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.
Comments
Post a Comment