Peter had some experience by the time he wrote his first Epistle, and he could say, "Whom having not seen, you love." That is a marvelous thing. Where would you find a man who could love a fellow man he had never seen? But Peter says that, though you have never seen the Lord, you love Him; and he goes on to say, "In whom though not seeing Him at present, yet believing, you exult with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Pet. 1:8). Faith and love are in an unseen One.

May the Lord show us how different He is from our conception of Him. If there is great exhilaration in our meetings we say, "Oh, the Lord is truly in the midst!" But such a condition is no evidence of reality. On the other hand, when the atmosphere is heavy and you find yourself thinking thoughts like these:—"Alas! I don't love the Lord as I ought. How reluctant I've been to pay the price! How I've failed to honor Him in my life!"—then the God who hides Himself is positively at work in your life. Sometimes when you are out on the street or in your room, thoughts such as these come to you—"What is the purpose of my life? What is the Lord getting out of it?"—and it does not dawn upon you that that is the Lord at work within you. Let me tell you: Those faint registrations in the depths of your being, those slight suggestions you thought were wholly your own because they were so natural—those were the Lord's doing. The God who hides Himself is at work within your life, but He has hidden Himself so effectively that you have been quite unconscious of His activity. And He is working outwardly as well as inwardly—in your home, in your business, in all your circumstances. He is creating many situations and is active in many directions, though He lets you sense nothing of it, until you imagine these things have just come about naturally; but both the inner and outer conditions of your life are under His control.

The very fact that the church has continued on this earth for nearly two thousand years is the result of the working of Him who is a God who hides Himself. It is often true that the greater the display accompanying any work, the less the divine content; and the more silent the work and the less our awareness of it, the greater the divine content. Since all the work we do is done unto Him who hides Himself, it must be based on faith, not on sight.

I trust these words will help some of us to realize that when we are most conscious of impotence, God is often most powerfully present. Don't look for greater things. Don't look for things other than they are. Don't set your expectation on some great vision or on some great experience. And don't expect anything outward, for the God who hides Himself is at work within your life, and He is working mightily. Your responsibility is to cooperate with Him by responding to His voice within—that "still small voice," that voice that seems so much a part of your own feelings that you scarcely recognize it as a voice at all. To that voice, registered in the deepest depths of your being, you must say, "Amen," for there, secretly and ceaselessly, the God who hides Himself is working.