July 14, 2023: Psalm 139:7 - We Cannot Escape God's Presence

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?” - Psalm 139:7

Almighty God. We either flee from Him or we run to Him, but in either case, He sees us, He knows where we are at, at all times. Whether we flee from Him or run to Him does not change who He is: all present, all knowing, and all powerful. Rather, our decision reveals the priority in our lives - ourselves or Him.

When we sin, we want to run from God, we want to hide our sin from Him. Remember Adam and Eve? What did they do after they ate from the one and only tree in the entire garden that God forbade them to eat from? Let us read:

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ So he said, ‘I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” (Genesis 3:7-10)

Until Adam and Eve had eaten of the fruit of the tree from which God had commanded them not to eat, they had no idea that they were naked. Now, it says their eyes were opened. Here they were in the garden, realizing they were naked before God, which wasn’t anything different than they had been prior, but now they were naked before Him in their sin and their shame. That was the difference. They knew in their hearts that they were guilty before God, and when they heard Him walking in the garden, they tried to flee from Him. The same holds true today. What happens when a robber robs a bank? They flee, for they don’t want to get caught in their sin. What happens when an adulterer is caught in bed with someone who is not their spouse? They might flee, but they might also try to kill the person who caught them in their sin. That is what happens with sin: one sin leads to another, to another, and we see that with Adam and Eve. Let’s read what happened next:

“And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?’ Then the man said, ‘The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.’” (Genesis 3:11-12)

When God directly asked Adam if he had eaten of the tree from which God had specifically forbidden him to eat, instead of answering first with a “yes” or a “no,” he blamed the woman for his action and then he blamed God because after all, it was Him who had given her to Adam as a “helper comparable to him.” (Genesis 2:18) Then after blaming Eve and God, finally Adam said, “I ate.” Did Adam have to eat that fruit? When she offered the fruit to him, could he have reminded his wife what God had said to him, and then refuse to eat it? Yes, he could have done that, but instead of listening to God, he listened to Eve. This is what happens in marriages when a husband does not put God first above everything. If Adam and truly loved Eve and wanted to protect her from harm, he would have listened to God’s commands and not to Eve’s desires.

Also, in blaming God for his sin, Adam twisted the love that God had for him when He said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” (Genesis 2:18) God didn’t want Adam to be all alone but wanted him to have companionship, a wife. However, in a desperate act to shift the blame off of himself and to put it on anyone besides himself, he blamed both Eve and God. How many times have we done this, not wanting to take responsibility for our own actions, our own decisions that caused us more trouble in our lives, and blame others, even blaming God? I know that I have done this many times, especially in my marriage, just as Adam did, and when I did, I felt trapped and wanted to flee; I wanted to escape.

Next, let’s read what happened when God asked Eve what happened:

“And the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” (Genesis 3:11-13)

Again, instead of taking the responsibility for her own action, Eve blamed the serpent. Deception is all around us today, just as it was in the garden. However, deception does not absolve us from our sins. Eve knew that God had told Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, and we know that because she had told that to the serpent when he questioned what God had said, planting seeds of doubt. However, as I wrote about in my prior daily devotional, Eve had added to what God had commanded Adam, saying they should neither eat the fruit nor touch it or they would die. God never said they couldn’t touch the fruit, only they must not eat the fruit. This is what happens when we twist God’s word by adding to or taking from it. Not only are we deceived by the enemy Satan, but we also deceive ourselves as we try to come up with an excuse as to why we sinned. Eve’s first sin was not obeying what her husband had told her and second, instead of fleeing from the serpent, she let him deceive her and was complicit in it because she twisted the words of God, which the serpent used against her. When we look at something with desire in our heart to take of it and we ignore the voice, the warnings of God and instead heed the words of Satan, we set ourselves up for a fall.

How many of us, myself included, have been willfully deceived because of the lust of our eyes, the lust of the flesh, and then when things started to fall apart in our lives, we blamed God, we blamed so and so, and on and on, not accepting responsibility for our own actions? This is exactly what happened in the garden of Eden to Adam and Eve. Wouldn’t it have been so much better if they had listened to God commands, if they had obeyed Him? Wouldn’t our lives have been so much better if we had listened to God’s commands, if we had obeyed Him? How many times have we ourselves fled from God after we sinned, only to find ourselves in a bigger mess?

