When God withdraws His conscious presence from a faithful disciple of Jesus, that disciple needs to understand that he has just received a very special invitation from the Father, not His rejection. He’s received a very special call: He has been invited to know God in a deeper way than he has known Him before. He has been invited into an even closer fellowship with God. He has been invited to know Him by faith more than by sight.
The dryness is a summons from the Throne of God. It’s not a rejection, or rebuke (necessarily, it could be), it’s a call, the high-calling of God in Christ Jesus. It’s a call deeper and nearer, into the very heart of God (Philippians 3:8-15).
If God does not withhold His conscious presence or blessing, at times, then the disciple may begin to take Him for granted, and not appreciate how infinitely precious the privilege he has is, in Christ, to know God.
The Father knows that WE need such dealings from Him. He knows how fickle we are, that we are dust. He knows our heart, how deceitful it is.
Ultimately, it’s the glory question that needs to be settled and resolved IN us weak and fragile creatures: What is our REAL motive – His glory or ours?
These painful dealings of the Father reveal and resolve our heart motives, and sets them in His order.
Ian Vincent 
May 17, 2012 at 5:08 am
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
We are TROUBLED on every side, yet not distressed;
we are PERPLEXED, but not in despair;
Persecuted, but not forsaken;
cast down, but not destroyed;
Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
So then death works in us, but life in you.
We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; Knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.
For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many increase to the glory of God.
For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.
For our LIGHT AFFLICTION, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
(2 Corinthians 4:7-18)
For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that
we were PRESSED out of measure,
above strength,
so that we DESPAIRED even of life:
But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead:
Who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us;
(2 Corinthians 1:8-10)
Paul sees an eternal PURPOSE and PLAN in all these tough encounters.
May 17, 2012 at 11:56 am
Very true!
May 17, 2012 at 1:23 pm
thanks bro i got encouragement