Psalm 139:23
"Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the Way Everlasting."
When the LORD hides Himself from one of His own it causes great searching of the heart and how we need that heart exercised! Many times we are looking for a reason outside of ourselves as to why God does what He does. How we need these heart searchings that the LORD causes in hiding Himself.
Some nights you lay there awake, your mind spinning and turning and there is a fretfulness; there may be fear; there might even be a sense of guilt, and dreadful unbelief. It's like someone taking a stick and churning a pot, and all of the filth coming to the surface. The LORD purposes these things that we might know our heart, but more so to know our need, that apart from the righteousness of the LORD Jesus Christ ALONE, we have no hope. That leads then to expose the sinfulness of sin, lest we ever think that somehow we have outgrown sin, as some preach 'progressive sanctification,' that somehow the heart becomes less and less sinful. Well, for the LORD's children, such is not their thought, and if they ever begin to think that way, God in mercy hides Himself to expose the sinfulness of their sin.
The LORD hiding Himself also brings about an earnest longing for Him, and even restless seeking and fervent prayer after Him. We would not even pray were it not that He withholds for a season His presence, hides Himself.
Just as water is vital to our survival in the flesh, so is the Water of the Word to the soul. Go for awhile without and pretty soon there develops a thirst. That is what the LORD is pleased to do, as we see in Psalm 42 verse 1, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the Living God:" What it brings us to, dear friend, is that we cannot live without Him. As one writer said of Christ, "His presence is heaven but His absence is hell!" Amen!
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