(BP) Him, in silence

“Are there times you feel nothing when you're praying?” My friend once asked me.

Yes, there are. There definitely are.

True, there are times we feel His Presence and perfect love so strongly during prayer; and simply meditating on His perfect love and wonderful works He has been doing in our life would stir up a sense of deep affection surpassing any joy we could experience through any other indulgence. But there are also times we just can't feel anything at all, and may even wonder if God is distant. Whenever the latter comes in, I would worry if I did anything wrong that put me away from God, and if my spiritual pursuit is going to fall apart.

But throughout those desert times, God has been teaching me that it is important to know His heart not based on our own eyes or own feelings. The experiences we walked through with Him as well as the moving feelings in our heart are precious and unique, but what ultimately forms the anchor of the knowledge of Him should be His Word. Just like knowing a friend. We can try to apply our experience and preference as lens to know a friend, but what matters more is to understand their way of thinking, the way they would feel most loved, and their life stories, and so on.

God means it when He says “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah‬ ‭29:11-13‬) His promise never changed even when our feelings change.

During the time we don't feel Him regardless of how hard we pray and how much of the Word we read, there are times we have to ask the Holy Spirit to convict us for any confession we ought to do. But I also believe it can be a time to test our faith on and pursuit of Him. Faith that fully trusts in His Word and perfect love. Faith that knows His heart and fully trusts in His faithfulness to fulfil His promises. Faith that fully trust He enjoys every moment we set aside to seek and to have communion with Him. For when we learn to put faith in Him, we simultaneously learn to know His heart by His Word and His characters, instead of by our own lens. And if our relationship with Jesus is intimate enough, even in times when there seems to be no deep affection during our quiet time with Him, we would still just know in heart that He is here, and His steadfast love never changes.

For even before we knew Him, He came to our world to seek us, and hold our hands to enter His world step by step. The building of an intimate relationship with Jesus is not an uni-directional pursuit. While we seek to understand His heart more, He also seeks to draw our heart closer to His, and let Him be our great joy and deepest desire.

And after all, His kingdom already dwells within us. “He said therefore, "What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches." (Luke‬ ‭13:18-19‬) The man may not know how the seed actually grow into a tree, but as he keeps up his faithfulness, the One who knows would grow the seed in ways that may not be revealed at once. So does the seed of knowing His heart.