Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Does God Withdraw His Presence from Me?

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Does God Withdraw His Presence from Me? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: Well, on Monday, we heard from Elina, who wrote to
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  Speaker 1: express her struggle with feeling like an outsider to the faith,
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  Speaker 1: treating the Bible as literature and Christianity as a social
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  Speaker 1: culture without a personal relationship with Christ. She asked how
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  Speaker 1: she can move from this place of spiritual detachment into
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  Speaker 1: a genuine relationship with Christ in a close walk with God.
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  Speaker 1: This is a very common question that we get every
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  Speaker 1: day now in the inbox. How can I have a
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  Speaker 1: genuine relationship with God? How do you get one? How
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  Speaker 1: do you know you have one? How do you keep it?
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  Speaker 1: And as you develop this relationship with God, you can
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  Speaker 1: expect to meet another question at some point along the way.
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  Speaker 1: Eventually you'll ask why does God sometimes withdraw his presence
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  Speaker 1: from us? This topic of abandonment actually comes up as
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  Speaker 1: we wrap up our Bible reading for the month of March.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe you're still catching up to those readings. That's fine.
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  Speaker 1: That's why I love about the Grace period in the
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  Speaker 1: Navigator's Bible reading plan, those final days of the month
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  Speaker 1: when we can catch up. And I know a lot
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  Speaker 1: of you also appreciate that future and helps encourage you
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  Speaker 1: along the way month by month. Well, if you are
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  Speaker 1: caught up with the month of March and our March ratings,
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  Speaker 1: you will know that we just read two interesting texts
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  Speaker 1: seem to conflict with one another. On the twenty fifth,
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  Speaker 1: we read the promise that God will never leave us
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  Speaker 1: or forsake us in Matthew twenty eight twenty. But on
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  Speaker 1: the twenty second, three days earlier, we read the psalmist
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  Speaker 1: cry out to God, don't leave me that was in
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  Speaker 1: Psalm sixty nine to seventeen. So does God abandon us
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  Speaker 1: sometimes or not? This question about desertion is a big one,
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  Speaker 1: and Pastor John joins us over the telephone today to
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  Speaker 1: take this question up from Mikayla, who writes in this
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  Speaker 1: Pastor John, Hello, and thank you for taking my question.
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  Speaker 1: In an early episode of APJ, this was early way
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  Speaker 1: back in Abja nineteen, which is over twelve years ago.
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  Speaker 1: Abja nineteen. There you said that God sometimes withdraws his
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  Speaker 1: presence from us. How does that not contradict God's new
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  Speaker 1: covenant promise to us that he will never leave us
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  Speaker 1: or forsake us, as we read in Hebrews thirteen, verse five.
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  Speaker 2: I love that kind of question because to me, the
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  Speaker 2: best questions are how things fit together. What's helped me most,
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  Speaker 2: I think in my study of the Bible is seeing
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  Speaker 2: when things seem not to fit together, seem contradictory, and
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  Speaker 2: then instead of walking away from the Bible and assuming
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  Speaker 2: well it's a bunch of double talk, digging down to
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  Speaker 2: the roots so they come together, and then you realize, oh,
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  Speaker 2: these two plants are not opposites, they have the same roots.
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  Speaker 2: So I think that's what we're dealing with here. So
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  Speaker 2: we need to think about kinds of presence of the Lord.
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  Speaker 2: The Bible talks about different kinds of his presence. So,
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  Speaker 2: for example, most of us would agree that God is omnipresent.
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  Speaker 2: There's no place where he's not. Paul said, in him
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  Speaker 2: we live and move and have our being. He's just
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  Speaker 2: quoting a pagan poet there to agree that, yes, everybody
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  Speaker 2: is in God, held in being by God. And Jeremiah
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  Speaker 2: in twenty three twenty four says, can a man hide
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  Speaker 2: himself in secret places so that he can't see? So
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  Speaker 2: that I cannot see him? God is talking? Do I
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  Speaker 2: not fill heaven and earth? Declares the Lord. So I
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  Speaker 2: think the first and most basic sense that we need
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  Speaker 2: to talk about is he's everywhere God is omni present,
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  Speaker 2: including in the lives of believers and unbelievers, holding them
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  Speaker 2: in being, knowing all that they do firsthand. And then
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  Speaker 2: Michaela points to and she's absolutely right. There is this
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  Speaker 2: special presence. She calls it the New Covenant promise of
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  Speaker 2: God's presence in Hebrews thirteen to five, which says, keep
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  Speaker 2: your life f ee from the love of money, and
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  Speaker 2: be content with what you have, for he has said,
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  Speaker 2: I will never leave you or forsake you. Or we
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  Speaker 2: could go to Matthew twenty eight behold, I am with
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  Speaker 2: you always to the end of the age. Or we
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  Speaker 2: could go to Second Corinthians four. I am persecuted but
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  Speaker 2: not forsaken. So you've got these New Testament New Covenant promises.
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  Speaker 2: God is never ever going to abandon or leave his people.
