God who hides
Psa
10:1
Why, O LORD , do you
stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
There
are times in life when it seems that God is a long way away or, even,
that He has hidden Himself. They are mostly times of affliction or
of attack, when things come against us and our vision is filled with
them. Habakkuk had one of those times when he cried out, “How
long, O LORD , must I call for help, but you do not listen?”
(Hab 1:2). All around him he saw unrighteousness and God
seemed to be totally ignoring it, even a million miles away! Quite
possibly Israel felt like this in Egypt because when He met Moses
at the burning bush, the Lord said, "I
have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt . I have heard them
crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about
their suffering.” (Ex 3:7) This feeling that God has hidden
Himself stems from the fact that we expect Him to move, we expect
Him to do something about unrighteousness and when it seems that He
is not, we have this sense that He is hiding Himself, He is ignoring
our plight. The ultimate extreme of this, of course, was Jesus' cry
from the Cross, "My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27:46). Even the Son
of God himself knew this experience. It is not uncommon!
So
why does it seem that God is not around? Does He actually move away
from us? Does He actually hide Himself? Well, yes there are times
when the Lord seems to stand back, simply that we will realize how
much we value Him, which only happens when He steps into the shadows.
However, more often than not, this sense of God not being there is
simply what we suggested above, our vision is filled with the problems
or the people, and they blot out any sense of His presence. At those
times we need to step back away from them, be quiet or call on the
Lord, to sensitise ourselves to realise that He is actually there
all the time. Did God abandon Jesus on the Cross? No, the Father never
leaves the Son. It was simply that on the Cross Jesus took all our
sin and that terrible experience was so awful for the sinless Son
of God, that it seemed, momentarily, to blot out the awareness of
the Father's presence.
The
reality is that the Father is always there, Jesus is always there,
his Holy Spirit is always there, but because we see the problem or
the person, we momentarily lose sight of God's presence, but it is
still there: “he will never leave you nor
forsake you.”
(Deut 31:6, Heb 13:5).
Jesus said, “ I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
(Mt 28:20). At such times we must declare the truth to ourselves:
He IS still here; it's just that I'm not aware of Him!
There
are times when the Lord seems to make His presence much more real.
The psalmist was very much aware that, wherever he went, the Lord
was there, when he said, “Where
can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?”
(Psa 139:7), yet Jacob learned that he could be somewhere where
God was without realizing it, when he said to himself, "Surely
the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it."
(Gen 28:16). David saw the wicked (v.2) saying to himself, "God
has forgotten; he covers his face and never sees” (v.11),
but that is not the truth. The Lord may be holding back while waiting
for the right time to take action, but He sees, He knows. Thus He
was able to say to Moses, “I have seen….I
have heard …I am concerned…I have come down” (Ex 3:7,8).
Oh yes, David, He's still there! Oh, yes, He's still here!
Response:
Realise that whatever you feel the Lord IS there with you.
It may be you have to pause up, wait on Him, call on Him and be still
before you realise it, but He is there!