Where is God When Life is Hard?
Part I: Where is God?
INTRODUCTION: When you get blindsided by life… how do you deal with it? When things get overwhelming, those times where life doesn’t make much sense… you find yourself surrounded by pain or terrifying circumstances… your confused… your hurting… how do you handle it? How do those times affect your faith? Do you find yourself growing in your faith… or do you find your faith being challenged? That’s a good question to ask yourself because reality is… one of the few constants of life that we can depend on… is that life is messy… and will continue to throw curve balls at us.
Reality is…
• Life throws the unexpected at us all the time… we think we are on the right road… going in the right direction… and then out of nowhere the un-expectant happens…
• Life doesn’t always turn out the way we expect it to… we end up in a job that we never anticipated…
• Our family turns out different than what we expected…
• Our kids don’t turn out the way we thought they would…
• Reality is…Life is just unfair… bad things happen to us out of the blue… when we least expects it…
• Life at times seems to go out of its way… just to throw the absurd at us… all most like it is trying to catch us of guard… so it could swallow us up…
• Reality is…Life is just confusing… it’s hard to know which way to turn at times…
• Reality is… Life seems to be flying past so fast… that it feels like we can barely hang on…
• Reality is…the problems Life throws at… at times seem too big for us to handle…
• And lastly… Regardless of why life is hard… it affects everything about us… how we feel about ourselves… how we look! Life is a mess!
Thus the question: So how good are you at handling the messes that life throws at you?
Do you find your faith rises to meet the challenge? Of do you find yourself reacting emotionally in ways that quite honestly embarrasses you? I think if most of us if we are honest… we would say we have more negative responses than positive ones. Why is that?
• I remember reading years ago about someone’s observation on how the faith of the Christian community here in America, doesn’t seem to go very deep! That there is not much substance once you get below our church’s faces! And the reason they say that… is because when most Christians come under pressure… or are knocked down by life… what spills out isn’t pleasant to behold!
• Why is it, when we are commanded by God to forgive everyone… forgiveness seems like a lost commodity?
• Why is it… when we are commanded to be content in all situations, we hear Christians complaining and whining about life… as much as everybody else does!
• And why is it… that there are there so many unresolved issues between spouses, friends or children? Why are there so many people who chose to run from their problems rather than face their problems and work them through?
Here is what I believe…I believe that the problem or the reason we see so much superficially in American Christianity is that because the foundation for our faith is entirely wrong. You see, in America what we have done is conformed our Christianity to an American way of life. In other words… we have tried to get Christ and our faith to serve us rather than the other way around… Where we realize that we exist to serve God!
To help make that clearer Bob Shogren, who is a missionary leader, makes the observation… that the difference between cats and dogs… gives us the perfect illustration of the difference between being God centered and me centered… as seen in this clip
• Clip
• Bob says that… the problem with us in America is the Bible was written for dogs, but it is read by cats! Now here is what he meant, a dog says if you pet me, feed me, you shelter me, you love me, therefore you must be God! But a cat says, you pet me, you feed me, a sheltered me, you love me, therefore I must be God! So now here’s a problem, the Bible was written for dogs, but it is read by cats. You see, a cat says I love Christ because he’d bless his me. A dog says he loves Christ because of who he is. A cat says that Christianity is good so long as it works for me. A dog says Christianity is good because it’s true. A cat says with times are hard and God is not given me what I want, I am going to run from God and run from the church. A dog says when times are hard and God isn’t giving me what I need, I am going to drawn near to God and drawn near to the church. The cat says this whole life exists to glorify me, to meet my needs. But a dog says that this whole life exists to glorify God.
My goal is to begin to place in your life a different foundation…so that instead of approaching Christianity from the point of view… what can I get out of it… we grow into the mindset that acknowledges that we exist for God… and that regardless of what we are going through as individuals… we want our lives to glorify God!
The primary question that we ask throughout this series is… “Where is God?” And the first question we want to address… is where is God when life is hard? This will be followed by other significant questions like… Where is God when we have to wait? Where is God when we suffer? Where is God when people hurt me? And where is God when we doubt? I think these are all important questions that need to be answered…especially right now. So let’s pray…
The first question that rises to my mind… is how do I (a cat) transform myself into a dog? Answer… I can’t! But God can… and will if we cooperate with him. And the way he does it… is by taking us through trials and difficult situations that cause us pain… sometimes its spiritually… sometimes emotional… or relational… sometimes it’s even physical!
• Now I understand that for most of us… we don’t like to hear that!
