Some people use the phrase absence when describing this season of God not seeming to be present – and it can seem that God is absent. However, it is only our perception that God is absent, as we know that God can’t really be absent and, in any meaningful sense, still be God! God, by definition, is present. All the time. Everywhere. What I am describing in this series is times when it seems to us that God is absent.

Actually God is with us, but in a different way from the way we usually discern Him. It is as though He moves from staring into our face to standing behind us. If we are very quiet and still we can possibly feel the faintest movement of air as He “breathes” on the back of our neck. God is with us, but we have very little sense of his presence. So I have coined the phrase the “withness of God“. So often we when we talk about the presence of God we are talking about something tangible, experiential. People say how wonderful it is be in the presence of God (and it is!). But for some people, when in a “desert” season, the presence of God is not a reality. But the withness of God is always a reality, regardless of what we feel or experience. Sometimes, the difficulty is discerning how God is with us.

Due to God’s withness, I prefer not to use the term absence. Therefore, others use the term hiddeness to describe times when God seems absent. God is not absent, but is also not always clearly seen. Sometimes, he is hidden from our spiritual sight, our ability to discern Him. What we are facing here is the difficulty of sensing and knowing a God who can’t be seen by our normal eyes. He is Spirit. We are confined by our physical bodies. So as Paul says in Corinthians, “we see in part”. Dimly. Unclear. There are times when God seems to come into focus, and we have a sense of clarity. Other times He seems invisible, unclear, out of focus. These are the seasons of hiddeness.

I prefer the term hiddeness to absence, although I am still not totally happy with the phrase. It can seem that God is playing some cosmic game of hide and seek, and while there maybe some truth in that some of the time, there are many times when this doesn’t seem the case. We will look in future posts, at the reasons why we might end up in a season of “desert” but it isn’t always because God is playing a game with us.

Hence I have used the term “desert” to describe these seasons. The image is strong and alive. Desert is a very strong metaphor (and reality!) in Scripture. I love the visual picture of walking across the desert, of a journey with companions, moving from one terrain (perhaps a fruitful place?) to another. The journey is part of the process, not just the destination. In this picture we can embrace the desert experience as part of God’s leading for us. It doesn’t have to be bad or negative. It isn’t always easy. But it is part of walking with God throughout our whole live, and one that I think we would do well not to run away from.

The more a human being advances in the Christian faith, the more they live in the presence of God as an absence, the more they accept to die to the idea of becoming aware of God, of fathoming Him. For they have learned, while advancing, that God is unfathomable. And from then on the presence of God assumes value in their eyes only against the backdrop of absence. The mystic, in his long and complicated pilgrimage experiences alternately the presence and absence of God. But, by degrees, the absence of God is felt more and more and the mystic understands that the absence is now the norm. Thus the mystic is someone who has had a long-term confrontation with God, like Jacob in the struggle that he waged all through the night, someone who does not cease to confront God. God always precedes us, we see Him only from behind, He walks ahead. He is ahead of us. What the mystic experiences – and every Christian is a mystic because it is not the great illuminations that are the mark of the mystic but the night, an everyday night – is a kind of distancing from God in proportion to advances in the deepening of their faith.
Jean Francois Six

Tags: Christian Life, Desert, Wilderness, Hiddeness of God, Absence of God

See previous posts:

• Living in the Desert 2
• Living in the Desert 1

Image: www.everystockphoto.com

My first post back was an opening shot looking the subject of “living in the desert“. Today I want to try to define what I mean by desert times in our faith.

One of the things that I have appreciated about my church tradition is the emphasis that God is present. He is not remote, far away, uninvolved, removed, uninterested. He is present, here, now, you can experience Him, He can fill you with His Spirit, empower you, touch you. You can have a relationship with Him. He speaks. He guides.

It brought faith alive to me in my late teens, having had no such expectations in my childhood church experiences. God became real. Exciting. Like a bubbling spring at the top of a mountain. Twisting and turning, sloshing and splurging, speeding its way down the mountain. Faith seemed so vibrant.

The problem is the expectation this emphasis produces in us or in our church culture: “It should always be like this“. For some people it sometimes seems as though it is. Although I do sometimes wonder what is happening beneath the surface, the mask, the hype. Is it real? Or are they statements of desire, rather than reality? Or are the harder, dryer times forgotten?

If you do find yourself in a “dry” time, I have been left with the impression that is not good, something to avoid at all costs, and get out of as quick as possible. It is as though we are standing on the beach, and the waves should constantly be crashing down over us. If they are not, it is because we have wandered too far into the sand dunes, and we just need to get back into the sea. “They are not in a good place spiritually” people cry. “If you are dry, lets us pray for you to be refreshed“. If only it was that easy all the time!

There are seasons when we do walk through different terrains. Sometimes the terrain is fruitful, full of life, green, vibrant, alive. But sometimes we find ourselves walking through a desert: dry, barren, lifeless, hot, dusty, and very quiet. God seems very distant or absent. It seems as though he has deserted us! He doesn’t seem to be speaking or guiding us any more. When we pray we don’t have any sense of someone we are talking to or communing with. The Bible is dry, and we end up reading without any sense of God speaking or understanding. Worship is difficult; church gatherings, especially the exuberant sort, are painful and excruciating, only emphasising our sense of aloneness and desolation. We seem so different from all these people who are passionately praising and thanking God for his presence and activity in their lives.

In previous seasons, we probably learnt particular ways of pursuing our relationship with God. We have found ways of prayer, reading, worship and other spiritual disciplines that help us to come into God’s presence and listen to His voice. But as we enter the desert, these disciplines no longer have the same effect. No longer do they bring life and nourish us. They seem dry and empty.

This can leave us feeling adrift, the anchor points that held us in our relationship with God seem no longer that strong. Our sense of drifting can be exacerbated by our sense of aloneness, a road less travelled, and often with a strong sense that we have done something wrong, we have missed a signpost somewhere along the way and ended up a desert that God didn’t want us to be in, and nor did we!

I will look in future posts some of the reasons why we do end up in these desert seasons, but suffice to say at this point, that often God seems to be the one that leads us into the desert. Sure sometimes the deserts of faith of our own making, but often they are not. God leads us into a desert, as He led Jesus into a desert. He leads us into the desert to meet with Him, meet with ourselves and be transformed. But more of that in later posts…

We need to find a way of positively speaking about these seasons and helping people to navigate these terrains. There aren’t many people who are desert dwellers, but there are some, and they are great companions for the journey. I am interested in being one of those desert companions, and hearing of your experiences of desert in your faith. Perhaps we can learn together about the often uncharted territory of walking with God in the desert.

What are your experiences of desert seasons of faith? What was it like?

Tags: Desert, Wilderness, God, Christian Life, Prayer

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I will try to write something more on this over the coming weeks, but here is a talk that I gave at our church before Christmas on times when God seems absent in our lives. God is never absent, but there are times when it seems as though He has left us; times when when we seem to praying to the ceiling; when all we hear is silence; when we have no sense of God’s presence. We are in a barren place, which can become a place of incredible fruitfulness, if we know how to walk with God in these seasons. Often we think we have done something wrong or we try to go back and do what we were doing in times of blessings. We can be tempted to give up. But if we can discern the “withness” of God, that God is with us in a unique, but different, way, we can learn to love the desert. And find it a place of transformation.

Intrigued? Well listen, and let me know what you think.

Living in the desert – Talk 4.mp3