Do Not Be Afraid - God is Near

Sermon text for June 10:
Psalm 139

That night in the hospital room while I waited for Mom to die, I decided I wanted nothing to do with God anymore. My mom was a good person, she never hurt no one, and more often than not if she could help she would. But that night she lay there dyin'. It seemed to me that the drugs weren’t workin' and she was in a lot of pain. Mom wasn’t much for complaining, but I saw the tear that ran down her cheek.

If God could allow someone like mom to suffer like this before she died, what good is he? I remembered the words to the old hymn, “Be not dismayed, what’re betide God will take care of you. Beneath his wings of love abide, God will take care of you.” It didn’t seem to me that God was doing much “taking care of” that night. Mom was hurtin'. Her breath was getting more and more shallow, and her chest was heavin' with the effort. I made up my mind right then that I was through with God … forever.

I had never felt so guilty in my whole life. What I did was completely out of character and I was deeply ashamed. I had a bottle of Jack with me in the room and I took a long pull on it – maybe enough booze would easy my guilt, but it didn’t help, instead it kind of made me sick. My head ached, my stomach felt queasy, the room was spinning around, and I still felt guilty. And then I got mad. Why should God make me feel so guilty because of one little transgression? If that’s the way it going to be, God and I were going to have a serious parting of the ways. And that was the last time I went to church. Church – my church or anyone else’s. From time to time my wife would nag me to join her for worship and I would tell her I no longer believed and did not want to be around all those hypocrites anyway. It’s been that way ever since.

Once in a while I felt kind of guilty ignoring God that way and pretending he doesn’t exist but that’s the way it is with God and me these days. I don’t bother God and he doesn’t bother me.

I have been very busy lately, with family and work and all. Sometimes I feel like I am going a thousand miles an hour and getting no where. There’s study group at church, and teaching Sunday School. I drive carpool for the kids one week a month and also once a month for my work. The other day Tommy came home and said he needed cookies or a cake or something for the cub scout bake sale, and O yea he had signed me up to stand outside the super market and sell baked goods for three hours on Saturday.

You know lately I’ve had this nagging feeling like maybe I’m missing something spiritually. It’s like God and I aren’t as close as we used to be. In fact sometimes I can’t seem to find God at all. I can’t talk to God the way I used to. Sometimes I wonder if I should be teaching Sunday School anymore because I feel as if God is lost, as if God can’t find me anymore. I don’t know what to do.

Each of us has a story to tell about our relationship with God, a time when God seemed near or far away. Maybe you are in the middle of one of those scenarios right now where God seems distant or lost.

The writer of Psalm139 is amazed by the constant presence of God. No matter what he does or where he goes, he knows God is with him. He writes “O Lord you have searched me and known me. You know when I rise up and when I sit down.” The image is of a God who is actively involved in our lives, who is impossible to hide from, and who knows us completely and intimately. The Psalmist’s God is concerned about things as simple as when we stand up or sit down.

“O Lord you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar .… Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord you know it completely.” Sometimes we like to think that our thoughts and feelings are private and we only need to be concerned about our words and deeds. But in our relationship with God, nothing is hidden – everything is known, so everything is important. “Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord you already know it. You discern my thoughts from far away.” There can be no pretending in our relationship with God.

When we understand that we can’t pretend to be something we are not; when we understand that there is no place to hide from God; when we believe that God will follow us no matter where we go; that’s when we finally surrender, and a real relationship with God becomes possible.

Sometimes we get angry at God because of something that happens like in one of the scenarios that began this sermon. Sometimes we decide not to be in relationship with God because we feel ashamed. Sometimes we just seem to get lost in the busy-ness of life and it is hard to sense God’s presence. But in all of these experiences God is with us, even when we choose not to be with God.

The English Poet, Francis Thompson spent years of his life trying to avoid God. He was a drunk and a drug abuser and he thought that the further he sunk into moral poverty, the further he was able to run from God. He writes about his journey away from God in his poem “The Hound of Heaven”:

I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled him down the arches of the years
I fled him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fear
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat – and a voice beat
More instant than the feet –
All things betray thee, who betrayest me.

The God described in Psalm 139 could be the “Hound of Heaven”, pursuing us wherever we go. If we are running or hiding from God, perhaps this is the day we stop, and allow ourselves to be caught by the One who has loved us forever.

Copyright © 2007 by Dwight R. Blackstock