There was a season in my life, for a few years, where I’d experience tangible manifestations of God’s Presence. It was almost as though I’d feel Him tangibly in my physical senses.
I’d shake under the power of God, laugh when His Spirit touched me, and feel the force of His power when I prayed for people. I enjoyed this season immensely as it made me realise His nearness and reality, and the realm of the supernatural.
Then, it all stopped.
I still feel His Presence sporadically, but never in the intensity of that season. For a long time, I wondered if I had done something wrong. Was there sin in my life that cut me off from His Presence? I didn’t know how to get back to that wonderful season.
I’d do some of the things I’d done to connect with God and try to recover the dramatic manifestations that I had experienced. I figured perhaps I wasn’t hungry enough. Maybe I wasn’t sufficiently filled with His Spirit or just not open or yielded.
A few weeks ago, while I was trying to connect with God’s Presence in the way I was accustomed to, I heard the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit in my heart.
He said, “You know My voice.” When I heard that, it was like a lightbulb turned on inside me, and I understood what He was trying to say to me. I understood why I stopped experiencing Him the way I did and what He was trying to teach me.
The Lord withdrew from my emotions and physical senses to teach me how to walk by faith. He wanted me to be established in the knowledge of His voice, His heart, His nature, and the truth that He lives within – and loves to connect with – us.
If we only look for God in the dramatic, we’d miss Him in the mundane.
For those of us who are so accustomed to experiencing God in our physical senses, we can at times be conditioned to cling to physical manifestations as ‘proof’ of His reality and Presence in our lives. So He weans us off our reliance on the outward and our physical senses so that we can enter the blessedness of those who have not seen, but yet believe.
He wants to give us a revelation of Himself, show us who we are and how He sees us. Out of that inner place will come insights, solutions to problems, answers to prayer, wisdom, and counsel.
He wants to build in us His mind and nature so we can rule and reign in life from a place of authority and not be led by our circumstances.
I love what the psalmist says that God guides us with His eye. We really have to know Him in a deep way to be led by His eye! Through His manifest Presence, He teaches us to drink from the well but, in seasons of hiddenness, He builds in us a deep well.
Deep truth has to be revealed over time. It takes patience to assimilate truth down to its deepest level – to mine the depths of the knowledge of God that’s available to us. It’s beyond meeting our own needs.
What we see and hear there in the inner place where He dwells will touch us profoundly. Only then can we experience real satisfaction that comes from stillness and rest.
