Trusting God When Anguished of Spirit

“But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,

will enter your house,

I will bow down toward your holy temple in awe of you.”

— Psalm 5:7 (NRSV)

The troubled nature of our spirits in torment, having found ourselves venturing on a lonely, painful road, is the state, ironically, inviting us to journey once again with the Lord our God.

Not that such a journey should ever, by God’s will, be interrupted.

Pain, this way, is a good thing—it leads us to God.

But it is by our broken, fallen state such spiritual interruptions take us into these reaches of spiritual nonchalance, whereby we struggle to exist. Our identities in God have been compromised so much in these places we barely recognise ourselves as people of God.

We have entered spiritual fatigue, and so sudden is our realisation.

And so there is the invitation: it is written by the Letter of pain; the Epistle of loneliness; the Covenant of emotional distance; a Note from our God to venture in, and drink from the well of healing—by God’s Presence.

Entering God’s Presence

“But I... will enter your house,” says the psalmist.

This is the psalmist in each of us, who, having received that divine invitation, takes the invitation and responds in trust.

We talk about such trust in common ways, but we uncommonly enter into God’s court in trust when we need to. This is why we have entered God’s Presence, now, in such a plight. Our human nature tends to leave it too late.

But God is faithful. We are helped whenever we trust. God limits none of his divine agency in coming to us, to heal our understanding, to bring us to a better mood, and to soothe the aches of our souls.

Entering God’s Presence is simply about separating ourselves from distractions, finding a quiet moment/a quiet day, and going inward to the resolute silence is sitting with God and allowing the healing nature of God to wash over us. The more we practice, the better we feel.

Such a thing as entering God’s Presence is all we need do to credit our trust to the extent that we are blessed by that peace the transcends our understanding. God does the rest, through the pure agency of our surrendered trust.

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The pain of spiritual discomfort—loneliness, grief, contention, depression, anxiousness, etc—is the blessed invitation to rejoin the Presence of God.

Entering the Lord’s house in taking up such an invitation—to spend time with God—is a grand commitment of trust. Trusting God when our spirits are troubled is the best thing we could ever do. Blessing is soon ours toward healing strength to endure our days.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.