Growing in Intimacy with God - Where Is God When I Hurt?

We’ve been talking for the last few weeks about learning to live in intimacy with the Father and learning to live in the reality of his love. I think it's the most important part of our transformation. And our transformation is essential if we’re to be salt and light to the world around us, and bear the image of God to the world. But the thing that will derail all that quicker than anything, in my opinion and experience, is pain and suffering.

In Psalms 10:1, the Palmist asks a familiar question: “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” If you’ve lived very long in this world as an adult, you understand that question. Because it certainly feels, at times, that God does hide himself in times of trouble. The hard, cold reality of life with God is that he doesn’t often do what we think he should . . . or in the way we think he should . . . or when we think he should. He doesn’t often seem to prevent disaster, or heartache, or pain, or abuse, or death. People – even good people, even God’s people – suffer in this world at the hands of others, and sometimes they just seem to suffer at the hands of life itself. And the fact that God doesn’t often prevent the pain has caused every generation to question his power or his love or even his very existence. Including me.

“Why? Where are you, God? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” These are hard questions, and we often ask them in the darkest moments of our lives, in the midst of crushing pain or desperate fear.

I don’t have any easy answers. But I have been wrestling with these questions for a long, long time. And my wrestling has not been an abstract academic exercise. It has been because I’ve spent a good deal of time in the midst of miseries of my own – the kinds of things that would prompt questions as the psalmist asks. So I understand the questions because I understand where they come from.

God’s answers have been slow in coming, and maybe don’t even qualify as answers as much as insights. And I suspect that the slowness has had more to do with my capacity to absorb new perspectives than with reluctance on the part of God. But he has taught me some things that have caused me to love him even more now than before.

Join me in today's episode as we discuss:

1. Life in a fallen world.

2. The choice to embrace God in the midst of pain.

3. The futility of trying to understand the hurt.

4. Paul's motivation to rejoice in affliction and how it can work for us.

5. The absolute necessity of NOT suffering in silence.

6. A couple of quotes and a song recommendation you absolutely don't want to miss!

 

Resources For Today’s Show:

He Loves Me: Learning to Live in the Father's Affection, by Wayne Jacobsen (2008).

PLEASE listen to the song Gratitude, by Nicole Nordeman

Thank you for joining us today. As always, we’d appreciate it if you’d tell others about the podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe,  rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please visit us at our website — thejesussociety.com — which we’ve also just launched, and which we’ll be updating as we go along. Also, please join us and be part of the conversation on our new Jesus Society Facebook group.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you’ll be back. And remember, you are unbelievably loved.

 

Music and audio production by Nathan Longwell Music