Unfortunately, those times didn't last very long. Before I knew it, I was cast into the most utterly dispicable place. What is reffered to as a desert in the christain life. I had only started to experience God's wonderful personality in the most intimate way I had ever known, and suddenly He left. Without a goodbye or a warning of any type. I didn't know if He left me or I left him, but I was alone. Or so it seemed.

I tried everything I could think of. I prayed, I sang, I worshiped. I called on my Lord in every way I thought possible and He would not come. No one could tell me the answer either. In any case, this thing lasted three times as long as when I was growing closer to the Lord, and I was starting to get upset and frustrated.

I started to feel as though I wasn't good enough to be a christian, even though I never believed God judged on that basis. I always knew in my heart that God's Love was God's love whoever you were, but I was so low I started to doubt what I was worth to Him. Then I started to think I was doing something wrong. What had I done that would cause my Lord to leave.

There was a time I remembered praying to God and asking Him that when I became weak, that He would not leave me but give me strength. I was starting to feel as if He had went back on this promise. But I never lost faith and I never blamed God. I would constantly tell myself that He did everything for our benefit and out of love for us, and so I would most certainly come out stronger. I made this commitment despite of how awful I felt inside.

I will not tell you how I finally got rescued from this stale mate, because that might be confused with giving you some type of formula. But none the less, I did come out. And I was never so strong before. The sweetness of my return, or God's, more than made up for all the heat, sweat, and fear I had traveled through. What love I felt for God then.

But none was sweeter than the moment I realized that God had NOT forgotten his promise. It was through Him that I even KEPT my faith, or else I would have given up. It was him that held me strong. Of course I didn't beleive at the time that I was strong. I didn't feel God's presence, I didn't worship or pray the same, and I didn't act like a "good christian" at all. But I learned through it that those things don't make one a good christian at all. It is GOD that makes one a good christian, and it isn't about praising and singing during the good times, but about staying strong and keeping the faith during the hard times. It isn't always pretty either.

But believe me, when you're wiped out of every single fleshly reason to dance and sing and pray, when you're beaten down to the escence of what you really are when you try to stand by your own power, it is the most humbling beautiful thing that can exist inside of someone while on the outside you feel so ugly. Our complete dependance upon our Father in heaven, the more we realize it, brings us closer and closer to Him, and makes us love Him all the more. We might say it, but it takes these "deserts" to really make us understand it. We must be broken.

I am no longer scared of this happenstance. It is nothing to be afraid of, but something to rejoice in. For when this happens, the Lord is preparing you for something grander than you knew beforehand.

We must go through the potters fire to be molded...