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What does the divine
immanence mean in direct Christian experience?
It means simply that God is here.
Wherever we are, God is here. There is no place, there can be no place,
where He is not. Ten million
intelligences standing at as many points in space and separated by
incomprehensible distances can each one say with equal truth, God is here. No point is nearer to God than any other
point. It is exactly as near to God from
any place as it from any other place. No
one is in mere distance any further or any nearer to God than any other
person. These are truths believed by
every instructed Christian. It remains
for us to think on them and pray over them until they begin to glow within
us. A.
W. Tozer, The Universal Presence
When October arrives our world here in the Shenandoah Valley gives
increasing evidence day after day that the Creator is here in our midst. No
greater metaphor needs He to hammer home the wisdom that Old Age can be the
most beautiful era of life. With gratitude
that I have made it this far, I’m remembering that God is shouting His miracles
and wonders for me to absorb into joy and gladness. I want to appropriate the
intense color of
these autumn days with a prayer that each day I can be more aware that Christ is
here blessing me in ways unimaginable.
In his book, Abba’s Child, Brendan Manning tells the story of a
journalist who stopped G. K. Chesterton on the street shortly after he became a
Christian. “Sir, may I ask you a
question?” “Certainly,” replied
Chesterton. “If the risen Christ
suddenly appeared at this very moment and stood behind you, what would you
do?” Chesterton looked the reporter
squarely in the eye and said, “He is.”
Manning continues: “Is this a
mere figure of speech, wishful thinking, or a piece of pious rhetoric? No, this
truth is the most real fact about
our life. The Jesus who walked the roads
of Galilee is the One who stands beside us.
The Christ of history is the Christ of faith....Faith means receiving
the gospel message... reshaping us in the image and likeness of God. The gospel
reshapes the hearer through the
power of Jesus’ victory over death. The
gospel proclaims a hidden power in the world – the living presence of the risen
Christ. It liberates men and women from
the slavery that obscures in them the image and likeness of God....
For me, the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning
the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.... My yes to
the fullness of divinity embodied in the present risenness of Jesus is scary
because it is so personal. This yes is
an act of faith, a decisive, wholehearted response of my whole being to the
risen Jesus present beside me, before me, around me, and within me; a cry of
confidence that my faith in Jesus provides security not only in the face of
death but in the face of a worse threat posed by my own malice; a word that
must be said not just once but repeated over and over again in the
ever-changing landscape of life. An
awareness of the resurrected Christ banishes meaninglessness – the dreaded
sense that all our life experiences are disconnected and useless, helps us to
see our lives as all of one piece, and reveals a design never perceived before.” 
 But my God shall supply all your need
according to His riches in glory. Philippians 4:19 
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