A friend of mine recently had a small crisis of faith. She is not prone to spiritual crises, so it got my attention. It seems she felt God was being distant since she didn’t sense His presence in her life. This sense made her question whether He exists.
Her question is a common one among believers who long to experience God more deeply. The idea that God is distant from a believer comes from a slanted version of God that is sometimes fed to us—often with the best of intentions—by Christian pastors and teachers and, to some extent, our friends and peers. Quite simply, we feel that if God is so powerful and yet so personal, we ought to see signs of that power in our highly personal acts of worship and prayer, and also in our daily life.
The desire to experience God personally and directly can lead to an uncomfortable disharmony between our sense of God and our expectation of how God should be. Nothing surprising there: our sense of God is fallen just like every other aspect of our being. Our sense of what is true (and therefore our sense of God) is tainted by our humanness, so our senses are unreliable conveyors of truth about the world around us (and about God). Longing to feel God’s presence but feeling nothing can be a source of ongoing frustration. In this article, we explore the conundrum of experiencing God and consider better ways to be sure of His presence.
The trouble with feelings
I’ve argued in a separate blog article that our senses were designed for our enjoyment but that we misuse them and allow ourselves to be misled by them. Jeremiah makes this point famously clear when he questions the motives of the human heart:
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
—Jeremiah 17: 9 (see also Hosea 10: 2)
Observe that the heart is not simply deceitful but also “beyond cure.” The ESV renders this phrase as “desperately sick,” emphasizing that our heart actually longs to deceive us. Scripture tells us that specific senses, such as seeing and hearing, are prone to deception as well. We lack spiritual sight, for example, until the grace of Christ enables us to see (John 9: 39–41). But even after receiving the gift of sight, we don’t see things quite as they are, but rather “through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). A similar parallel can be drawn for the sense of hearing, which is only given to those who are of God (John 8: 47), and even then it is possible to hear without understanding (Matthew 13: 13-15).
Modern preaching makes much of senses and feelings, and not all in a bad way. For example, it is common for preachers to explain how specific elements of scripture apply to a person’s life. In other words, they fill in an experiential gap in order to make scripture relatable and applicable. There is nothing wrong with preaching this way, but if the focus of preaching is consistently on creating an experience for the listener, then that experience might sooner or later upstage the message itself. As pastor Kevin Deyoung writes: “Sometimes it’s ok to end the sermon by simply telling the people about Jesus.”
The power of experience
In 2016, blogger Jules Evans found that the number of Americans claiming to have had a religious experience has been increasing steadily from 22% in 1969, to 33% in 1994, to 49% in 2009. Admittedly, the increase may be attributable to changing definitions of “religious experience.” Whereas previously it may have been a supernatural contact with a higher presence, nowadays it may be nothing more than “awareness of a spiritual dimension.” Religious experiences may also be more common simply because the definition of “religious” has gotten broader.
Yet there has also been an increased social openness to individual experience, particularly anomalous experience. Evans indicates that this openness has been mediated by an increasing interest in abnormal psychology since the end of WWII. But the true culprit may be a growing trend toward experience as a way of understanding the world. It only takes a few scrolls through Instagram or Facebook to be reminded of the power of experience in people’s lives. Reading about the Taj Mahal works only to a point—to truly be understood and known, it must be experienced up close and in person. Experience has become the new knowledge. At colleges and universities, “experiential learning” has taken off as an educational model, playing to a highly tenuous argument that humans invariably learn better by experiencing.
On his blog Church and Gospel, Pastor Charlie Wallace discusses ways that an over-emphasis on experience has taken root in modern Christian worship, affecting how we view God and our relationship to Him. “Experience-driven worship,” he states, “is the act of congregations, pastors, and worship leaders allowing the worship gathering to become a place where one’s emotions and feelings outweigh logic and truth.” It is, he argues, a plague on the Church. He gives three causes for it:
- Post-enlightenment thinking. Elevating man above God in such a way that feelings (rather than truth) become the center of one’s life.
- American individualism. Freedom and liberty reign in American society, as does the pursuit of happiness—whatever this may look like.
- Diminished authority of God’s word. As the authority of God’s word is questioned, personal interpretation and experience play a greater role in spiritual discernment.
Does this mean the experience of God is spiritually harmful? Absolutely not. But it does mean that as we lean more and more on experience in matters of discernment, we are more likely to be assessing our own spiritual pathologies rather than God’s forensically objective will.
The presence of God
Isaiah had a vision that brought him into the presence of God (6: 1-8):
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
While such interactions were commonplace in the Old Testament, there is no reason to believe that they were particularly common in the general populace. There is also no reason to think that the general populace lived in wistful anticipation of them. In the 1600s, a French monk known as Brother Lawrence made a name for himself by experiencing God’s presence in the mundaneness of his work at the monastery. But what he experienced was not a showy transfiguration or vision. Brother Lawrence experienced the presence of God by thinking of his work as small but significant acts of love:
That we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed. That we should not wonder if, in the beginning, we often failed in our endeavours, but that at last we should gain a habit, which will naturally produce its acts in us, without our care, and to our exceeding great delight.
—Brother Lawrence, Practice of the Presence of God, 4th conversation
Jesus offers great insight into the experience of God the Father by the ways He handles his interactions with God the Father. Jesus was presumably in constant conversation with the Father, yet these interactions never had “experiential” overtones. Rather, whatever Jesus drew from his interactions with the Father, He merely proclaimed:
By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.
—John 5: 30
I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
—John 17: 4–5
Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.”
