“When can I go and meet with God?” Psalm 42:2.
This series began with a thought that was deeply rooted in Psalm 42:1, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.” Now, on the 8th installment, we move on to verse 2, and onto a consideration we must never forget in our desiring and searching for our beloved Lord Jesus.
Consider the situation for the Psalmist. As he pours out his longings for his God amidst his feelings of being cut off from God, the cause of his anguish, the Holy Spirit has stooped to breathe upon him, inspiring him to write this portion of God’s Holy Scriptures. As David longed for God, God met with David in those very longings.
It is right that out of our desire to meet with God we wholeheartedly endeavour to seek for Him. We have already considered Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart”.
Psalm 14:2 reaffirms this emphasis on our need to seek God, “The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.”
But even in the midst of our seeking, even in the very midst of our longing, it is God Himself who has met with us, imparting that longing within us, and leading us onward. God has sought us out, God has met with us, and God now leads us on to meet with Him.
Christian mysticism is one of Christianity’s most fascinating, commendable, yet wretched theologies. Although difficult to correctly define the many strands of Christian mysticism succinctly, D.D. Martin has offered the definition that, “Christian mysticism seeks to describe an experienced, direct, nonabstract, unmediated, loving knowledge of God, a knowing or seeing so direct as to be called union with God.”
Firstly, it is good, indeed a most excellent thing, to be seeking an experienced, loving knowledge of God directly through the Holy Spirit. However, when we correctly understand “unmediated” when related to mysticism as meaning that Jesus and Scripture may perhaps play a role, yet includes a desire to be united to God with no intermediaries - of which include Jesus (using Him then discarding Him when we have got to where we desired) - then perhaps you can understand why it is commendable (in its great desire for God), and yet horribly wretched at the same time.
Christian mysticism proposes that there are various steps, or stages, to attaining this union with God (a bit like walking down a corridor where there are many doors to pass through). As each step or stage is passed then we come closer to that special union with God. These steps include various spiritual “exercises”, such as fasting, extreme fasting, pilgrimage and long periods of “stillness” contemplation.
Adoniram Judson was a famous missionary to Burma (now Myanmar). He went there at the age of 24 with his wife, Ann, who was 23 (the year is now 1813). It was 6 years of labouring there before they saw their first baptised convert. It would be 19 years before the first powerful moving of the Spirit in that country. After 10 years, with Adoniram imprisoned for sharing the Christian message, Ann gave birth to a daughter, Maria. Shortly after Adoniram was released Ann caught an illness and passed away. Not long after that so did Maria.
Adoniram, understandably, fell into a period of great despair and sorrow, losing sight of God completely in the midst of his despair. Feeling lost, Adoniram would search through the readings of the Christian mystics which were then very much in vogue, even with Protestants,.. but still no sight of God.
Some time later, Adoniram’s brother, back home in England, also died. Through this further grief Adoniram came to see that he had allowed himself to wallow in self-pity, even becoming consumed by it. Graciously, God was now meeting with Adoniram where he was, in his grief and sorrow, and would then proceed to lead Adoniram back into a feeling of closeness with Himself; to a place of restoration and anointing, as God would go on to greatly bless Adoniram’s labours in the years that followed.
We seek for God and, when we seek for Him with all our heart, we find Him – but did you ever stop to wonder why that is so? Well, the answer is, it’s because He has sought for us.
So what is there that we can we take away from this?
We might not feel the closeness with our Lord and Saviour as we desire – not yet, anyway – but He has already met with us by His Holy Spirit:
The genuine desire for communion with Jesus (that grips hold of us and gives us no respite until we appropriately respond to it) is the Holy Spirit’s work within us. The Holy Spirit has brought Jesus to us and He now seeks to bring us to Jesus.
This mutual meeting together with Jesus is what we seek – but don’t lose sight of the fact that Jesus has already met with us. Let this be an encouragement to keep seeking Him, even though you might feel cut off from Him still.
When you feel crushed (contrite) and brought down low by your circumstances, and feel unable to seek after God as you ought, you can be comforted and encouraged by this thought: God is also seeking you, to meet with you and to lead you back to meet with Him.
“This is what the high and exalted One says – He who lives forever, whose name is holy:
‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.” Isaiah 57:15.
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