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When God Isn’t There
by David Bowden
God’s absence makes us uncomfortable. I
titled a book When God Isn’t There,
and people kept asking me, “When God
isn’t there? Don’t you know God’s always there!”
It isn’t easy to think about God being absent, but if we
avoid the tension created by God’s absence and presence, we forfeit joy.
I’ve learned to state the tension like this: God
is often absent in the ways we most desire, but present in the way we most
require.
God has been, and still is, present with us in all the
ways we require: sustaining the world, revealing his word, making covenants,
sending His Spirit, and, preeminently, giving us Jesus.
Not Yet Here
But God is also, simultaneously, often absent in the
ways we most desire.
While we live on this earth and inhabit unglorified
bodies, we cannot see the face of God (1
Corinthians 15:35–50; 1 Timothy
6:16).
The Bible uses God’s face to refer to His tangible,
unmediated presence (Revelation 22:4).
This is the presence of God that we will only
experience when Jesus returns, glorifies believers’ bodies, and brings the new
heaven and new earth (1 John 3:2).
It is this form of God’s full presence that we most
desire (Psalm 73:25).
“We
would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians
5:8).
Until then, we are like Moses, asking to see the glory
of God but running into the limits of what our fallen, human existence can bear
(Exodus
33:18–20).
Until that day, we are like the woman from Song of
Solomon, hearing the king at the door only to fling it open and find that he is
gone (Song
5:4–6).
Until Jesus brings the full presence of God, we are
like King David, who knows that fullness of joy and everlasting pleasure can
only be found before God’s face and at his right hand (Psalm 16:11).
We are like Paul, groaning with all creation for the
day of Jesus’s return (Romans
8:22–23).
His Absence Is No Accident
You are experiencing God’s absence this very moment.
You want more of God than you can currently have or experience. Such news can
actually come as a sweet relief.
You may feel guilty, as if you were a second-class
Christian, because God feels far. All manners of doubt flood your heart when
you bump up against your longing for the actual presence of Jesus.
You fear that you are lacking in faith because God’s
nearness isn’t as immediate as you know it could be.
But such guilt, doubt, and fear do not necessarily
follow from God’s absence.
God is absent in the way you desire, but present in
the way you most require.
Knowing this can give shape to how you experience God
in this life, while still extending all the hope and assurance you long for.
God’s absence is not an accident.
God engineered all reality (1
Chronicles 29:11–12; Isaiah
46:9–10; John 1:3), including
this reality.
Therefore, since God always seeks His glory and the
good of those who love Him, we can know that our experience of God’s absence in
this life is actually for God’s glory and for our joy (Isaiah 64:4; Romans 8:28).
Consider four ways God’s absence is for your joy.
PLEASURE IN PURSUIT
We do not pursue what we already possess. We do not
chase that which we already hold close.
God uses the distance of His full presence to provoke
us to strive for Him. Running after God is one of the great joys of the
Christian life (Psalm 34:10).
Does God feel distant? Perhaps God is using His
absence to draw you into a chase. Take pleasure in pursuing the one most worthy
of your energy and effort.
ELATION IN EXPECTATION
Do you remember what it felt like to be a kid on
Christmas morning?
You would wait eagerly in your bed for that moment
when you could run downstairs and discover what untold treasures lay beneath
that tree, hidden behind wrapping paper. God made us to experience great joy in
expectation.
As our desire for God’s nearness rises in this fallen
world, our expectancy of His coming fullness grows.
God will elate your heart in a unique way as you
uncover the gift of expecting His return.
“Christ,
having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time,
not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:28).
WONDER IN WANTING
I miss my wife when I’m not with her. Why? Because I
love her.
That may seem like an obvious statement, but we miss
this logic all the time in our relationship with God.
We think that something is wrong with us when we don’t
feel as close to God as we want. We desire God’s presence, but something is
just not right. He feels distant.
Could it simply be that we love him and miss Him like
a loving wife misses her husband?
Your desire, or wanting, is not necessarily proof that
God is far from you in a bad way. Perhaps you just want Him to be nearer to
you.
Your sense of lacking, or wanting, proves that your
desires for God are strong. In this way, God’s absence helps prove that you
long for his presence, which is a gift of the Spirit.
Allow yourself to wonder in amazement at his work in
your wanting.
MERRIMENT IN MYSTERY
I love a good mystery story. I love discovering things
about my wife I never knew before. I love seeing a new bit of truth in a
biblical text I’ve read a hundred times.
Humans love mystery. But most mysteries come to an
end. When the mystery resolves, the thrill of the mystery fades. And there is
no greater mystery than God (Romans 11:33).
The fact that there remains an elusive element to
God’s presence can fill us with joyful wonder. What will his glory look like?
What will the full revelation of his mercy feel like?
The unresolved mysteries of God, which we get to experience more acutely in
this present absence, is for our joy.
Foretaste of Forever
Beyond the mystery is the discovery. Each layer we
peel back reveals just how deep the journey of discovering God’s majesty truly
is — and that discovery is never-ending.
This constant uncovering is but a glimpse into what we
will enjoy for eternity. We will never cease discovering the depths of God’s
goodness, mercy, faithfulness, justice, and power.
What a gift of grace it is that God gives us a
foretaste of this eternal discovery as we press into those places in our lives
where he feels absent.
What an amazing truth it is that God has given us the
down payment of his future presence in the indwelling Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:14).
Even the fullest joys we experience now in his absence
— in pursuing, expecting, wanting, inquiring, and wondering — are but an
appetizer to the never-ending feast of revelation we will receive when his full
presence comes.
David Bowden is a spoken word poet and author of Rewire Your Heart. He is the founder and president of Spoken Gospel, a
non-profit dedicated to creating gospel-centered
content. David and his wife, Meagan,
have one son.
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