Monday, December 24, 2007
-When God Seems Distant-
When God seems distant, you may feel that he is angry with you or is disciplining you for some sin. in Fact, sin does disconect 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.
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 you life?
The most common mistake Christians make in worship today is seeking an EXPERIENCE rather than seeking God. They look for a feeling, and if it happens, they conclude that they have worshiped. WRONG! in fact, God often removes our feelings so we wont depend on them. Seeking a feeling, even the feeling of closeness to CHRIST, is not worship.
When you are a baby Christian, God gives you a lot of confirming emotions and often answers the most immature, self-centered prayers - so you'll know he exists. But as you grow in faith, he will wean you of these dependencies.
God's omnipresence and the manifestation of his presence are two different things. One is a fact: the other is often a feeling. God is always present, even when you are unaware of him, and his presence is too profound to be measured by mere emotion.
Yes, he wants you to sense his presence, but he's more concerned that you trust him than that you feel him. Faith, not feelings, pleases God.
The situations that will stretch your faith most will be those times when life falls apart and God is nowhere to be found. This happened to Job. On a single day he lost everything - his family, his business, his health, and everything he owned. Most discouraging - for thirty-seven chapters, God said nothing!
How do you praise God when you don't understand what's happening in your life and God is silent? How do you stay connected in a crisis without communication? How do you keep your eyes on Jesus when they're full of tears? You do what Job did: 'Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked i will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, may the name of the Lord be praised.'
Nelvin Blogged @ 12:15 AM
