God is with Us, Before us, and Behind Us

Church I've got good news for you tonight!

All through the Bible God tells us He will be with us; He'll never leave us [You], and He will also go before us.

The Old Testament tells us the Lord of Hosts is with us, our God forever and ever. He will guide us until death…the Lord is the one who goes ahead of you…He will be with you…He will not leave you nor forsake you…the Lord is for me, I will not fear.

The New Testament says do you not know that you are a Temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. His name is Emmanuel - God With Us, the One who joins himself with the Lord is one spirit with Him. I Am With You Always to the end of the age.

That's just to name a few scriptures that tells us that God promises to always be with us. In

Matthew 28:18–20 CSB

Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

the very last thing that Jesus tells the disciples giving what we know as the Great Commission is “I am always with you, to the end of the age”!

This Promise is so powerful because Jesus had just told them that - #1 - all authority had been given to Him in heaven and on earth thus giving him the authority to - #2 authorize us to go therefore and Make Disciples of all Nations.

And then after dropping the Great Commission on the disciples, which I can imagine would be overwhelming, He Comforts them by promising that He's going to be with them and us every step of the way to the very end of the age. He's with each individual one of us as we live our lives. He is with us, enabling us to be the man or woman that he's called and created us to be.

He's letting us know that where two or three are gathered, He is in the mist also. So, Jesus is with us as individuals as we go through our life, witnessing and living for God, but He's also with us corporately, as a whole, as the church is the bride of Christ.

So, he guides us through life as individuals and He also guides us as the church corporately. Church, do you know how blessed that we truly are? I think that we misunderstand what a true blessing is. We tend to misunderstand being blessed. Blessed is God giving us something…or helping things go our way…or having favor on us, but the fact is that God Himself being with us, never leaving us, never forsaking us. being in the mist were two or three are gathered is the blessing!

The very presence of God in our lives means we're blessed - so the fact that God will never leave us nor forsake us means that every single day, hour and minute of our life are blessed because God is with us and He promised He would never leave us!

John 15:5 CSB

I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.

Jesus says you can do nothing without me! Church, when Jesus tells us something we better take it to the bank. So, the fact that we can do nothing without Jesus means it's a really good thing that He promises to always be with us, to never leave us, because without Jesus we can't do anything - but with Jesus we can be Spirit-filled, Spirit-Led Disciples of Jesus Christ, being bold and living bold as Christians as he expects us to be.

Isaiah 41:10 CSB

Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold on to you with my righteous right hand.

says Do not fear for I Am With You, do not be afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold onto you with My righteous right hand.

All throughout the Bible God promises to be with us, to hold on to us, to help us, to be bold to help us to be the men and women that He called and created us to be Church!

Church in Deuteronomy 31:8 Scripture says: The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid and do not be discouraged.

Deuteronomy 31:8 CSB

The Lord is the one who will go before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or abandon you. Do not be afraid or discouraged.”

Now I'm going to kind of tackle this verse a little backwards. We're going to talk about how God goes out in front of us, but I want to talk about that in the context of another story so we're going to talk about the part where it says I will never leave you nor forsake you first. The Greek word for leave means to send back, let go, relax, loosen, give up or desist from. The word forsake in the Greek means to leave behind, to abandon, or to desert.

So, when God promises us He'll never leave us nor forsake us, He's saying - I will never send you back to what I brought you out of. I'll never let go of you. I'll never relax the hold of my hand on you, or loosen my grip on you. He is saying no matter how hard headed you are, I'm not going to give or desist from being around you. He's saying as long as you keep seeking me, then it doesn’t matter how many times you stumble, I'm not going to leave you behind, abandon you or desert you.

So all it says is I'll never leave you nor forsake you, but what it means is so much more than those few words. It means that we have a personal, loving, patient, merciful God who sees our failures, but loves us in spite of them, who sometimes has to walk at a snail's pace because we keep stumbling, but He does it with joy and kindness, because He promises that He will never leave never forsake us. And Church you know what I always say about a promise from God! We can take it to the bank! So we’ve taken a look at several Old Testament and New Testament scriptures that tells us that God is always with us, and I noticed that as I was studying the promise, I kept seeing that God also goes before us.

So, if you're like me, your first thought was how is He with us and before us at the same time? Our God is omnipresent meaning He's not held by space and time. He's everywhere at once.

So, part of the promise that God is always with us means that He's also going before us and that also means that He covers behind us.

God is with us helping us every second of every minute of every hour of every day guiding us and His guidance is amazing because He's the only one who has already gone before us into our future, so God is guiding me through today's problems with information about what I'm going to be facing tomorrow, all the time defending us from past problems.

So all it says is God is with you; He'll never leave you but it means our God loves us so much that He guides us through the present with information from the future and protection from the past.

So when the scripture tells us not to fear, not to worry, don't be discouraged, to hold our heads up high, it's because our omnipresent God is walking with us and He's gone before us and He's telling us to trust in Him and let Him fight our battles because He's the only one who's been in my future!

So, when God is giving me guidance that seems weird or strange, I have to understand that God's advice is based on His knowledge of my tomorrow; it's based on His knowledge of my future!

