The past few months have been intensely difficult for me. I've been sick and in quite a lot of pain a large majority of the time. I have been feeling very disconnected from people and unable to build any real significant relationships. Rumors and lies have gone around my church about me and the situation was not dealt with well and left me feeling quite hurt and confused. But the most difficult thing about the past few months is not the situations I have been dealing with but rather the fact that God has been completely silent in the midst of all this.
I am used to hearing God on a regular basis. There has only been one other time that I can remember where I could not hear Him speak to me and then I was on a mission trip with a team of people and an incredible team leader who spoke truth into my life when I could not hear it for myself. This time there is no one consistently speaking truth into my life and no one with whom I can completely bare my soul and emotions.
Michelle Perry put how I am feeling into the perfect word picture in her book An Invitation to the Supernatural Life. She says, "I felt like I had been plunged into a pitch-black room, and God might be in the room but He wasn't letting on where He was. I was the one who kept running her hands over the walls looking for the light switch so I could see Him again." That so perfectly expresses how I feel. I can feel God standing just out of reach, I feel His presence on the fringes of my awareness but no matter how hard I try to get closer to Him, He remains out of reach on the fringes. Just standing there. Not speaking, not moving. I am left to myself in the darkness.
The most confusing thing for me about this is the timing. Not only am I feeling completely overwhelmed by my circumstances but, for the first time in my life I am asking questions that I have always had but have been terrified to ask. So, I finally work up the courage to start asking Him some of the hard questions and He stands silent. I really feel like He led me to this place of questioning because these are fundamental identity questions. They are rooted and sourced in how I see myself and how I think God sees me.
Through all of this, there has been one thing, one phrase God keeps saying. It is the same phrase I kept hearing when I was going through a similar time in Turkey. All I keep hearing is, "This is all about you." The first time I heard this in Turkey, I furious. I still remember exactly where I was and what was going on. I had been out with my team doing some street evangelism, or trying to, and we were sitting on a bench overlooking the Mediterranean sea trying to gain more clarity about who God wanted us to talk to. I was asking God why I couldn't hear anything and what was going on and He said those words. I was so angry I almost got up and walked away until I realized that I was in a foreign country, in a part of the city I was not familiar with, with no cell phone and no where to go. I was confused. Those words made absolutely no sense to me. How could it be all about me? It's always about Him. Always. Everything for Him and for His glory.
I had some clarity about what that meant during my time in Turkey and now I have even more clarity. This time of silence is all about what God is doing in me. Yes, it is all about Him and His glory, but He is developing something in me. He is working something in my life that can only come through the dark, silent times.
Later on in the chapter I quoted from earlier, Michelle goes on to say, "In seasons of hiddenness God withdraws much of His tangible touch in the arenas of our soul and the physical world in order to draw us deeper into the realm of the spirit. He is not at all absent, regardless of what we feel or don't feel. He is present with us, just interacting in a different way. Seasons of hiddenness are about Him actively drawing us deeper into His realm........These are times of my faith deepening in the experience of just knowing He is and He is with me regardless of the experience of my faith. Seasons of hiddenness don't have to be barren times at all. They can be desert places filled with beauty and wonder and burning bushes. When God withholds the external place of visitation, it is only to build in us and internal place of habitation.... His silence does not mean His absence. Neither does it mean His disapproval. Some of God's most precious invitations come wrapped in mystery. In the times we don't feel His presence, we are having a different type of encounter. Instead of him encountering us in our realms, Jesus is intent on drawing us into His realm. the quiet times are heaven's invitations to journey deeper."
So as I walk through this season of hiddenness, as Michelle Perry puts it, I choose to trust in what I know to be true of Jesus. He has promised me that He is always with me and He has promised that He has chosen me and I am His cherished creation. I can cling to every promise I have received from Him. I will search for Him in the silence and I will rest knowing that He is calling me deeper. Not that I won't struggle during this time. I know that it is going to be difficult and lonely and frustrating but though I cannot see when I will come out of this on the other side, I know that I will and that I will come out of it in a place of deeper intimacy with Him. And that is what this is all about. All of it is about intimacy with One who knit me together simply for the pleasure of being in relationship with Him.
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