HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 8, 2024 – Just a timely reminder that God sees everything. He also hears everything and knows our every thought. There’s nowhere to hide from God: He’s all-knowing, all the time.

There’s another layer of surveillance that most people don’t like to think about, let alone talk about (and I include born-again believers in the “most people” designation here). This secondary surveillance layer has some restrictions but still sees most of what you do and hears most of what you say. Your thoughts, however, are off-limits (for now). This secondary layer is the fallen entities assigned to you.

We all have them. Even born-again believers have them. Jesus had battalions of them following him around, harassing him, outing him as the Holy One of God, and generally making a nuisance of themselves trying to trip him up. Even Satan himself made occasional cameo appearances in Jesus’ earthly life. Thank God, none of them ever found so much as a speck of dirt on Jesus, but the entities following us around have a much higher success rate. That just goes with the territory of our not being Jesus.

Unlike Jesus, we all fail some of our tests and temptations. We all let a word or two slip past our lips that we shouldn’t have let slip but chose (for whatever reason) not to stop. Jesus reminded us that we’ll be accountable for those words come Judgement Day, and you wanna bet the unholy contingents trailing us are taking copious notes to be presented at that time. To believe otherwise is not to take Jesus at his word.

I thank God, my Heavenly Father, that I am under his surveillance. His constant presence through his Holy Spirit gives me comfort. I know that at any time I can talk to him and that he hears me and will answer me. I know he is right here, right now, as he is with you. This is a promise given directly to us born-again believers by Jesus. God’s Spirit is our connection between us and God and between us and Jesus, and nothing and no-one can break that connection except God. And God will only break it if we show by our words and thoughts and actions that want to break it.

May none of us ever do that.

I also thank God (or better said, I learned to thank God) for the other layer of surveillance because it keeps me on my spiritual toes. God watches over us with love, guiding us and reminding us of how we need to be. The fallen entities, on the other hand, are constantly looking for a chink in our spiritual armour, a moment of weakness that they can massage into sin and then leverage toward our fall. God permits this layer of malicious surveillance over his children (with, as I mention, some notable restrictions, such as not being able to read our thoughts or to hear our conversations with him), knowing it will make us that much more circumspect in our choice of words and actions.

That’s the theory, anyway. The practice (on our part) takes some doing to get it right.

As I mentioned at the outset, this is a reminder that we’re all under surveillance 24/7, and that while God’s surveillance is done lovingly and with good intent, the other surveillance is not. We need to be aware not only of the layers and levels of surveillance, but also in the crucial differences between them. God only should we fear (with zero exceptions), but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be aware (and wary) of what the unholy entities are up to and the kind of dirt they may or may not have on us. God doesn’t want us to be naïve about this but to understand it as a spiritual fact of life and to deal with it accordingly. A rankling conscience signifies the need for repentance, and repentance should never be delayed.

A third artificial level of near-constant surveillance has grown up over the past few decades that involves digital technology. For quality, it trails at a significant distance behind the other two surveillance layers and is more opportunistic than benevolent or malicious, but still, it’s there, and we should be aware of it.

Technology, as a tool, can never be good or evil: It simply exists. How the technology is applied determines whether its use is for good or for evil. Unfortunately, most of the technology being applied today is more the intrusive, snitching, and exploitative variety, clearly demonstrating which layer of spiritual surveillance is behind its inspiration and privacy-defying application.

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The tl;dr of this article is to be aware of the constant surveillance, but not to be paranoid about it. Cling to God and heed his advice, even if it doesn’t make sense to you at the time or is the polar opposite of what you feel like doing. Know that your prayer time with God (which should be all the time) is just between you and him and that your thoughts are also only shared with God. The constant presence of God is meant to be a comfort (Jesus promised us he would send the Comforter), so receive it as such. As for the other two layers of surveillance, be aware of them and maybe even be grateful for them, “for we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”