• I certainly will confess… that in my earlier years… my hope was that God would give me a pain free existence… but it wasn’t long before I realized that wasn’t going to happen.
• I remember going through painful experience… and then teaching about it by saying… this is the hardest experience I have ever had. But then a few months later… I would go through something even more painful… and once again, I would say this was the worst experience I ever had.
• And then it would happen again and again and again. It almost seemed like every time I said that this was the worst experience of my life… God would say… really? You haven’t seen anything yet. So eventually, I quit saying… that this was the worst experience of my life!
• Now I have to confess, after going through all those experiences… I have come to realize… that more than anything else in my life… it was pain that brought real change into my life.
• Another way to say this is that… Our lives are not transformed when we are brilliantly succeeding… we can do that without God. Search the scriptures… the message is clear… most of the changes God works into our lives don’t happen on the mountaintop, but in the valley!
• Which is exactly what we discover in text today… Psalm 73
For the sake of simplicity … I want to break this psalm down into three parts… three things we all do in life!
1. We struggle…
2. We search…
3. We discover…
I. WE ALL STRUGGLE: We need to set the context…
• This is a psalm written by a man captured and taken into captivity, into Babylon, back in the Old Testament. It was a very dark time for Israel, everything precious to them had either been destroyed or stripped from them. Their temple was destroyed… something they thought was impossible. Their city Jerusalem had been destroyed… the pride of the nation. They were torn from their homes and now replanted in a culture where almost everything was repugnant to them… because it was full of idolatry and witchcraft.
• In this context… this believer found himself surrounded by unbelievers who were seemingly experiencing blessing… even though they didn’t trust God. This paradox caused him to struggle and wrestle with God in a way that he never had before. And it was in the midst of this struggle… that God began to transform him from a cat into a dog!
• First off… let me make this observation about this person’s circumstances: NEWSFLASH… ALL CHRISTIANS STRUGGLE! IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU ARE A BRAND NEW CHRISTIAN… OR YOU HAVE BEEN ONE FOR YEARS. STRUGGLE IS PART OF LIFE!
• No matter how hard you try to protect yourself… you are going to go through struggles in which you have no control over. That’s life. Life is pain, so learn to deal with it.
• I still remember how Scott Peck… author of a Road less traveled… said… 80-90 percent of mental illness is a result of not accepting that one simple truth… that life is pain.
• Meaning… that maybe it would be wiser to stop spending all your energy in trying to avoid pain… to learning how to deal with your pain and struggles in a kingdom way.
• The second observation I want to make… is that each of us have our own different struggles. What is a struggle for one person… is not necessarily a struggle for someone else! For the author of this psalm… here was his struggle…
• Ps 73:1-2 Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold.
• The psalmist begins with good theology, sound theology! He says God is good! This is what the Bible teaches…God is good, he is always good… He is good in every situation, and as the Don Moen song says… He is good all the time! So what’s the problem?
• So we read in verse two… But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. He is saying… as for me, my faith has almost drained away, I almost lost my faith. I struggled to hold on; I was so filled with confusion and doubt, why?
• The problem with the psalmist was…his life experience wasn’t squaring with his theology. If God is so good… then why is my life experience so bad? This doesn’t make sense…When he looked at his life and lives of other people who were going through tough times… he said, this isn’t jiving with my theology or with what I had been taught by other people. What gives?
• This is actually a good question. And I think Part of the problem… was His understanding of Good! Somehow his definition of good became more or different than what God meant.
• For him… good had come to mean… “I am no longer going to have to really struggle or wrestle with life… After all, now that I am a believer… God will give me a good life. Therefore He will protect me from struggles... especially the really big ones. Thus, finances should always fall into place, relationships should always work out… and physical health should always stay in tacked! From here on out… life is going to be a blessing… at least certainly more than those that don’t have God!
• He had expectations of how life was supposed to be… that he didn’t even know he had! This is the way of struggles… they expose our false expectations and beliefs! This is actually a core principal when it comes to us making sense of our struggles.
• CORE PRINCIPAL: our struggles expose our false expectations and beliefs His false expectation was that if God was good… then he shouldn’t ever have to go through hard times or struggle. But then real life hits… and now that he was going through a crisis of faith.
• Now jump down to verse 14… Ps 73: 14 All day long I have been plagued; I have been punished every morning Here we see that he had other problems plaguing him… and that these problems weren’t going away.
• All day… every morning…He is telling us that he is being overwhelmed with struggles that seem to have no end… day in and day out! He doesn’t tell us what the natures of his struggles are… only that he experienced and was inflicted with. Perhaps God did this on purpose so we could apply it to all difficulties, hardships, trials that we experienced.
