When God Feels Hidden: Attaching to the Spirit from Ezra to Esther
I don’t know why… but I often expect the Spirit to be obvious.
It could be because we know Him from when He came with a rushing wind and tongues of fire (Acts 2). Or when He hovered over the waters in Genesis 1.
Those things? They seem pretty obvious… right?
So, when it comes to our own lives, we expect a clear word or a strong impression. We hope the door to swings WIDE open or a window sash is thrown up, loud and clear. We expect a moment where we can point to something and say, “That? That was God.”
And sometimes? He is that obvious.
An Obvious Behold Moment
Like the time we were praying about launching a church plant, and I was pregnant with our third child. We had two rambunctious little boys, one in first grade and the other in preschool. We were planning to be “surprised,” and we were all hoping for a girl (to be completely transparent). We’d talked through names and already had one for our future daughter, but Michael and I couldn't agree on the boy names. Suddenly, one day, I had the idea to read through the Old Testament, making sure to spend extra time in certain books of the Bible.
I’d just finished a Bible study on Esther, so as we sat studying the Bible together, I stated, “Man, babe. I don’t know the last time I read the book of Ezra… It’s fascinating!”
He nodded and went back to his devotional.
Over the next two weeks, I read through Ezra, then moved into Nehemiah.
My mother asked if I could join her in Kansas City for a Beth Moore conference, and I agreed. And as I sat in the audience, Bible in my lap, my mom sitting next to me, Beth said, “Well, we were going to be spending time in 1 Corinthians this week. But suddenly, the Lord told me this last Monday to switch it up. He specifically asked me to study this book. So, please turn in your Bibles to the book of Ezra.”
My jaw dropped. And then, in that instant, I heard a distinct voice beside me while a rush of breeze seemed to whip around me, raising goosebumps.
“You are having a boy. It’s going to be okay. And you’re going to name him Ezra.”
Sometimes, the Spirit is obvious. But what do we do when He’s not?
The books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther show us what it looks like to belong to God even when His presence doesn’t look like what we expect. Ezra and Nehemiah begin with a people returning from exile, rebuilding their walls, city, and temple after they were destroyed, and longing for the presence of their God, whom they had been told about and remembered from generations past. Yet even after the temple is rebuilt, something is still missing. The building returns, but rebuilding a structure does not automatically rebuild the human heart.
And by the time we arrive at Esther, God’s name isn’t mentioned at all.
And yet, He is EVERYWHERE.
Maybe these books teach us about attaching to the Spirit, which is super important: We cannot measure His nearness by how obvious He feels to us.
The Spirit Often Begins with a Stirring
The book of Ezra opens with one of the most unexpected people responding to God's movement.
“The LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia.” Ezra 1:1
The thing I think we often read by too quickly was that Cyrus was a Persian king… not an Israelite. Yet, God moved through him to send His exiled people home to rebuild Jerusalem. Knowing this should expand our understanding of the Spirit, and limiting Him to where we expect Him to move isn’t wise.
Often I’ve seen Him work through someone I wouldn’t have chosen. Sometimes He changes the heart of a person at the very top of organizations or kingdoms, or opens a door to something we could never have opened ourselves. A thought keeps returning to us, over and over, or a burden or idea won’t leave our minds and hearts.
Nehemiah experiences something similar. Before he began rebuilding the wall in Jerusalem, God placed something within him.
“In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.” When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.”
Notice where attachment to the Spirit of God first began with Nehemiah… his attention.
For Us: Behold the Spirit
When we feel as though we are distant from the Spirit and are desiring to move into relationship with Him, ask yourself first:
What is being stirred in me?
What keeps returning to my heart?
What makes me cry or fills me with joy?
What burden will not release me?
Not every thought is from the Spirit (which is why we should test what we sense against Scripture, the character of God, wisdom, and trusted people who will speak the truth to us). But when we follow the Spirit, we have to pay attention (and BEHOLD) long enough to notice when God is inviting us towards something or someone.
We cannot respond to the Spirit who feels hidden or forgotten when we are too distracted to notice Him in the first place.
The Spirit Attaches Us to The Word
If we go back to the book of Ezra, there’s something worth noticing. Ezra had “set his heart” to study the Torah, practice it, and teach it to Israel (Ezra 7:10). Later, in the book of Nehemiah, we see him bring that to fruition. He stands before the people in Nehemiah 8 and reads Scripture from morning until midday. He had other teachers move through the crowd to help interpret for those who didn’t understand what they were hearing.
And then… the people of Israel began to weep.
They began to encounter the Living God through His Word. This matters so deeply when we talk about attaching to the Spirit, because the Spirit and His Word are not competitors. Sometimes we can become so desperate for a fresh word from God that we ignore the Word He has already given us! But the Spirit who speaks is the Spirit who has always been forming God’s people through truth.
