You are living at a distance from your Beloved. Perhaps you hardly even think of Him as your Beloved anymore. By your prayerlessness you seem content to remain hidden from Him. Though He watches you with love, and urges you to speak, and tells you He wants to hear the sound of your voice in the prayer closet (Song of Solomon 2:14), your voice is not heard; your prayer closet lies empty. A house once alive with the sound of praise is now silent.
Do you remember when you were—as John Flavel put it—“restless and impatient… in His absence”? You could bear anything but that. Sickness you could bear. Pain and temporal losses you could endure. But His absence was unbearable. You could not stand to go on without the sense of His dear smile. You longed to walk and live and breathe in the light of His countenance (Psalm 4:6–7; Psalm 89:15).
Do you remember when “Divine withdrawments were to you as the hell of hell (Flavel)”? Those seasons when God seemed to hide His face from you—when He was distant, and there was not that familiar communion and fellowship in the prayer closet—were to you as hell. You wept and you groaned and you cried for His return. You stirred yourself to take hold of God (Isaiah 64:7), and you wrestled with Him as you told Him you would not let Him go (Genesis 32:26).
Do you remember when the world was a burden to you? Do you remember a time when, if it were not for your sense of duty, you would have gladly and willingly let everything else alone—you would have neglected a whole world—if only to enjoy uninterrupted communion with Jesus? This was your one thing: to dwell in the house of your God and behold His beauty (Psalm 27:4). How you loved to sit at the feet of Jesus (Luke 10:39)!
Do you remember when you woke in the night and could say that “the darkness [was] enlightened by the heavenly glimpses of the countenance of my God upon me? How did His company shorten those hours…(Flavel)” You could say with the Psalmist that you remembered Him upon your bed and meditated on Him in the night watches (Psalm 63:6).
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