There All The Time

2 Chronicles 15:1-2 KJV

And the Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded:

And he went out to meet Asa, and said unto him, Hear ye me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin; The LORD is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you.

I find it interesting that none of my usual commentaries make note of the theology of this passage; theology which so seemingly contradicts New Testament thinking. We are prone to say things such as, "You may leave God but He never leaves you." Our theology teaches us that, no matter how far we remove ourselves from the things of God, when we turn to seek Him we learn that, "He was there all the time."

What we find here is not a contradiction in theology but a demonstration of the perspective of the Old Testament believer vs. the New Testament believer. The Old Testament was more about form more than the truth, about the shadow rather than the body of doctrine. The Old Testament believer tended to see results rather than the underlying spiritual truth

• The result of forsaking God is the loss of blessing and victory
• The result of trusting God is the experience of blessing and victory

In neither case did the position of God move. He is immutable, unchangeable, without variableness or shadow of turning. God never leaves us nor forsakes us. Indeed whenever we have forsaken God, if we will but turn toward Him we will find He has never been afar off. He was "there all the time."  

However, the experience of being forsaken of a God is as real today as it was in the Old Testament. God is here; but sin still separates us from God. It breaks our sense of fellowship; it ruins our joy in the knowledge of His presence.

Asa demonstrates this truth as well. In his later years he chose to trust a foreign king for aide against an enemy. He succeeded in the battle but when the prophet rebuked him he refused to repent. In his last years he suffered with diseased feet but refused to ask God for healing. His sin was not that he sought the help of the physicians but that he rejected the help of God.

God was there but Asa couldn't enjoy His presence.