This morning I've been working through an interesting unit in my studies on spirituality. Its been on the subject of hard times, they word it as 'dessert times'.
You can see from my last post that Louise and I have been through something of a hard time in that we aren't able to go to the UK for Christmas, so such a subject hit home with me easily.
I'm aware that many others face much harder times then mine. I want to ask such people to join me in viewing them in a way that will bring glory to God.
Dessert times or hard times, whatever you want to call them have been experienced and come through by many Christians and characters from the bible or from the history of the Church, we can learn much from them if we take the time to hear their stories.
In these hard times one may wonder where God is. A fare question I feel! But what I've been looking at in my studies may help shed light on what you may be going through.
When we are saved we often experience God in pretty amazing ways which is great, I myself was saved from drugs and really couldn't get enough of God. But God doesn't want to hold us or keep us at that point in life, He wants us to grow.
So it maybe that God has to take away that feeling of closeness experienced when we're first saved, even to the point where we may ask whether God has completely left us.
He doesn't do this because He wants to hurt us but because He doesn't want us to rely only on past experiences.
Experiences of God are great but when they don't come we often feel quite desperate. God does want us to rely on them but for us to rely on Him.
Times of darkness or uncertainty in our faith in God are often the times when He's taking us from experiences of Him, to a lasting faith in Him. They are seldom easy, but would they be of any real worth if they were.
I can't say that having worked through my studies today that I've found the answer to all our pain but I can now ask questions like:
'Lord are you trying to lead me into deeper degrees of maturity in this'?
'How can I get to know You better through this'?
Are you in a place where you can ask such questions?
In the past I would have done anything I could think of to escape that desert but now I am discovering some of the exquisite flowers that bloom nowhere else ... I am discovering God when God apparently was not there to be discovered.
(quote from Anne Townsend)
I want this to be my testimony in hard times, I pray that it will be yours also.
Are you seeking God for answers, or are you seeking the God of answers?
The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine. For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity.