• Maybe this man’s plague was physical…have you ever been in so much physical pain, just physical pain where you began to doubt the goodness of God?
• You pray God I have heard teachings about healing… and your word says that you are gracious towards your children… I know it is nothing for you to stretch out your hand right now and heal me… if I had a child suffering something like this… I would reach out if I had the ability and heal them…and so here I am… with the tumor or slipped disc or migraine… and you are not healing me.
• Have you ever been there? In so much physical pain that you wondered about the goodness of God?
• Maybe the psalmist problem was financial? Maybe he was indebted, hounded by his creditors…he was about to lose the family estate or his inheritance. So he says Lord…your word tells me that you own cattle on 1000 Hills…why won’t you meet my need?
• Maybe the problem in this man was relational? Maybe he was experiencing the great pain of broken relationship, or he’s struggling because he is experiencing great pain in his marriage…maybe his spouse has been unfaithful…or maybe his child is in rebellion…or maybe he has had a fallen out with some of his friend.
We just don’t know… any one of these things can challenge a person’s concept of God… and cause them to question their faith!
• The point being… is that we all struggle! And each struggle brings with it… its own unique temptation. Here are four different ways we are tempted.
• All designed to get us to throw the towel in on our faith…and all of them designed to make our struggles 10 times worse than what they really are!
1. WE STRUGGLE WITH COMPARING OUR LIFE WITH OTHERS
This man was already struggling in his faith…and then he compounded it by looking at others. He started to compare his life with them… especially the ungodly… Ps 73:3-9 For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills. Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes iniquity; the evil conceits of their minds know no limits. They scoff, and speak with malice; in their arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. This is what the wicked are like — always carefree, they increase in wealth. Wow… what honesty!
• If he was talking today… he would be talking about a crude professional athlete. I remember years ago their was this very famous basketball player who claimed to have slept with several thousand women…in 50 different cities…he has six kids with five different women, not married to any of them. And he was bragging about it! So here you a guy completely arrogant and vulgar…yet sports writers are breathlessly hanging on every word that he says!
• Or the palmist could have been talking about…the arrogant businessman…the person who cuts corners, scams the public, who is constantly cheating, and obviously has no ethics. Yet he is quoted all the time, and he is celebrated, and we see him shaking hands with the mayor and meeting with other politicians.
• Or the psalmist could have been talking about the totally absorbed Hollywood celebrity, the person who just moves from marriage to marriage without even blinking, yet he or she is talked about in US magazine, or is featured in EXTRA. They have perfect teeth and a perfect complexion and perfect bodies… yet they never give God a passing thought…and so the psalmist cries out…what gives?
• All these folks who are ungodly… yet seemed to be so blessed…yet they spit in-your-face? They blaspheme you… they deny you have any knowledge… they deny your judgment… and beyond that they abuse your people. They make fun of your people in movies, they mocked your people, they drag your people to court and yet it seems that you bless them. What is going on here?
• Why are they blessed and I am not… what gives… This doesn’t seem fair to me…
• Now when this happens… we have reached a point of vulnerability…where the enemy attacks!
• He comes alongside us and whispers to us…you know…you have been taught that God his good, but is God really good… to you? He has not been good to you.
• Or maybe he whispers… maybe God is good to people faraway, or maybe he is good to the really good Christians across the street, so why not you? You must be doing something wrong!
• At this point the enemy takes it a step further…he says…Christianity doesn’t work for you! Maybe it works for some of your family…maybe somebody else…but not you!
• Have you ever heard the voice? That voice that says… Because of your particular problem, struggle or the way you are wired… Christianity doesn’t work for you! And then he says…look at everybody else and how happy they are! Christianity works for them… but not for you!
• We need to understand that the enemy wants to hit us…with the combination punch. Not only does you want to hit you with a right to cross, he wants to do you in with a left upper cut…he wants to knock you down completely.
• So He comes along and exaggerates the size of our problems… to the point that our problem gets so big… that it’s the only thing we can see.
• And then enemy tries to go even further by saying…there is no blessing on your life. (At this moment of crisis… this seems like such a real possibility!)
• Here you need to stop for moment. Is that true? Is a true that there is nothing of God’s blessing on your life? You see no goodness of God in your life? Do you have any children…is your child healthy? There’s a blessing of God. Are you able to worship God in freedom? Do you have any Christian fellowship available to you? Do you get any Christian teaching? Are you able to walk today? Are you able to eat today? Of course we are… yet the enemy tries to blind us to them…
• And if that wasn’t enough, the enemy comes in with a second attack… and exaggerates the blessing of God of those that don’t believe…so we need to ask ourselves… are the ungodly as happy as it seems they are?