Obviously, we can’t change history. God knew before He even created Adam and Eve that they would sin, that they would fall into the sin nature, but He chose to create them anyway. Why? Because He had a plan of redemption, a plan of salvation, and it was right there in the book of Genesis. But before this plan of redemption would come, Adam and Eve would suffer the consequences of not obeying God, just as we ourselves suffer the consequences in our own lives for not obeying Him, for ignoring that still small voice in our heads that said to us, “Don’t do that!” but we did it anyway in an act of rebellion against God. Let us read what God then said to the serpent (Satan), Eve, and Adam:

“So the LORD God said to the serpent:

‘Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.’

“To the woman He said:

‘I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’

‘Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it”:

“Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” ’ ” (Genesis 3:14-19)

First, let’s discuss the consequences of Eve’s sin. God said the woman’s sorrows and conception would be multiplied and childbearing would now become painful. As a mother, we worry about our children’s safety. Prior to Adam and Eve’s sin, they would have had children and never worried about their safety, for they would live forever in a place without sin and sorrow, but now, all that had changed. Now, Eve would worry about her children’s safety and would know that one day, they would die. Eve would sorrow after her firstborn son Cain would murder his brother Abel. God also told Eve that her desire “shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” When God made Eve for Adam, He told Adam, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” (Genesis 2:18) However, Eve’s desire had not been for her husband because if it was, she would have heeded the voice of her husband and not the voice of the serpent and not given into the desire of her eyes and the lust of her flesh. Consequently, God now said her desire would be for her husband and he would rule over her. Clearly, this is not a popular concept in our world today, and our rejection of it has caused much sin and chaos in the family and is a major contributor to the breakdown of the family, culture, and society. There clearly is a power struggle between many husbands and wives in marriages today.

Next, let’s discuss the consequences of Adam’s sin. Instead of having everything provided for him by God, now Adam would have to work for his food and it wouldn’t come easy for him. He would have to work hard and sweat in order to grow things from the earth that he, Eve, and their future family would eat. I can relate to the thorns and thistles part of what God said. Last year, my husband discovered there were wild black raspberries growing in a field nearby where we live. They taste really good, especially in homemade jam. However, picking them is definitely a challenge because the bushes are covered in thorns. When one of the thorns hook into you, you can’t pull away from it as the thorn only digs in deeper. This happened to me when a thorn got caught in my shoulder. It hurt, and I immediately pulled away but it only went in further. My husband had to help free it from me. The thorns were one thing, then add to that the summer bugs and the summer heat. We picked them for probably 30 minutes and reaped only three cups of fruit. It was a lot of work for just a little food, and this was what Adam had to learn after living in the comforts of God’s garden when previously everything had been provided to him by God.

This is such a picture of our American society today. God has blessed our nation in so many ways and yet, it wasn’t enough. We took our blessings from Him for granted, got puffed up in ourselves and became filled with pride and full of self; we put our trust in education and unrighteous governments, which provided no wisdom in the word of God; we felt invincible with our military prowess, thinking we could never be brought down; and we turned our eyes, our hearts, and our flesh on the things of this world and we were deceived - and are being deceived I believe more than at any other time in our history - by Satan, and we have taken God completely out of our lives. Just as Adam and Eve had a fall, which resulted in a fall of all generations thereafter, I believe we are seeing the fall of America, a nation that forgot the one true God, to embrace the lies of the devil, making life all about ourselves, and to have the audacity to think that we can be like God.

Speaking of the devil, now let us examine the consequences of his, the serpent’s actions. God said he would be cursed more than every beast of the field and “on your belly you shall go and shall eat dust all the days of your life.” The serpent would have no limbs and eat the dust as he slithers on his belly from place to place. Next, God gave the first prophecy of Jesus Christ. Let’s read again what it says:

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

Jesus the Christ would come from the Seed of the woman. We know that women do not have seed, or sperm, but have eggs. When Jesus was born, God Himself provided the Seed when a young virgin named Mary conceived Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Satan would war against Jesus and all who choose to follow Him, to believe in Him as their Savior. Satan would use evil men and demonic forces to crucify Jesus and have Him nailed at the cross, including the nail that would be thrust through His heel, but Jesus will bruise or crush Satan in the end. As the Bible tells us in the book of Revelation, Satan is a defeated foe and so is every single person who has ever and will align theirselves with him and against God. There is no escaping God’s presence. Try as he might by using modern technology, including artificial intelligence, which is growing more rapidly than most of us can comprehend, Satan and those aligned with him are no match against Almighty God. Almighty God is all powerful, all present, and all knowing, and He will not be defeated. God sees everything, He hears everything, He knows what move we will make before we even thought about making it. To believe anything else is to believe the lies of Satan.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I write these devotionals as often as I am able to encourage you, to encourage myself, to stand strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, for we are in a spiritual battle with the enemy and will be until the day we die or until we hear that upward call of Jesus Christ when He:

“…will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.” (2 Thessalonians 4:16-18)

We must never forget that God is with us, always. We must remember His promises that He will never leave us nor forsake us. We must remember that we must not fear man but have a fear of the Lord, a reverent fear of Almighty God, our Creator and Savior. May we rest in the assurances that we who put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ have been forgiven of all our sins and that our hope is not in this world but our hope is in Him, the author and finisher of our faith. No matter how dark this world gets, and boy, is it growing darker every day, God is with us. He is the light that leads us in the way of salvation, in the way everlasting.

