What about When God Seems Distant?
Purpose Driven Life #14
Montreal/Cornwall
November 15, 2003
When God is near and you can almost feel his presence, it’s easy to worship Him. If this happens here, you can have tremendous feelings of exhilaration and can go home tremendously buoyed up. If it happens during one of our prayer meetings, you can go out feeling like you want to have everyone else join in another time so they can feel the same thing. If you go about your daily work and life and have a day when you’ve had a particularly good and close time with God and you feel like he is right there with you are you go about your day, you almost fly through the day. All of us have had days and times like this. Maybe you’ve gone into a special gathering of Christians and the presence of God was there.
I’ve felt this in Squaw Valley at an autumn festival in the distant past of 1972. I’ve felt this in the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in 1972, en route to college in California and attending a public presentation sponsored by our church. I’ve felt this at special services in Langenburg, SK, while serving in Yorkton and Dauphin. I felt this when I attended the Billy Graham School of Evangelism in Lake Louise a few years back. I have felt this in attending Acquire the Fire in Hamilton a few years back, too. Some days, I go through the day as if with wings.
You’ve experienced the same thing sometimes in your life.
But what about when you don’t? You and I have also experienced those days when we wonder where God has gone. It seems that nothing is going right in our lives. It seems like there’s no contact with God- we pray, and prayer doesn’t seem to go very far. We want to ‘feel’ God’s presence, and we don’t. We want some wisdom or suggestions on how to face a situation and what we do only makes it worse. We want guidance, or comfort, or a word, or something, and nothing comes. We might wonder whether God has left us and, if he has, then maybe we should just go on out and do and be whatever everyone else around is and does.
These times are every bit as real and, sometimes, at least, more frequent, than the times when we feel the incredible presence of God. A few weeks back, I referred to Brother Lawrence and his book encouraging the practice of the presence of God. Sometimes, we can do this and it’s absolutely wonderful. We feel like we’re in the heavenly realm with God already. But, other times, we feel like we’ve been very much cast down to the ground.
The darkest period of my life happened in 1995, and I went through a period of time wondering where God was and what in the world he was doing. As we approached the ending of our tenure in the Peterborough area, we had looked around and had thought we wanted to live in Kingston. The pastor there, whom we had followed to Peterborough, and us had discussed it and we knew that we’d both be due for transfer at about the same time (transfers were much more part of our psyche then than now, by the way). In March 1994, as our church went through dramatic changes, he chose to go from us, and I was called to pastor Kingston in addition to Peterborough, and the message was that when the time for full transfer came, I’d be in Kingston and Smith’s Falls. This was wonderful. So, for 9 months, I served Peterborough and Kingston. We got to know the people and our daughters developed close friendships among the youth of Kingston. In November, I got a call that I needed to transition to Kingston and Smith’s Falls in January, 6 months earlier than expected; we decided that I could do it from where we lived so we didn’t need to uproot the girls in the midst of their school year. It meant more driving for me, but a small sacrifice to make. However, as you’ll remember, with major church changed initiated with a sermon that we heard the beginning of January, 1995, things changed rapidly. Understanding that we were not between the covenants, but were fully in the New Covenant let to incredible changes for many people. Many chose to not accept and believe this biblical truth, so, very quickly, reorganization of the church occurred as church income plummeted and ministers chose to depart. As this process began, I went along merrily in the word and expectation that had been given. We found and purchased a home in the Kingston area, to close the end of June for our July 1 expected move. The congregations expected to occur what we expected. Then, in March, our world fell apart, really. My world fell apart. Lynn was in hospital in Toronto having thyroid surgery, and we were coming to Montreal for a youth weekend, because I pastored Kingston and this was where those youth came. En route to Montreal, the girls and I went to Toronto to visit Lynn in the hospital. I went to a copy place to get access to a fax, that I hadn’t gotten before leaving home that was going to confirm ministerial transfers. I was, happily, supposed to continue with Peterborough and Kingston and the pastor who had been in Peterborough for three months was supposed to move to Barrie. So, things were fine through the weekend. However, on returning home, there were phone calls and pressure to accept a change- for us to move to Barrie. We didn’t want to. We had our house. We had our lives planned and in order, but from several quarters there was increasing pressure for us to accept a change in the assignment. Out of exasperation, I did, eventually.
However, I kept wondering, as certain things transpired, where was God in all this? Why would he get our hopes up and then dash them? I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to understand, actually.
We started looking for a house in the Barrie area and couldn’t find one that fit- location, size, price- it was a more expensive market than Kingston. But we’d given the Kingston house back, and weren’t sued for it, fortunately. We’d had to rent in Peterborough because we had lost significantly on our sale in Yorkton, so had to rebuild, and finally saw our way back into the market. Then it looked like we’d have to stretch. Lynn made trips to look at houses. I made trips to look at houses. And, eventually, I purchased a house without Lynn with me and that she didn’t see until the day we actually moved into it. May I say that this is not the way to go about purchasing a home? Don’t ever do that- it’s not a good idea.
