic athletes who took part in the recent Beijing Olympics are believers. The Kenyan marathon gold medalist gave his life to Jesus after winning the gold medal. Several of the swimmers are believers. There are 70 Jewish rabbis in New York who have turned to the Lord. The most influential rabbi in the United States who died at the age of 105, confessed that Jesus Christ is the Messiah in a letter he left to be read one year after his death. The son of the leader of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization, is a believer and is preaching the gospel.

Where is Jesus? He has never left us. He is in us by His Spirit and He is building His church. He is perfecting His bride for His coming and He is revealing Himself to the world through you and me. Despite the hostility we encounter, let us take heart. He may not be welcome in our country but no-on can shut Him out of our hearts!