The God who hides himself
The dark night
Isaiah says something startling about God in the same breath as he calls him Savior: truly, you are a God who hides himself. Sometimes God deliberately withdraws the felt sense of his presence — not because he has left, but because the hiding itself is doing a work that his felt nearness could not.
The sixteenth-century Spanish mystic John of the Cross gave this experience its enduring name: the dark night of the soul. He observed that God often weans maturing believers off the sweetness and consolations they enjoyed as beginners, withdrawing the felt warmth so that the soul learns to love God for himself rather than for the good feelings he gives. The dryness that feels like abandonment is, in this light, a sign of growth, not failure — God treating the soul as mature enough to walk by faith and not by feeling.
Scripture knew this long before John named it. God led Israel through the wilderness, Moses said, to humble them and test them and know what was in their heart. The dark night is a wilderness with a purpose: it humbles us, exposes what we have secretly been relying on, and purifies our love until it rests on God alone and not on his consolations. The God who hides himself is still the Savior, and the hiding is part of how he saves. Could the very absence you are grieving be God's deeper work, hiding to make your love for him pure?
“Truly you are a God who hides himself, God of Israel, the Savior.”
— Isaiah — Isaiah 45:15 (WEB)
Receive the seasons when God hides his felt presence as his deeper work — weaning your love off consolations so it rests on him alone — rather than only as abandonment.
“You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart.”
When felt consolation dries up, we read it as sin, failure, or divine abandonment, and despair. The interior work is to learn from the dark night that God sometimes hides himself deliberately, to wean a maturing soul off spiritual sweetness so its love rests on him rather than his gifts — so the dryness becomes a sign of growth and purification, a wilderness with a purpose, rather than proof of desertion.
This week, if God feels absent and prayer feels dry, resist concluding he has left: ask what he might be purifying, deliberately seek him for himself rather than for the lost sweetness, and keep walking by faith where you cannot walk by feeling.
When the felt presence dries up, despair rushes to call it abandonment and to urge you to quit, just as God is weaning your love off sweetness so it can rest on him alone. But a soul that keeps loving God through the dryness lets the dark night finish its work — and a love that has learned to hold to God himself can no longer be moved by consolations he chooses to withdraw.
When the felt presence of God dries up and consolation disappears, we almost always read it as a problem — a sign of sin, of failure, of divine abandonment. The long tradition of the dark night reads it very differently: as a deliberate work of a God who sometimes hides himself in order to mature us, weaning us off spiritual sweetness so that our love comes to rest on him rather than on his gifts.
This does not make the darkness pleasant, but it transforms its meaning. The dryness that feels like desertion may in fact be God treating you as grown enough to walk by faith and not by feeling, purifying a love that had quietly grown dependent on consolations. The wilderness humbles us and shows us what we were really leaning on. Could the absence you are grieving be not God's abandonment but his deeper, hidden work — making your love for him pure?
- Do I read the loss of felt consolation as abandonment?
- Could the dryness be God weaning my love off his gifts onto himself?
- Am I willing to walk by faith where I cannot walk by feeling?
Lord, when you hide your felt presence I assume you have left me. Teach me that you are still the Savior, hiding to purify my love. Wean me off the sweetness onto yourself, and help me love you for who you are, even in the dark. Amen.