Does God See What I’m Going Through, and Does He Care?
“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, if you turn to Him with praise, you will be welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away.”
C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Psalm 10
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“This is how it feels…” (vs 1, 10, 12)
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The question isn’t unfaithful.
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Shrinking God to human standards
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Assessing the character of God in light of our suffering
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Are we viewing through the correct lens?
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Trusting the character of God in spite of our suffering
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“And this is what I know…” (vs 14, 16, 17, 18)
“…there is a chronic temptation to reduce God to human dimensions, to express Him in manageable ideas. Human reason seeks to understand, to reduce everything to its own terms. But God is God. He is more than a superhuman being with an intellect keener than ours and a capacity for loving greater than ours. He is Unique, Uncreated, Infinite, Totally Other than we are.”
Brennan Manning, The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus
Correcting the Lens: Assessing the Character of God
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Job 26 – A right assessment of His power
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Genesis 50:19-20 – A right assessment of His goodness
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1 John 4:9-10 – A right assessment of His love
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will He not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died —more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:31- 39
Three New Questions to Ask About My Suffering
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“Lord, how might you be at work for my good in this hard situation?”
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“Jesus, how does this suffering unite me with you?”
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“Lord, what have you promised to ultimately do about all suffering, wrong, and injustice?”
“A Christian, then, is not a person who has solved the problem of suffering but one who has come to love and trust the God who has suffered for them.”
John C. Lennox, Where is God in a Coronavirus World?
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith— that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Ephesians 3:14-19
