Consolation and Desolation
It has been a long journey for me to accept both consolation and desolation as gifts from God. These two words were not common vernacular for me until the recent years of my life. If you’re reading them and asking yourself what they even mean, you’re not alone.
Consolation is basically all the good feels when it comes to the Presence of God—the moments when we experience peace, joy, tranquility, clarity, epiphany, or anything that stimulates the sense of delight and pleasure. God is good, and He desires the experience of His goodness to be a common aspect of relationship with Him. Times of consolation are kisses of grace, gifts of love that flow from the endless riches of His great heart.
Desolation is the converse—disturbance, pain, anxiety, and a sense of burden are a few descriptors of what it feels like. In moments of desolation, a sense of forsakenness pervades the soul. The knee-jerk response to this is self-scrutiny, an introspective searching for where we have sinned or failed God. In desolation, God feels distant and sometimes even scary.
You may notice in both definitions above there is an emphasis on the emotions. That is because both consolation and desolation are experiences of the soul. God created us spirit, soul, and body; and the redemption Jesus purchased through His blood was triune. When we experience the gift of salvation, our spirit is regenerated within us and we become a new creation in Christ Jesus. This is a miracle of grace! Though indescribably amazing, it still is only the beginning of God’s intended work in us. He desires to sanctify every part of us.
The soul is powerful. It is the seat of our emotions, affections, and desires. When aligned with the leadership of God, our soul has the force within it to create incredible movement. It was the passion of Jesus’ soul that exuded from both His life and death. The same can be said of Peter, John, Paul, and the countless others that have turned the world upside down for His name.
The soul can also be very fickle. This is because the soul can receive input from multiple sources. Primarily, it is designed to submit to our spirit that continuously abides with the Holy Spirit. When this happens through whole-hearted surrender, the leadership of God is expressed through a life. However, the soul can also receive instruction from any combination of the circumstances of a sinful world, the influence of other people, and the demonic realm. Therefore, an undisciplined inner life will produce a soul with divided allegiance. The truth is, we all inherit this as part of the Fall, meaning, to some measure, we have all been trained in this internal division.
Understanding this brings clarity to why we need BOTH consolation and desolation. Jesus desires a whole-hearted love affair with His Bride. We’ve been commanded to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We need Him to do this adequately, but this does not remove all responsibility from our shoulders.
Once we become Christians, regenerated in our spirit by the Holy Spirit, and given a new identity in Christ, God continues to pursue, seeking to woo our soul into deeper places of connection with His heart. He longs for face-to-face fellowship. He longs to show us His glory. This woo-ing comes in the form of many consolations. In these many kisses of grace, our soul is becoming acquainted with Love. His Presence enkindles deep desire and affection. Like the bride in Song of Songs, our soul begins to long incessantly for the caresses of Divine consolation. And then suddenly, He vanishes.
Desolation ensues. The soul is thrust into chaos. It searches to and fro for consolation of any form. It turns from the inner life and begins to look without. The voices of other lovers begin to resound. Come shopping and take pleasure for yourself. Search images and find satisfaction. Work harder, and faster, and make yourself great. Eat as much as you like and be happy. Drink wine and let all worry slip away. All these lovers (and many more) are an arm’s reach away and promise to be available, on demand, so you will never have to experience the agony of desolation.
All the while, Jesus is intently gazing, silently asking, “Do you love me?”
Desolation are days of decision for the soul. Which lover do you choose? Desolation exposes the division within. Covenant faithfulness, our “Yes!” to Jesus’ probing question, has the power to destroy it. To do this, you will be forced to submit to the way of faith, seen by the spirit, but not felt in the soul. Choosing faith, and therefore exemplifying faithfulness, trains the soul to submit to the inner man and brings us into internal alignment. Once patience has run its course—trying and proving the integrity of our inner “Yes!”—the trial is over, and you will surely find a sweeter consolation and more intimate fellowship with Christ than before. This is the pathway of glory to glory.
If I’m being honest, my first response to desolation is still “What did I do wrong?” The last months have been very exposing on how dependent I’ve become on feelings. I’ve operated under the premise that I need consolation to pray, worship, preach, relate, work, and converse in an “optimal” way. I certainly want these things, but I do not need them. Faithfulness in the great and small matters, in the midst of desolation, is what Jesus is searching for. I pray He finds this in me. I pray He finds this in all of us. I am longing for a deeper revelation of His manifest glory, and I know it is not the fervency of my prayer, but the faithfulness of my obedience that will lead to this.
I would love to hear your thoughts as well as your own experience of this!
Abounding in hope,
Jordan