To those who aren’t saved by putting their faith and trust in Jesus Christ to forgive them of all of their sins, I ask you: can you see that the war that is raging across the globe is a spiritual war for the souls of mankind? Can you say that the battle lines are being drawn and each one of us must take a side and that the grey that once existed, the middle ground, is being erased, that things are black and white and there is no in-between? Can you see that Satan and his demonic forces are using as pawns those in power, including world governments and the “elite,” and the average, every day people who have aligned themselves with Satan, to deceptively implement policies that promote the destruction of mankind? Can you see that everything regarding population is to reduce it: abortion, alternative lifestyles that cannot reproduce, less men and women getting married and having children, forced one-child policies resulting in more men than women, sterilization masked as immunization, gender confusion, medical assisted suicide, worshiping the planet to the extent that the “elite” are pushing policies that will result in more people dying, such as forced closure of farms and decreasing the amount of cattle, chickens, and other much-needed animal protein that are required especially by young children as their brains develop, and the list is being added to all the time. Can you see governments, militaries, corporations, education, media, and entertainment are all doing things that are appeasing, embracing, and wholeheartedly promoting things that are evil and rejecting all that is good in the eyes of God? Why is this happening? Because Satan hates mankind and unlike Satan, we are the only beings created in God’s image. Satan is filled with pride and wasn’t happy enough to be called by God “the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty…in Eden, the garden of God…the anointed cherub who covers…” (Ezekiel 28:12-13, 14). Oh no, instead, Satan said, “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:14) That is why Satan deceived Eve in the garden, leading her and Adam to the fall of mankind, and he wants to deceive as many people as possible before God finally says “Enough!” and tells His Son Jesus Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, to take the scroll from His right hand and open the first of seven seals on the scroll. This will begin the unleashing of His wrath upon all who have rejected God and who are destroying His creation.

There is no running from God, there is no hiding from His presence. Let us read of just one of 21 judgments that are to come upon the earth in a time period known as the 7-year tribulation period, the time of Jacob’s trouble, when God has had enough and sends these judgments as a final wake-up call to mankind, to give them a final seven years to turn to Jesus Christ and be saved or to confirm their alignment with Satan and suffer the consequences of such as dreadful mistake:

”I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb [Jesus Christ]! For the great day of HIs wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’” (Revelation 6:12-17)

If you are still reading this, and I know it’s long, I ask you, do you believe you can escape God’s presence? Are you prepared for what is coming, whether you live to see the days described above, or when you die, exiting this temporary life and entering your eternity? We all will spend our eternity in one of two places: heaven or hell. Where we spend it is entirely up to us and it is based on the single most important decision we will ever make in our lives: did we accept Jesus as our Savior, trusting in Him to redeem us of all our sins, or not? A “yes” answer guarantees our salvation and our eternity in heaven, with Him. A “no” answer or even avoiding the answer altogether, guarantees an eternity in hell. What do you choose?

The passage below sums up the difference between those who put their faith and trust in Jesus and those who don’t:

“We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is fitting, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other, so that we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure, which is manifest evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you also suffer; since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes in that Day, to be glorified with His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed. Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thessalonians 1:3-12)

Just as Adam and Eve tried to hide from God after their sins but could not, so we too cannot hide from Him. For a believer in Christ, this is a good thing; however, for an unbeliever, this is a terrible thing:

“The mountains quake before Him, the hills melt, and the earth heaves at His presence, yes, the world and all who dwell in it. Who can stand before His indignation and who can endure the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by Him. The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knows those who trust in Him. But with an overflowing flood He will make an utter end of its place, and darkness will pursue His enemies. What do you conspire against the LORD? He will make an utter end of it. Affliction will not rise up a second time. For while tangled like thorns, and while drunken like drunkards, they shall be devoured like stubble fully dried.” (Nahum 1:5-10)

What is God’s presence to you? Are you fleeing from Him or running to Him? ✝️