Maybe if I clasp my hands just right, and get down on my knees. Maybe if I conjure up tears, and ask enough times, He’ll come back to me. He’ll tell me that He was never really gone. He’ll rekindle the fire in my heart that has faded to a smoldering pile of lukewarm ashes.
Maybe I’ll read my Bible more. And start praying again. Maybe I’ll wake up early and go to church services before work. We both know that I’ll just be counting the minutes until the sermon is done, but surely it must count for something?
I’ve never be apart from Him for this long before. Often, I wonder if I was ever really His. Maybe I never received the call; maybe it was just a wrong number.
posted by Jessica @ 11:15 PM
15 Comments:
I hate to confess that these desperate words could have been mine. Every single one of them. What the hell is going on?
And the word of the LORD came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."
The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by."
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
(I Kings 19)
hi,
I'm Raj, by the way. My sister (aziner) pointed me to your blog. If you don't know who she is (I don't know if she's ever commented here), she's friends with Pieter.
don't lose hope. keep listening for the whisper, for the still small voice, even when it seems silent - it's usually just that everything else is too loud.
Raj,
Your words are true and good. Although, I can't hear that whisper anymore. I remember what it sounds like, I just don't hear it. I'm the little boy's sister from The Polar Express. I know that the people around me can still hear it, but I can't. There's a brick wall between God and me.
I don't understand how God can be moving all around me and, yet, I am numb. I don't see Him and hear Him. I know that I am His, whether or not I "feel" Him, but I have no idea how to escape this valley. I miss the ecstatic joy I once had in His presence.
Sometimes I feel like I'm trying so hard to hear His word that I'm missing it. It was never this difficult.
Jessica and Sherry,
I am sorry that you are both going through this for it is a thing I know all too intimately. And not to contradict Raj or the Bible, but one of my favorite quotes is this, "God whispers in our pleasure and shouts in our pain." At first I thought, that is not at all true becaues when I am in pain I cannot hear him. And then someone explained that when you're in pain there are a thousand things vying for your attention and they are all so loud that God shouts to you and even at that you can't hear him. I know it maybe doesn't seem comforting, but I think the idea that God so yearns to help us that he will shout seems wonderful. Keep listening, eventually you will hear that still small voice and it will grow louder until you are overwhelmed with love and then he will whisper to you as he holds you tight. I know words can only offer the tiniest bit of comfort, so know that I am praying. And on an ordinary day not so long from now you will notice things are different and you may not have a specific reason but you will feel indescribable joy. May the day soon come when the sun shines brighter, the air smells sweeter, and the sky seems bluer.
Azina,
I have tears in my eyes. I hope your words are true.
I promise that they are.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts...
I love all you guys very much....
I must admit that even as a pastor-in-training I've struggled much in the last few years of the idea of Christian life where you don't feel like you can hear God and in fact feel like you can't sense Him at all. At first I thought that it was a lack of faith or some sin in my life. Then I thought that it was just a season, but seasons pass and this one hasn't for a long time.
Now I wonder if that loss of feeling isn't part of becoming more spiritually mature. That's not to say that as we grow spiritually that we'll never feel God's presence or hear His calling ever again, but rather it means that we're not dependent on it anymore for our devotion. It's scary because it seems that we've been taught to recognize guilt and ecstacy and warmth and love as the only indicators of God's presence in our lives. When we stop feeling those things because we've heard the same sermons and sung the same songs (or different ones with the same intent) too many times, we're led to think that we aren't right anymore. I don't think that's the case. I think it's the moments where we can't even hear the whisper that define whether or not we were ever really listening to it or if we were just addicted to the comfort that its breathy presence afforded us. Does God covet more my praise even when I don't feel like it? Or does He want me to feel like praising?
Love of God, like our love of others, cannot be dependent on feeling can it? If so, every marriage would fail within 30 days (or however long it takes PMS to set in for the first time). Perhaps the better we learn to love God when we don't feel like it all the sweeter it becomes to love Him when we do feel it.
Raj,
These echo many of my thoughts.
I wonder if I've become "bored" with God. Yes, I know it's blasphemous. There's an "Everbody Duck" song that talks about worshipping God because He Is. It talks about our obedience even when we don't "feel" him. That was sufficient for me for a while. I loved that song. Lately, I'm wondering if He really Is. It's no longer enough. How do I KNOW when I can't feel Him or sense His presence? I know that a relationship about God isn't based on warm fuzzies, but when I can't sense the Holy Spirit, all else seems in vain. What now?
Sherry's relationship with God:
Stage 1: Warm Fuzzies in consideration of a loving God. God, the Daddy I never had.
Stage 2: God almighty. Worshipping God because He is glorious and He is jealous for His fame.
Stage 3: God, the deserving. Worshipping God out of obedience; worshipping because He Is.
Stage 4: God? Am I talking to a wall?
Sherry -
You are a mind reader.
There was a time, about 400 years, when God didn't speak. There was only one chosen nation that He talked to anyway, and He wasn't even speaking to them. This was before He sent His Spirit to live inside of us. These people were left totally and utterly without any sense of God's presence or plan or protection.
And then God broke the silence. Except for this time His Word was not spoken, thundering from a distant mountain to only a select prophet or high priest. This time God's Word was born, a baby boy, Emmanuel - God with us.
I'm sure you know that story or you probably wouldn't even be asking these questions. But God's greatest revelation of Himself to the world was preceded by the longest, darkest, most desperate silence that His people had ever known from Him.
Could it be that this is how God works in our lives today? Elijah was the greatest prophet (before John the Baptist). He was the first to raise a man from the dead. He stopped the rain in the land with just his words. Yet even he cried out to God in dire straits because he had lost sight of Him.
So "what now?", you ask. I don't know what it will take in your life or even what it will take in mine for that matter. But I know a good place to start. Would you even be questioning God if you really believed that He Isn't? If you were sure the issue would be settled in your mind and you could confidently say, "Let's eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die." But the reason that you can't drop it is because something deep down inside of you knows that He is. Ecclesiastes tells us that God "has set eternity in the hearts of men." He didn't do that so we would be miserably seeking after His presence. He did that so He could be found.
Go back to His Word. It's a cliche, a Sunday School answer, I know. But His Words created land and sea and life from nothing (Psalm 33). His Words became a person and redeemed us(John 1). His Word can fuel a fire that we once thought extinct (Jeremiah 20:9).
As you read, consider these things:
- What happened right after the last time I clearly remember experiencing God's presence? Have I given into a sin? Have I felt like God has let me down?
- What's the last thing you remember hearing from God? Are you doing it?
Finally, the other Sunday school answer, pray. Even if the only thing that you can say is, "God I am so pissed at You because I feel like You've abandoned me." Even if you don't know what to say at all. Romans 8:26 tells us that the Spirit communicates to God for us with groans when there are no words left.
Do you think it is sin in our lives that prevents us from hearing God in that way? I struggle with that idea a great deal...
It can.
Sin doesn't necessarily stop God from speaking to us, but it does change what we are trying to hear.
For lack of a better analogy, if sin is The Matrix and life with God is the real world, the more time you spend in The Matrix the harder it is for us to accept that it isn't the real world. And we become content with that.
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