“Behold, I go forward but He is not there,
And backward, but I cannot perceive Him;
When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him;
He turns on the right, I cannot see Him.
But He knows the way I take;
When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
My foot has held fast to His path;
I have kept His way and not turned aside.
I have not departed from the command of His lips;
I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.” (Job 23:8-12 NASB1995)
Do you ever get so overwhelmed by your trials and your
tribulations that it seems to you as though God is silent, as though he is not
listening, or as though you cannot perceive his presence? You pray, but it as
though there is a wall now standing between you and God, and you can no longer
hear his voice. And you want to hear him. You need to hear him. Even though you
know he has not left you, still you want that reassurance that he is there.
That is where Job was. And he had definitely been “put
through the ringer,” i.e. he had been subjected to very difficult and trying
and unpleasant and painful experiences. First his livestock, then his servants,
then his children were put to death at the hands of Satan. Then Satan attacked
his physical body with sore boils, from head to foot. And then his friends
began accusing him falsely of sin, as the reason for why he was facing all
these difficulties.
And sometimes it will be like that for us, too, for “when it
rains it pours,” i.e. sometimes our trials and tribulations tend to follow each
other in rapid succession or to arrive all at the same time. So just as we are
dealing with one difficult situation, another occurs, and then another and
another, to where we might feel, at times, as though we cannot possibly have
one more difficult situation or we will absolutely fall to pieces and burst
into tears.
I have been there many times, so I know what that feels
like. And I don’t like it at all when I feel as though I can’t hear from God,
not that I can’t read his word and get something from it, I can. But sometimes
I pray about a situation and I don’t sense his leading one way or another. And
I think that sometimes God is silent as a way of testing our faith, to see if we
will remain faithful even at times when we feel that he is not present with us.
And this doesn’t mean at all that God is not present, or
that he is not working on our behalf, or that he cannot hear our prayers, or
that he is not answering our prayers in one way or another. But when he is
silent, this just encourages us to trust him more and to believe him and his
word even when we cannot hear him, and even when we don’t see him working on
our behalf. For he will test our faith in order to grow us in our faith to maturity
in him.
[Matt 5:10-12; Matt
10:16-39; Matt 24:9-14; Luke 6:22-23; Luke 12:49-53; Luke 21:12-19; John 15:1-21;
John 16:33; John 17:14; Acts 14:22; Rom 5:3-5; Eph
6:10-20; Phil 3:7-11; 1 Pet 1:6-7; 1 Pet 4:12-17; 2 Tim 3:12; 1 Thess 3:1-5;
Jas 1:2-4; 2 Co 1:3-11; Heb 12:3-12; 1 Jn 3:13; Rev 6:9-11; Rev 7:9-17; Rev
11:1-3; Rev 12:17; Rev 13:1-18; Rev 14:1-13]
But let me say here that if you are someone who professes
faith in Jesus Christ, but you are not living for the Lord, and you are not
walking in obedience to his commands, but you are still living in sin to please
the flesh, then God is not going to be listening to your prayers. For,
according to the Scriptures, you do not know God, you are not in fellowship
with him, and so you don’t have life in him. You are not in genuine
relationship with God.
So, this passage of Scripture is intended for those who do
love the Lord, who are walking in his ways, whose walks of faith have held fast
to His path, and who have kept His way, and who have not turned aside from the
Lord to follow after the desires of the flesh and the ways of this sinful
world. This is for those who have not departed from the commands of God, but
who have treasured the words of God more than physical and necessary food.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we are going to go through
trials and tribulations to test our faith. And part of those trials may include
feelings of the loss of the presence of God, and feelings that we cannot hear
him answering our request, as though he is far away from us, when actually he
is still there, and he is working, even when we cannot see him working. For
Satan loves to attack us in our emotions, so we can’t rely on our feelings.
For our faith in Jesus Christ is not based in what we feel
but in what we do in love response to what he did for us. For when Jesus died
on that cross it was to put our sins to death with him so that we will die with
Christ to sin and be raised with him to walk in newness of life in him, no
longer to live as slaves to sin, but as slaves to God and to his righteousness,
in walks of obedience to his commands in holy living, in the power of God, by
the grace of God.
[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 1:12-13; John
6:44; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 2:6-8; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; 1
Corinthians 10:1-22; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32;
Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 12:1-2;
1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:5-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10]
Just a Closer Walk with Thee
Hymn lyrics by Anonymous/Unknown
Music by American Melody
“For indeed He was crucified because
of weakness, yet He lives because of the power of God. For we also are weak in
Him, yet we will live with Him because of the power of God directed toward you”
(2 Co. 13:4 NASB).
I
am weak, but Thou art strong;
Jesus,
keep me from all wrong;
I’ll
be satisfied as long
As
I walk, let me walk close to Thee.
Through
this world of toil and snares,
If
I falter, Lord, who cares?
Who
with me my burden shares?
None
but Thee, dear Lord, none but Thee.
When
my feeble life is o’er,
Time
for me will be no more;
Guide
me gently, safely o’er
To
Thy kingdom shore, to Thy shore.
Just
a closer walk with Thee,
Grant
it, Jesus, is my plea,
Daily
walking close to Thee,
Let
it be, dear Lord, let it be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Ks49apflE
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Is
He Not There?
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