God's guidance is perfect not only because He loves me unconditionally and wants the best for me, and not only because He is sovereign and trustworthy, but because He has already gone before me and knows what I'm facing!

So let's look at some scripture from the Old Testament about a man named Jehoshaphat who was the King of Judah. You can find the story in 2nd Chronicles chapter 20.

A couple of Messengers come to King Jehoshaphat and tell him that the Moabites and the Amorites have joined with another army and is well on its way to attack King Jehoshaphat and Judah.

King Jehoshaphat had just narrowly escaped a war with his life and now he's got three armies who have joined forces against him and he is scared, and I would say he doesn't know what to do because apart from seeking God, he doesn't know.

But King Jehoshaphat has an up-to-date, on time, 24/7, white hot relationship with God. So, he proclaimed and/or declared a fast and a prayer for all of Judah.

Scripture says that they came from all the cities that made up Judah to seek God. Church, There Is Power in corporate worship; there is Power in fasting; there is Power in prayer, and when God's people come together in faith and earnestly seek God, God shows his dedication and love for His people, and He tells them do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast number of soldiers coming against you for the battle is not yours but the battle is God's!

God told them it wasn't their battle to worry about or win, but it was God's battle. God tells them that He would win the battle, but he also told them to go to the Battlegrounds, and position themselves and to stand still and to watch the salvation of the Lord.

It's one thing to claim that we believe, or to claim that we have faith in the Lord. It's another thing to risk our lives knowing if God doesn't follow through with what he told us He would do, then we were going to be slaughtered.

God is not just with us, He goes before us. God doesn't just use the here and now to help us, He also uses our past to show His hand and who He has refined us to be.

When they started singing and praising God, He set ambushes to defeat the enemy. Scripture says the moment they began to shout Praises to The Lord, He set the ambush.

So King Jehoshaphat in the entire Kingdom of Judah came together to see God in what they knew that apart from a supernatural, divine, intervention from God, they had no chance.

God told them to go to the Battleground to position themselves on the battlefield and to stand still and watch the salvation of the Lord. So they sought the Lord in prayer, fasting, praise and worship and God LED them to a position of victory.

Church when you seek God and His will for your life, He will not only go before you and fight your battles, He will position you for victory. And once you are in a position of victory, all you have to do is standstill and praise the Lord as you watch the salvation of the Lord in your life!

We have to jump into action when the enemy is approaching and seek God, and we have to have faith and trust in God to go out to the battlefield so that God can put us in a position for victory, and then we have to get out of the way - we have to move out of God's way and praise His name as we watch the salvation of the Lord.

Their praise was evidence of their faith. Their faith LED them to the battlefield, but their praise was evidence of their faith. When we truly believe the word and the promises of God, we can't help but praise Him. And when we praise Him standing on the battlefield where Faith brought us, and we're standing in a victory position aligned with God's will and purpose for our life, we can't help but praise Him.

We see this in what Jesus did for us. He fought the Battle for our salvation, and He rescued us from the Judgment of God that we deserve. We are Overcomers…We are conquerors in Christ because He fights the battle and defeats our foe and then shares the spoils with us.

You see God is going out in front of us in this new year. He's going out in front of us in preparation for what He has for us in this new year.

God went out in front and fought the Battle. The fight was God's fight not man's fight. God won the battle before the enemy even arrived at the battlefield. The scripture said the moment they praised God, He set an ambush and the armies that had joined together to come against Judah turned on each other and completely wiped each other out.

When we position ourselves and align ourselves in God's will, we stand still and watch the salvation of the Lord God wipe out our enemies and then hand us the spoils of War.

When we spend time seeking God's counsel for our lives, a part of the promise that He's always with us also means that he goes out before us. God is already out in front of us fighting the battles that are coming our way in the new year of 2022.

They actually won this battle on their faces in prayer before God. So many times we try to fix the problem, so many times we try to fight the battle that we're not equipped or expected to fight, when all the time God is wanting us to fall on our face before Him and seek Him in fasting and prayer, because He's got this, because it's not our fight, it's God's fight.

Our fight is not against flesh and blood so we're needed on the front line with our face to the floor in prayer. Prayer is our only access into the future! God goes before us, and we have a direct line of communication with God, so our prayers are capable of affecting the future.

So we know that God is with us that He'll never leave us, and now we know that God goes out before us and He'll fight the battle and He'll hand us The Spoils of War, but God is also behind us!

When Moses was leading the children of Israel to the Red Sea and Pharaoh was chasing them, the children of Israel had the ocean on one side and Pharaoh's Army behind them. God put a wall of fire between the children of Israel and Pharaohs army to protect them until the next day when God was going to do one of the greatest miracles and split the Red Sea!

The point is that God is with us, walking us through each moment of our day with knowledge and guidance and direction based on His understanding of what we're going to face in our future. God put a wall of fire between us and our enemies from the past to keep us under His protection, to keep the past from creeping up on us!

So I don't know about you, but the promise that God will always be with us is way more deep and complex than we ever thought it would be. But the promise that He's with us means that He's before us, means that He's behind us, means that he has a hedge of protection all the way around us as long as we continue to walk in the light as He is in the light.