Silas
Beloved of All
The pain you have put into words is deep and very real, and feeling far from God while carrying fear, anxiety, confusion and doubt can make that hurt go down into your bones. Losing joy and even the desire to pray does not mean you are forgotten or beyond His reach. Scripture shows us a man who knew this kind of stripping. He lost his possessions, his family, his health, and even the comfort of his friends, until he was left alone with nothing but the bare essence of existence. In that place he said his grief was heavier than all the sand of the sea, that he felt as if the arrows of God were within him. Out of that misery he cried out, questioning why he had ever been born and challenging God to explain Himself. Those cries were not calm statements of truth about God, they were the honest anguish of a suffering person trying to understand Him, and God understands that kind of honest cry.
What helps to remember in such a season is that God remains sovereign and He sets limits. When the heavenly beings presented themselves before Him and the adversary came among them, God allowed testing but He put boundaries on how far it could go. His word promises that He will not allow you to be tested beyond what you are able to bear, and with the test He makes a way to endure it. The enemy works by deception, trying to make you believe God is unfair, that His commands are harsh, that He is withholding something good from you, and by placing enticements in your path to draw you away from His word to follow your own desires. To resist those lies and allurements is part of walking with God, not because you are strong on your own, but because He is at work.
It is easy in pain to pull God down to our level and measure Him by our feelings. He is not a man as we are. Our human language falls short of describing His nature, and our wisdom cannot trace out all His reasons and ways. We see only a part, and we do not know why every sorrow is permitted. The friends who came to comfort that suffering man kept insisting they knew the reason, that he must be wicked, that God was only paying him back. They were wrong. Human understanding cannot fully explain the purposes of God.
What you can hold onto when you do not understand your circumstances is the confidence that God loves you and is still at work though you cannot see how. If you believe in His eternal plan and in life beyond this present world, you will not have to find all your hope in getting everything you want now from money or success or relief. The deepest need of your life is not for more things, but to know God and to be touched by Him through Jesus Christ. That relationship is what satisfies the cry within. What is man that God should set His heart upon him and crown him with glory, redeem him and make him His child, and yet that is what the Bible reveals He has done. He sees your ways and counts your steps. He knows you completely.
Scripture says happy is the person whom God corrects, so do not despise His shaping hand. He sometimes strips away the props we lean on, not to destroy us but to mold us and form us more into the image of Jesus Christ. He saves the needy, He gives hope when iniquity would otherwise silence it, and He keeps His own through famine and sword and the wounding power of words. When His purposes are finished and we see the end result of the sorrow and pain, His judgments are shown to be holy and true. He does not pervert justice.
You mentioned the desire to pray is gone. One of those friends accused the sufferer of casting off reverence and restraining prayer, as if discouraging prayer were the answer. The true counsel is the opposite. Receive His word and lay up His words in your heart. Bring Him even the weak and wordless prayers. You do not need demanding words or great eloquence. A simple, honest coming to Him through Jesus is enough. He invites you to find Him and be at peace. The man who has never known the presence and joy of God is the one to be pitied, not the one who has tasted it and now grieves its absence. The joy can return as you keep turning to Him.
In all his loss that man worshiped and said, naked I came into this world and naked I will leave it, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. And when his wife urged him to curse God and die, he answered, shall we receive good from God and not also receive hardship, and in all this he did not sin by charging God falsely. You may feel hurt and doubtful, and God can carry those honest feelings as you keep trusting that He loves you in spite of what you are experiencing.
May the Lord meet you in this grief, quiet your fear and confusion, and give you again the assurance of His love. May He restore a desire to seek Him, give you hope, and do that forming work in you that brings the satisfaction of knowing you are in the center of His will. In Jesus name, may you feel His nearness, His comfort, and the fulfillment of knowing you are His.
What helps to remember in such a season is that God remains sovereign and He sets limits. When the heavenly beings presented themselves before Him and the adversary came among them, God allowed testing but He put boundaries on how far it could go. His word promises that He will not allow you to be tested beyond what you are able to bear, and with the test He makes a way to endure it. The enemy works by deception, trying to make you believe God is unfair, that His commands are harsh, that He is withholding something good from you, and by placing enticements in your path to draw you away from His word to follow your own desires. To resist those lies and allurements is part of walking with God, not because you are strong on your own, but because He is at work.
It is easy in pain to pull God down to our level and measure Him by our feelings. He is not a man as we are. Our human language falls short of describing His nature, and our wisdom cannot trace out all His reasons and ways. We see only a part, and we do not know why every sorrow is permitted. The friends who came to comfort that suffering man kept insisting they knew the reason, that he must be wicked, that God was only paying him back. They were wrong. Human understanding cannot fully explain the purposes of God.
What you can hold onto when you do not understand your circumstances is the confidence that God loves you and is still at work though you cannot see how. If you believe in His eternal plan and in life beyond this present world, you will not have to find all your hope in getting everything you want now from money or success or relief. The deepest need of your life is not for more things, but to know God and to be touched by Him through Jesus Christ. That relationship is what satisfies the cry within. What is man that God should set His heart upon him and crown him with glory, redeem him and make him His child, and yet that is what the Bible reveals He has done. He sees your ways and counts your steps. He knows you completely.
Scripture says happy is the person whom God corrects, so do not despise His shaping hand. He sometimes strips away the props we lean on, not to destroy us but to mold us and form us more into the image of Jesus Christ. He saves the needy, He gives hope when iniquity would otherwise silence it, and He keeps His own through famine and sword and the wounding power of words. When His purposes are finished and we see the end result of the sorrow and pain, His judgments are shown to be holy and true. He does not pervert justice.
You mentioned the desire to pray is gone. One of those friends accused the sufferer of casting off reverence and restraining prayer, as if discouraging prayer were the answer. The true counsel is the opposite. Receive His word and lay up His words in your heart. Bring Him even the weak and wordless prayers. You do not need demanding words or great eloquence. A simple, honest coming to Him through Jesus is enough. He invites you to find Him and be at peace. The man who has never known the presence and joy of God is the one to be pitied, not the one who has tasted it and now grieves its absence. The joy can return as you keep turning to Him.
In all his loss that man worshiped and said, naked I came into this world and naked I will leave it, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. And when his wife urged him to curse God and die, he answered, shall we receive good from God and not also receive hardship, and in all this he did not sin by charging God falsely. You may feel hurt and doubtful, and God can carry those honest feelings as you keep trusting that He loves you in spite of what you are experiencing.
May the Lord meet you in this grief, quiet your fear and confusion, and give you again the assurance of His love. May He restore a desire to seek Him, give you hope, and do that forming work in you that brings the satisfaction of knowing you are in the center of His will. In Jesus name, may you feel His nearness, His comfort, and the fulfillment of knowing you are His.
