Sermon Text: Psalm 139:1-12
Sermon Title: "Walking in the Presence of God"
By Rev. Joon-Sik Park

We all desire to be a spiritual person, or at least to stay near a spiritual person. Then, what are the characteristics of such a person? Who is such a person?

In the life of a spiritual person, there is always connectedness between life and faith. Faith is not so remote and abstract matter as something you only mention and remember once a week on a Sunday morning. Faith is the center of life: it guides, inspires, and corrects life. Faith and life are inseparable, and indistinguishable.

The spiritual person is most of all the one who is gentle to everyone around, and impresses everyone he or she meets with simple goodness. The person’s life generates love and respect for others, confirming human dignity. It also opens up new horizons of possibility in the life of others. While most of us live according to self-interest, such a person is truly self-denying.

One of my professors at the seminary grew up as an American missionary’s son in China. His house was near to the house of Watchman Nee, the most noted Chinese theologian a half century ago. He still vividly remembered the visit of Watchman Nee to his house: "Whenever he came over to my house, I felt that the whole house was brightened with his presence. Even when I was young, I thought to myself that he was a saint."

The whole Psalm 139 originated not from abstract thinking about God, but from the personal experience of God. No matter where the psalmist looks or whether he stands still or walks, sits or lies down, everywhere he meets God’s eye watching him continually; indeed, God even knows what he is going to say before he has uttered a word and even discerns his thoughts from afar.

The verses we read in this psalm teaches us two things.

First, we are fully and completely known by God. God knows our deeds, thoughts, and words. God sees and knows every attitude of our hearts. No intention or act is hidden from him. He hears every word. God knows us inside and out.

Such penetrating knowledge of God is too wonderful and too high. The psalmist stands amazed under the mystery and wonder of the omniscience of God. These verses express the astonishment that in all our ways we are involved in relations with the One who knows us fully. There is nothing that is not known to God.

Second, God’s presence is inescapable. Even a flight to the remotest East where the dawn rises, and the distant West where the sun sinks into the sea, or even to above and below the earth is senseless: The Lord is everywhere. Even calling darkness is of no avail, for darkness is light and night is like day for God. Thus, no one can flee from God. This knowledge is not simply a conviction about God’s being generally present everywhere, rather it is the personal certainty that God is present everywhere I am.

Like the psalmist, if we truly affirm that God knows us and is with us always, what should our life be? If we truly believe in living God, how we should live our lives?

There must be the connection between life and spirituality. The greatest temptation facing all Christians is to separate life from spirituality. One of the most effective strategies of Satan is to disconnect us, to cut us off from the memory of God by busy actions, or restless concerns. When we are cut off from the memory of God even for a moment, we cannot live as we should as His children.

What is prayerful life? It is a life in which nothing is done, said, or understood independently of God. It is a life of total connectedness. In a life of total connectedness we truly walk in His presence.

God wants all of our heart, all of our mind, and all of our soul–unconditional, and unreserved. Then, all our desires, thoughts, and actions are to be constantly guided by God. Everything we see, hear, touch should remind us of God’s presence, goodness, and faithfulness.

Much of what the Bible demands is "to remember." When the soil is not plowed the rain cannot reach the seeds; when the leaves are not raked away the sun cannot nurture the hidden plants. For the Word of God to bear fruit, we have to remember the Word of God constantly. To plow the soil of our soil, and to rake away the leaves covering it, we have to meditate upon the Word of God day and night.

And such a practice calls for discipline, formation, and training. It is the "practice of the presence of God." Whether we work, play, or study, whether we are alone, or in the midst of crowd, we should be reminded of the presence of God who continually watches us. Then, to work is to pray, and to pray is to work. Spirituality becomes the way of our living.

Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun whose very name became synonymous with charity for the poorest of the poor died on September 6, 1997. She was 87. For 50 years, she comforted the poor dying in gutters, sheltered infants abandoned in trash heaps, and soothed the wounds of lepers.

One day when she was young, she found a woman "half eaten by maggots and rats" lying in the street. She sat with her, stroking her head, until the woman died. With that experience a new vocation was born. Her goal would be to minister to the "unwanted, unloved and uncared for."

At her funeral, the Scripture reading was from the passage taken from the Gospel of Matthew, a parable that Jesus told his disciples. The parable says that when the righteous are welcomed into the kingdom of God, the Lord will bless them for having fed him when he was hungry, having given him water when he was thirsty. The believers say they never saw him hungry or thirsty. "The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." This was the passage that Mother Teresa considered her life’s mission statement and always remembered. When she served a suffering person, she thought she was not doing any favor but only performing her duty to her Lord. She always walked in the presence of her God.

Decades of caring for the poor and sick did not dull Mother Teresa’s sense of humor. "The other day I dreamed that I was at the gates of heaven," she once said. "And St. Peter said ‘Go back to earth, there are no slums up here.’" I wonder what it would have been like to be around her. We probably could have felt the very connectedness between her faith and life.

We should remember that God sees through us to the very bottom of our soul, and that we cannot flee from His presence. God knows us and God is with us. Nothing in our lives is outside the realm of God’s judgment and mercy. God’s knowledge of us and presence with us make us both humble and full of peace: Since God discerns even our deepest thoughts and motives, no one can boast; since God’s guiding and upholding presence is with us always, we can feel secure.

Good news is that we can entrust ourselves to the God who knows fully and yet loves us. The One who knows us and is with us is the only One who can guide us in the way everlasting. As Paul said in Romans 8:39, nothing "in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

True faith is possible only when we encounter the presence of God in every situation of our lives and are continually attentive to Him, recognizing every situation as related to God. God’s companion presence is with the one who prays in every moment, every place, every circumstance, and thus walks in His presence.