Where is God? I mean, where is he really? As I have listened to people praying over the years, I have raised this question to myself many times. As I participate in prayer meetings, I find myself envisioning the process of prayer. In my imagination, I see our prayers rising above our heads, into the sky. 
I see earth shrink and fade into the distance as our prayers soar toward God on his throne in heaven. Somewhere out there among the stars, our prayers reach an almighty God who peers through the vastness of space and somehow hears us as individuals. That’s what makes him God. I couldn’t hear something from that distance much less recognize who it was that spoke on a distant planet in a galaxy far, far away. But God can.
We even pray as if this were the case. We tend to talk to God as if we’re talking to someone on the phone. We speak to someone at a distance as if they are near. We explain our position because, after all, God is out there in heaven somewhere listening to us. He needs help in understanding the context of our prayers sometimes, and so we go to great lengths to explain, through prayer, our position. Pay attention the next time you hear someone praying. It’s true!
It’s also wrong. God is not “out there, somewhere” listening to our prayers. In fact, he’s closer than we think and with a better understanding of our situation than we often give him credit for. Instead of thinking of God as being far away but still connected, we should think of God as being close. I was taught long ago to pray by putting an empty chair in the room, and then praying as if God was sitting in that chair. Somehow, over the years, I’ve taken God out of that chair and put him back into heaven and been content to pray as if I was talking to him long distance over the phone.
Psalm 145:18 says that “The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.” One of the names that Jesus was given was Emmanuel, which means “God with us”. The word which is translated “Priest” in the Old Testament was the Hebrew word “Kohen”, which means literally, “one who draws near”. God no longer separates himself from us. He is actually, literally right there in the room with us when we pray. We don’t have to talk over the phone to him. He’s right there listening the whole time.
So, what’s the big deal? What does it matter if we suppose that God is a million miles away, or right there in the room with us? It matters. Have you ever felt like you had a bad connection when praying? That you had to explain things to God so that he could really understand the gravity of your prayer? Have you ever felt that if you didn’t say things exactly the right way that God may not hear your prayer? Or at least that he may not understand the right way to answer it? See, having the understanding that God is near us makes a difference. It’s the difference between calling up a good friend and explaining what happened during your accident vs having your friend in the car with you when it happened. It’s the difference between sending your Mom an email with your Christmas list vs having someone going through life with you who already knows not only what you need, but what you want as well.
Maybe it’s just semantics, but our mindset about God makes a difference. It will make a difference in how we pray and how we respond to God overall. Having God speak while you read your Bible takes on a whole new meaning when you realize that he’s there looking over your shoulder as you read, not somewhere out in the universe sending good thoughts your way. Knowing that God goes through life with you means that he is already aware of your situation. Not because he’s watching you through a telescope from the other side of the galaxy, but because he was there when it happened. He knows not only the situation, but he knows all of the circumstances surrounding it. He also knows about the other people involved because he was there with them as well.
God is not watching us from far away. He’s not looking down from the sky. He’s right there with us as we go through our day. Keeping this in mind as we pray and listen for his leading in our daily lives will help us relate better to him. It will help us to pray better knowing that he already knows what we’re praying about. It will help us become better at recognizing those prompts from the Holy Spirit. Keeping the proper perspective about God will help make us more aware of his presence. Even when we don’t sense it. He’s still there.