A welcome guest post from my friend Colin Bearup.

Perhaps one of the most treasured sentences in the Bible is ‘I am with you’. It occurs many times and is often preceded by ‘Do not be afraid’. In times of anxiety, crisis, challenge and, well, life in general, to know that the Lord, the capable and wise, is with us is reassuring. However, I came across it the other way round: I (human being) am with you (Lord). That simply must have a different vibe to it. The Lord doesn’t need us to reassure him.
Psalm 139:15 says “When I awake, I am still with you.” I don’t know about everyone else, but at the prompting of my bladder, I get up in the morning, feel around for my slippers, put on my dressing gown and go to the bathroom. Then I go to the kitchen, make myself some tea, get some cereal and then sit down. When I have eaten, I consider myself to be sufficiently awake. Then I compose myself and reach for my Bible. It is like the shopkeeper, entering the shop, opening the cash register, unlocking the front door and saying “OK you can come in. I am ready”. Or even “the doctor will see you now”.
The unarguable reality is that the Lord does not show up when or because we are ready. He is already there. It is just that we have not given him our attention. Personally, I have always read Psalm 139 as the story of a journey. David goes from pondering how fully God knows him and slides into a sense of near panic – he cannot get away, he is never private, never alone, always exposed. We human beings, generally want to manage how exposed we are. We like to have some say in the matter. Finally he arrives at a place of trust and willing surrender.
I suspect that many of us rub along with God, keeping him at a manageable distance, imagining that we go into his presence and come out again at our convenience. Then one day we realise, like David, how utterly open to his view we are. We need to pass through that discomfort of realisation and emerge on the other side into a place of total trust. We become just a little bit like a small child, who wakes up in the parental home, at ease in the presence of apparently all-knowing parents.
Although nothing is hidden, David concludes with the invitation “search me and know me,” a full and cooperative acceptance of the Lord’s overwhelming knowledge of him with a view to being purged of all that is displeasing and being led in the way everlasting. Living with this perspective, one of sure and trusting knowledge that absolutely everything we do and say is known to our loving father God, that knowing we are in his presence whether we are aware of him or not, must lead to a very different way of living. Whether we attain it, is largely up to us. The story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, does not end with the hug and the party. No, it concludes with the father speaking to the miserable elder brother and saying, “You are always with me, everything I have is yours.”