363 Where God Is

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Where God Is”, originally shared on June 11, 2025. It was the 363^rd  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Where is God? Not where you expect. Today, we’re going to find out why.

    I once saw a puzzle that asked the reader to find a message in these letters:

GODISNOWHERE

   The easy part is finding the words "God” and “is”.

   The hard part is in knowing what to do with the remaining letters.

   Do you leave them alone and have the message read “God is nowhere”, or do you do a little more work and put a space between the “w” and the “h” and make the message, “God is now here.”? This raises another question.

   Why don’t more people go beyond what they see and come to know the presence of God?

   I’ve often wondered why people who deny the truth of Christianity without understanding it don’t apply the same standards to their work or to the things they do believe in.

   What kind of scientist, for example, comes to a point where what they are doing in their field doesn’t make sense and just gives up? Does a researcher stop exploring because they find something that they can’t explain?

   Or do they try to learn more so that they can move forward?

   The popular science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov is said to have said, "the most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny.'"

   Knowing that we don’t understand something is when learning and growth begins!

  G.K Chesterton once said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

   Take the Holy Trinity, for example.

   This coming Sunday will be Holy Trinity Sunday in the vast majority of churches in the world.

   It raises a difficult question? How many Gods do we believe in? It may seem obvious to some of us, but to some new Christians it is difficult.

   How many Gods do we believe in? The answer is obvious. One: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

   But wait, that’s three. How can one be three? Or is it, “how can three be one?” Today, we’re going to find out. And we’re going to find out how to find out.

   Some say that physical work requires only two tools.

   If it moves and it shouldn’t: duct tape.

   If it doesn’t move and it should: WD40. Or, if you’re old school and you want it to move, or if you want it to move faster and you don’t need those fancy aerosol cans: 3-In-One oil.

   Yes, before we had those fancy gasoline powered lawn mowers or those eco-friendlier electric ones, we used our muscle-powered manual mowers, and they moved efficiently with 3-in-one oil! When we wanted our bicycles to fly like rockets: 3-in-1 oil. When things got rusty and wouldn’t move: 3-In-One oil. Hedge clippers, bolts, pruners, bicycle chains, locks, adjustable wrenches, almost anything that turned and could rust was made more efficient by 3-in-1 oil.

   It’s been made since 1894, and you can still buy it. It’s one of the, if not the most, masculine smells I know. If you could make a cologne out of it, I think that you’d have something.

   It “Frees Rusted Parts”, “Prevents Rust”, and “Lubricates.” And yet it comes from one 4-oz. container. It’s just one oil: “3-In-One!” Get it? So, does that make it a good way to describe the Holy Trinity? Well, sort of. But “No.”

   This coming Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday, the only Sunday in the Church year named for a doctrine. That might sound pretty dry except for the blood spilled, the churches divided, and the lives that have been spent trying to define what “the Holy Trinity” means. So, if it still sounds dry, maybe we need a little spiritual 3-In-One oil.

   There’s nowhere in the Bible that says, “there is a Trinity”, and yet the evidence for that revelation of God is found from the beginning to the end of it, and it says: God is now here.

  Sometimes just one is present, and sometimes all three persons are manifest in the same place and the same time, as in Jesus’ baptism in Matthew 3:13-27. Jesus came out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove and rested on him, and a voice spoke from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

   And as in our Gospel reading for this week, John 16:12-15,

12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

   The doctrine of the Trinity is that we believe in one God who reveals Himself to us in three persons, each of which is fully God. Yet, does this make who the Trinity is any clearer?

   Martin Luther, the 16th century Church reformer, once said, “To try to deny the Trinity is to endanger your salvation. To try to comprehend the Trinity is to endanger your sanity.”

   I’d say it’s pretty much impossible to describe the Holy Trinity without slipping into heresy. But, the whole idea of heresy brings to mind the bad old days of torture, war, and hypocrisy, right? Yet it also points to a time when the truth mattered, when it was literally a matter of life and death, not just for this world, but for eternity.

   The Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed (which is 1,700 years old this year) that are central to the Christian faith, that ended much of the Church’s fighting over doctrine by setting down the central things that the Bible teaches, are both based on the structure of the Trinity.

   Remember St. Nicholas, the guy called Santa Claus in many cultures. He wears a red robe because St. Nicholas was a bishop when the Nicene Creed was being written. When the essence of the Christian faith was being decided and things got so heated that good old Santa Clause, St. Nicholas, is alleged to have smacked another bishop, Arius, over his heretical beliefs regarding the Trinity.

   Muslim evangelists in Christian areas sometimes accuse Christians of believing in three gods, not one.

   How do we explain the Trinity?

   We see in the Bible that God has revealed himself to his people in three primary ways, as God the Father, or Creator, God the Son, or Redeemer, and God the Holy Spirit, or the Sanctifier, the one who makes us saints, even while we are sinners.

   One God, revealed to us in three persons.

   How do we illustrate that? A shamrock, a triangle; ice-water in a glass, one man who is a Father/Husband/Son or one Woman, who is a Mother, wife, and daughter, are all things I’ve used to point to the Trinity. And here are three that I haven’t: an egg (shell, white, and yolk), the Sun (star, heat, light), and the three layers of an apple.

   And we could look at the three versions of Gene Simmons.

   I read a story online recently about Gene Simmons, the lead singer for the ‘70’s rock band KISS.

   He told about his first big interview with “Rolling Stone” magazine.

   He wanted to display his demon rocker credentials, so he prepared for the interview by putting on his heavy metal band hair and make-up, his spider jewelry, his shiny black costume and sky-high platformed black boots. The interview had already begun when the doorbell rang. It was his mother, a holocaust survivor.

