WHEN WE FEEL LESS OF GOD’S PRESENCE
Is God asleep, or has just gone on vacation? Where is He? Why is He missing in our daily lives and does not answer when we most need Him? Is it possible that God sometimes hides himself that we have to seek and discover Him a new? Or does He purposely create silence about Himself so that when He speaks, it thunders and embodies the sacred nature and the awe of His being? Is He still hiding Himself in the clouds and pillars of fire? It could be that if He makes Himself always available, mankind would take Him for granted and He merely becomes a piece of idol designed and made by man that we turn around and carry about at wills. Yet God is omnipresent: always present everywhere at every time. Nothing can ever stop or deny His presence in joys, sorrows, terror even in death.
But God is in heaven and His footstool is on earth. God in His wisdom made man to domain on earth where we trail as visitors. It’s easy to recognize God and talk about His goodness when our expectations and desires are met. Then we sing His praise and rejoice in thanksgivings for successes and for aspirations fulfilled. When we experience sorrow, delays, failures and persecutions we tend to think, He hides and allows problems to overtake us. Little wonder Job could ask should we accept goodness from God and reject bad things when they happen! God can also reveal Himself in ugliness, persecution and in death. God could be seen not only in plenty but also in famine, not only in health but in illness, not only in victory but in defeat, not only in prosperity but in hardship. Sometimes God allows sufferings and hardship to befall us to work out His purpose. For example: the children of Israel spent 400 years in slavery until they started enjoying their sufferings. One could ask why God had to wait so long to intervene.
As Isaiah 50:2 put it: God’s hand is not short to helping us but our sins block God from reaching us. Are we directing God on what to do? How can a pot tell a potter how to create or mould it? We better stop and pause to understand what the problem is. We should stop telling God what to do and begin to abide in Him; listen and obey Him. God should hold the steering and not take back seat. He created us, know us and direct us. Why it’s hard for people in our age to believe that God is present with us and can relate with us in our different circumstances of life. The bible teaches that God is at work within our human affairs and many of the trouble we suffer are our refusal to acknowledge Him, follow Him and work out His purposes. It’s not God who hides from us rather we hide from God. From the time Adam and Eve failed, human beings have been hiding from God, even when He walks into our domains.
In the Old Testament, God spoke through prophets and His presence and powers revealed through the works He did. For example: the various meetings Moses had with Pharaoh and his stubbornness to let the children of Israel to go, the wilderness experiences and the miracle of dividing the Red Sea and after that River Jordan. His chat with Noah and the Ark, Adam and the Garden of Eden, Abraham and his only son Isaac; God’s Angel wrestled with Jacob, Joseph and the fulfillment of his dream. Apostle Paul experienced God in his conversion and in every area and circumstances of his life and submitted, “And I know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose” [Romans 8:28]. However in the New Testament, God hid Himself in Jesus Christ and came to us through his Son. No wonder Jesus could say He who sees Him has seen the Father. “I am in the Father and Father is in Me.” While Isaiah said it was our sins that hide God from us, Jesus said the same thing differently; that the pure in heart shall see God. Reverend Leonard Griffith writing on God in Man’s Experience said Jesus found God in all things – in the flower of the field, children at play, laborers in a vineyard, women at their work, shepherd watching their flocks. He added even through God may not always be accessible to the quick-witted or the clear-headed; He is never hidden from the eyes of the morally pure. Jesus put it straight when He taught, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” The pure in heart saw God in Jesus Himself; some humble shepherds seek Him, peasant fishermen and children worship Him; the sick rejoiced in their health restored, the dying man on the cross obtained mercy and a place in His kingdom. This strange spiritual perception had very little to do with the way that people thought but it had everything to do with the way that people lived; the decisions and choices they made as God continue to work in the lives delivered from sins.
In this Church age Jesus had long gone back to the Father and sent us the Holy Spirit. In this new dispensation we can only see God through the eye of faith. So it could be that God deliberately hides himself to drive us to exercise our faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” However Donald Hankey was quoted to have redefined faith as an act of betting your life there is God. It has been described by another giant of faith as doing something because the word of God says so, even when it makes no sense. “It is the stubborn persistence of belief in God when everything in our lives and in the life of the world seems to contradict that belief. No man really comes close to God until he finds Him by faith and no man begins to exercise true faith until God seems to be hidden from his sight.” Again Martin Luther was said to have written that God is “the hidden God.” He held the opinion that God always remain hidden unless and until He takes the initiative and makes himself known. God had therefore revealed Himself in His son, Jesus Christ that we should believe in Him and live. So even when we feel less of His presence we should believe He’s ever present and approach Him through the faith of our inner mind; only then can we see Him in action.
A friend, Mr. James Okafor sharing his thoughts with me opined, “When we feel less of God’s presence, we should call home meaning personal introspection. This reminds me of my parent’s advice each time I left home for college; they admonished, call home. However Mr.Okafor’s opinion reminds that we are strangers, passing by on earth. Our home is in heaven. Christians are “resident aliens” in a sinful world [Philippians 3:20]. Yea, when we appear to be loosely connected to heaven, we should call the throne of grace where the King of glory resides. We do this by reading and meditating on our bible daily; the more intake and application of the word, the stronger and growing we become. We have to pray everyday and always, since prayer is the food of the soul and Spirit and a dual communication with God’s head. Next is to attend Church worship and activities regularly and exercise our faith by witnessing for Christ, in words, actions and in silence. The prophet Isaiah asked, “Who among you that feared the Lord, that obeyed the voice of His servant, that walks in darkness, and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord; let him who does not have any light to guide him, depend on his God [Isaiah 50:10].
Our Daily Manna [A Devotional Booklet for champions] Volume 8; section 3:8 says the first thing to do is to do nothing. This supports the saying, ‘when you’re rattled, don’t rush.’ The Psalms 46 had this to say: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in our trouble. We should not fear, even when the earth is removed, the mountain is carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters roar…mountains shake, it makes no difference. God is the refuge of His people against everything actual and imagined. Be still and know that I’m God….I am not an absentee deliverer but a defense always present…..will be exalted amongst nations and in the earth.” Find out what God is trying to say through the happening events. Follow your heart because God’s present and talks to us always. Remember God knows the way and He knows what to do. In the midst of all we go through, resist worries and anxieties. Finally seek spiritual counsel and help, if need be. Reverend Jimmy Lin, ministry leader of the Back to God Hour writing on TODAY [The family Altar] October 8, 2008 quoted these inscription found in an underground cellar in the Paris city after world War 11, “I believe in the sun even when it’s not shinning, I believe in love even when not feeling it, I believe in God even when He is silent.” Those who unscripted those words did not live in a fantasy world. They knew that the enemy was really ferocious but God was mightier; life was too difficult to bear, but God was never far away. Christians should learn in a hopeless situation to draw strength from God and from God’s people. Christians should hold unto unshaken faith no matter what happens.
Reach: Evangelist Ogbonnaya, Godswill at: weeefreeministries@yahoo.com or P. O. Box 720035, Houston, Texas, 77272.