One of the experiences of the exercised Christian at times is to feel that God's presence is removed. Such desertions are painful to the godly. But they teach salutary lessons and bring forth fruit in the believer's life.

Paul states a profound and comforting truth for God's people when he writes in Romans 8:28: 'And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.' In a word, not singly, but together all things in the life of God's people shall work together for their real spiritual welfare.

The life of God's people resembles a watch. Open it and what do you see? You see that one wheel is turning in an anti-clockwise direction, but it is attached to another wheel that is working in a clockwise direction. Your first thought may be that the watchmaker is either foolish or confused. But he is neither.

He has so arranged this watch and put in a mainspring to govern all its wheels, that when wound, though one wheel turns this way and another that way, all work together to move the hands around the face of the watch. They appear to be in contradiction but they all work together to the same end. Such is the life of God's people. Some wheels in their life run clockwise, which sometimes gives a hope that these things are good for them, but other things seem to be all against them. It is only when their eye of faith is fixed on the great Watchmaker (who has planned everything in his all-wise decree) that they see he has placed the mainspring of free grace within their watch-life so that all providential and spiritual wheels are governed to work together for their welfare.

Though much often seems counter-clockwise and against you when you see one wheel of providence work within or against another wheel of grace in various spiritual afflictions, spiritual exercises, spiritual disappointments and spiritual riddles, yet your Jehovah-Shepherd knows exactly what he is doing. He shall work all things together to produce a divine and blessed result according to God's sovereign good pleasure and eternal counsel.

'All things' — all good things and all evil things work together for good. The best things — including the attributes and works of Jehovah, the promises and providences of the Father, the work and Person of the Son, the graces and labours of the Spirit, the everlasting covenant of grace with all its accompanying benefits of salvation, and all divine ordinances, such as Word and sacraments, prayer, the communion of saints — shall all work together for their spiritual good. Even the worst things — including divine desertion, sin, Satan, infirmities, temptations, afflictions, persecutions — shall all work together for spiritual welfare.

No doubt some of us will say, 'It is easy to understand how good things will work together for good, and I know that evil things are supposed to serve the spiritual welfare of God's people, but how divine desertion can work together for their good, I cannot comprehend.'

Allow me to show you a handful of ways how even divine desertion works together for the spiritual welfare of God's children, and from this we shall be able to safely conclude that, indeed, 'all things work together for good to them that love God.'

Children of God, does not the Holy Spirit use divine desertion in many ways to your spiritual welfare? Does not divine desertion drive you to the throne of grace to seek after and prize God's countenance more than ever, causing you to knock at heaven's gates with unceasing petitions? Does not the Lord use divine forsakings to cause you to examine your own soul to discover and stone the accursed thing within that has caused you to desert God and him to desert you, so that the winter of divine desertion yields the killing and mortifying of growing weeds of sin? Does not the common cause of divine absence, sin, cause you to hate sin with a holy hatred?

Does not divine withdrawal cost you the blessed price of trying and exercising all received graces, especially faith, hope and love, so that the rough file of a sense of God's absence is used to scrape off much spiritual rust? Does not an absent God cause you to value more what heaven has given, so that within your soul special grace does not become common grace, nor common grace become special grace? Does not a lost God serve to purge you of innumerable remaining infirmities, weaning you away from soul-embraced worldly inclinations, thoughts and actions?

Have you not experienced that the Holy Spirit uses a withdrawing God to cut off everything within you — your experiences, your humility, your unworthiness, your prayers, your faith, and your conversion, yes, all of you, so that total soul-lack may make room for the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart? Has he not used divine desertion to cut off from your side even the benefits God has given, such as promises and applied texts, so that what he gives does not become Lord in your soul over and above the Lord himself? Does he not delay to come in order to teach you that his delays are not denials, but rather, that his comings are always at his time and in his way, since he is sovereign in all his doings?

Does he not hold himself back in order to teach you that he possesses a full right never to come over to your soul again on account of your sinning against received grace? As the bride in the Song of Songs experienced, does not Jehovah often depart to draw you out of spiritual lethargy to follow and seek him, crying: 'Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?' Does he not lay the foundations of truth deep in your soul through deep desertion, convincing you that God himself must receive all honour and glory both in divine presence and divine absence, and that the difference between them is purely a matter of free sovereign grace?

Truly, these are Spirit-taught fruits of divine desertion, all profitable to your souls even though you fight against them. The Lord brings you into the depths of desertion on this side of the grave to keep you from the depths of damnation on the other side. He holds you above hell by desertion to keep you from hell for eternity. Your desertions work for your spiritual welfare to prepare you for heaven, and to make heaven all the more heaven when you shall finally arrive on the shores of eternal bliss. Truly, even when he appears to be absent, he is still secretly present with his Godhead, majesty, grace and Spirit.