Last Saturday, I went to the SACCRE Pentecost Seminar at IHM Church. The speaker was Fr. Robert Faricy from USA. The topic was about discernment in the spirit. He taught us that in order to be able to know God’s will better, we must have a personal relationship with God. We have to spend time with Him to get to know Him better, just like how we spend our time with our beloved ones.

However, Fr. Faricy also mentioned that there will be obstacles in our relationship with Him. In life, there will be times when we enter the period of spiritual darkness. Sometimes, when we face problems or difficulties in our life, we may feel that God is very far from us. We may have spent our time praying hard, trying to figure out what He wants to tell us, but we may end up feeling nothing. We may also think that God has taken back the gifts that He has given to us. And these were exactly what I have felt ever since I answered His call to step up to be the coordinator of NTU CPG.

During these past few days, I barely felt anything special during my prayer. In the past, every time I went back from the adoration room, I normally would feel lifted up and empowered.  However, during the past few days, my visit there did not gave me much…or sometimes, I just could not focus on Him because my mind would start travelling from one thing to another.

Even singing or listening to the praise and worship songs also did not help much. I attended some PW sessions, but I just couldn’t feel as high as what I used to feel. I kept asking myself, ‘what’s wrong with me?’ Or… Is it because the few small mistakes that the worship leader did? Is it because the music was off-beat?

Listening to His prompting has also becoming more and more difficult these days. I used to be able to use the gift of prophecy much more easily in the past. But what about now? I rarely heard Him speaking to me personally anymore.

I have been longing for His touch and the sense of peace that He often used previously to comfort my heart. However, again, I ended up feeling disappointed and questioned why God did this to me after I answered His calling. But last Saturday, Fr. Faricy helped me to understand why God let me experience all these.

Fr. Faricy said that this period of darkness is actually very common, especially to the people who have been with God for long…those people who pray a lot and are very close to God. These are the people that the Dark Knight (Satan) will target first, because they matter more to God. So why does God allow the Dark Knight to attack us? Why doesn’t He prevent the Dark Knight from coming into our lives?

It's because <b>God wants to purify us</b>. God wants us to depend only on Him, not on our feeling alone or on the gifts that He has given to us. God wants us to grow stronger because we cannot stay as babies all the time. He wants us to know that <b>Jesus sees us, even if we do not see Him</b>. He wants us not to quit praying although we may not feel anything during our prayer because He is there, listening to our prayer.

So I realize that I should never give up on Him. I realize that what really matters is not about the gifts and the satisfaction that I can get from my prayer or from the PW session. Instead, I should focus on the Giver, Himself.  I should trust Him and keep my faith in Him, knowing that He is always there for me and He does love me so much. 

So I thank God for I am still surviving until now. And I also thank Him for the community that has been a great support and encouragement for me, preventing me from straying away from Him. Although sometimes I may not be able to see Him in me, at least I still see Him through the people around me. And this should be more than enough to ensure me that His presence is real in our lives.