I’ll bring You more than a song,
For a song itself
Is not what You have required.
You search much deeper within,
Through the way things appear;
You’re looking into my heart.14
The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.
DAY THIRTEEN
THINKING ABOUT MY PURPOSE
Point to Ponder: God wants all of me.
Verse to Remember: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Mark 12:30 (NIV)
Question to Consider: Which is more pleasing to God right now—my public worship or my private worship? What will I do about this?
14
When God Seems Distant
The LORD has hidden himself from his people, but I trust him and place my hope in him.
Isaiah 8:17 (TEV)
God is real, no matter how you feel.
It is easy to worship God when things are going great in your life—when he has provided food, friends, family, health, and happy situations. But circumstances are not always pleasant. How do you worship God then? What do you do when God seems a million miles away?
The deepest level of worship is praising God in spite of pain, thanking God during a trial, trusting him when tempted, surrendering while suffering, and loving him when he seems distant.
Friendships are often tested by separation and silence; you are divided by physical distance or you are unable to talk. In your friendship with God, you won’t always feel close to him. Philip Yancey has wisely noted, “Any relationship involves times of closeness and times of distance, and in a relationship with God, no matter how intimate, the pendulum will swing from one side to the other.”1 That’s when worship gets difficult.
To mature your friendship, God will test it with periods of seeming separation—times when it feels as if he has abandoned or forgotten you. God feels a million miles away. St. John of the Cross referred to these days of spiritual dryness, doubt, and estrangement from God as “the dark night of the soul.” Henri Nouwen called them “the ministry of absence.” A. W. Tozer called them “the ministry of the night.” Others refer to “the winter of the heart.”
Besides Jesus, David probably had the closest friendship with God of anyone. God took pleasure in calling him “a man after my own heart.”2 Yet David frequently complained of God’s apparent absence: “Lord, why are you standing aloof and far away? Why do you hide when I need you the most?”3 “Why have you forsaken me? Why do you remain so distant? Why do you ignore my cries for help?”4 “Why have you abandoned me?”5
DAY FOURTEEN: WHEN GOD SEEMS DISTANT
Of course, God hadn’t really left David, and he doesn’t leave you. He has promised repeatedly, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”6 But God has not promised “you will always feel my presence.” In fact, God admits that sometimes he hides his face from us.7 There are times when he appears to be MIA, missing-in-action, in your life.
Floyd McClung describes it: “You wake up one morning and all your spiritual feelings are gone. You pray, but nothing happens. You rebuke the devil, but it doesn’t change anything. You go through spiritual exercises…you have your friends pray for you…you confess every sin you can imagine, then go around asking forgiveness of everyone you know. You fast…still nothing. You begin to wonder how long this spiritual gloom might last. Days? Weeks? Months? Will it ever end?…it feels as if your prayers simply bounce off the ceiling. In utter desperation, you cry out, ‘What’s the matter with me?’”8
God admits that sometimes he hides his face from us.
The truth is, there’s nothing wrong with you! This is a normal part of the testing and maturing of your friendship with God. Every Christian goes through it at least once, and usually several times. It is painful and disconcerting, but it is absolutely vital for the development of your faith. Knowing this gave Job hope when he could not feel God’s presence in his life. He said, “I go east, but he is not there. I go west, but I cannot find him. I do not see him in the north, for he is hidden. I turn to the south, but I cannot find him. But he knows where I am going. And when he has tested me like gold in a fire, he will pronounce me innocent.”9
When God seems distant, you may feel that he is angry with you or is disciplining you for some sin. In fact, sin does disconnect us from intimate fellowship with God. We grieve God’s Spirit and quench our fellowship with him by disobedience, conflict with others, busyness, friendship with the world, and other sins.10
But often this feeling of abandonment or estrangement from God has nothing to do with sin. It is a test of faith—one we all must face: Will you continue to love, trust, obey, and worship God, even when you have no sense of his presence or visible evidence of his work in your life?