I
have never hungered for God in my life more than I do now. At this writing, I have walked with
Him for over 35 years and my desire to know Him and to love Him is stronger than
ever before. I find this to be true because of the great suffering that has
afflicted my life. It seems that the more I desire Him, the further away He
seems to be. The more I pursue Him, the faster He runs. I can’t outrun God!
Even if I could, He’d put an obstacle in my way. I’ve wrestled for more years
than I can remember but I will not let up until He blesses me with His
presence. Like Jacob, He has wounded the strongest part of me as I have learned
to yield to Him.
The more I know of God, as He reveals Himself to me, the less I see that I truly know Him. When I was a young man in Christ. I thought I knew all about Him. Just as a young man in life thinks he knows everything there is to know. As I grew in Christ, I thought I knew Him better than most. But now I am no longer a young man and I find that I know Him much more than I ever did, and yet, I know Him not.
It
was through great pain and suffering and sorrow and devastation that I came to
this greater knowing of our Lord. As my world crumbled in on me, I learned how
to enter into His suffering instead of dwelling in self-pity. In my past, when
I encountered sorrow, it was only the echo of my own self-pity. This is not
true sorrow. It is self, afraid to go to the cross. After many years of asking,
the Lord allowed me to enter into His suffering, which was the experience of
His pain due to my sin that He bore. I now understood, in a small degree, what
He went through and my love for Him grew in proportion to the suffering. I
experienced being crucified with Christ and being conformed to His death. This
was no longer biblical knowledge or cognitive understanding or belief; it was
experiential. Before this took place I was first led to the experience of
Gethsemane. It was there that I understood the true dying of self. It was there
that I was completely broken and my will was surrendered to His will. It was
there that I learned obedience from suffering.
All
of these experiences were His first and I consider it a blessing to enter into
them. Please understand that my experience was but a small portion of His. Only
He could bear the full weight of it. I was soaked in sweat, but He sweat great
drops of blood. My portion of the cross was but a splinter in my finger and yet
the weight of it was and is unbearable. He bore the full weight of the cross
and all sin that was destined for it.
I
understood in a new way why Jesus prayed in John 15 for us to be in Him. He is
the vine and we are the branches and apart from Him we can do nothing. If you
are not in Him you will wither and die and be gathered up and burned. You cannot
bear fruit unless you are in the vine. Do you understand that He was telling
you that if you are in Him you are crucified with Him? How did sin enter into
Him on the cross? Was sin just floating around in the air and just happened to
bump into Him? Of course not, it was through us, the sinners that were in Him.
We were in Him. It was our sin, in Him. He was the seed that fell into the
earth and died in order for many others to have life. We were in Him and died
with Him and that is how and why we can bear fruit. If you are not in Him, you
will be dead branches that are gathered up and burned.
So
when I say I experienced this, it is not some metaphorical story or because I
am more spiritual than you. It is not a psychotic delusion or an LSD flashback.
It is because it happened in reality and I entered into that reality through
His suffering. The experience of it is because of the suffering and the
suffering is so very real. It is beyond anything that I can attach words too.
There is no need to describe the specific events or people involved in the
suffering because all the suffering is due to sin, whether it is your own sin
or the sin of others against you, it is still sin. Sin demands to be paid. The wage
sin demands is death. Suffering precedes death.
I felt the horror of my own sin against Him and others. I
felt the horror of others sin against me. I was sin just as He was sin. I feel
the pain of His separation from the Father due to sin. I feel the pain of the
Father, as He had to turn from His only Son, as He became sin. When the Father
turns away, the Son is crushed beneath the weight of sin. For the first time,
in time and eternity, there is no communion between the Father and Son. There
is nothing that can describe this.
First there was the emotional distress in the Garden of Gethsemane that almost brought death; “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”. Then there was the physical beating and scourging that had almost brought death and then the actual crucifixion. This is beyond our understanding. Finally there was the actual bearing of sin by the innocent, sinless one. This is even further beyond our understanding. Then, to have the Father turn away and depart from Him on top of it all is beyond the human language to convey. When you view the crucifixion in time or from a perspective that is not in Christ, then you see a man being tortured on a cross. When you understand that He is there in your place and you accept His sacrifice for you; this should drive you deeper in order to have a better understanding or a perspective that is in Christ and outside of time. When we truly understand what has taken place there, then the physical crucifixion becomes secondary in relation to the bearing of sin and separation from the Father. To have both at the same time is incomprehensible.
Can
you even begin to understand this? Everything that was in the eternal plan was
now in doubt to Him as sin permeates His soul. Was it all a lie to get Him to
bear the cross? How could my Father do this to me? My Father cannot lie. Sin
torments Him beyond our understanding. The people mocking Him are a glimpse
into the spirituals where demons mock Him. They bring doubt and confusion as
the Son of Man, as man, has made Himself defenseless prey to every evil and sin
and death. Look at what sin has done to
mankind. Look at all the evil in the world all through time. Look at all the
suffering. All of this was put on Him. Do you think He wasn’t going mad? Do you
think He didn’t doubt everything? Do you think He didn’t want to give up? Why do you think He cried out “Father, why have you forsaken
me”?
