Be honest!
Every Christian who has walked with Christ for any amount of time will admit (if they are honest) that there has seemingly been a time in their life where God was nowhere to be found.
Maybe it was a marriage gone bad, a rebellious child, a lost job, an alarming medical report or an intense battle with an addiction.
And…for some reason…prayer didn’t work. Reading the Bible didn’t work. Going to church didn’t work. Fasting didn’t work. NOTHING SEEMED TO WORK…and the more desperate you cried out for God the more seemingly distant He became.
Ever been there? Are you there right now?
I was thinking about those times in my life the other day after spending some time with Charisse. She’s gotten to be quite the adventurer…and loves to climb the stairs in our home.
For her to climb the stairs is…well…it’s hard. The staircase is long…and she literally has to strain to make it up all the way. (She occasionally stops to take a breather.)
On Saturday morning she began climbing and was completely oblivious to my presence behind her. She thought she was alone. She thought she was doing the work all by herself…
BUT…there I was…right behind her, watching her and holding my hands out behind her…just in case she fell…
She fell…but…I caught her and put her right back on the step. She never turned around to thank me. She never said, “I never knew you were there.” She just kept going and finally made it to the top…in her mind…all by herself; however, she would have never achieved those heights had it not been for her father being willing to walk behind her…one step at a time.
David, a man after God’s own heart said in best in Psalm 23:4—POWERFUL verse…he said that he KNEW that even though he was walking through the valley of the shadow of death…that He KNEW God was with him.
I personally believe that the times we maybe feel that God is the most distant…He’s actually right with us, arms out, waiting to catch us when we fall. And when we think we’ve accomplished something all by ourselves—we haven’t.
God will, at times, allow us to not have the FEELING that we are so close so that our FAITH will be FOUNDED on FACT. The fact is…He’s with me (and you) right now. The fact is…when we cry out He hears us. The fact is…every hair on our head is numbered. The fact is…He gathers our tears in a bottle. The fact is…before we experienced the current pain in our lives He KNEW what we were going to go through…and HE’S RIGHT THERE…whether we feel Him or not.
I’ve forgotten God at times in my life…we all have; however, there has NEVER been a time in your life that He has forgotten about you.