So, the ecstatic joy I’ve felt since first hearing God has worn off. I don’t babble anymore when trying to tell people that God has spoken. I don’t feel giddy whenever I think about God. And I think that’s a good thing. People (including myself) must have thought I was loony.

I still struggle with many of the same issues I did before God spoke. Nothing is fixed. But I feel more confident, more hopeful, more at peace than I have in years.

That’s the beautiful thing about God- His presence is all sufficient. When I was lost in my sea of darkness, I had so many questions and fears. But now that I’ve heard God speak, and even though those questions remain, and many of the fears as well, I’ve discovered all I really need is God. My life isn’t suddenly better. I’m not the perfect happy Christian. I still struggle with my sin, my failures, and my brokeness on a daily basis. But I have heard God speak to me, I feel Him moving again. Like a firm but gentle breeze. And in all honesty, that is all I need.

In the book of Job, God never directly answers any of Job’s questions. And yet when He appears to Job, all the questions somehow fade.

“My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen You,” He’s says. And then, “I place my hand over my mouth.”

Michael Card touches on this in His song Could It Be, when he says,

“Could it be You make Your presence known so often by Your absence?

Could it be that questions tell us more than answers ever do?

Could it be that You would really rather die than live without us?

Could it be the only answer that means anything is You?”

And again in his song, The Hidden Face of God when he says,

All I ever wanted, all I could ever need-

Not a single question answered, so now I can believe.

He pierced the holiest shadow, stepped from behind the façade.

Now I know the only answer is the hidden face of God.

With God, all is complete. We don’t need the answer to our “why?” The only answer we will ever need is the non-answer of God’s presence. Somehow in the glory and awe and love of His presence, all else falls away. The doubts, the questions, the fears- everything that held us down, every mountain that loomed in our way, every wall blocking our path- all of it becomes unimportant, meaningless, mere trifles not be bothered with when faced with the presence of God.

I clung to this hope in my fear and trembling. I held to this hope when nothing else made sense. I had heard of this and believed it. But now my eyes have seen it, and I know it to be true. We don’t need God’s provision, we need His presence. And in that presence, we find all the provision we will ever need.

~Joshua I. Crain