I remember the first time I couldn’t feel God.
It lasted for about an hour and a half and completely devastated me.
I had grown up in a Christian home with a dad who was a pastor and so had lived most of my life in the church. Consequently I grew up with an awareness of God. And something that I obviously attributed to being a feeling of Him.
But this happened at a Student Christian event and it was a lot more than just an absence of the feeling of God. It was the presence of something really dark. I just remember feeling absolutely full of fear and all alone and it was really weird and scary. And as quickly as it appeared it disappeared and life returned to normal. Because it didn’t happen again, I soon forgot about it.
A LENGTHIER PAUSE
A few years later it happened again. This time was not nearly as intense as the first time, but it lasted for 18 months. I was in England earning money to join a Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Discipleship Training School (DTS) for six months to do a short terms mission school.
This time it happened a lot more slowly and gradually intensified. Without going into the specifics it really caused me a lot of concern because of how long it lasted. I started to believe that any feeling I had had of God before must have been a childish thing and that it was all about what you knew in your head and heart and best to focus on that. Maybe this is what growing up was all about?
But then one day, that too passed. And there were moments of feeling God again. It never returned in the same force as I had experienced while growing up and from then on has been a bit of a rollercoaster with ups and downs of various heights and depths, which is a whole lot harder but maybe a lot more realistic to life.
WHICH BRINGS US TO TODAY
What was super helpful about getting through that 18 month period of doubt and struggle was that I made it through. So a year or so after that when it struck again for three weeks I was able to look back and say, “I got through eighteen months of this, I can stay strong” and it worked.
Five years ago my wife and I moved to Americaland (as I call it) for three years to work with Christian non-profits and although it was quite a difficult time for various reasons, for the most part I would say there were a lot of times of feeling really close to God again. Especially when we stayed in Oakland for the last eighteen months and were part of an amazing church called Regeneration.
But since returning home to South Africa (two years now) I seem to have returned to a place of deep, dark valley and there has not been a lot of feeling.
BRING IN THE FRIENDS
It’s kinda cheesy – and I’m not a fan of cheese – but I actually like the saying of how the church (as in the followers of Jesus) can be described as ‘God with skin on’. Because when you’re not feeling God, it is certainly amazing when someone pitches up to be God in a way to you.
This week it was my friend Wayne. He knew I was struggling a bit and so he sent me a message to check in on me and then instantly organised a time to have coffee and catch up. Which we did yesterday. He also lend me some books: ‘The God of Intimacy and Action’ by Tony Campolo and Mary Albert Darling, and ‘The Road to Peace’ by Henri Nouwen.
I haven’t had a chance to really start reading the books yet, but I did get through the Intro to ‘The God of Intimacy and Action’ and it starts with this super encouraging verse:
I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”- Ephesians 3:16-19
If there really is a God, then that is an amazing prayer. In the times of valley and distance and doubt and questioning, how powerful to be reminded of just how incredibly HUGE God’s love for you is. Demonstrated by Him sending one of His followers to encourage me and walk with me and listen to me and just console me with the words, “This too shall pass”. To give me counsel and friendship and resources to help me along a path he has already walked.
Where is God when He’s not? He’s always there, always. It is only the feeling of Notness that becomes a little more overwhelming and which will stifle us if we don’t have people around us to remind us of the Truth. God loves us very much and is deeply committed to us, no matter what we feel like at the time.