GUEST POST - Is God Everywhere Or Not?

This week’s guest post comes from my friend Anthony Vernon who is a doctoral student at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. He has a big heart with a passion to care for and love all people. Go follow him on his Facebook page! ❤️🙏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

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“We have to bring God to (insert location)!!!” 

“We have to take back (insert location/sphere of influence) for God!!!” 

If you have grown up in church or around Christianity, especially in the United States, you have probably heard these phrases or something similar. I have, and for a long time, I believed them. I heard this a lot, especially when it came to doing mission work and sharing the Gospel with those across the world. 

“We have to take the Gospel to places where God is not known,” I would hear people in the church say. 

This is what drove people to fundraise, go on mission trips, and other things.  I wanted to follow this call in my younger years when I was around 6 or 7 and into my college days. I went to college to learn how to be an effective missionary, sharing the Gospel in contexts different from my own. One of the classes that I took while in my undergrad program was a course on world religions. I learned about Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, and how, as a missionary, I could take aspects of these faith traditions and apply them in contextualizing the Gospel.

It was then that my mind started shifting about some things, and led me to where I am now. 

The idea and notion that the Western church, particularly in the United States, has brought God or has taken Jesus to certain areas of the world or the nation itself reeks of colonialism and wanting to dominate the world. It is believed that it is our job to take God to places that do not believe in God. Rather than trying to understand the different cultures and contexts of the world, we often think that it is our duty to “take back” the land for Christ, as if the world has been stolen by “secular” society and culture. This type of thinking has to change, for the betterment of the Church and the way we see the world. 

I want to say this: We do not have to “bring God to” a certain location or “take back” a certain sphere of influence for Christ.

The author of Psalm 139 says that they cannot flee from the Spirit of God. If they go to heaven, God is there. If they make their bed in the world of the dead, God is there. God is all around them and with them. If we believe these words to be valid, then God is in all places, among all people, regardless of who they are. God can be found in the hearts of those who believe differently than us. God can be found in the places that we would not even dare to think or believe that God could be. To say that God is not in certain areas is to deny the omnipresence of God. If we can see God as being in ALL places and ALL people, then it takes pressure off of us. 

God is everywhere, even in the places where we think God cannot be seen or found. We don’t have to do all this work. God is with you, and in you. Take that to heart and run with it. 

 - Anthony