We all love to feel the presence of God. We love times when we feel his love or joy welling up inside us. We feel free and light or just tremendous peace. But what about the rest of the time when we don’t feel God’s presence or power? Do we find ourselves making every effort to reclaim the spiritual sweetness we had?
Seeking spiritual sweetness is okay to an extent. God wants us to feel good and He wants us to feel joy and peace. He wants to be with us as much as we want to be with Him. But there is some things that are more important than spiritual sweetness in the Christian life. Two come to mind.
First, submission to God’s will. If we truly want to be in Christ then we should find ourselves seeking God’s will more than seeking spiritual sweetness. God may not want to give us sweetness when we want it. He may have something else in mind for us that will accomplish something God wants to get done. If we make spiritual sweetness a higher priority than God’s will then we will just becoming spiritual hedonists; we will just be seeking our own pleasure. We are like a little child who only wants to eat candy. Worse than this, we will start to generate false spiritual sweetness inside ourselves with our own strength. Or we will let others generate false sweetness for us.
Before we mention the second item it will be helpful to look at Hebrews 12:5b-7a, 10b:
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children…
God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.”
This is addressed to those who are not experiencing sweetness for it says these hardships tempts us to lose heart. But the trials are important for our spiritual growth. Lack of sweetness is one of those trials.
The second priority is the pursuit of Christlikeness. It is much more important to become like Christ than to feel spiritual sweetness. Becoming like Christ – “Christformation” – sums up the whole Christian life. God wants us to learn self-control, patience, kindness, forgiveness, humility, honesty, holiness and many other Christlike qualities. This is because he is more interested in healthy relationships than He is in making us constantly feel good. In the New Creation we feel good all the time but for now he wants us to be lights in a fallen world, so we need to be like Christ. If we let our desire for sweetness dominate our lives then we will not become like Christ. We will be people who seek God’s hand but not his face. We won’t die to self, carry our cross, and embrace the “fellowship of [Christ’s] sufferings” (Phil. 3:10). If we won’t do these things then are we really becoming like Christ? Aren’t these experiences that Jesus embraced?
Thus, we can let the hardship teach us and accomplish its appointed task. In prayer it is helpful to just sit with the hardship and be quiet and open to God. Then we can gradually embrace the hardship in our hearts. And we can ask God to show us what he wants to accomplish.
Sometimes God gives us sweetness in the midst of trials but sometimes he doesn’t. When he doesn’t we can say this is helping us share in God’s holiness and making us like Christ!
