“Ghosted” By God
Each week, as I sit down, I try my best to openly and honestly share my thoughts and feelings on the things that I have learned and the ideas I was introduced to or wrestled with. In this, I find I also wrestle with feeling as though I share too much. Because in being honest, I expose myself and reveal my weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I recall that when I was nine years old, maybe ten, I would always hide from my siblings anytime I cried. If I had gotten a spanking for doing something wrong, even then, I would try to hide my tears because I didn’t want anyone to see my weakness. This has, in some ways, translated into my adult life, where I still find it very hard to be willing to honestly share the depths of my struggles because I want everyone to believe I have it figured out. Though I doubt I fool anyone. We are all broken in our own ways; it just manifests differently in all of us.
Why do I share this? Well, because honestly, this past week was tough, and something broke in me on Friday. I was tired; it had been an exhausting day with many challenges at work, and I was simply spent. So much so that I ended up spending my Friday night lying down on the floor of my room and ultimately ended up sleeping my evening away. I have written in the recent past about how I have found myself wrestling with God for a while now, and something in my soul was just done on Friday. I have been desperately seeking God to show me what “to do” and asking Him for direction, and I simply have not seen nor heard anything. I have sensed no direction and no answers to the questions heaviest on my heart. Because of this lack of answer, I found myself asking questions like, “Am I not hearing God, or am I not listening?” “What is wrong with me?” What do I need to DO differently?” “Did God speak, and if so, did I miss it?” “If He did speak and I did miss it, how do I get God to repeat it so I can finally begin to move forward?”
Is anyone else exhausted just reading these questions? Also, can anyone relate? On Saturday, I sat down with a dear friend of mine, and he shared with me some of his own inner wrestling. Though he was wrestling with different questions, he found himself very much in the same boat. Asking the question, “God, what do you want me to do?” as we began to talk, he shared with me an idea he had learned from a favorite pastor of his, John Mark Comer, in a sermon titled “The Dark Night of the Soul.” The idea comes from Saint John of the Cross, who wrote on this idea that there are seasons in our journey of faith where God seemingly becomes distant, as though He has left us. Though He has not, in actuality, left us, it is at this time that His “felt presence” leaves us.
As I began to meditate on this idea, I found it resonated true in my heart. As I had been wrestling, I had figured that there must be something wrong with me or I was doing something wrong because God had seemingly become quiet in my life. I have been doing everything that I knew and know to do to live according to His will, and so I found myself asking why God had seemingly become so distant from me. I wanted to know what I needed to “DO” differently. As I listened to both of these sermons from John Mark Comer on this subject and meditated on its message, the word “do” began to stand out in my mind as if it had been highlighted and boldened.
John Mark Comer explains that in the “Dark Night of the Soul,” we will often find that God withdraws His “felt presence” to allow us to grow in spiritual maturity. It is a spiritual weaning of sorts as if He is taking off the training wheels and asking us if we will follow faithfully even when we can no longer see. Will we trust when we have no guiding light? Will we follow even if there are no answers? Will we follow even if we don’t get the results we want or ask for? As I continue to meditate on this, even now, I realize that this has been my mental and spiritual battlefield. I wrote about the story of Job a few weeks ago, and this was very much the heart of Job at the end. He followed, and he remained faithful despite the seeming abandonment of God.
I would not dare try and say that I have been afflicted as Job was, but as I wrestled through this, I felt as though I could, in some small measure, understand some of what his wrestling must have been like. I also realized that despite God’s seemingly being quiet in my life in this season, He has left me with a few clues and waypoints to help me continue forward. At my church, in our Young Adults community, we are currently all together memorizing a passage from John 15, verses 1 and 2 which says
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”
We have been reading and rehearsing these verses for the last few weeks now, but as I began to spend time with these verses and meditate on them sincerely, I was struck with the revelation that this must be a form of the “pruning” spoken of in these verses. That there is pruning even of the good branches. God is pruning my “striving,” my spirit of “control,” and perhaps other things I do not yet see as needing to be pruned. Yet He is still leaving me to decide whether I will truly trust Him in this season or will I seek to do it my way. I am also reminded again of the book of Job when he writes in Job 13, verse 15.
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.”
Again, I would not dare assume my affliction to be comparable to that of Job, but I think I can, in this, see a glimpse of his struggle in the midst of his afflictions. God did not abandon Job. But God did allow Job to essentially prove to, in this case, satan that he did not follow God only for the gifts and blessings that God had provided him. He had chosen to say, “I will follow no matter what the circumstances may be.”
I share these things not that I want any sort of pity, nor do I really even wish to talk about it. I simply want to share honestly and hope that in doing so, this writing can encourage someone else who, too, maybe in a season of wrestling. Who may find that they, too, feel that God has seemingly gone silent. As though you have been “ghosted” by God, as though He has left you on “read” and has forgotten to reply. This has been how I have felt over the last couple of months. I believe that an answer will come, and He will once again provide me with direction. I just don’t know when, but it is not for me to know, only to trust and obey.
This is not a season to strive to “make it happen” nor to try to find the perfect formula that will solve the problem or maybe find a way to remind God to hit “send” on His reply. It is a season to rest and know that He is, in fact, God, and I am not.
I hope this is encouraging for those who, too, find themselves in a season similar to mine. Thank you, as always; I hope you have a blessed day.
Below are both sermons from John Mark Comer, as well as two of the three books he recommended! Links to the books will be in the title.
The Dark Night of the Soul Part 1
The Dark Night of the Soul Part 2