—John 8: 28–29
The closest Jesus ever came to putting on a “show” was the Transfiguration (Matthew 17: 1–8; Mark 9: 2-8; Luke 9: 28–36). This unusual event occurred in a secluded location, and only Peter, John, and James were permitted to witness it. It is clear from the three gospel accounts that the purpose of the Transfiguration was not to provide a “wow” experience for these three apostles, but rather to give God the Father a pulpit from which to verbally uphold Jesus’ authority:
A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”
—Luke 9: 35
Jesus clearly recoiled from dramatic displays of power. In fact, He had little patience for those who asked for “signs,” that is, direct, sensory experiences of God:
Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.” He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.”
—Matthew 12: 38–39
“A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away.
—Matthew 16: 4
The significance of Jesus’ refusal to indulge his audiences with signs of His power did not escape Paul, who saw the Jews’ demand for signs as a conceit that missed the point of Christ’s sacrifice:
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
–1 Corinthians 1: 22–24
The sign that mattered most—that matters still—is what Jesus called the sign of Jonah: his death and resurrection. This sign cannot be experienced by believers today, but believers may accept by faith that it occurred, and enjoy the fruit of it in their lives.
Standing on the promises
It’s easy to sympathize with the crowds who begged Jesus for a sign. This was the Messiah, after all! What other chance would humanity have to see God’s power at work? The problem is we hold too loosely to the concrete assurances that God actually gives.
God…
- is near us when we call on Him (Deuteronomy 4: 29)
- never leaves us or forsakes us (Deuteronomy 31: 8)
- His love endures forever (1 Chronicles 16: 34)
- is a refuge for the oppressed (Psalm 9: 9)
- shepherds us (Psalm 23: 1)
- is our light and our salvation (Psalm 27: 1)
- instructs us in the way we should go (Psalm 32: 8)
- makes firm the steps of the one who delights in Him (Psalm 37: 23)
- delivers us in the day of trouble (Psalm 50: 15)
- abounds in love (Psalm 86: 5)
- gives rest to those who shelter in His shadow (Psalm 91: 1)
- breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron (Psalm 107: 16)
- neither sleeps nor slumbers (Psalm 121: 3-4)
- is with us (Isaiah 41: 10; 43: 2)
- His love cannot be shaken or His covenant of peace removed (Isaiah 54: 10)
- doesn’t change (Malachi 3: 6)
- satisfies our needs (Isaiah 58: 11; Matthew 6: 33; Philippians 4: 19)
- has good plans for us (Jeremiah 29: 11)
- gives us rest (Matthew 11: 28-30) and abundant life (John 10: 10)
- will not let us be snatched from His hand (John 10: 28)
- will return for us (John 14: 2-3)
- works for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8: 28)
- comforts us in all our affliction (2 Corinthians 1: 3-4)
- strengthens us (Philippians 4: 13)
- guards our hearts and minds (Philippians 4: 6-7)
- reserves an inheritance for us (1 Peter 1: 4)
- …and many more!
These truths are first and foremost about God. But each one also proclaims some dimension of our identity as His children. Naturally, we are shaped by how God sees us and interacts with us. We may experience His presence in worship (or not), but regardless of how we experience Him, we can depend on these truths.
It may not always be easy. Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910–1997) went through a period of spiritual loneliness that lasted several decades. Early in her ministry, she felt that God had withdrawn His presence from her. In 1947, she confessed her feelings to Calcutta archbishop Ferdinand Périer. He replied by saying, “You are not so much in the dark as you think. (…) You have exterior facts enough to see that God blesses your work. (…) Feelings are not required and often may be misleading.” In working through her feelings in one of her many subsequent letters, she addressed Jesus:
I am your own. Imprint on my soul and life the sufferings of Your heart. Don’t mind my feelings — don’t mind even my pain. If my separation from You brings others to You and in their love and company you find joy and pleasure, why Jesus, I am willing with all my heart to suffer all that I suffer — not only now, but for all eternity, if this was possible.
To a Father Neuner, with whom she corresponded helpfully in the 1950s, she wrote:
I accept not in my feelings—but with my will, the Will of God—I accept His will.
It takes great spiritual humility and courage to set one’s feelings aside and tell Jesus “don’t mind my feelings–don’t mind my pain.” But Mother Teresa eventually drew comfort from the realization that Jesus shows Himself to the world in many other meaningful ways besides feelings. Mother Teresa’s struggle shows just how powerful feelings can be as we seek closeness to God, and how disruptive they can be to His work in and through us. Her story also reveals a truth about God’s promises and our identity. If the promises of God proclaim who God is and (to a lesser extent) who we are, then awareness of our identity in Christ fulfills our sense of God. With that sense fulfilled, there is no disconnect between how we sense God and how we expect God to be. Choosing not to stand on visions or experiences of God but rather on His promises reveals who He is and assures us of our standing, as the old hymn proclaims:
Standing on the Promises
—Russell Kelso Carter (1886)Standing on the promises of Christ, my King,
Through eternal ages let his praises ring;
Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing,
Standing on the promises of God.
Refrain:
Standing, standing,
Standing on the promises of God, my Savior;
Standing, standing,
I’m standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises that cannot fail.
When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,
By the living Word of God I shall prevail,
Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises of Christ, the Lord,
Bound to him eternally by love’s strong cord,
Overcoming daily with the Spirit’s sword,
Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises I cannot fall,
List’ning ev’ry moment to the Spirit’s call,
Resting in my Savior as my all in all,
Standing on the promises of God.
–by Rick E.
For Freedom 