Panentheism “God is all and is in all”

The idea that we have to invite Jesus into our hearts  is a little unhelpful and even misleading. What is Biblical Panentheism ? It is the “everywhere-ness” of God—God in all things. When I was a teenager I said the “sinners prayer” more times than I care to remember. Why so often? Because I never ever felt saved never felt clean enough for Jesus to live inside me. 

If this dualistic teaching was right he was reluctant to come in because of my sin and therefore he might be all the more ready to go out at the first sign of trouble. Those old-fashioned, altar call, hymns such as “come home, come home, you who are weary come home…earnestly tenderly Jesus is calling” made me feel even more estranged

I now realize that there is NO place where God IS NOT. Our dualistic thinking has created artificial ”spaces and places” where God CANNOT be. We have so demonized “sin” and our “sinfulness” and so romanticized God’s righteousness and holiness that God has become a little like the infamous Howard Hughes in that he hides himself away from all contact with people fearing he might somehow become “contaminated”.

I see things differently now in that God already lives within people’s, hearts. The great change takes place when we recognise where God IS and it’s this revelation that changes all things. We are encouraged by this loving, compassionate God to let him out of our lives or to let him loose in our lives. God seeks to be freed from the tomb within. God is not an interventionist God who “rescues and retreats” he is here now somehow entwined within the very fabric of our living breathing lives or as Paula D’Arcy so wonderfully says:  “God comes to you disguised as your life.”