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A final word from Charnock on the omnipresence of God:
 Let us endeavor for the more special and influential presence of God. Let the essential presence of God be our the ground of our awe, and his gracious influential presence the object of our desire. The heathen thought themselves secure they had their pretty household gods with them in their journeys: such seem to be the images Rachel stole from her father (Gen. xxxi. 19) to company her travel with blessings: she might not at that time have cast off all her respect to those idols, in the acknowledgment of which she had been educated from her infancy; and they seem to be kept by her till God called Jacob to bethel, after the rape of Dinah (Gen. xxxv. 4), when Jacob called for the strange gods, and hid them under the oak. The gracious presence of God we should look after, in our actions, as travelers, that have a charge of money or jewels, desire to keep themselves in company that may protect them from highwaymen that would rifle them. Since we have the concerns of the eternal happiness of our souls upon our hands, we should endeavor to have God’s merciful and powerful presence with us in all our ways (Ps. xiv. 5); “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths:” acknowledge him before any action, by imploring; acknowledge him after, by rendering him the glory; acknowledge his presence before worship, in worship, after worship: it is this presence makes a kind of heaven upon earth; causeth affliction to put off the nature of misery. How much will the presence of the sun outshine the stars of lesser comforts, and fully answer the want of them! The ark of God going before us, can only make all things successful. It was this led the Israelites over Jordan, and settled them in Canaan. Without this we signify nothing: though we live without this, we cannot be distinguished forever from devils; his essential presence they have; and if we have no more, we shall be no better. It is the enlivening fructifying presence of the sun that revives the languishing earth; and this only can repair our ruined soul. Let it be, therefore, our desire, that as He fills heaven and earth by Hiss essence, he may fill our understanding and wills by his grace, that we may have another kind of presence with us than animals have in their brutish state, or devils in their chains: his essential presence maintains our beings, but his gracious presence confers and continues a happiness. —Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Baker Books, 2005), 1:405.
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