You need to persevere so that when you have done the
will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For, "In just a little
while, he who is coming will come and will not delay." And, "But my
righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks
back." But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed,
but to those who have faith and are saved.
Hebrews 10:36-39 NIV
As we read the
Book of Job we realize that Job did not have a single page of Scripture…and
throughout his suffering he struggled with God’s apparent absence. Like Job, we feel forsaken at times; we
wonder if God is indifferent to our pain.
The kind of God Job wanted was absent, one who fit his notion of
fairness; who would give him whatever he asked.
Job poses questions that God doesn’t answer. Job was trying to figure out why bad things
happen. We know why Job was tested, but
at least in the pages of his book, he never learns the reason. God instead challenges Job to try and run the
world better.
So what do we
do when life hurts? In both the Old and New Testaments, a phrase is repeated: “The just shall live by faith.” While we’re plodding through life, we
trust. And we discover that God does for
us what we can’t do for ourselves; He enables us to persevere. He does so according to His schedule. “Faith means trusting God, even when His
timing disagrees with ours” (Reeve).
Faith also means striking out, with no clear end in sight, even with no
clear view of our next step. “Tempting God” has been defined as “trying to get more assurance than God has
given” (Newbigin).
In the Psalms,
the writers prayed with gutsy honesty, complaining when God appeared distant: “Why do you stand afar off, O Lord? Why do you hide
Yourself in times of trouble? How long will You hide Your face from me? (Psalms
10:1, 13:1). The absence of God was a common experience over the
years of Bible history. These may seem like shockingly angry prayers, yet God
can handle our anger. It’s better to complain to God than to ignore or delete
Him from our lives.
CS Lewis
writes that, in spite of God’s silences, we have a marked advantage over
non-believers by knowing that we live in a fallen world. Many things fit into place when we understand
how Paradise became polluted. This world
isn’t as God originally made it. The
world has been corrupted by sin and death.
God is not hidden; people have simply forgotten and forsaken Him.
The ancient
Greek philosophers viewed God as impersonal, remote and indifferent. The Bible
paints a different picture, revealing God as intimately involved…yet at times
He is distinctly silent and seemingly absent.
Pope Benedict writes that “God’s
silence is part of His revelation.” When we are leaning on God’s promises we
can bear His silences. God has not
abandoned us. Even though we don’t understand His ways, we trust Him
regardless.
It’s been said
that “the direct presence of God would overwhelm our freedom, with sight
replacing faith” (Yancy). God wants us to find Him with the eye of
faith. The irony is that God is
everywhere. To search for Him is like hunting for our eyeglasses while wearing
them. The Psalms also affirm God’s
presence. In Psalm
139 David writes, “Where can I go
from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the
heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I
rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even
there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast” (verses 7-10).
Oswald
Chambers writes: “Has God trusted you with His silence, a silence that has great meaning?
God’s silences are actually His answers.
His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more
wonderful understanding of Himself." God is never really silent--we just are deaf
to what He has to say to us. Like Job,
we sometimes judge God before the final sentence is completed.
On a wall in a
cellar in Köln, Germany, where Jews had hidden from the Nazis, an inscription
was written by an anonymous author: "I believe in the sun even when it is
not shining. I believe in love even when not feeling it. I believe in God even
when he is silent."
People of
faith observe a world in which every trace of God seems to have vanished; we
ask why we’ve been forsaken, yet we still obey.
We find ourselves climbing mountain slopes of increasing difficulty. We prepare ourselves for times when God seems
absent. Eugene Peterson writes, “The
story in which God does His saving work arises among a people whose primary
experience of God is His absence.”
People think
of Hell as fire and brimstone. Hell is
the complete, total absence of God. This is what Jesus suffered upon the Cross.
He cried out in spiritual agony, “My God, why
have You forsaken Me?” He endured separation from the Father so
that we might not.
Scripture to Claim:
Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him; Do not fret
because of him who prospers in his way, Because of the man who carries out
wicked schemes. Cease from anger and forsake wrath; Do not fret; it leads only
to evildoing. For evildoers will be cut off, But those who wait for the LORD,
they will inherit the land. Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no
more; And you will look carefully for his place and he will not be there. But
the humble will inherit the land And will delight themselves in abundant
prosperity. Psalms 37:7-11 NASB