   She came with enough food to feed a small army for what she called the “hungry boys”, and she called Gene Simmons by his Hebrew name, Chaim, and she told the interviewer that he was “a good boy”.

   Gene Simmons had wanted to establish himself as a hard rocker, but he had been exposed for what he was, “a momma’s boy”. He said that he had never used drugs or alcohol because he didn’t want to hurt his mother, who had been through enough.

   So, we could also say that there are three Gene Simmons: the entertainment personality, the demon rocker, and the mamma’s boy, but there is only one Gene Simmons.

   But, that and every one of those ways for explaining the Trinity is inadequate, some border on heresy, and some cross that border. And they all have names. 😊

   For example, saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not three persons of the Trinity, but are different parts of God, each equaling one third: that’s Partialism.

   Saying that the Trinity is three separate individuals: that’s Tritheism.

   Saying that we believe in one God who reveals his self in three different ways, like Father in the OT, Son in the Gospels, and Spirit in the Epistles: that’s Modalism.

   Saying that God the Father always existed, but that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were created by God and therefore are less than fully God: that’s Arianism. What’s that?

   Remember those lines about Jesus in the Nicene Creed that say, “eternally begotten of the Father” and “begotten, not made”? Or the one about the Holy Spirit that says, “proceeds from the Father and the Son” (note: “and the Son” was added later)? Those were all written against the arguments of Arius, the namesake of Arianism, the one slapped by Santa Clause. That issue split the Church in two in the year 1,000 A.D., creating the Roman Catholic Church in the west and the Orthodox Churches in the east.

   Why is this important now? Well, I think that we would agree that it’s important both to understand what we believe and to know that the things we believe are true. And, practically speaking, what we believe about the Trinity in the abstract has a major effect on how we relate to God.

   For example, sometimes, you’ll hear people say “I love Jesus. He’s so accepting and forgiving, so non-judgmental. But I have hard time with the God of the Old Testament. He seems so judgmental, so intolerant, and so punishing.”

   The thing about the Trinity is that all three persons are exactly the same. God the Son is God the Father is God the Holy Spirit is God the Son, and ‘round and ‘round. We believe in one God who is three persons, and each is fully God.

   How can God be one and three at the same time? Here are three ways to know where God is.

   First, I would say that anything that we claim that we have figured out about God is probably not true. All we can know is what is revealed to us by God. We can’t understand God any more than a loaf of bread can understand the baker, or an engine can understand the mechanical engineer.

   If anyone says they fully understand God, that god is probably not the God of the Bible. That is a god they have invented for themselves, not the Creator of all that exists, the redeemer of my soul, and the one whose presence within me and within us makes me and us holy!

   How many of us love a mystery? One of the things we like about mysteries is solving them, or not being able to solve them and then being shown the answer at the end of the movie or of the story and then working out the clues that were there all along.

   I like to read how a story ends first and then see how the story gets there. Some people think that’s weird. 😊

   The Trinity is a mystery, but not in the sense that we can solve it, or that anyone can show us the answer, or that the clues are hidden but are there for all who can recognize them. The Trinity is a mystery in the sense that it cannot be understood except as it is revealed to us by God.

   Second, do you believe in God? You give your testimony every time you read or recite one of the creeds in a worship service. The word “creed” comes from the Latin word “credo”, which means “I believe”. Those creeds are Trinitarian, they are the core of the Christian faith from which we grow. They are what the Church believes. Not what your denomination believes, but what the entire Christian church believes is central to what it means to be a Christian.

   Both of those creeds begin, “I believe in God.”

   Some people say “seeing is believing”, but believing is also a way of seeing. It enables us to see the transformational work of God, giving us new life, making us a new creation, born again, so that we may be a part of what God is doing.

   Third, where is God? God is in you!

   We have been shocked by the rioting and the civil unrest of the past days. We see desperate people who have given up. We see officials who seem to only believe in power.

   But we have not given up. And we know where true power is found.

   We know that we are better than this, that we can do better.

   Why?

   Do you believe in hate? Do you believe in love? You can’t see them. You can only see them at work in people. We see them when they come from the inside out of people.

   This is why Jesus, just before he explains how God (the Father) sent the Jesus (the Son), explains the work of the Holy Spirit in John 3:8,

⁸ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

   We see where God is by seeing the transformed lives that are God’s gift to all who believe and are baptised.

   Why do people not believe in God when they really just don’t understand Him? Who will tell them the truth about God, powered by the Holy Spirit except us?

   When people tell me that they don’t believe in God, and I ask them to tell me about the God that they don’t believe in, I find that I don’t believe in that god either.

   We are not the light. Our task as the people of God is to reflect the light of God as God is. People we know can’t move beyond their ignorance by themselves.

   God is like 3-In-One oil. When our hearts are hard against God, God will penetrate our resistance and set us free. When the rust of sin has kept us from being what we were created to be, God dies for us on the cross so that we have what we were created to have in a living relationship with the one, true living God. When we need protection from the corrosion of sin, death, and the power of the devil, and we repent and open our heart to receive God, God abides with us, and nothing can take us away from God.

   But God isn’t three oils making one oil, or three purposes doing one thing, or three solutions to similar problems. God is One, One in three persons, each fully God. We know this because it has been revealed to us through the Bible, God’s Word.

   How many Gods do we believe in? One. The Holy Trinity. We believe in one God.

   It’s not easy to understand this because it is God. God is God, and we’re not.

   All we can know about God is what God reveals to us. God is never where we expect. God is where God is. God is for you and in all who believe and are baptized.

   God is now here.

   Share the good news.