There
was no answer. The Father could have spoken to Him as He did before. He could
have reassured Him but He was silent. Was He there? Did He even hear? Did He
even care? Don’t think that these things didn’t enter His thoughts as fear and
doubt and betrayal and death and hell and every dark, evil thing that ever was;
permeated the Son of God. We don’t know how long He was in this state. We can
only see from our perspective in time. I believe that in the midst of all of
this, He still could have quit. I believe He still knew that He was God and at
any time could have stopped it but He chose to bear it out of His great love
for us. The ineffable love of the Son of God as seen in the ineffable suffering
of the Godhead.
You
must understand that before the cross, He knew what He was going to do and
accomplish. Looking unto Jesus the author
and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured
the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the
throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2). But in the midst of it,
when sin literally engulfed Him and the Father was silent, I don’t believe He
saw this any longer. Sin destroys everything it encounters. Sin brings death.
Just try to imagine how horrible this was. When the Father turned away,
everything He knew was no longer known. Everything He believed was challenged.
Everything He is, was in question. Yet, He still trusted the Father in the
midst of all the darkness and evil.
Now
we come to you and I. If you have had this experience of entering His suffering
as I have, then you were faced with this same thing. Again, the degree of this
cannot be compared to His. Even though I know what God says and I believe it
and after I surrendered in Gethsemane and willingly went to my cross, I encountered
the same thing. I felt sin, I became sin. Everything I believed was challenged.
I cried out to God “why have you forsaken me”. You said you would never leave
me or forsake me. Where are you? Complete silence. I am engulfed in my sin and
those that have sinned against me. I cannot function. My mind is telling me
that it’s all a lie. My body has given up. My spirit holds on to truth not
knowing if it is still truth. I exist and yet I don’t exist. I exist in a
non-existent void where I get a glimpse of light only to be swallowed up in
darkness. Hope is a vague mist and hopelessness is like the sun that evaporates
the mist. Is hope my own delusion? It is at the same time, my greatest strength
and my greatest weakness. I cling to a God who isn’t there. Faith seems like a
candle in a raging sea of darkness. Where is joy, where is peace and the
abundant life that was promised me? I cry out for death but death delights in
my suffering and wants no part of me.
Have
I literally gone to hell? This must be hell. Eternally separated from God while
crying out to Him eternally. I don’t recall dying but I must be in hell and
everyone who I encounter is just part of my hell that is imitating my life.
Even those I try to explain this to say that this is still real life and I am
not in hell, but they are just part of my hell. How can I be in hell if I
accepted Jesus? Was it all a scam? There is no relief. The suffering and sorrow
are present 24/7, 365 days a year. How does time exist in this place? There
must be time because the measure of suffering doesn’t end. There is no relief.
Where is the comforter? My aloneness is enhanced by my loneliness. There is no
one, absolutely no one. All I do is cry out to the Lord. Where is the Lord? Is
there a Lord? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I hold on to my faith
and my belief even though it is like holding on to air. I continue to trust a
God that may not exist. Nothing can exist in this nothingness and yet I exist.
The pain is a constant reminder that I exist.
In
this abyss of nothingness, I try to hold on to faith, trust and belief but it’s
like holding on to air. I reach out and grasp for it but there is nothing there
and yet I still grasp. I find myself falling. Falling endlessly, never to hit
bottom to die. I get a glimpse of hope floating through this abyss of
nothingness but is it more false hope? Yet, I continue in faith and trust
because without these, nothingness becomes less than nothing. Darkness becomes
darker. I know that any faith or trust that I have is not from myself, it is a
gift from God and yet this faith and trust comes from the God that may not even
exist, so even the faith and trust isn’t real, it is only a delusion to keep me
holding on to nothingness…and yet I still hold on to it. Everything becomes a
paradox and I become the pawn that is slowly, mercilessly devoured by the
incessant pulling of each. While all of this is going on in the spirituals,
there are always those in the physical who stand there mocking me, and those
that have betrayed and deserted me, unaware and oblivious of the great love and
forgiveness that I have for them even as they revile me. This too is a gift
from my God who has allowed me to be here.
This is a vain attempt to try to put into words an experience that is not expressible. If it were something that could be expressed in human words then our Lord would have expressed them at the time. These things cannot be conferred but must be experienced. My feeble attempt to express them is only for the purpose of preparing one who will experience this. Although once this experience begins, these words will be of no use…another paradox. Most are willing to be resurrected but few are willing to go to the cross or Gethsemane. Both are required before resurrection. If you want to know Him and the power of His resurrection then you must enter the fellowship of His suffering and be conformed to His death. When this happens, even the most virtuous are unaware or blinded to those who enter into this suffering. It is as if God wants no one to know or to be able to give comfort. It seems like the persecution of the wicked is small when compared to the servants of God.
Have you ever been burned alive? What about being frozen to death or suffocation by drowning? Have you ever been crucified? Think about any of these tortuous deaths and how you would describe the pain that you suffered. Could you? How do you describe pain that is beyond description? Even if there was a way to convey in words the pain of the experience, the hearer would not experience the pain. Even if the hearer could understand what you were trying to convey, they still would not understand because it is something that would have to be experienced in order to understand. Even if the hearer also experienced the same type of death, their experience of it would be different than your experience of it although it was a similar kind of death. It is the same when you enter into the sufferings of Christ. These are things that the Lord has kept secret in the same manner that my life is now hidden with Christ in God. We are the only ones who know. When this happens to you, the Lord will hide you within Himself so that no one else can see this. You and He will be the only ones that know...until...
Dana Leonardi
April-May 2012
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