Is God Less Present In Some Parts Of My Life?

“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.” (Psalm 24:1, NLT)

“What is the price of two sparrows—one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.” (Matthew 10:29-31, NLT)

“I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.” (Psalm 139:7-10, NLT)

In the eyes of the ancient Greeks, the Olympian gods each had their own department. Hestia’s domain was hearth and home. Hades was lord of the gloomy underworld. Poseidon governed the sea, and Zeus ruled the sky. Demeter held power over the produce of the earth. Athena and Ares shared dominion over warfare, but in different ways. One might pray to Ares for courage in battle or skill with a sword. Athena, on the other hand, was the goddess of higher-level strategy, which probably related to her also being viewed as the goddess of wisdom. Leaders of armies or city states might invoke Athena as they made military plans. In the ancient world, a time of maladies and frighteningly low life expectancies, it’s not surprising that Apollo’s son Asclepius—the god of healing—was widely known and worshiped.

The ancient pagans believed the gods and goddesses, though powerful, had limited domains. This would have led ancient worshipers to believe they had a vast menu of gods and goddesses to choose from, depending on the circumstances of their lives.

But what if you ordered up the wrong god, or there was no god on the menu to address what you were going through? This created a persistent fear in the ancients: the need to approach the right god in the right way in order to make something happen or protect oneself from calamity.

We Christians can find ourselves, accidentally, thinking of God and interacting with him in similar ways. This fear manifests actively and passively: We fear God’s active intrusion into areas of our lives over which we want to maintain control, and we fear God’s passive neglect of those spheres of our lives where we desire his intervention.

In terms of intrusion, we welcome the notion that God is Lord of our spiritual lives and eternal destination, and maybe a few other realms of our experience, but we fearfully grasp for control of other aspects of our lives, like our finances, family time, political perspectives, and careers.

We can also fear his neglect. If we are experiencing pain or trouble of some kind—whether physical, emotional, relational, or financial—we assume that God must not be Lord of that area. If he were, we reason, then we wouldn’t be suffering adversity. He must have somehow lost control.

These accidentally pagan assumptions generate roots of fear in our daily lives because they make us feel that God’s presence is selective, intermittent, or unreliable.

But the freeing truth about God is that he has no departments; his realm is everything. God is Lord of all spheres of our lives. There is no aspect of our being or experience that he is not involved in or sovereign over. There are no boundaries to his presence or power. He has no limited areas of jurisdiction. We don’t have to live in fear about imagined limitations to God’s presence and power.

As you now turn to the Bible to discover the truth about God’s presence, reflect on these questions:

• What is an area of your life that you want to maintain control of, so you rarely speak to God about it?
• Is there a department of your life that feels disconnected from the Lord, perhaps because it’s an area of struggle? Why do you think we assume God is less present when we’re experiencing adversity?