When God Seems Absent
Do not mistake the silence for absence. He knows the way you take.
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him; on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him; he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him. But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold. (Job 23:8-10)
There are times in the life of every sincere believer when the familiar sense of God’s clearly felt presence seem to withdraw – when prayer meets silence, when Scripture feels like words on a page, when the throne of grace seems to recede into an impenetrable fog. Job knew this moment. Not as a sinner fleeing God, but as a man abandoned, it seemed, in the very act of seeking Him.
This is a profound and necessary distinction. Job is not running from God. He is running toward Him – and finding Him nowhere. East. West. North. South. The desperate search yields nothing but silence and shadows.
Many of us, when we lose the felt sense of God’s nearness, immediately begin the work of self-examination: What have I done? What have I failed to do? Why has He hidden Himself? And while honest self-examination has its place, Job’s experience warns us against a subtler error – the assumption that the withdrawal of the clearly felt experience of fellowship means the withdrawal of fellowship itself.
God’s purpose from the beginning has been fellowship with us. He did not create us merely to rule over His world on His behalf, nor only to worship Him from a distance. He created us in His image, breathed His own breath into us, so that a genuine union of love would be possible between His man and Himself. This purpose has never failed. It does not fail now, even in Job’s darkness.
What, then, is the meaning of this hiddenness?
The refiner does not step away from the furnace. He bends over it. The very heat that makes God seem distant is the heat He has personally ordained and is personally watching over. Job’s trial is not an interruption of God’s purpose of fellowship. In reality, it is that purpose working itself out in the deep places of the soul where no comfort of feeling can reach, and where only pure faith can survive.
“He knows the way that I take.” Here is the great reversal of the passage. Job cannot find God – but God has never for a moment lost sight of Job. Our inability to perceive His presence is not evidence of His absence. He sees us fully, knows us completely, and is working in us precisely what the superficial seasons of felt blessing could never accomplish alone.
This is the path of fellowship at its deepest. Not the sweet warmth of devotional nearness – that is real and good and to be treasured – but something more costly: the fellowship of trust that endures when all feeling has gone silent, and the soul holds to God by naked faith alone. Christ Himself walked this path: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The cry of Jesus on the cross was not the reality of abandonment – it was the deepest possible act of trust in the Father’s unfailing purpose. The Father was always with Him!
We will come forth as gold. Not as we were but now refined, purified and bearing more clearly the image of the One in whose image we were made. This is His goal. This has always been His goal. The furnace is not His rejection of us. It is the most intimate expression of His purpose of fellowship, pressing us toward the very union with Himself that is our chief and highest end.
Do not mistake the silence for absence. He knows the way you take.