• Think about it… If people are so happy, then why are so many Hollywood’s celebrities going to drug or alcohol rehabilitation? If they are so happy, if that’s such a great life…why are so many of them addicts? If the wealthy are so happy, if all you need is a money to be happy…why are so many caught up in dysfunctional families?
• But we lose sight of this… so we begin to question our personal faith…
2. WE STRUGGLE WITH THE VALUE OF OUR PERSONAL FAITH…
• Ps 73:13 Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.
• Can you can hear the palmist heart cry out…I have tried Lord…to obey you, I have tried to pray, I have tried to seek your face, but it doesn’t seem to work!. It doesn’t seem to matter if I obey or not. I am not getting what I want! It doesn’t seem to matter if I pray…you don’t answer my prayers. There is no breakthrough; there is no change in my circumstances…where are you God?
• If this man lived in the 21st century, maybe he would say, the evolutionist are right, maybe the whole universe is just random. Maybe it’s all just a crap shoot… and it doesn’t matter if you obey or disobey, to follow Christ or not follow Christ, love God, hate God, it is all just a matter of what your luck is in life, if you’re number is up, it’s up.
• Listen to his statement again… Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence. Can you hear the false belief and expectation behind his cries… that if I work hard enough at pursuing God; I should not have to struggle more than those in the world!
• The reality is… our ongoing pursuit of God is preparing us for our struggle!
3. WE STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND…
• Ps 73:16 When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me.
• Can you hear the hidden expectation and belief that if I just understand what is going on… I can get through this… or I can fix this… or I can overcome this… if I can just understand what is going on! Can you hear that? Catch this now… that whole line of things is simply NOT TRUE!
• Unfortunately that it is in this place of seeking that we find ourselves once again very vulnerable to the enemies’ wiles…
• Who goes on to say… you don’t understand. You know you are seeking God, you are seeking wisdom, and you are seeking insight to why this is going on. But he is not giving you any understanding in the moment… so what is wrong with you… if you were close to God… he would certainly tell you what is going on… therefor, you are failing God because you do not understand…
• I want you to understand this…you are not sinning when you do not understand… when you look at life and it’s all confusing to you…you are not failing as a Christian.
• Listen to what the apostle Paul said in 2 Cor 4:8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; in other words… it is okay to be perplexed…you’re not failing God when you are perplexed. You can be perplexed…but you don’t have to go all the way to despair, and throw the towel in on your faith.
• You don’t have to give up your hope…and say nothing will ever change, nothing will ever get better, God will never hear my prayers. It’s okay to be perplexed. Scriptures are full of stories where people were perplexed. Paul was perplexed. The psalmist was perplexed. Job was perplexed.
• And why do we expect that we will understand the ways of God anyways? Isa 55:8-9 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. 9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. In other words…God is God! God is infinitely huge.
• He is infinitely wise, he is at work… not just in your life…in your little part of the world…he is at work transforming the entire universe! He is bringing about a new creation! Meaning… Even if God explained his plans to us…we would not understand it! I don’t think we could grasp it!
• Therefore, it really is okay not understand why everything is happening the way it is.
• But watch out for the enemy. If you begin to wonder about the goodness of God…and you begin to look out and see that everybody is happier than you…and you’re struggling because you do not understanding… be warned… you are in a dangerous spiritual place.
4. WE STRUGGLE WITH BITTERNESS…
• You know you have hit bottom of the valley when you get to verses 21 and 22 … which I believe represent the most dangerous spiritual position of all…
• Ps 73:21-22 When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.
• It is absolutely essential that when you are going through times of difficulty and hardship and your life is not working out the way you think it should…you need to guard your heart!
• When you find yourself confused and you don’t understand…it is absolutely imperative that you protect your heart from growing bitter!
• The author of Hebrews says the same thing in Heb 12:15 See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
• So why is it so essential that you guard yourself from bitterness? It is my observation after 30 years in the ministry…that when a person allows bitterness into their heart…any sin is possible! And almost any behavior becomes thinkable.
• And most people don’t realize that it doesn’t take much to get there… A person gets hurt…they have been wounded by another person…or they have been wounded by the church…or by something that has happened in the family…and that they believe God should have done something but didn’t.
