Psalms 13:1,2,5: “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? forever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?  (5) But I have trusted in your mercy my heart will rejoice in your salvation.”

I am now into Day #4 of this journey through my Dark Night of my Soul, in search of the God whom my soul loveth.  I share my experience as I believe I am not the only one who is going through a Dark Night of their Soul where the presence of God has somehow vanished and you can’t figure out why.  I believe this happens often but we just ignore it, we fill our lives with busyness, activities, parties, fellowships, even church activities and worship services.  We manufacture the presence of God in our worship by singing the songs that move us.  Sure I can feel the so called presence of the Lord, I just pop a CD in of my favorite Maranatha song and I will be streaming tears in a few minutes. Wow, I have now found the presence of God, praisealleuia. But did I really?  Or did I just manufacture it. Like some preacher who knows how to work an audience and get them going into a frenzy before taking the offering.  I can do that number on myself.

However, I know in my heart, in my spirit that there is a rift between my God whom my soul loveth and myself.  People can give me all kinds of advice in how to feel the presence of God.  “Oh you must praise the Lord, you can’t feel the Spirit until you say Praise the Lord,”  “You must lift your hands” “You must stand before God.” “You must bow before an altar,”  “You must shout before the Lord,”  “You must be quiet before the Lord.” “You must hold on”  “You must let go.”  But all I am doing is manufacturing the presence of God.  I have not dealt with the issue of my heart. I could ignore it, go about my business and pretend everything is ok.  However, this time I chose to isolate myself for one week.  To shut myself off from the world and to crawl under yon rock from whence I came and face up to this separation.

As each day passes I am more aware of how lonely I am, how isolated I am without the presence of God.  There is no noise, no TV or radio to mask the loneliness.  This evening I crawled into a corner for almost an hour I wept in my loneliness, my longing to be hugged by God.  I imagine spending an eternity without that hug from God without being near Him and feeling His presence why it is worse than any fires of hell.

I recall a story a friend once told me of a woman who went through the Holocaust in a concentration camp and survived.  She later got married and after a few years that marriage fell apart and she was divorced.  She said the emotional and mental agony of her divorce was worse than any physical torture she experienced in a concentration camp. Perhaps hell is a place of fire but that is not the real punishment.  The real punishment is being separated from the one who created you.  Of course many people don’t understand that so we have to emphasize the fire and not the loneliness and emotional torment.

As I sat huddled in my corner crying and weeping out of sheer loneliness and longing for God I cried out like David: “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? forever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?”

The words How long is ’ad ‘anah. This has no real translation as it is an expression of a deep emotional suffering, it is a cry of sorrow, of total frustration.  How do you translate that into English?- “How long?” “Until when?” I know the feeling, I understand the deep sorrow and pain but I cannot translate into English for you. Even as a writer I cannot find the words to express this deep cry of my soul. You have to feel this to be able to translate it.

What is David feeling so frustrated about? It is the fact that he is taking counsel in his soul. His soul is what is filled with this sorrow and agony.  The word taking is shyath which expresses a uniting or teaming up.  You might express it as joining hands.  “How long will I join hands with the counsel of my soul with this agony and sorrow.”  This word for sorrow in the Hebrew it is the word yagun which could also mean affliction and it is in his heart. By joining hands with the counsel of his soul the agony and suffering of his soul, his heart is placed under great distress. As I sit here writing this I cannot put into words the distress I feel in my heart. I want to turn on the TV, go shopping, go to a movie something to take my mind off this agony.  But I dare not.  I have committed myself to experience this agony to its fullest so once I am restored and I know I will be restored, I will never fall into this sin of pride and selfishness again and I can also warn other believers of this horrible experience that they too could pass through.

But soft, look at what David says in verse 5: “I have trusted in your lovingkindness which is the word chasad in Hebrew and my heart will rejoice.  Curious, the word for rejoice is yagul. David is making a play on words here. When he listens to his soul his heart is yagun or sorrowful and afflicted,  but when he trust in God’s lovingkindness, his heart is yagul rejoicing.  Two words that sound the same but have opposite meanings. Sorrow ends in a nun whose shadow is depicts drowning in sorrow.  This word for rejoice, however, ends with a Lamed which connects you to joy of the Lord and  means to spin in a circle with joy.

The word trust is batach which is similar to the word shyath both mean to unite.  But shyath is joining hands where batch (trust) is welding yourself to God’s lovingkindness.   All I have to do is just “lean to my own understandings” as it says in Proverbs 3:5-6 and I fall into misery.  But I forget that I am batach welded to the chasad or lovingkindness of God.  That very thought brings yagul rejoicing.  Job did, after all say: “Though He slay me, yet I will trust batach in Him.”  No matter what happens, no matter what the outcome, there is a bright ray of sunshine, the lovingkindness of God.  David knew that at the end of that lovingkindness was salvation or deliverance.

The tears have stopped flowing, I am confident I will return to the one whom my soul loveth, but I hear Him whisper that there is yet much more sorrow that I have brought to His heart. If I am willing He will show it to me, but it means I must continue in this journey through a Dark Night of my Soul. He has reminded me of Deuteronomy 4:29: “But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find [him], if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.”

How many of us really seek Him with all our hearts and soul?  Well, I plan to do just that in these next few days and I am clinging to His promise that I will find Him.  I will find Him and feel His presence again without a preacher working me up into a frenzy, without some motivational speaking telling me to go out there and win one for the Gipper. Or without playing my favorite worship song.  How long oh Lord, how much longer will it take? For I am now approaching Day #5.