Have You Ever Felt Abandoned by God?

03 May Have You Ever Felt Abandoned by God?

We’re in a series that is looking at why Christians can believe in God. We’ve been making the point that if we reject God, we’ve only done half the job. The other half is that we must explain reality without God, which cannot be done.

Whenever we are tempted to turn away from God, to try to find the answer to our spiritual issues someway other than God, we are shooting ourselves in the foot, making things worse instead of better.

Therefore, we must continue to believe in Him and move toward God in spite of our problems, questions, and challenges in life. So, as we ask the question “Why believe in God?” – the answer in this blog post is: Because God is always there for us, even when we don’t feel like He is.

Have you ever felt overlooked by God, or neglected, or even abandoned? Boy, I have. Many times, I have felt that God was somewhere else in the universe doing something more important with someone more worthy.

Prayers go unanswered, circumstances remain unimproved, frustrations and disappointments continue unresolved, leaving me thinking “Where in the world is God?!?”

If you have ever felt that way… if you are feeling that way right now… there is nothing wrong with you. It is not unusual to feel that way. We just have to be sure we process everything correctly so that we end up embracing truth, which is the only thing that can “set us free” (John 8:32).

God doesn’t abandon anyone

The first step in coping with a feeling of being abandoned by God is to get a tight grip on the reality that God does not abandon His children.

Hebrews 13:5 says, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

Then, in Luke 15, Jesus tells the story of a man who had 100 sheep. When one of them went missing, he went looking for the one lost sheep until he found it.

God doesn’t abandon anyone. So, we get a grip on that truth, like a drowning person at sea gets a grip on a life raft.

People in the Bible felt abandoned

• Moses cried out to God, “How long?” before you help us (Psalm 90:13).
• David cried out to God, “How long?” will it be before you help me? (Psalm 35:17).
• Isaiah cried out to God, “How long?” before you deliver us? (Isaiah 6:11).
• Habakkuk anguished, “How long?” before you hear me? (Habakkuk 1:2).

It is not unusual for God’s children to feel abandoned.

God has a different timetable than we do

Yet, God does not abandon His children. It’s just that He has a different timetable than we do. We want things now, and if not now, then yesterday. But God is not deterred by our impatience. He will do what is right, no matter.

• Abraham was promised a son, but the promise was not fulfilled for another 25 years until he was 100 years old!
• Joseph was given a promise from God that he would be a great ruler, but it was another 15 years (give or take) before the promise was fulfilled, and he spent that time as a slave and in prison!
• David was anointed by the prophet Samuel to be the next king over Israel. But instead of having an inauguration ceremony the next day, David spent much of the next 7 years, or so, of his life dodging Saul, the current king, and trying to keep Saul from lopping his head off.

Second Peter 3:8 – 9 says, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness…” It just seems like it from our perspective.

God has a number of things He has chosen to accomplish by His “slowness”

• To bring glory to God. Jesus explained that Lazarus’ death created greater glory to God (John 11:40). Many came to Christ as result of Lazarus’s resurrection.
• To strengthen our faith. God was testing Abraham’s faith by delaying the birth of Isaac. Scripture says that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness (Romans 4:3).
• To mature our character. James 1:2 – 4 tells us that trials (and God’s “slowness” can be a real trial!) make us perfect and complete, lacking in nothing, if we go through them in faith.
• To increase our eternal reward. Romans 8:18 tells us that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed to us.
• To increase our eternal position. Luke 19:11 – 19 tells us that when we are faithful at little things, God will give us greater things.

So, slowness is baked into God’s plan for His purposes, some of which we can understand and some we can’t. But there’s nothing wrong with God, nor us, nor the system when things move slowly.

 Conclusion

The “sit – stay” command is the most difficult command to teach dogs in obedience training. They must sit and stay for usually around three minutes (twenty-one minutes in dog time) doing absolutely nothing, while their trainer and the judge go behind a screen of some kind out of sight. The command is so difficult because the dogs think that they are not doing anything, and that they have been forgotten.

Neither is true. The dogs are doing something. They are sitting and staying, obeying the single most difficult command. And they are not forgotten. Everyone there is holding their breath to see if they’re going to remain faithful.

So it is with us. God is trying to make some-one out of us, and then he will do some-thing with us.

When we feel abandoned by God, we must – as we saw earlier – get a grip on truth, like a drowning person at sea gets a grip on a life raft.

We must learn to “sit and stay”, trusting Him to fulfill His promises in His time. God will honor our faith as we do, and give us disproportionate reward (2 Corinthians 4:16 – 18).

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