The Hidden God

“Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.’” ~Genesis 28:16

As Christians, we can often struggle to feel God’s nearness in our lives. It seems, to me at least, that His presence is always more concealed than revealed. We pray, ask for guidance, and seek comfort, but sometimes it feels like God is not listening. We lament but don’t feel the strong embrace of His arms around our weary souls.

In our text this morning, we hear Jacob’s surprise to discover God to be where He had been all along–right there beside him!

Why isn’t God more obvious?

We are finite. 

Even in the garden of Eden, while Adam never had to contend with any sense of alienation from God, he still enjoyed unique times of particularly close communion with God. For instance, the text of Genesis 3 seems to suggest that God habitually came down to walk with Adam in the cool of the day (verse 8). This was, if you like, His normal practice. When Moses says this, he is not for a moment suggesting that God wasn’t there all along. He simply means to describe a season in which God manifested His presence with particular intimacy and felt closeness.

We are fallen. 

The entrance of sin and the curse of God upon the created order has significantly affected this dynamic for the worse. Our spiritual faculties no longer work properly. We are blind to His glory, deaf to His word, and dead to His presence. From one perspective, the unbeliever is quite happy with this state of affairs. The thought of God profoundly unsettles him; he likes living in the dark. At the same time, though, he feels dogged by a feeling of angst. We were not meant to live without God.  

We are frail and forgetful. 

This dynamic of spiritual insensitivity lingers even in the redeemed heart as its greatest lament (Psalms 42, 43, & 63). Like a thirsty man trying to slake his thirst from a dripping faucet, the believer never finds as much of God as he wants. The busyness of life, the deceitfulness of riches, and the pervasive pressure arising from life East of Eden, not to mention the desires for other things, only compound this problem. To feel more of God in the humdrum realities of life, we need to practice His presence. But like the child and his piano practice, too often we forget.

Ultimately, our ability to perceive God’s presence comes down to faith. We have to believe God is with us even in those times we don’t feel Him close at hand. How do we do this? We go to His Word. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). We remind ourselves who God is: our Father in heaven. We remember how God Himself describes His posture towards us:

“The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.” (Psalm 34:15–19)

In conclusion, dear Christian, you can trust that God is with you not because you always feel His presence, but because He has promised to be with you to the end (Matthew 28:18-20).