“How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? Forever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?”(Psalm 13:1-2)
God is real, no matter how or what you feel. It is easy to worship God when things are going good in our life, when He has provided food, friends, family, health and happy situations. But circumstances are not always pleasant. What do you do to worship God when this happens? What do you do when God seems to be a million miles away? The deepest level of worship is to praise God in spite of the pain, to thank him during times of trials, to trust in Him when you are tempted, to surrender to Him when you are suffering and love Him when He seems distant.
Friendships are often tested by separation and silence; when you are separated by physical distance or because you are not able to speak to each other. In your relationship with God, you will not always feel close to Him. Every relationship has its times of intimacy and times of separation and in a relationship with God, it does not matter how intimate it may be, the pendulum moves from one side to the other. It is here that worship is difficult.
To deepen your relationship, God tests you with periods of apparent separation, times when it feels as if He has abandon you or has forgotten you. It feels as if He is a million miles away. These days of spiritual drought, doubt and separation of God are referred to as "the dark night of the soul." Others call it "the winter of the heart".
David was probably the one that had the most intimate relationship with God without equal. God took pleasure in calling him "a man after mine own heart." Nevertheless, David frequently complained about the apparent absence of God. Of course, God had not actually abandon David and He will not leave you either. Repeatedly He has promised: “I will never leave you nor abandon you.” But God has not promised: “You will always feel my presence." In fact, God admits that sometimes He does hide His face from us. There are times in which it will seem as if He has disappeared completely from your life.
If you wake up one morning and all your spiritual feelings are gone, what are you going to do? You pray, but nothing happens. You rebuke the devil but that doesn’t change anything. You do your spiritual exercises, you ask your friends to pray for you, you confess all the sins that you can possible imagine and then you go and apologize to every person you know. You fast and even then, nothing happens. You begin to ask yourself, how long is this depression going to last. Days, weeks, months, when is it going to end? You feel as if your prayers simply bounce off the ceiling. In total desperation you sob: “what’s happening to me?”
The truth is that there is nothing wrong with you! It is a normal part of the testing and of the deepening of your relationship with God. Every believer goes through this at least once in his life and usually several times. It is painful and disconcerting, but it is absolutely vital for the development of your faith. To know this, gave Job hope when he could not feel the presence of God in his life. He said, “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him: But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:8-10).
When God seems distant, it is possible that you feel that He is angry with you or that He is disciplining you for some sin. In fact, sin does disconnect us from intimate communion with God. But very often this feeling of abandonment or of God's separation has nothing in common with sin. It is a testing of faith, one that we all have to face. Are you going to keep on loving, trusting, obeying and worshiping God, even if you do not perceive His presence or have visible evidence that He is acting in your life?
The most common error that people commit today in worshiping is that they look for an experience instead of looking for God. They look for a feeling, and if it happens they then conclude that they have worshiped. This is erroneous! In fact, God often removes our feelings so that we do not depend on them. To look for a feeling, even if it is to feel God's closeness, is not worship.
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