When I was in middle school, I went to my youth pastor and asked her, “How can I know God’s will? Like, really know?” What I actually meant was, “How can I experience God’s presence in a tangible way and know that he’s with me? How can I hear what he’s saying?” I was told that there really was no answer to that question, but that wasn’t satisfactory for me. If no one really knew how to experience God’s presence, how come everyone acted like it every Sunday? I must have been doing something wrong.
I compared myself to other Christians really often. They’ve seemed to feel or experience the presence of God in a way that I barely understand. Sometimes I feel like I’m a goat in Jesus’ flock of sheep, like there’s some secret that everyone knows but me. People have tried to help, sort of, by telling me that I’m worshipping wrong and I just need to do x, y, or z and this problem will be solved. I’ve even found myself trying to come up with formulas to plug my faith into—“Well, maybe if I just pray more as soon as I wake up, and read two chapters of the Bible instead of one, I’ll break through. Maybe then God will feel close to me all the time.”
This view persisted all the way through college. It was on a different scale because now, instead of being surrounded only by non-denominational Christians who knew exactly what to do, I was surrounded by Christians of basically every denomination who seemed to be experiencing the presence of God all the time. Still, I was searching and searching, just like I was supposed to, peering in the dusty corners of my life for the key to my problem. Once I was told that my body language was too closed off to the Spirit. I should try opening my arms.
*
My frustration grew over the next couple of years. I experienced people having dreams, seeing visions, speaking in tongues, and wondered what was wrong with me. The sheep in Jesus’ flock were supposed to know and recognize the voice of the Shepherd, right? I worried that the things I thought God was saying to me were just me deluding myself. Some kind of physical feeling would cure that fear, though. No such feeling came. As a person who primarily expresses love through physical touch, I was hurt and confused. God, if you really love me, why won’t you express that love in the way I best understand?
I complained about this abandonment I felt to my mom on one of our long drives back from my college. I didn’t understand—I was doing everything right. “Why is it that everyone else seems to feel something? Doesn’t God want to talk to me?”
My mom quickly set the record straight. “Life is 95% not feeling that God is near,” she said. “And that’s what faith is for. If we were feeling the presence of God all the time, faith would be totally useless. Just because it doesn’t feel like God isn’t there doesn’t mean that he’s abandoned you.”
*
In the book of Joshua, the Israelites build a monument in the middle of the Jordan River, a flooded, bubbling, muddy mess of a river that God miraculously helped them to cross. It was to be a reminder to them of how far he had brought them, what he had done for them, how great his love was for them, something to exist in the physical world to jog their memories.
I have had experiences throughout my life when God has met me in my everyday and I have felt his presence in a tangible way that I can’t really explain. They are my monuments, my stones in the river.
*
The other day I was driving down a long and beautiful hill on my way into my town. The sky was clear, the lack of humidity made the air light and sweet, and I was in high spirits for the first time in a while. In the span of a week, I had had my identity stolen, dropped my phone in a toilet, and become the frantic owner of a laptop that wouldn't turn back on. I hadn't understood why any of this had happened, and anxiety seemed to be my constant companion, a clenched fist in the pit of my stomach.
My extremely trusty phone refused to charge because of its rendezvous with the toilet bowl and would only charge in the car. I couldn't listen to my usual Spotify mix of acoustic indie pop and soft rock, so I was listening to the only Christian radio station in my state. Tenth Avenue North crooned through my speakers:
God, you don't need me / But somehow you want me / Oh how you love me / Somehow that frees me / To open my hands up / And give you control
And it hit me then. My terrible week wasn't about seeing how much crap Annalise could handle being thrown at her. It was about how far I was willing to trust God with my technology, my time, and the friends and loved ones I communicated with through my devices.
And I got more than just that. In that moment, I hummed along in my heart to a song that I had only heard this one time. But it was speaking to me in that moment. The lyrics sung by another human's mouth in a recording studio was my prayer of worship. In that moment, it all came together— my realizations about my week, the song blaring over the radio, the golden late-summer day. God was there, and I knew it more than I knew anything else. The only way I can think to describe it is this: the presence of the Lord was tangible, and it was so, so sweet.
*
There is a John Steinbeck quote that I read this summer that I love: "What is warm without cold to give it sweetness?" It speaks to the glory of the transient, how ordinary moments are made extraordinary by the fact that they end.
I think that feeling God's presence in a tangible way is like that for me. This is the reason why I have faith. If I could see Jesus and all the ways that he is working in my life day in and day out, what use would faith be to me? That's the glory of heaven, isn't it? We see now with squinting, trusting eyes, but someday we will see with our eyes wide open. One day we will see with our eyes what our hearts have known.
*
This is a poem I wrote last summer. It summarizes my feelings on emotionalism, hearing the voice of the Shepherd, and trust very well.
Dear God who is above me, below me, behind me, and beside me:
If only I had the faith
Of St. Patrick
If only I had the strength
Of St. Augustine
If only I had the fire
Of St. Peter
Then I could hear you.
Then there would be no
Tearing pain of absence.
But
Didn’t Peter deny you?
Didn’t Augustine fornicate?
Didn’t Patrick learn to pray?
And am I not, too
A saint?
Works Cited
Steinbeck, John. Travels with Charley: in Search of America. Penguin Books, 2012.
Tenth Avenue North. “Control (Somehow You Want Me).” Followers.