What Can I Do When It Feels Like God Isn’t There?Sýnishorn

Day #3 When God Disappoints

Most of us feel that God exists to help us feel happy, secure, and safe. So when something happens in our lives that makes us feel quite the opposite, our hearts can begin to accuse God of all manner of wrongdoing. When—for reasons that we cannot see—our emotions go dark and we lose the will to go on, what do we expect God’s responsibility to be?

It took me a good deal of work to realize that I had expectations of God hidden in my heart that were neither reasonable nor scriptural. These emotional expectations need exposure to the light of some self-awareness and Scripture. Only an honest, slow gaze into our expectations of God can reveal them fully.

Becoming self-aware is only part of the journey, though. The next step is to gain an increasing awareness of God himself as he really is. This is the journey of discipleship—growing in our knowledge of God from the Scriptures, from his people, and from the work of the Holy Spirit.

It has taken decades of walking with God for a simple truth to appear before my mind: God’s differences are features, not bugs. That is, God is different from me.

For Peter, God’s different-than-he-expected nature paved the way to a better Messiah than he could have imagined. All Peter saw was the total disappointment that Jesus would not be the Messiah he’d heard about since he was a boy. But the resurrection of Jesus showed Peter something we would do well to note—namely, that this God is the kind of God who is so different than what we expect that, even though we cannot imagine how, we can always know that his nature will turn out to be better than we can imagine.

Prayer:

Father, I thank you that you are different from me. When you seem different than I expect you to be, let your word refine my expectations. By your Spirit, reveal yourself more clearly to me and lead me to trust you more. Amen.