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  Speaker 2: The one I love most is Jeremiah thirty to forty,
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  Speaker 2: where it goes over the top and says I will
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  Speaker 2: make with him another everlasting covenant. This is now the
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  Speaker 2: new covenant, that I will not turn away from doing
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  Speaker 2: good to them. And then he adds, and I will
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  Speaker 2: put the fear of me in their hearts so they
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  Speaker 2: may not turn from me. So this new covenant promise
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  Speaker 2: is not only that God won't walk away from us,
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  Speaker 2: won't let us walk away from him. So I want
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  Speaker 2: to say to Michaela, Yes, yes, yes, yes, she's right
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  Speaker 2: that there is a presence of God, a keeping, a
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  Speaker 2: staying with that will never fail for God's elect for
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  Speaker 2: those who are in Christ. But now here's what she
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  Speaker 2: picked up on. There is another way in the Bible
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  Speaker 2: that it talks about the presence of God. So Psalm
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  Speaker 2: sixty nine seventeen, Hide not your face from your servant,
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  Speaker 2: for I am in distress. Make haste to answer me.
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  Speaker 2: So he's his sense is God is distant, God is
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  Speaker 2: hiding from him. Or Psalm one forty three seven. Answer
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  Speaker 2: me quickly, oh Lord, my spirit fails. Hide not your
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  Speaker 2: face from me, lest I be like those who go
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  Speaker 2: down to the pit. Or Isaiah sixty four to seven.
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  Speaker 2: There is no one who calls upon your name, who
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  Speaker 2: rouses himself to take home.
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  Speaker 1: Old of you.
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  Speaker 2: For you have hidden your face from us, us your
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  Speaker 2: covenant people, and have made us melt in the hand
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  Speaker 2: of your iniquities. Now what occurs to me when I
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  Speaker 2: read these is that Michaela might say, Others might say,
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  Speaker 2: wait a minute, those are Old Testament prayers. Maybe the
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  Speaker 2: Saints had to pray like that in the Old Testament,
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  Speaker 2: don't hide your face from me, don't go away from me.
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  Speaker 2: But we're New Covenant people. Would we ever pray like that?
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  Speaker 2: And there are a couple of problems with that objection.
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  Speaker 2: One is that in the very text that Michaela quoted
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  Speaker 2: from Hebrews thirteen to five, where it says the Lord
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  Speaker 2: has said I will be with you, I will not
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  Speaker 2: leave you, that's a quote from Joshua one five. So
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  Speaker 2: he's quoting an Old Covenant promise and applying it to
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  Speaker 2: New Testament believers. And the other problem is that the
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  Speaker 2: Old Testament abounds with promises to God's people that he
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  Speaker 2: won't forsake them. For Samuel twelve, twenty two, the Lord
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  Speaker 2: will not forsake his people for his great namesake, Psalm
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  Speaker 2: thirty seven, twenty eight. The Lord loves justice, he will
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  Speaker 2: not forsake his saints Psal I'm twenty three. Four. We
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  Speaker 2: all love Psalm twenty three, even though I walk through
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  Speaker 2: the valley of the shadow of death evil, because you're
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  Speaker 2: with me. In other words, even in the worst of
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  Speaker 2: horrible dark times, my shepherd is with me. Those are
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  Speaker 2: Old Testament statements. So here's here's my answer to her question.
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  Speaker 2: The old Puritans put it all together by talking about
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  Speaker 2: the manifest presence of God, and they were using that
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  Speaker 2: phrase manifest, experienced, known, tasted presence of God to distinguish
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  Speaker 2: it from the omnipresence of God and from the covenant
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  Speaker 2: keeping of God, which may or may not be experienced
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  Speaker 2: intensely from time to time. And I think this is
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  Speaker 2: really really helpful. In other words, sometimes God withdraws his
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  Speaker 2: presence from us. That's the phrase. That's the statement I
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  Speaker 2: made that Michaela stumbled over. She said, how can that be?
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  Speaker 2: When I say that sometimes God withdraws his presence from us,
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  Speaker 2: I don't mean that we are forsaken by our covenant God.
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  Speaker 2: I mean that the manifestations of his presence are limited.
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  Speaker 2: He doesn't withdraw his covenant commitment to us or his
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  Speaker 2: sustaining grace from us. What he withdraws is the sweetness
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  Speaker 2: of his fellowship from time to time, or the conscious
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  Speaker 2: sense of his power. And he has his reasons for
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  Speaker 2: doing this, and I think maybe that would be another
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  Speaker 2: time for us to talk about that, But surely one
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  Speaker 2: of them is is to make us feel our desperate
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  Speaker 2: need from Him so that we fly to Christ into
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  Speaker 2: the cross where we hear the Covenant promise afresh.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Pastor John. This question about desertion is
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  Speaker 1: a big one, as you can see in the Ask
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  Speaker 1: Pestor John book on pages forty five, three, forty five,
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  Speaker 1: three seventy seven, three ninety nine, four hundred. On those
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  Speaker 1: pages alone, you can see how that beloved text Jeremiah
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  Speaker 1: thirty two versus forty and forty one, how it comes up,
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  Speaker 1: and why Piper has called this text his favorite promise
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  Speaker 1: that God will not leave us a precious promise. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: see how it functions in his life as you read
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  Speaker 1: the APJ book on pages forty five, three, forty five,
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  Speaker 1: three seventy seven, three ninety nine, and four hundred. That's
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  Speaker 1: one of the most important reasons I wanted to write
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  Speaker 1: the APJ book is just to show you how texts
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  Speaker 1: operate in Pastor John's life, his mind, his heart. Jeremiah
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  Speaker 1: thirty two. Thank you for joining us today. If you
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  Speaker 1: have a question to ask Pastor John, find a link
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  Speaker 1: to email us at Askpastor John dot com. We have
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  Speaker 1: another big week ahead on the podcast But first the weekend.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Tony Ranky. We'll see you on Monday.