God is watching you.

All the time.

He sees everything you do, and I mean everything.

Not only that, but he’s also listening to everything you say, and he’s reading your every thought.

Most Christians don’t know this. They think that God can only see them when they go into a church building or when they pray. They are unaware that God knows every intimate detail about them, that this knowledge is current in real time, and that God’s constant surveillance will continue for the rest of their days on Earth.

If you love God and follow Jesus, this is a comfort to you. Knowing that God sees and knows everything about you keeps you in line. Like a mother watching over her child, God watching over us is a safety feature of being human. I frankly wouldn’t have it any other way.

I think if more believers actually believed that God was watching them and watching over them all the time, their behavior would radically change. If their mindset were “God can see me, God can hear me, God knows my thoughts”, they would adjust what they do, say, and think to what they know pleases God.

I remember as a teenager being so relieved when my parents would go out and leave me alone in the house. I felt then that I could really be myself. Being myself meant calling a friend to come over, getting drinks from the liquor cabinet, and indulging in porn. I had no idea at that time that “being myself” actually meant giving into temptation.

We are all made in the image of God. God does not swipe drinks from his parents’ liquor cabinet or sneak porn into the house. These are temptations.

If we’re made in God’s image, then our first impulse (our default) is to do good. We were made to do good, if not to be good (Jesus says there are none good but God). We are made to want what God wants for us. The only thing getting in our way and muddying the waters is our free will. Being conscious of God’s perpetual presence is an excellent way to overcome the temptations that come from free will.

As you read these words, God is reading them with you. He sees you reading them and knows your mindset exactly. He even knows your state of health to the tiniest detail. There is nothing about you – down to the sub-molecular level – that God doesn’t know. You cannot in any way fool God.

You can, however, fool the devils. They are also watching you, though their vision of you is not as clear as God’s. They can see you and hear you, but they cannot read your thoughts. They can speak into your thoughts, if you’re not born-again, but they cannot hear your thoughts. Being born-again provides you protection from “demon voices” through the protective power of God’s Holy Spirit that forms a spiritual firewall around you.

Because the devils don’t actually know your thoughts, you can fool them with your spoken and written words, as well as with your actions. God is the only one who has access to your thoughts, so he knows what your real intentions are. But not the devils. You can fool them. Jesus says to be as wise as serpents. Just as the demonic serpents fool mankind, you can and must also fool them. They don’t need to know your thoughts and your plans. Only God needs to know those.

In teaching about the Kingdom, Jesus gave very few of his inner thoughts away to his disciples. Scripture says he did this because he knew what was in their hearts (that is, their thoughts) and also because they could not at the time bear it (that is, understand it or handle the knowledge wisely). Jesus knew the thoughts of others because God told him. God tells us the thoughts of others, too, when we need to know. That is one aspect of private revelation.

If we were more aware of God’s presence in our lives, our choices would likely be godlier. Similarly, if we were more aware of the presence of demonic spirits in our lives, our choices would also likewise be godlier. Having an awareness of the constant presence of the supernatural realm around us (not as something to be conjured on occasion and in certain places, but as a perpetual reality that is there whether we are aware of it or not) fundamentally changes how we act, speak, and think. Far from being an intrusion, being under constant surveillance by spiritual forces acts as a safety barrier around our free will. It keeps us from doing, saying, and thinking things that will literally come back to haunt us.

Knowing that God is the only one who can know our unexpressed thoughts is a comfort as well. Our mind is our ultimate safe-space; the world can know everything else about us in relatively intimate detail, but it cannot know our thoughts unless we choose to reveal them. Like Jesus, it’s best to keep most of those hidden between you and God, revealing only what God advises.