Where Does the Holy Spirit Dwell?

The Holy Spirit is eternal and therefore has existed forever. Scripture clearly teaches that God the Holy Spirit eternally exists along with the Father and the Son. The good news is that the Holy Spirit is not only eternal but He is also omnipresent. To be intentionally redundant, He is always present everywhere all the time!

When I was a young boy growing up in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta in the late ’60s, our gang of friends occasionally played a cruel prank on one of the kids in our group. We would randomly pick a less popular kid and agree (without their knowledge) to a plan to ditch them. The next thing you knew, all of us had deftly sneaked away undetected, and the unfortunate kid was left all alone! As I look back on what we did, it seems incredibly cruel and insensitive. Talk about fueling a kid’s abandonment issues!

The good news for us is that God is incapable of ditching us because His Holy Spirit is present everywhere! The Holy Spirit dwells absolutely everywhere at all times throughout the entire universe. Said another way, there is nowhere in the universe where the Holy Spirit is not always present. This is in keeping with the fact that God is omnipresent, and since the Holy Spirit is God, the Holy Spirit is therefore always present everywhere in the universe. We see this truth clearly stated in Psalm 139:7-12:

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

While God will never hide from us, the truth is that sometimes we are tempted to try to hide from Him. We see in Genesis 3:8 that Adam and Eve tried unsuccessfully to hide from the Lord in the Garden of Eden after they disobeyed and sinned against Him. It is in our fallen nature to try to hide from God when we knowingly disobey His will for our lives. According to this psalm, the good news is that we cannot ever truly hide from God’s presence because His Holy Spirit is always with us wherever we may go!

King David learned the principle, despite committing the sins of adultery and murder, that God’s inescapable presence was ultimately his greatest good. “But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds (Psalm 73:28).” The same is true for you and me—the perpetual nearness of the Holy Spirit is good for us!

You and I are never, ever truly alone. As Holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom said, “There is no pit so deep, that God's love is not deeper still.” You will never find yourself in any circumstance or problem or pit in life so deep that the Holy Spirit of God is not there with you to comfort, to guide, and to deliver in His ever-present love for you!

How aware are you of the constant presence of the Holy Spirit surrounding you every moment of every day of your life? What difference might this reality make if you were?

Pray with me:

Dear God, please help me to be more aware of Your constant presence in the world and in my life everywhere, always, all at once, and to remember that the nearness of God is good for me (Psalm 73:28).