The spiritual journey begins with faith, which is essentially the recognition that we lack power and need dependence on God. Initially, faith may be only fragmentary and episodic, but nonetheless it comprises the basis for our spiritual life. Without faith, we cannot please God (Hebrews 11:6), because only through trust will we form with God what God desires, a deep relationship of mutual love.
However, we may experience, when we are seeking God, striving to know him, to see him, and to experience his presence, what appears as if he is withdrawing. Despite our attempts to come closer to God and know God more, it is as if God is elusive, staying just out of reach. Our seeking seems to be rebuffed, so what is going on? Why would God do this?
You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. James 4:3
James writes these cautionary words about worldly cravings which serve our own appetites, but is not the principle the same for spiritual, even good desires, such as the desire to know God? Is it possible to want to know God in a mistaken way, for what are ultimately wrong motives, and in a manner which is essentially self-serving?
My answer is “yes” based on personal experience. We can want to know God on our terms rather than his. But what would “our terms” be? We may desire to know God so that we may be more certain and less dependent, which is the opposite direction of growing in the relationship that is by faith.
Often that is what we are doing when we want “proofs” for God, and many are happy to offer what they claim are proofs. We may want to “see” and “find” God in ways which actually work against the faith that is essential to relationship with God. We can want to know in a way that gives us control, to make us more certain and ultimately less dependent.
Faith is the absence of self-dependence that certainty offers, and instead the emergence of a radical trust in God. As faith matures, we realize we have nothing in ourselves to stand on, hope for, or have confidence in. We in our own need must fully entrust ourselves to God. This is a risky act of self-denial.
Since faith is, by nature, an abandoning of all confidence in what we can do, or know, or master, sometimes we may seek God in a manner which would make faith irrelevant. We may want to know God, see God, and experience God so that we no longer have to trust in the mystery of the unknowable. This is when God may hide himself. God is remaining out of our grasp because we are not coming to him in faith.
For God to show himself to us when our desire is to know him apart from faith, would be to facilitate in us less faith not more. Of course, God is not going to do that because it would not deepen our relationship of mutual love and trust.
Our proper relationship with God is one of utter reliance. The struggle is that so often we want to ground ourselves in our knowing rather than be grounded in him by faith. We must realize that our true way is to surrender to God on his terms, not try to know him on ours. God reveals himself to those who humbly seek him, who make no demands, and who are open to however and whenever God wants to show himself.