Nehemiah 9 makes this clear:
“You gave your good Spirit to instruct them.” (Nehemiah 9:20)
And later, they remember that God admonished their ancestors by His Spirit through the prophets (Neh. 9:30).
The Spirit instructs.
The Spirit reminds.
The Spirit reveals.
The Spirit turns hearts back toward God.
For Us: Get Into His Word
It sounds so cliché to say, “Just read the Bible.” But when we want to grow in our attachment to Him, one of the most powerful things we can do is open the Bible and start paying attention. Start with, “What does this passage say?” but then ask, “Spirit, what are You showing me about God?” And “What are You revealing in me?” and “What are You inviting me to believe about Jesus?”
When we become more and more familiar with God’s Word, we will be able to more easily discern and hear the voice of the One who inspired it.
Rebuilding Things is Not the Same as Becoming Whole
Through Ezra and Nehemiah, the temple and the wall are rebuilt, worship is reformed, the covenant is renewed, educational systems are put in place, and there is confession and celebration. But the book's ending is still super uncomfortable.
The book ends with the unsettling realization that external reconstruction alone cannot produce the kind of internal transformation God’s people actually need.
Maybe we need to hear that warning, too.
For Us: Allow the Spirit to Transform Our Hearts
Just like the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, if we attend to just our “exterior lives”, we can rebuild our routines without attaching ourselves to the Spirit. We can attend church, read the Bible study, highlight our Bibles, join the small group, serve in the ministry, fix our schedules, create boundaries, and still remain inwardly distant from God.
Spiritual practices are beautiful gifts, but they were never intended to replace the relationship with the Spirit. We need more than reconstructed lives; we need the Spirit of God to transform us from within.
The larger Biblical story eventually gives us exactly that. God’s people themselves (that’s us!!) become His dwelling place, built into a temple in which God lives through His Spirit. He has chosen to dwell with us… and within us.
Looking at Esther, God Goes Quiet
The book of Esther is one of my favorites, even though the book never mentions God by name. There are no burning bush moments or Red Sea splitting. Not even a temple filling with God’s glory. Instead, there’s a young Jewish woman forced into a Persian palace, a relative who overhears an assassination plot, a king with insomnia, a historical record he finds that same night, a banquet, a conversation, and that same young woman willing to speak. Because of this, a terrible plan to begin a genocide of the Jewish people collapses.
God appears hidden, and yet His fingerprints are all over the story. Through the book of Esther, we’re invited to look beneath “coincidences” and notice God's providence quietly moving the story toward deliverance.
Esther teaches us something that Ezra and Nehemiah prepare us to understand: God’s hiddenness is not the same as His absence.
For Us: His Hiddenness ≠ His Absence
There will be seasons when you cannot see clearly what the Spirit is doing. You won’t hear a voice next to you or hear a booming voice giving you direction. You may spend days, weeks, months, even years, praying for an answer or a way out. In the meantime, you may take steps, hoping you’re moving the right way. You may even look around and think, “God, are You even in this with me?”
Ezra, Nehemiah, and especially Esther, all whisper back, "Keep beholding… keep paying attention.”
Attachment Sometimes Looks Like Courageous Obedience
One of the most beautiful parts of the book of Esther is that God’s providence doesn’t eliminate the need for Esther’s obedience. She still has to walk into the room and use her voice. She risks her position, and even her life. Mordecai still has to act. The Jewish people still fast.
God works through willing people, and that’s super important for us to understand, as women who want to live attached to the Spirit. But at some point, our beholding needs to move into obedience.
Speak. Go. Apologize. Teach. Create. Give. Stay. Leave. Tell the truth. Use your voice. Take the next right and good step.
Esther becomes a part of a long biblical pattern of women whose willingness matters immensely in God’s redemption story. The Biblical story moves toward the Spirit being poured out on sons and daughters (Joel 2:28-31; Acts 2), empowering both to participate in the work of God’s Kingdom.
The Spirit doesn’t just comfort us. He empowers us.
For Us: Look for Behold Moments
Maybe that’s the invitation from Ezra through to Esther: Pay attention to what God is stirring. Return to His Word. Allow the Spirit to transform your heart, not just your circumstances. Obey what He’s made clear. And when He’s quiet, look for His fingerprints (the unexpected conversation, the door that opened, the delay that frustrated you, the person who arrived at the exact right moment, the Spirit illuminating something you’d already read in the Bible several times, the burden you can’t shake, or the courage you didn’t know you had until you needed it.
These “Behold Moments” are places we stop long enough to recognize that God is moving all along. And sometimes, like Esther, we may look back later and realize, “He was there the whole time.”
