Does God Really Hide From Us?

Scripture: Psalm 10:1 (ESV)

10 Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

Devotion:

            In our last devotion we considered why we try to hide from God. The answer we found was pretty straightforward. We hide because we sin, and we don’t want to confess our sin to God for whatever reason. The cure is easy confess your sin and stop hiding your sin. Today we consider the opposite situation. Why does God sometimes appear to be hiding from us? This is a more perplexing problem. One that I won’t be able to solve in my 700 word devotion. But let’s lay out a few basics here.

 

            The reality of the hidden God appears throughout scripture. Sometimes God gives us the reason for his hiddenness as in Deuteronomy 31: “¹⁸ And I will surely hide my face in that day because of all the evil that they have done, because they have turned to other gods.” Here Israel’s rebellion and sin caused God to abandon his children to their sin. Sometimes we try to hide our sin from God, but sometimes our sin causes God to hide from us. In both cases the solution is repentance and renunciation of our sin. God responds to genuine repentance. In Deuteronomy 32:45-46 we have God’s promise of eventual restoration if the people of God obey his commands. ⁴⁵ And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, ⁴⁶ he said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law.

 

Other times the reason for God’s hiddenness is simply unknown to the believer. Consider the plight of Job in chapter 13:24 “²⁴         Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?” Poor old Job he had no idea what he had done to deserve God’s hiddenness. In fact, Job never finds out the reason that God seems to have abandoned him. Believers throughout the ages have suffered in this way. The Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross penned an entire book on this subject called “The Dark Night of the Soul” in which he explores this topic extensively but is never able to give a definitive answer to the problem. More recently Mother Theresa expressed her feelings of abandonment by God in a letter to her spiritual director:

"Where is my Faith—even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness—My God—how painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith—I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart—& make me suffer untold agony." 

            Even Jesus cried out from the cross “my God why have you forsaken me” before he died. His desolation from God resulted in our salvation, but as we have seen not all hiddenness of God is so easily explained. The only thing we can do is repent of any known sin, pray, and rely on the scriptures that proclaim God will not abandon his people forever. We must always hope in God no matter what our situation is. God is faithful and does not want his children to be orphans without a God. God will come and make himself known to us if we will be still and know that he is God.

 

Prayer:

            God of heaven thank you that you are always for us and never against us. Even when we feel abandoned and hopeless in this world, we know that you are there with us. When our prayers feel like they are not heard help us to know that you do hear when your people cry out to you. Let us not be weary of calling on your name even when you seem absent. Help us to trust in the promises in your word not in our feelings which change from hour to hour. May we with the psalmist declare this refrain from Psalm 13(ESV) “⁵   But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. ⁶          I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” Amen.