Certainly I will be with thee.
—Exodus 3:12
When a man imagines a god he often thinks first of power, however limited. The first thought of the true God, in contrast, is omnipotence: “I am God Almighty” (Genesis 35:11). The second thought is omnipresence—God’s promise of His unseen presence with them always. To His “I am with thee” (Genesis 26:24), their faith responded, “Thou art with me” (Psalm 23:4).
When Christ said to His disciples, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18), the promise immediately followed: “I am with you always” (verse 20). The Omnipotent One is surely the Omnipresent One.
The psalmist spoke of God’s omnipresence as something beyond his comprehension: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it” (Psalm 139:6).
The revelation of God’s omnipresence in the Man, Christ Jesus, makes the mystery still deeper. It also makes the grace that enables us to claim this presence as our strength and our joy something inexpressibly blessed. Yet how many servants of Christ, find it difficult to understand all that is implied in it and how it can become the experience of their daily lives!
Here, as elsewhere in the spiritual life, everything depends on faith, on accepting Christ’s words as divine reality, and on trusting the Holy Spirit to make it true to us from moment to moment.
When Christ said “always[s]” (Matthew 28:20), He meant to assure us that there is not a day of our lives in which that blessed presence is not with us. It is ours every day. There does not need to be a moment in which that presence cannot be our experience. This does not depend on what we can do, but on what He undertakes to do. The omnipotent Christ is the omnipresent Christ; the ever present is the everlasting. As surely as He is the Unchangeable One, His presence, as the power of an endless life, will be with each of His servants who trusts Him for it.
“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him” (Psalm 37:7). “Lo, I am with you alway[s]” (Matthew 28:20). Let your faith in Christ, the Omnipresent One, be in the quiet confidence that He will every day and every moment keep you as the apple of His eye (see Pslam 17:8), in perfect peace and in the sure experience of all the light and strength you need in His service.