Deep Unto Deep - Week #12

Chapter 9 – Believing in the Unseen

This chapter deals with our hiddenness in Christ…Dana Candler says, “My life is not my own. I have been bought with a price. And I have willingly surrendered to my position of hiddenness in Him – hidden with Christ in God. When He appears, I too will appear with Him (Col. 3:4).”

When we fully embrace the free-fall into the hidden life in God, we step into unknown territory where our worth is measured differently than in the visible realm of this world. “We depart from the false identity that was based on how respected, known, gifted and influential we were in the eyes of men and leap into the vast, unknown realm, the hidden reality, of who we are eternally in God…We are trading in what we have always known and what others have always told us of ourselves for a book of blank pages. We leave all the old voices, however true or false, for the One Voice that is temporarily silent in our experience.”

One difficulty with embracing the unseen and unknown is that when the visible things that we have hinged our identity on are not there, we discover that we didn’t know Him as well as we thought we did. But of course, this discovery is good and drives us to seek Him more, and we are transformed more into His likeness.

And the more we are like Him, the more we begin experience His nearness because one significant reason we don’t experience the feeling of His presence is that we aren’t enough like Him to be able to recognize Him when He is near. This shouldn’t be cause for alarm but rather motivation for going after Him more than ever. “As our inner man is transformed so also our intimacy with God will deepen.”

The Unseen Work of God’s Silence
When we cry out for God’s manifest presence and He delays, it’s painful. He is testing our desire with His refining fire, wanting to turn our words into reality. Our desire wanes when He doesn’t show Himself. But He knows how to secretly keep us motivated to pursue Him, and so we go through times of hoping and then times of fainting and then hoping again…In this process “He makes Himself the one Love and one Fear of our hearts by starving us out for Him alone…He stretches our small capacities far beyond what we would have thought possible. He prepares the way for His coming by the very process of the journey’s waiting and the pain of His delays.”

Here is the key to making this process count: “In these times, He asks us to remember Him in love even when all circumstances seem to sing a different song.”

But the author also includes another important element in this walk: “We must learn to face our own emerging questions. We question His distance. We wonder at Him reasons for not coming to us in His presence. His ways are mysterious to us…” One thing I’ve learned and continue to learn is the importance of talking with God about my doubts and feelings and not pretending before Him. I can do that and still remember His love and sovereignty in my life. The psalmist did this over and over – he openly expressed his doubts and fears and anger but always said, “yes” to God.

“Yes. To all that You are. To all of Your ways. I believe in Your love. I will have no other loves but You. I believe that even Your silence is Your love for me and I say, ‘Yes,’ to Your hand upon my heart. Have Your way within my heart and take me to the fullness of love.”

The Unseen Fellowship of God’s Silence
“The Lamb’s greatest suffering was His Father’s silence on the cross…It was His Father’s absence that caused His heart to burst with sorrow. Because of the cross and redemption, we are never again separated from His love…Yet He does take us through seasons where He withholds his manifest presence from us in order to bring forth even greater and stronger love from our hearts. He refines our love by the fire of His felt absence…”

So what the Lord waits for from us in the times of hiddenness and silence is our declaration of love for Him. This “yes” to His love in the midst of “darkness” is precious to God. I like the way the author imagines the Lord instructing the angels: “…My beloved one is about to speak. She is about to choose Me in the darkest night. The words she will say will be recorded and remembered for all our eternity together…We must wait. We must make room for the heart of the volunteer to come forth. It is My way. She will volunteer her love freely.” (Psa. 110:3)

The chapter ends with these comments: “We have one moment on the earth to touch the great place of the Lamb’s heart…If we say ‘Yes’ to this fellowship of suffering, we will one day gaze upon the very real scars on the Lamb’s hands, feet and side with understanding…”

I remember hearing a man of God preach about suffering out of his own experience. He said that in his deep pain he cried out to God, “Why?...” And the Lord told him something like this, “When I’m on my honeymoon with My Bride someday, I want us to be able to have an intelligent conversation.” The sufferings we go through now, if done with a “yes” to Him, will prepare us to understand His scars and relate with Him in eternity, and it will prepare us to share in His glory as well (Rom. 8:18).

Lord, teach us how to be people of the unseen; help us to know the unknowable so that we are more like You and can recognize when You are near. Make us a people of prayer and adoration for the sake of the Lamb…we say “yes” to you, dear Lord.

The next two chapters are short, so let’s cover chapters 10 (Prisoners of Hope) and 11 (Seasons of Relevance) together, ok? Rich blessings on you this week!