Yes! And I mean in the gut-wrenching kind of way. God becomes 'strange'. God, at times, becomes 'other' and I know he is 'other' and strange', but it's also an intimate thing we have going on, if you know what i mean and I know it can't be like that all the time. Only, once you've tasted it, you crave more.
So I'm feeling it, baby, you know, that whole eschatological tension thing and okay, by my language, you can tell i am trying to make light of it but I miss the charisma, I miss the waiting, I miss the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit. I can not find God at the moment in the wordiness, in the stage sets, in the nervous performance. However, i trust the line will clear, the fuzziness is all at my end, I'm working on it. I nodded off for ten minutes today, after college and before making the tea, before my youngest came in to say 'I'm hungry, mummy', and I thought, wow, I'm hungry too, hungry for God. And so God blessed me and I met with him in that ten minutes, in a dream where I was worshipping him freely, my hands up in the air, in self-abandon. And I should probably be posting this at Angelutterances where I deal with this kind of thing but I just seek a little assurance - is this normal, is it just all a part of the training, the formation?
Ouch, it hurts.
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A little background reading so we might mutually flourish when there are different opinions
7 comments:
If you don't feel like this, either your theological college is no good, or you're missing the point. Many good things will come of it. You may particularly like to reflect how someone who is in the state of mind you describe feels when confronted by the you in the euphoric state of mind, full of certainty and full of joy and enthusiasm for the Holy Spirit. In my experience, such a person will not be drawn to you of God by that, but many will be drawn your your uncertain and disturbed and lonely state. It will speak to something in them.
Thank you anon
Think how it must have been for Jesus, coming down from Heaven, away from the Father's immediate presence and living in this spiritually desolate world. If you have tasted an amazing closeness with God, have experienced something supernatural and other worldly, then you will miss it all the more when it is not there. BUT it cannot be there all the time, because (in terms of his work on earth), you will never be of any use to God like that, because all you would want to do is worship and enjoy him - and that isn't getting the baby bathed as it were!!Hope I am making some sense....xx
Oh my flipperties, I do get you. And you've totally nailed it on the head. This is the reason I've got myself a spiritual director who says she is going to get tough and this is exactly what she has been talking about too.
Gill, what you have just said has helped me so much - thank you, when I feel this way, i reckon I'll now be able to focus better on Jesus. You have just added a whole other dimension to Phil 2:5-11 for me. Bless you.
Hi Rachel
I found this really helpful:
When the Well Runs Dry: Prayer Beyond the Beginnings - Thomas Green - it draws on St Teresa of Avila- and certainly reassured me that the sudden feeling of God's absence isn't necessarily a sign that something is wrong.
Hope you're having a good break. Tessa
Thank you Tessa
This could be just the ticket.
Thanks for dropping by.
See you soon
God bless u hugely!
X
it is difficult in writing which is impressionable like this posting to know what is the oject of your attention and what is the subject. Ie. what exactly are to trying to attend to? Rather this condition you describe feels like the deficit of love and the void which just longs to be filled with the presence of God. We all get like that....we are needy creatures and sometimes we are strangers to ourselves until we meet with God afresh and then we rediscover ourselves in his light.
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