Hello dear brother awareness,
Interestingly enough, TAS's mention of the experience of the Lord withdrawing and not being able to sense the Lord's presence is found in Message #7, which is exactly the message where I left off almost a year ago.
TAS mentions this experience is a very general way. While there are no details given, the listener/reader can tell that TAS is most definitely speaking from personal experience. In fact, TAS stated right up front that his whole burden in these messages was to speak words from deep experience, to speak of those lessons which he had learned first-hand from the Lord. These are his words (emphasis mine):
Quote:
|
"The Bible shows what a wonderful thing it is to be in the presence of God. Oh, when the Lord is present, what a blessed thing it is. And the most terrible thing that the Bible shows is for the Lord to withdraw Himself from men. I expect all of us here know something about that. I mean that the most difficult thing in our experience is not to sense the Presence of the Lord. If, when we have a day, when it seems that the Lord is far away, that is a very very hard day. When we have a day, when we realize the Presence of the Lord, that is the best day in our life. You remember the Lord's servant of old says, "If Thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence." He could not contemplate going out without God. The Lord says, "My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." And so they were able to go on."
|