God is with you.

God being with us has significant results. When God was speaking regarding King Cyrus in Isaiah 45, there God says He is with Cyrus, even to the extent that He is holding his right hand.

The benefits for Cyrus when God was with him:

• God will subdue nations before him
• God will ungird the loins of kings
• God will open doors before Cyrus so that gates will not shut
• God will go before Cyrus to level the mountains
• God will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron
• God will give treasures of darkness and the hidden riches of secret places

Isaiah 43 also gives us the benefit of God being with us.

• When you pass through the waters, God will be with you
• Through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you
• When you walk through fire, you will not be scorched
• Nor will flame burn you

The behavior of the fire will change and the water will not drown you. This is the result when God is with you.

God’s desire has been from the beginning to be with us.

Overall, we see an intent from God to be with us. The Bible gives us a lot of evidence where we can find God wanting to be with us. In the Book of Genesis, we see God wanting to have fellowship with Adam. Afterwards, in the book of Exodus, we see God wanting to dwell among the sojourning people of Israel. He gave Moses the blueprint of the tabernacle where his glory would dwell.

When Solomon built the physical temple, we see God filling the temple with his glorious presence, where the priests tried to enter but could not!

Then we see the prophecies in the major prophets that promise he will be with us. Thereafter we see Jesus coming and then the Holy Spirit who was sent to dwell with us. Finally, in the book of Revelation, we see the Lamb of God dwelling on the new earth and the new Jerusalem.

Most importantly, think about how Jesus was very much thinking about who would be with the disciples once he left them. Jesus said the Holy Spirit coming to them would be beneficial.

The Spirit of truth is with us! Praise God.

We can see the original purpose of God when he was passing the plan of the tabernacle to Moses.

Exodus 25:8 Have them build a sanctuary for Me, so that I may dwell among them.

Exodus 29:46 They shall know and acknowledge that I am the Lord their God.

Exodus 29:43 At the doorway of the Tent of Meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you, to speak to you there.

Let’s go to the part where Jesus says that he is not going to leave his disciples as orphans. John 14:18 says I will not leave you as orphans.

I will ask the Father and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever.

But the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He remains with you continually and will be in you.

Jesus had been with them so far, and so far they had experienced all the benefit of the Son of God being with them. In short, we can say the disciples never felt that they were orphaned. Earlier in this article I do share many verses that tell us all the essential benefits we get of Jesus being with us.

All the benefits that were informed earlier are incomparable. All those supernatural attributes matter and are beneficial. However, there are occasions that those Supernatural occurrences do not happen according to how we expect.

This is where one of the hidden attributes of God that benefits us matter the most. Please read John 16:1 I have told you these things so that you will not stumble or be caught off guard and fall away.

16:33 I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace.

So, sometimes the supernatural may not occur as we expect. But one thing we need to be assured of is that while God is with us, the least he does is inform us individually of what is going to come. In John 16:13 Jesus talks about the Spirit of Truth who will come to you. He will speak whatever He hears and He will disclose to you what is to come.

You may be facing lots of challenges and whosoever reads this article may in different situations of their life.

Perhaps you may be in the pit of sin. When I say pit of sin, I mean you are sinning. You feel that there is no way out. You are totally addicted to the practice of sin. You know Jesus and you feel ashamed of yourself. You feel conscious of your sin, and even in that state of being God is with you.

God is still with you.

You may feel all alone when you are overwhelmed with the current demands of necessities in your life which you are not able to meet. You feel that nobody is there to help you. The need can be physical, where you have to be present all the time. You would have loved it if you had got a helping hand. But so far you have not seen any. You are all alone facing the errands of the day and the sleepless nights where you want to sleep but you are suffering with insomnia.

God is still with you.

You may be a person who is burdened with the need for a tremendous amount of funds. You are flapping your wings as much as you can, but as a bird is limited to a height in the sky, you are not able to go beyond a level. You know God is all powerful, he is able to just call into action anything. You desperately want him to send some help, even if it is small. But you do not see anything. You wonder why nothing is changing around you; you wish, but nothing significant occurs.

God is still with you.

