Christ promised that He would never leave us or forsake us.
We may not be as aware of His indwelling Presence at some times as much as others, but it's our perception, not His absence in fact.
He has sealed us with the promised Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our inheritance. He can't leave.
Ephesians 1:13-14 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
Ephesians 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.
2 Corinthians 5:4-8 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
We walk by faith, not by sight.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
So that even when it may feel like He's not there, our faith kicks in and we can know it as a certainty because He said it and we know He is faithful and He is not a man that He should lie.
Don't grieve that He has left, just that the intimacy and fellowship is interrupted.
Thank you for that insightful and encouraging post!
Our mutual Sister may not have needed its uplifting grace -- but I certainly did! Sometimes I feel as if "I have my fingers in my own spiritual ears".
At such times, I may not "hear" the Spirit, but, as you have kindly pointed out -- He is still there with me!
Thank you!!
I don't grieve that He has left me. He hasn't, and won't: Because He knows that I love Him, and acknowledge Him as my Father.
I doubt the language of the Reformed Church can adequately address the sense of "lostness" that I experience in these "dry periods" of sense of separation that strike my soul from time to time. (I figure this is part of the divine pedagogy as it pertains to my soul.)
But nevertheless because I feel such a sense of "lostness" from time to time does not mean that I have been abandoned by God. Rather, such experiences are opportunities for my soul to testify to Him even in times of personally-sensed adversity.
I could be wrong in this. But then, it's up to you to tell me why I am wrong.
For my part, I will cite the example of Mother Theresa of Calcutta.
She was a woman, sanctified by God in all respects, who though experiencing "darkness" in her soul (as her journals, which have surfaced after her death attest), never gave up on executing God's salvific work — among the very least of us, the poor, the suffering, the diseased, the abandoned of society, the castoffs of a vicious caste system. She wrote:
Where is my faith? Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness ... If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul ... How painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, ... What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.And yet the testimony of her own life as lived demonstrate that she lived in "faith, and love, and zeal," for the sheer love of Christ. At the same time, she suffered from what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul" all her life. And she lived with it, almost every moment of her life — not because God was not going to give her a "pat on the back" for every step of the way she took, but because God called her into the mystery of performing the hard duty of relieving human suffering in the here and now.
Which she did, every step of the way: She still carried out her calling, under God, to do everything in her power to relieve human suffering, wherever she found it. And wherever she was temporally/spatially placed — which was mainly in the nasty, dark, inhuman streets of Calcutta, dealing with the castoffs of a vicious caste society. She took care of the sick, the dying, the starving, the abandoned mothers of yet-to-be-born children, lepers, all persons with whom "normal" society would have nothing to do. She served her fellow human beings from dawn to dusk and beyond, for love, because she was called to do it, not because she expected any reward or "applause" in this life so to do it.
When after she died, her journals became public, the first thing the (late) Christopher Hitchens bore down on was the total absurdity (as he saw it) of a life of service like this, without reward in this world. He used this argument to totally delegitimate Christianity, calling it as a game for "dupes," for stupid people. Ergo, Christianity itself — in his mind — was a "con game," a "shell game," conceived to deceive. Ergo: No intelligent person should ever go there. Better to be an atheist.
Yet I wonder: How is Christopher Hitchens faring, where he is now?
I admired him a lot in life for his contributions to the literary arts.
But it seems to me there is a whole lot of salvation that does not depend on excellence in the literary arts....
May the Lord have mercy on his (atheist) soul.