One of the common themes expressed by the various psalmists is that they had experienced seasons when the Lord seemed to pull away from them. Of course, David felt this after being rebuked for his affair with Bathsheba. “Banish me not from thy presence,” he cried; “deprive me not of thy sacred Spirit.” (Psalm 51:11 Mof) What could be more horrible for a believer than the sense that God had expelled him from His presence?
But there is a different sort of banishment that the Almighty occasionally metes out to His loved ones. And it doesn’t seem to be connected to carnality, worldliness or blatant sin.
I’m not referring to carnal Christians who haven’t experienced true intimacy with God. It only makes sense that they would not know what it’s like to enter the inner precincts of the Lord’s throne room. I’m also not referring to the dry spells that every believer occasionally encounters. And I’m definitely not talking about the separation from God a person feels because of outward sin.
What I am referring to is the very real sense that God is no longer there—in spite of the fact that the person hasn’t done anything “wrong.”
I used to read statements like these made by Asaph and assumed I knew all about it. After all, there had been many times that the Lord seemed distant from me. But it wasn’t until the Lord took me through very deep waters that I realized how superficially I had understood the psalmist’s cry.
I am convinced that every true believer will eventually go through a period when—through no fault of his own—God withdraws His presence. The sons of Korah experienced this as well. They went through a time when the Lord seemed to turn away from them and give them over to the hands of their enemies. They wrote, “And all this has happened, Lord, despite our loyalty to you. We have not violated your covenant. Our hearts have not deserted you! We have not left your path by a single step. If we had, we could understand your punishing us in the barren wilderness and sending us into darkness and death.” (Psalm 44:17-19 LB)
What I learned during my trial was that—even though I had not indulged in worldly living or known sin—my passion for the things of God had become stagnant. I had allowed myself to get into certain spiritual ruts. Un-Christlike attitudes had formed within me that were not going to be uprooted without a certain degree of drastic chastisement.
One day while I was in the middle of this period, the Lord spoke to me and said, “I am breaking up the fallow ground.” It took some time before I came to understand what He was saying to me. He was allowing me to feel spiritual deadness because He wanted to give me a fresh beginning. And He did it! Losing the sense of God’s felt presence was extremely distressing to me, but now I am so thankful for what He did for me through it.