A key part of God’s nature is the fact that he moves in two ways: hiddenness and manifestation. When we come to terms with this truth, we are set free spiritually to ebb and flow with what God is doing. There are times when God reveals himself to us and times when he hides. He has reasons for doing both.
I love times of manifestation. I love it when God is right in my face, speaking into everything he can. But for every time of manifestation, there is a season of hiddenness, where God seems to move away from us. When God hides from us, he is trying to draw us into his presence. Manifestation takes place in our reality; hiddenness happens in his. Hiddenness draws us into a new place in the spirit. In manifestation, God proclaims his nature.
In hiddenness we have to break through the veil to feel his presence because our soul is not feeling the Lord. In manifestation we are walking under an open heaven in the sense of feeling God.
One of my favorite promises in scripture is found in Hebrews 13: 5- I will never leave you nor forsake you. God is constantly with us, whether we realize it or not. Sometimes he jumps out at us because he cannot wait to show himself to us, and that other times he hides, drawing us further into him.
People in hiddenness are in a completely different life space than people in manifestation. When we pray for a person to whom God is manifesting himself, they fall over, shake, laugh, cry, and experience physical sensations of God. But people in hiddenness stand there, receiving the same prayer, and don’t even flinch. They’re like rocks.
In the early days of renewal, ministers thought there was something wrong with people who didn’t visibly react to God’s anointing. Some were even considered demon possessed! And yet these people were as dedicated to God as anyone else-they were simply in hiddenness; God had a different lesson for them.
Amazingly, the people who were in hiddenness during the seasons of renewal in the 1990’s have generally held on to more of the presence of God than those who were in wild manifestation. They learned how to relate to God for themselves, even when nothing seemed to happen. In short, they learned the true walk of faith.
In hiddenness, he declares his heart. We all have to learn to walk by faith, not by sight. When God is manifested towards us, he is so in a tangible way. We can feel him. We access him emotionally. We laugh, we cry, we feel his peace and joy in us. His love overwhelms us, and we feel gratitude and praise as a tangible expression of our response to his presence. Rejoicing, thanksgiving, praise, worship, and adoration are all physical indications that our emotions are fully engaged in blessing the Lord. God’s manifest presence is both physical and emotional. It sets us free to experience God fully.
When God is teaching us the walk by faith, not by what we feel, he withdraws from our emotions. He hides from our feelings. Now, we get to take it on trust that he is with us. Now, we learn to believe that God will never leave us or forsake us, and we establish a pattern of simple faith that he is with us always.
God has not left us -just withdrawn from our feelings for the purpose of establishing trust and simple faith. It’s a tough lesson initially, but also immensely rewarding.
Now I can enjoy my emotions in the father but not be dependent on them as a way of life. My lifestyle is one of simple trust and joyful believing in a God of infinite goodness, grace, mercy and kindness. His love never fails.
Whether I am doing well or badly, he remains totally consistent in his nature towards me. In trust, I learned to be confident in who he is for me when all my attendant feelings are not working.
It is a key discipline to learn, and one that the Holy Spirit is so brilliant at teaching us.
Perhaps the simplest way to explain it is to say that manifestation is a time of blessing; hiddenness is a time of building. God desires to bring us through seasons of hiddenness because he wants us to learn the discipline of walking by the Spirit. Manifestation takes place in our reality, Hiddenness takes place in his reality, the dimension of the kingdom realm of his Spirit.
Developing an ongoing walk with God by the power of the Holy Spirit is a discipline. Practicing faith is a discipline, and hiddenness is God’s way of establishing that discipline in our life. Once established, it prevents the enemy from invading our life and touching us, because regardless of our emotions, we know how to find the presence of God. We have a constant assurance of his presence and his commitment to us.
Understanding the fact that God is sometimes hidden and sometimes manifest grounds us in our faith and helps us to have a more consistent walk with him. Whether it’s a good day or a bad day, we will know how to live in the grace of God. Some days we’ll feel very close to God, and other days we won’t, but it won’t matter, because we will know that we can live, enjoying God’s presence when we feel it, and enjoying living in our faith when we don’t.