Saturday, March 6, 2010

He is invisible!

Have you ever awakened and felt that God was not near?

By way of analogy, if you were a nation, was it like God was stopped at the border?

Or maybe even, he was simply and completely nowhere around ... like, nowhere in your universe? A breathtaking kind of no-show?

This happens to me often. Chances are, it happens to you too, right?

Well, hold on to your hat ... I'm going to tell you something that will rock your world.

God is invisible!

Things that are invisible are tough sometimes to sense in any way, shape, form or fashion! Our normal senses do not operate on them.

Of course, God knew all this when he put in place the present we-are-matter-but-he-is-not structure. This did not catch him off guard. This was not unanticipated in the heavenlies. This was not an oversight or miscalculation on God's part.

But it does make for mornings when he might not be anywhere in your neighborhood.

What I'm saying to you is that this is normal, standard, natural ... almost routine. It is not a reason to flip out, doubt the foundations of your faith or run screaming into the night.

If you read the Psalms, David felt the absence of God's presence often. So did many of the major and minor prophets. It is a normal structure for this God-man experience.

I have had stretches of months, where I experienced this kind of 'absence'.

Here's what to do:

1) Relax ... most Christians who have a pulse experience this,
2) Rest in the knowledge that he is pervasive in our worlds, we are the ones who are failing to sense him,
3) Share with other Christians this experience ... as we share our struggles, the body of Christ is built up. (Just not enough struggle-sharing going on now-a-days)

So the next time you awaken and the invisible God is not immediately connected to, remember that the same thing happened to David and Jonah and Moses and Joshua and Jeremiah and Paul and John the Baptist and Mother Teresa and Billy Graham and DL Moody and Oswald Chambers and Jesus (remember the Garden of Gethsemane?) and Isaiah and Peter and Timothy and Abraham and .... now it has happened to you!

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