When God Hides

[StriperAddict]

My wife passed along this study in an email from work. In light of a few other threads over here in the SP, I thought this had some good points to ponder and discuss:

When God Hides

A study of Psalm 13:1-6

Psalm 13:1 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

There are benefits to pastoral ministry. Recently a woman wrote about how thrilled her family was to receive their green cards for permanent residency in this country. We had prayed consistently for this family and supported them through their many struggles and setbacks. Now she shared her joy with her church family.

Of course, pastoral ministry also has tough times. Once I stood with a newly married wife as her husband yelled at her, calling her every name possible. He ripped her house keys out of her hands. Later, he replaced the locks on their house and boarded up the windows to prevent her from getting back in.

The ups and downs of pastoral ministry are echoed in Psalm 13. Among the delights of praise, we hear a litany of despair. Where is God when one of us gets a bad report from the doctor? Where is God when a marriage breaks under the stress of unemployment? Where is God when a spouse dies?

One of the hardest challenges I've faced is finding God in loss. I remember sitting with a mother in a hospital, praying for the recovery of her daughter. The daughter had been married only a year. While delivering the woman's baby, the doctor nicked something with his knife. Now the young woman was fighting for her life.

Her mother was inconsolable. When we prayed, she felt no peace. Within hours, her daughter was gone. After that, the mother stopped going to church. The young husband was angry and didn't know how to care for his baby alone. Where was God?
That question is often asked in suffering or loss. And often the only answer appears to be silence. The promises of Scripture fade in the agony of sorrow. The Holy Spirit seems to withdraw from hearts that grow chilly. Where is God when airplanes crash? Where is God when a spouse is unfaithful? Where is God when a baby dies? Where is God?
Psalm 13 echoes those concerns. In verse 1, the psalmist David asks God, "How long will you hide your face from me?" But this isn't the end of the psalm. Rather, the psalmist goes on to assure us that our God, who is enthroned on high, stoops low to see and hear and know us-even when we can't see his face and his words are like a foreign language to us.

"I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation," said David (Psalm 13:5 ). Likewise we continue to love and trust God, not for what we get out of it right now, but because it is the only way to make sense of this life. We trust in God, not because we always feel the wonder of his divine presence, but because there is truly no one else to turn to but God. And in time we will live to say, "He has been good to me" (Psalm 13:6).

Wayne Brouwer
Let's Talk

• What suffering have we known? How did it affect us? What was our relationship with God like at the time?
• How do we know that God cares for us today? What would we say as a testimony if asked to share our stories?

What do we need from each other during stressful times? How can we best echo back to one another the confident testimonies of Psalm 13?

 

[gordon 2]

This is somewhat interesting: Adam did he not hide his face from God? And David pleads that God not hide his face from him?

In Jesus God has not hid his face from us. We can chose to continue to hide our face like Adam and ignore the Good News in full or in part or we can chose to embrace it--something like someone embraced Jesus at the last supper--but as to his ministry.

I worked with a lady who's dauther was decapitated by a backhoe falling off of a truck. Her dauther a teacher was going to work and her mother not far behind her ( going to work as well) came upon the scene--finding her dauther's smiling but lifeless and bodyless head in the back of her Jimmy and her body minus a head sitting at the wheel.

That woman, that mother, never turned from her faith. But her husband railed at the Lord, telling Him and all He did not exist--as far as I know--till his dying day.

For some God is far away and it is His responsibility to meet us more than half way. In Christ he did. He met us fully. But from Christ we can hide our faces like Adam from his creator and like David we can ball in the spirit "Jesus come.",--- only He did.

It seems to me that when David had someone in his family die he cried and mourned ernestly, deeply for many days. His face was burried in his grief--not seeing this way or that way. Then one day he stood up and carried on with and in his relationship with his Lords.

 

[mtnwoman]

God says I will never forsake you.

I do think He moves away to wean us from milk. We still desire that milk like a baby (suckling) does...sometimes it's a short time, sometimes it's a long time. It might be hard to move to the meat of the word, or we may not be fed where we are 'feeding/watering". We may have to move to another place. Not that pastors are necessarily inadequate. We can sit in a 'meaty' church for years and never understand a thing....which does us no good. So we need to go where we know we are getting fed, whether all we can take in is milk or whether we are ready for the meat.

I also believe that it is us sometimes that move away from God. I have to ask Him, what did I do now? What am I not doing? What do you want me to do? Where are you? He gets my attention that way.

 

[StriperAddict]

Thanks for the posts. I'm sure this topic is inexhaustible. Jeremiah's writings in Lamentations 3 comes to mind.