“With You is the fountain of life” (Psalms 36:9)

If you’re saved, there will be times when it seems like the Living Waters of the indwelling Holy Spirit seem to stop flowing, and the normal means of grace won’t comfort you. Why does God permit this? Usually, it’s because  you’ve forgotten the basis of your grace relationship with God, or as the Apostle Peter put it, you’ve  become “shortsighted, even to blindness, and forgotten that you were cleansed from your old sins” (2 Peter 1:9).

This can occur when God allows something bad to happen to you, and instead of believing “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28), you blame God for letting you down, or perhaps, you become ungrateful, and take God for granted. You could reverse course at this point if you obey the Scripture, “in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

If you continue in rebellion, you can begin to delude yourself that little sins are OK. Then, when you feel guilty, you start doing dead works to appease your conscience like you did before God saved you. In this state, you no longer feel God’s love, and think you’re justified in not loving Him. You are now experiencing what modern Christians call “spiritual burnout”.

The only remedy is repentance, but because you feel abandoned by God, your pride prevents you from coming back to Him, and you blame God for your condition, the height of stupidity. Then one day, a word from God, usually a Scripture, occurs to you, and you see your stupidity, and repent, and the Living Waters start flowing again.

If you want to cooperate with the indwelling Holy Spirit, start “singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:18–20).

For more on the subject of God hiding His face, click here.

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