You are suffering with a dreadful disease, and you do not know the reason why it happened to you! But you have a glimmer of hope. On any of the coming days God can appear and in a snap would cure you. But so far you have not seen anything happen. There is no sign of anything happening. Your body is giving up, your ray of hope is slowly fading away.

God is still with you.

You have taken off on a journey hearing a promise. However, nothing is working out! Day after day you are becoming depressed. Not knowing which step to take next! All the time confused, wondering whether you should try one thing or the other. Legitimately paralysed to take any step. You want to squirm into your pathetic state, where you pity yourself and you are just willing to fulfil the cravings of your flesh. You do not know if there is any possibility, you try to get up one day or another but life beats you down again. You do not know why, but you are back again in the same cycle.

God is still with you.

I want to tell you that out of all of these situations God can bring you out, because God is with you.

If God is with us, why do we fall away, or why do we fail? Why do we not see the attributes of God being with us? Why does he not show us or disclose to us what is going to happen, if he is with us? That is because we fail to make use of this God who is with us for our challenges in the way, he wants us to use Him

I am going to share about a person in the Old Testament who failed utterly because he failed to make use of God who was with him and who was with the nation of Israel. Let’s start with what caused his ultimate failure and what the Bible records as the reason.

1st Chronicles 10:14 says Saul did not inquire of the Lord. Therefore the Lord killed him and turned the kingdom over to David.

It is one thing to have God at your side or to have God dwell in the midst of the people, and another thing to make use of him for yourself. Saul was a person who was doubtful of himself. Prophet Samuel says of him that when he thought of himself as little in his own eyes, Saul was chosen.

Saul from the start was a person who was led by other people and flowed according to the situation. He did not make his own decisions. Here I do not mean his personal decisions, but more the decisions that you take after inquiring of God.

We can see he is terrible at this. So for a king who is leading a great nation, who needs hand holding all the time, he needed people to guide him. For the matters of God, Prophet Samuel realized he needed his help. So Prophet Samuel established an ordinance for him right at the beginning of his anointing.

1st Samuel 10:8 You shall go down ahead of me to Gilgal and behold, I will be coming down to you to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice peace offerings. You shall wait seven days until I come to you and show you what you must do.

This was a commandment that was something to stay with him long. 1st Samuel 13:8 Now Saul waited seven days, according to the appointed time which Samuel had set, but Samuel had not come to Gilgal and all the people were scattering away from Saul.

He did the burnt offerings on his own and disobeyed Samuel, and his kingdom did not endure. He thought the offering of sacrifice was more of a ritual than a moment where God is going to talk to his servant and tell him what to do. Here is where he started to fall out from the sight of God. It is one thing to know God is with you and it is another to get God’s own input on the matters you ask him. Later on we see time and again he failed to inquire, and on occasions when he tried to inquire he did not get answers because of reasons caused by him.

1st Chronicles 10:13,14 summarizes his life. The 14th verse clearly states Saul failed to inquire of the Lord, therefore the Lord killed him and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse.

David faced a great number of challenges before he became King and after he became King also. But one thing he understood: it is a must to seek God before doing anything. After he was coronated as a King there were two wars one after another against the Philistines. The Philistines did not want David to gain the upper hand, so immediately when they realised he was anointed, they wanted to destabilise him.

But David, as opposed to Saul, called in the High Priest before taking any action. Here is where he won his victory.

The assurance that God is with us is this: that he communicates and guides. That is why the written scripture that says “The Spirit of Truth will disclose what is going to come” should be greatly appreciated, however without inquiring I doubt how much freedom the Spirit has to tell us.

God being with us is good and great, however there is a deeper level of encounter we have with him when we enquire of him.

We see Moses (Exodus 33:7) used to take his tent outside the camp, far away from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. Moses moving out of his comfort zone, taking the tent outside and erecting it just to meet God and communicate, displays his hunger and thirst to see the Lord and the need that he had for God to tell him what is going to come, and he wanted God to tell him His ways.

Today, regardless of what situation you are in and what immediate miracles you expect from the Lord, I want you to SEEK him first, SEEK his face. Do not let anything outside overwhelm you; instead SEEK him. He at the least will organise your steps to bring success in your life. God bless you.