336. Poured Out Spirit
Ezekiel 39:29 Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God.
The Lord promises that He will never hide His face from us any more. He will always be with us, present and available. At any time for any reason He will respond to our prayers and our needs. It may appear to us that God is hiding His face from us from time to time. God seems distant; our prayers don’t reach past the ceiling; we feel like we are alone. But such appearances (or disappearances) are not real. He is there; He is here.
There is such a thing called the deus absconditus, which means “the hidden God.” There is much that we would like to know about God, which we cannot know. We have many questions that will not be answered until we see God face to face in heaven. There are mysteries, questions we cannot answer or know anything about. God has reserved these things to Himself, possibly because our weakened human mind cannot comprehend even if we were told.
However, everything about God and our relationship with Him that we need to know has been revealed. What we need to know God reveals; what we don’t yet need to know God has not revealed. And it is foolhardy to attempt speculations and make up theories about the hidden God. We get into trouble when we take traditions of men as doctrines of God. If God did not clearly reveal it, we cannot take it as truth; if God did reveal it, we must take it as the Truth.
The promise of “not hiding” simply means that God is Present for us, and what we need from Him we will receive; what we need to know He will reveal. We can be sure of this because God said He would pour out His spirit. This He did for all people on the Day of Pentecost. Because the Spirit is poured out after Jesus’s Ascension we can be sure that we all have access to God any time and any place. He is not hidden from us, and secret rituals are not necessary to find Him. Just open your heart to the revelation of the Lord.