• Help For The Thessalonians
• Hook's Points
• The Exodus
• God's Attention to Individuals
• What I Hear From You
• Does Suicide Seal One’s Doom?
• Hallowed Be Your Name

God knows you individually, does he not? He sees you every moment, hears your every word, knows your every thought, understands your every feeling, and guides your every step. That is comforting to believe.

The world population is about 6-billion people. God shows no respect of persons, so he gives constant individual attention to each of the 6-billion of us. And he is conscious of the many billions who have already departed this life. This concept is simple to state but it is not all that simple when we try to explain how it can be.

It is no surprise that we cannot explain all the nature and capabilities of the divine Creator, yet some concepts can give us greater assurance. God surely will not judge us adversely for probing deeper in an effort to comprehend how he can give billions of us individual attention constantly.

What is your concept of God? Is he an awesome, oversized man 28 feet tall towering over us even as he sits on his throne? When we try to picture him in any physical form, we are simplifying him beyond recognition. God is Spirit who can manifest himself in various ways. The one God has manifested himself as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as he has served different capacities. His divine nature has been dispensed in different capacities in human beings.

Jesus prayed that "they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us … that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me…" (John 17: 20-23). "God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts," Paul adds (Gal. 4:6). He had already revealed, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).

This was not a physical, sensational experience, for Paul prayed that God "may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith…" (Eph. 3:16f). This indwelling of God made them individually temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19) and collectively a temple of the Presence of God (Eph. 2:22). The Spirit of God indwells all his children (Rom. 8:9-11), however, all do not receive the same measure of his gift (Eph. 4:7). The three manifestations of God as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit indwell our hearts – our minds rather than our blood-pumping hearts. Their indwelling in our bodies is only in the sense that our bodies house our spirits.

In view of this indwelling in our very minds, instead of lifting up hands and sending prayers toward the Milky Way or looking beyond the Big Dipper or the Southern Cross in prayer and praise thinking he is located out there, we can think of his presence within our own spiritual beings. We don’t have to sing "I want to be where you are." Does not our relationship with him make him within us instead of at some remote distance, though he does permeate the universe? (You think of his dwelling place as being over the warmer zone rather than the North Pole, don’t you?) His dispensation of himself in each of us makes him a personal deity. We need not shout our prayers or even whisper them. He knows our thoughts. We can talk to him who is within us by communicative thoughts. He is a very personal deity.

Would you greet God if you met him on the street or in the aisle of the church? Even the Safeway employees are required to look customers in the eye and greet them. That is for business purposes. Do you pass persons in whom the Spirit of God lives without acknowledging them? They are the most accurate representation of God you will see in this life. In slighting them, you slight God! Interaction with another is the interaction of two spirit-filled hearts. Can we not say that such is one way God gives us individual attention?

No, understanding the personal attention of God is not all that easy; neither are the suggestions that I am offering all that simple. However, believing this may bring a sobering realization of his personal interaction in our lives. It is easier to state it on paper than to commit our trust to it.

There is a measure of God in each human. Man is made in the image of God, which is a spiritual image since God is not physical, and God has breathed into him the breath of life. All life is from God. From parent to child that original life has continued to be passed on through the generations. That is not just a physical energizing, for the passages above indicate that the Spirit dwells in our hearts. Thus he gives spiritual direction – the law written on the heart, God’s own principle of action which is love – to all people of all times. In different times and cultures men may not worship according to Biblical revelation, but when they worship a Creator, they are worshipping the same God we serve. They may not know a lot about him, but we don’t know the mysteries of God either.

Paul addressed those who were worshipping God as the unknown deity. He assured the Athenian worshippers that they were on the right course as those who "seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ Being then God’s offspring…" (Acts 17:27f). They recognized the fatherhood of the one they served in veiled understanding. A measure of God’s gift was in their hearts. God could work good through them. For those who have not his revelation, God will judge them according to the law written in their hearts.

If humans are cloned, and since it is possible, it probably will be done very soon, the life in that creature will be but a continuation of that part of the Spirit of God common to all mankind.

I am still doubtful that there is intelligent life on other planets, but if there is life in other beings, what is its source? We are limited in our choice of answers. Either it came from matter or it came from the Source of Life. You have already answered that by your belief or atheism.

Eventually, God will reclaim that measure of himself that he dispensed in each person, whether saint or sinner. At death, "the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Ecc. 12:7).

In concluding this essay I will throw you another question to ponder. In order for Jesus to "come again", will he have to leave us and no longer indwell us so he can "return"? Will he go away again so he can return again?

These are suggested thoughts that I leave for your pondering. I fully value the question Zophar put to Job: "Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the almighty?" (Job 11:7).

It is not all that simple, is it? []

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