It didn’t seem that God was helping us find a house. It didn’t seem that he was continuing to care for us. He said something about giving us the ‘desires of our heart’, and it seemed he did, then horribly ripped that away from us. I was more than upset with him and his behavior through all this. Here we were, a couple who had chosen to remain in the ministry when others had taken an option to leave. We felt like we could be a help to people and that people needed ministers who remained and who helped them through the transitions of our church. We were trying to be so faithful to God. The least he could do would be to not put us through even more trauma than all of us were going through.
But he did and continued to, as we tried to work through all this.
Where was he? How did I make it through this long, dark period of personal and spiritual darkness? My world was going berzerk. Nothing seemed to be going right. Where was God?
You’ve had these times, too. All Christians have these times. We don’t operate on a spiritual ‘high’ all the time, and we don’t always have this clear and strong sense of the presence of God. All relationships have 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. When it does, the entire matter of worshipping and offering self as a living sacrifice becomes difficult.
I can tell you how I made it through. It has to do with a bottom-line conviction that I’ve had since God brought me to Himself back when I was a teenage boy.
Heb.13.5- this has always seemed very clear to me and is something I’ve directed others to, over the years, when they’ve wanted to give up on God, or when they’ve felt like God has abandoned them. He says he won’t. If we can’t believe God, who can we believe? If we can’t believe God, then we can’t believe anyone, and that puts us in a very awkward and uncomfortable position.
God does not depend on our feelings for our awareness of Him. Christians today are far too experiential for their own good. We live in a sensual world and there is unending emphasis on feelings and appealing to the feelings. Unfortunately, Christians have fallen into this, with regard to relating to God. We are not to seek to experience God- we are to seek God. This is what scripture calls us to. This is what God calls us to. Christians, often, seek feeling, and when it happens, they conclude that they have worshiped. But God often removes our feelings so we don’t depend on them. Seeking a feeling, even the feeling of closeness to God and Christ, is not worship.
When we are younger in the faith- a baby Christian- God, often, gives more feelings and confirming emotions, more miracles, and even healings. But as we mature in faith, he leads us to a most important place.
2 Cor.5.7- we are to walk by faith not by sight- not be emotions and feelings and what we can ‘sense’.
Heb.11.1-6- discusses this matter of faith and its critical importance to us as Christians.
As we grow in faith, God weans us of the dependence on feelings. This gives me, now, tremendous conviction about God’s involvement in Empowering Couples, for instance, even though we don’t see masses of people flocking to be here. I know the process. I know we’ve done what God wanted us to do in prayer and thought and preparation. God is watching us right now to see whether we’ll follow through with what we’ve begun, whether I’ll prepare adequately, whether we all support, how we treat those who are new. There’s no question that God is involved.
God is always present. He is much more concerned with matters of our trusting of him than with matters of our feelings about him.
Let’s think about how Job handled what must have seemed to him like God’s abandoning of him.
Job. 1.1ff-
v.20,21! What an attitude and a reality. Yet this is where we, as mature Christians, need to be. God’s business is NOT making us ‘happy’ and having everything going in a particular way in our lives. He’s concerned with eternity, not the present. He does not promise to heal us and give us health into the kingdom of God. He does not promise to fill our bank accounts now. He does not promise to keep us employed now. He promises to provide food, clothing and shelter. We have to be careful to be clear on what he does promise and not to extrapolate and to infer beyond what he says.
When you’re feeling isolated from God, what do you need to do? Be honest with God. We talked about honesty in our worship a few weeks back. Be honest. Tell him how you are and how you feel.
Then, focus on his unchanging nature. He tells you, in so many ways, that he won’t leave you. We saw one passage earlier. Here’s another- Phil.1.6. This one is very absolute! This is a promise you can ‘take to the bank’, as we say.
Then, rely on God’s promises, not your feelings. I remember one family back in the days we had in Evansburg- a couple I’ll call Jack and Wilma. They had adopted twin boys. They were up and down emotionally in their relationship with God depending on whatever was happening at the time. When things went well, as they defined it, they were on top of the world, generous, happy, and fun to be with. But they got into a huge debt situation and they were in the pits, selfish, surly, and not a lot of fun to be with. It was funny, in a way, because we left them in Evansburg and then, when we were in Yorkton, one day we got a call from them and they were not living in that area and we went through a bit more of the same things with them there, but they wandered off, much disappointed in God, as I remember.
Allow yourself to be driven to God’s Word and to what you know about Him. Imagine what that does in your relationship with God. “I don’t understand, but I know you are there.” What a statement of faith.
When you get down to it all, God need never do anything more for you or for us than He already has. He’s done more than enough already! Jesus Christ died for me- for you- for us. This is the absolutely greatest reason for worship. And HE knows what it’s like to be away from God- remember!
Matt.27.46- did He give up? Did he throw in the towel? No! He understood that there was some eternal purpose in what God was doing. So is the case with you and in your life. Jesus felt a weight of separation from God that you and I never approach. He kept going because he saw something greater for his relationship with God. So do you and I need to do in those times when God seems far away from us. He is real no matter what you feel!
