A Kind of Heaven Upon Earth

Last Sunday was meh.

You wrestled with all the kids to get them in the car. You sat close to the back where you always sit. You got up several times during the service with the kids. You saw the same people. You sang, you listened, you said hello as best you could, then you drove home and felt dazed: “What did I get out of that?”

The Westminster Standards say something was happening, whether you felt it or not. The Directory for the Publick Worship of God says that “the congregation being assembled” was to begin in prayer “in all reverence and humility” by “acknowledging the incomprehensible greatness and majesty of the Lord.” Then comes the payoff in a parenthetical clause: “in whose presence they do then in a special manner appear.”

In whose presence they appear. In a special manner. This pastoral aside rests on an ancient distinction theologians made with care, which may have been quietly lost by us.

God Is Everywhere
The Shorter Catechism teaches that God is “a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth” (Q. 4). Because His being is infinite, His presence fills all things. The Confession calls Him “immense” (2.1); the Larger Catechism says He is “everywhere present” (Q. 7). He is no absentee clockmaker who wound up the world and walked away. He upholds, directs, disposes, and governs every creature and every action (Confession of Faith 5.1), ordinarily through means, though free to work without or against them as He pleases (Confession of Faith 5.3).

So, God is no nearer to your “sanctuary” than to your kitchen. As we sing with our kids, “He’s got the whole world in His hand” because He’s everywhere at once.

That presence, by itself, is no comfort. It’s just as true of the man who despises Him. God’s essential presence tells you that God is. It doesn’t tell you that God is yours.

God Is Present in Grace
That’s why our older writers distinguished God’s essential presence from His gracious presence. The first sustains; the second saves. The first you share in common with rocks; the second is covenant: God gives Himself to His people in Jesus Christ.

Two Nonconformists who shared a pulpit used this ancient distinction in helpful ways. Stephen Charnock prayed that as God “fills heaven and earth by his essence, he may fill our understandings and wills by his grace.” Of that second presence: “this presence makes a kind of heaven upon earth” (“The Omnipresence of God,” in Several Discourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God [London, 1682], 270–71). Thomas Watson, who preached beside him at Crosby Hall until Charnock died in 1680, expounded the Shorter Catechism on Q. 4, and asked how heaven can be God’s throne when Scripture also calls a humble heart His throne. Heaven is His throne “in regard to his glorious presence” while the humble heart is “in regard to his gracious presence” (A Body of Practical Divinity [London, 1692], 27).

So, where can we genuinely experience this presence now?

In the Assembly
Watson asked how Cain could go out from the presence of the LORD (Gen. 4:16) since He’s everywhere. He replied that Cain went out “from the church of God, where were the visible signs of God’s presence, and where God in a special manner manifested his sweet presence to his people” (A Body of Practical Divinity, 28).

In a special manner. That’s the Directory’s own phrase. God has covenanted His presence to the church and to visible signs. Thus, while God is to be worshipped in secret and in families daily, He is to be worshipped “more solemnly in the public assemblies” (Confession of Faith 21.6). Secret prayer is real worship. So is family worship. But public worship is the most solemn thing.

The Shorter Catechism names what happens there: Christ communicates the benefits of redemption by “his ordinances, especially the word, sacraments, and prayer” (Q. 88). As Watson preached through the catechism, he expressed what the believing heart is seeking in worship: “It is a great matter to enjoy God’s ordinances, but to enjoy God’s presence in the ordinances is that which a gracious heart aspires after” (A Body of Practical Divinity, 9).

In worship, God speaks directly to you by means of the voice of a man He sent. He feeds in communion. Worthy receivers “really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified” (Confession of Faith 29.7). He hears. Because God has adopted you, you “receive the Spirit of adoption” and “have access to the throne of grace with boldness” (Confession of Faith 12.1). That’s true of you alone in your car. When a whole congregation of adopted children stands before their Father at once, it’s so much more.

Watson pressed this home for the weary mom and dad: “It should be our great design, not only to have the ordinances of God, but the God of the ordinances” (A Body of Practical Divinity, 10).

Why This Is Not Yet the Summit
In the assembly, God gives Himself to us now by means. Summing up Scripture, the Larger Catechism says there’s more to come.

When a believer dies, “immediately after death” their souls are “received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory” (Q. 86).

After the resurrection and final judgment, the righteous will be “filled with inconceivable joys, made perfectly holy and happy…in the company of innumerable saints and holy angels, but especially in the immediate vision and fruition of God the Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, to all eternity (Q. 90).

There’s fullness of enjoying God to come, forever!

And it will be immediate. No means of grace anymore. No water, no bread, no preacher’s voice, no faith straining after what it can’t yet see.

Watson expressed how the heaven on earth of worship doesn’t compare to heaven itself.

The first difference is frequency. Of heaven he said, “We shall not only have God’s glorious presence at certain special seasons; but we shall be continually in his presence” (A Body of Practical Divinity, 12). Our Lord’s Days are “certain special seasons.” One day we’ll have “continually” what they now give us weekly.

The second difference is capacity. We need means because “we could not now bear that glory, it would overwhelm us, as a weak eye cannot behold the sun; but God will capacitate us for glory” (A Body of Practical Divinity, 12). The water, the bread, and the voice of a man preaching are not God keeping His distance, but His stooping to eyes not yet strong enough for the sight of Him.

Christ’s ordinances are no consolation prize. The Larger Catechism says believers have communicated to them “in this life the firstfruits of glory with Christ” (Q. 83). Watson said, “The enjoyment of God’s sweet presence here is an earnest of our enjoying him in heaven” (A Body of Practical Divinity, 12).

Next Sunday
None of this makes worship exotic; that’s the point. You’re not supposed to manufacture anything. The acceptable way of worshipping God is “instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will” (Confession of Faith 21.1). This is a mercy, not a restriction. Everything you need happens on Sunday. God has appointed what’s there, and has promised to bless.

Go to receive what He gives: His voice, His table, His ear, and His people. It might happen in a plain room, with a plain man preaching. The bread you eat isn’t different than your weekly bread. Yet, behind all the plainness—and the noisiness of our children—in and through the means God has given, the living God gives you Himself.

Sunday’s coming. It might be meh, but appreciate the significance that it’s the nearest you’ll come to Jesus’ smiling face until you see Him face-to-face in heaven.

Dr. Daniel R. Hyde is the founding pastor of Oceanside United Reformed Church in Carlsbad, California. His new book, A Christian’s Pocket Guide to the Presence of God (Christian Focus Publications, 2026, ISBN 978-1-5271-1425-8), is available now from Christian Focus and Amazon.