The Attributes of God - God's Immanence (Pt 1)

The Attributes of God - God's Immanence (Pt 1)

A Journey into the Father's Heart

A.W. Tozer (Pg 152-155)

A Sense of God's Nearness  

I once knelt under an apple tree in a field, along with several other preachers and a Salvation Army man, Captain Ireland. As Captain Ireland began to pray, I suddenly sensed a nearness—there was another presence. Though unseen, He had been there all along.

"Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?" – Jeremiah 23:23

The Challenge of Fellowship with God  

How can God continually manifest His presence to the proud and arrogant when He is so humble and lowly? How can He reveal Himself to the lukewarm and careless when He is so zealous, or to the hardened and vengeful when He is so forgiving? How can the harsh and severe experience the God who is so kind, or the calculating receive grace from the One whose love led Him to die for us?

How can we, stained by sin, have true fellowship with Him?

The Heavenly-Mindedness of Jesus  

Think of the heavenly-mindedness of Jesus. While on Earth, He remained in the Father’s bosom.  

"The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father," – John 1:18.  

Notice, it says "is," not "was." He never left the Father’s bosom while He was on Earth, except during that awful moment on the cross when God turned away from Him so that He might die for mankind.

Jesus often spoke of the other world:  

"I am from above," – John 8:23.  

"I came down from heaven," – John 6:38.  

He lived in the heart of God, and His life was rooted in the world above. That was the world He inhabited. Yet, think of how earthly and worldly His people have become—talking about furniture, TV sets, sports, cars, houses, and politics—anything but heaven and God.

The Dissimilarity of Nature  

We pray, "Draw me nearer," yet He is already as near as He can be, as far as distance is concerned. The issue isn’t distance; it's a dissimilarity of nature. We have enough of His nature to be justified and regenerated, but not enough to perfect our fellowship with Him. And it is the perfection of that fellowship which we so desperately need.

Peter's Distance and Our Own  

There was a man who followed the Lord from afar, and he was able to live with it. Some of you, too, have learned to live in this twilight, in the chill of distance, and not mind it. But Peter couldn't stand it. When the Lord turned and looked at him, Peter went out and wept bitterly.

Do you have tears for your unlikeness to Him? Do you have tears for the distance between you and God—a distance that you know isn’t real, but you still feel? You are thankful for every blessing, for justification, and for God’s grace in your life, but you still can’t escape that sense of remoteness. Some days, it feels like a heavy burden because God seems far away. You know He isn’t, but you feel that He is. He can’t show His face because you have allowed self-indulgence, harshness, a vengeful spirit, lukewarmness, pride, and worldliness to cloud His presence.

A Call to Repentance  

I believe repentance is called for. We must repent of our unlikeness to Him, our unholiness in the presence of the Holy One, our self-indulgence in the presence of the selfless Christ, our harshness before the kind Christ, our hardness in the presence of the forgiving Christ, and our lukewarmness before the zealous Christ. We must repent of our worldliness and earthliness in the presence of the heavenly Christ.

What are you going to do about it? Has He opened your heart?

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