Those lonely nights lost to God saved me

In a season God found me, 

I felt incredibly lost to God. 

What seems a contradiction is actually a fact for so many I have had the privilege of journeying with.  As a pastor and counsellor, I’ve heard many recount exactly the same story.

What follows is an account of how God was found even in the plot of feeling utterly lost to God; 

… like God was completely silent.

I recall it like yesterday, whether in my dingy flat or in the slightly more well-appointed townhouse I subsequently moved into.  

Myriad experiences of feeling utterly alone,
zero Presence of the Lord with me. 

Yet in that dusky time, even as I questioned the very existence of God as far as I was concerned, there was something in me that could not let go.  Part of me had to believe in faith.

The more God seemed absent,

the more I sought His Presence.

Of course, what I describe here is much like the dark night of the soul, as St John of the Cross put it.

There was about this time a kind of non-living experience that forced me into the ethereal. 

Even as God’s Presence was void in my life on many such occasions, lonely nights where there was just me and my tears, there, in fact, in those moments, was the Presence of God.

I just could not see it at the time, and because I could not bear the idea that God was not present, I imagined He WAS present, praying as if He was, even though I could not feel His Presence. 

You may be forgiven for needing to reread this a few times.  It may make no sense to you.  But it makes all the sense in the world to me.

In those times when my soul was vanquished, and my spirit was tested beyond its apparent pathetic strength — because when it was tested, I really had nothing of my own — even as I had nothing left, God proved His Presence with me, even as He was absent to me. 

You may need to be in that position to understand what I’m saying.  And I trust that if you ever are in such a position you don’t run from being completely lost.  Refuse to let go of the hope that God is WITH you.

I found I needed to be completely lost

before I would truly need God to save me.

Amid the moment of our personal Gethsemane, we’re blessed in being reminded of this: just when the Father seemed to turn His face from Jesus, we cannot reconcile that reality without contrasting with it the reality of the resurrection. 

That’s right, we cannot contemplate the truth of Gethsemane and the Cross without also contemplating the Resurrection just a few days later.

Likewise, when God seems to turn His face from us, as He did with Jesus, He still has us (we just don’t know it at the time), and His pervasive resurrection plan is in full roll-out mode.

In these moments of absence,

the bridge of faith is absolutely vital.

No life comes without faith.

How do we hold on in times of God’s absence?

We hold onto a faith that says He is present.

We ignore every screaming distraction pushing us away from our pain, and we enter the journey of being in the lostness, for that is where God will surely meet us. 

We should not expect this 

will be a lovely experience. 

It’s the worst experience of our lives — levels deeper than we could ever previously conceive or imagine.

But that is where the true God meets us;

in the hell of our private Gethsemane.

But we don’t feel met at all. We just feel lonely and abandoned. That’s the paradox in being truly saved. We need to feel truly lost first.

God saves the desperate soul 

who is so lost only He can help them.

This is an article for you to save for when war breaks out — the war against the soul whose life has departed into the ether.  When your life as it was is lost.  As it was when it ceases to be.

You will know it when you land there. 

A living hell descends in grief outbound of loss.

Nothing will make sense. And nobody will seem to understand, but, praise God, some will try.  Humour them.  Trust them.  God will use them.  There is a ministry of God in the space where human help is benign. 

Trust those who have such humility 

to feel hopeless and helpless WITH you.

Yes, when you’re in these lost places,

it’s only those who cannot help you who do help you!