Sometimes I feel as though my walk with Christ is a bit schizophrenic, at the least bipolar. There are days I feel such intimacy with God it seems He walks right beside me, just out of eyesight. Other days it feels as if He could not be further away; there is a palpable distance between us that seems infinitely long and impossible to cross.
David had a similar walk with God. Reading through Psalms can be such an encouraging but confusing experience. In Psalm 21, David says he is happy and blessed by the Lord. He feels that intimacy. He spends Psalm 22 asking why God is so far from him. He begs God not to hide His face. In Psalm 23, David says God is his Shepherd and makes him lie down in green pastures. Whether schizophrenia or bipolar, David and I share the diagnosis.
I know David did not write these Psalms one day after the other, but their close proximity shows me something important: David, a hero of the faith, went through seasons of closeness to and distance from God. And through studying his life, there are several principles for us to learn and apply.
Ask God to reveal our sin. There can be no doubt that there is sin in our lives. We have fallen, sinful natures and the reality of sin is ever-present. The question for us is whether we recognize it and repent. There are some sins I am constantly aware of and take to Christ. As David says, “I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me” (Psalm 51:3).
But there are other sins I am not aware of until God opens my eyes to them. I learned from David to ask God to reveal those sins to me. David declares in Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
In his poetic way, David is admitting his sins without being aware of it. Ravi Zacharias, an internationally recognized apologist and speaker, echoes this with his phrase, “We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.”
The only recourse we have is to ask God to open our eyes to our faults. He is faithful not only to forgive but to show us more sins we need to repent of. That is part of the graceful process of sanctification.
Remember the intimate times with God. Sometimes the chasm I feel between God and myself is just that, something I feel. It can be due to the fickle nature of my heart, or because I simply do not understand something God is doing.
In those times, I study the lives of heroes of the faith. God reminds me of His faithfulness to His children. Whether it be George Muller or Elisabeth Elliot, God is as faithful to me as He was to them. I did not come up with the practice of remembering, I learned from David, “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old” (Psalm 77:11).
But knowing how God was faithful to others still leaves something lacking. It is great that He did that for others but I must also remember His faithfulness toward me.
This is when I really wish I used a journal. I don’t, but I wish I did so I could tell you how I have looked back at those times. I do, however, Facebook. And I can scroll down my page and see all the times God blessed me and I remembered to post it. It is not as personal and intimate as a journal could be, but it helps me remember God’s faithfulness and goodness.
Remember who God is. In college, I went on a mission trip to a small country in Asia. While there, my team and I worked in a field against the backdrop of an incredible mountain range. The people who grew up there worked in the fields and never gave a second look to the mountains. I had to be reminded to work because I would spend all day staring at the snow-capped peaks.
In the lives of believers, we grow to take God for granted and neglect to see Him as awesome in the truest sense of the word. We become like those villagers growing up in the shadows of majestic mountains. We acknowledge the view and neglect to truly see it. David stands in awe of the person of God throughout the Psalms, but some of my favorite imagery comes from Psalm 8, Psalm 19, Psalm 89, and Psalm 139.
This article is not meant to be an exhaustive treatise on the reasons we feel distant to God, but to be transparent on the fact that some days I feel I have this Christian life understood and other days I feel like a newborn babe in Christ. The fact is, no matter how far I have traveled on this Christian walk, I need the gospel every day as much as I needed it at the point of salvation. I must preach the gospel to myself every day, and I’m sure you could use that encouragement too.
