Experiencing God III

If we are to have an experiential relationship with God, why is it difficult to experience God and why do so many long for more than what they have? This goes back to Dallas Willard’s question, “Why isn’t God obvious?” Willard points to a passage in The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis’s book about a senior demon advising a junior demon, as an answer to this question. Keep in mind that the enemy in this book is God, as this is from the perspective of demons.

“You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to over–ride a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little over–riding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” (C. S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters pp. 26-27)

I think that Lewis is onto something here. Although I do not think it is so much that we experience God at the beginning of our relationship with Him, and then should expect to experience less of Him after that. Rather I think we have times when we experience His presence and times that are more of a struggle. This fits with my blog post Restoring Devotion and the dance between seeing Him meet our needs and not meeting our needs. When we are struggling to experience God, it is not because He is failing to be faithful or that we are failing to be worthy. It can be because He is accomplishing His work in our lives. To borrow from the song Blessed Be Your Name, He is at work “In the land that is plentiful. Where Your streams of abundance flow…When the sun’s shining down on me. When the world’s ‘all as it should be’” and “When I’m found in the desert place. Though I walk through the wilderness….On the road marked with suffering. Though there’s pain in the offering.”

I want people to experience God in their work. I ask God to meet them in their pursuit, to honor His promise of “Seek and you will find.” I want to see prayers answered for favorable circumstances in difficult work situations that are attributable to God’s intervention. I want people to experience God’s palpable presence in their place of work in the way they have experienced Him in church or small group. But, I do not want people to be dependent on these experiences to constantly fuel their pursuit of the kingdom of God at work. Because I am persuaded by Lewis that God is seeking disciples who are not dependent on that.

Here is a thought, how would you rewrite the positive and negative lyrics of Blessed Be Your Name to apply to your specific work life?