• And instead of going to God and giving him their wounds and hurts and asking to be cleansed from their pain…heal them of their pain. Asking God to make them free from this… and going to God and say I forgive them of this…instead…they nursed those wounds…and they become infected…and bitterness grows up in their heart.
• And the more that the bitterness grows…the more it defiles every aspect of their being…so that even their thinking grows irrational. You try talking to someone who was bitter…and the psalmist says it’s like talking to animal.
• Ps 73:21-22 When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. They can’t hear…they are not thinking rationally…like an animal, they are reacting just instinctively.
• Over the years… I have seen people do all kinds of crazy things that you’d never would have expected them to do …because when life didn’t work out the way they thought it should …they reacted!
• I am going to live my life my way… regardless of the cost… regardless of who it hurts! At that point… your Bitterness will take you down!
• So there you have it… four ways the enemy loves to tempt us when we struggle. So the nex question becomes… how do we escape this downward spiral…how do we keep ourselves from slipping?
II. WE SEARCH… we set out to find God in the midst of our struggle…
1. We must come into His presence!
• Ps 73:16-17 When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.
• He is saying here… I tried finding meaning in life…and I couldn’t find it. You know people are asking all the time…what is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of this particular tragedy? This plane crash, this death, this car accident, this cancer, this financial disaster?
• The reality is…we can’t find meaning from life! You can look at an event…you can analyze it, scrutinize it and spin it around and try looking at it from every aspect…but you will never be able to find the meaning.
• When you try to look at life this way…many times you’ll end up like the writer of Ecclesiastes…who said I have tried to find the meaning of life in every way imaginable, I have used all my natural mind and natural reason to search out meaning… and have discovered that all life is vain… there is no meaning!
• But here the psalmist said in verse 17, that I didn’t understand until… I entered the sanctuary of God.
• What is the sanctuary of God? In the Old Testament, it was the temple that one could find the presence of God and were taught the law of God.
• Its only here we discover the meaning of life… in God’s presence… from the word of God. It’s God’s thoughts, God’s truth that provide meaning for life. In other words…We don’t derive meaning from life, you bring meaning to life!
• Let me give you an example of this…let’s say you hear about a godly person who prays and obey his God…they love the Lord…and then you hear that person has literally punched right in the face. The police have come and drag them away in handcuffs and threw them in jail for their faith. Scattered their children and looted the house and burned to the ground… and you look at that situation and ask yourself what meaning can I draw from his?
• Once again… You could end up like the evolutionist…who look at this and say here’s this godly person, who praying and obeying, loving God… yet he is treated that way…maybe there is no sense to life. Maybe it doesn’t matter if we obey or disobey …
• But if you go to the sanctuary…and you hear Gods thoughts… you hear God’s perspective… which gives this situation a whole different meaning…you say “oh my goodness”…there is a totally different meaning I get from persecution.
• The apostles had to do this when they got persecuted…the apostles had to remember what they heard Jesus say about persecution…in other words… they let their thoughts get formed in the sanctuary…where they heard Jesus say….
• Matt 5:11-12 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
• So when the apostles were beaten and thrown into jail they rejoiced… why… because they said that this was their graduation day… we have made it, finally! The people think we are enough like Jesus that they persecuted us! Thank you, Lord; finally, the world takes me to be a threat! Thank you Lord, I am finally associated enough with Jesus to be treated like him!
• This is godly thinking, it is spiritual thinking! This is thinking that will be different than you get from life.
• How do we get to spiritual thinking concerning our hardship…the psalmist says…
2. We must learn to look at things with eternity in mind.
• We need to learn to see not just in moment, but where life is headed. He said… Ps 73:16-20 When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me 17 till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. 18 Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. 19 How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors! 20 As a dream when one awakes, so when you arise, O Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.
• Natural thinking, natural perspective always looks at life just in the moment. We take a snapshot of where we are at right now, we take a snapshot of what other people are at right now…and we say that is what is going on.
• The psalmist says start thinking spiritually… start thinking biblically! How do we do this? By understanding that Biblical thinking always looks at the end of behavior… biblical thinking always looks ahead, not just in the moment.
• Biblical thinking says… roll the camera a head to 20 years, 30 years… if you continue on with the behavior that you are currently engaged in… where you going to be 20 years now? Thirty years from now?
• If you continue on the road you are on… spiritual thinking will ask… where will I end up? Don’t just look at the moment, are you happy right now… are you enjoying sin for a moment…but where will you be in old age?
• In fact… let’s take the film a little further… let’s roll the film all the way to death…where will you be then at death? With Christ…without Christ…if you continue on the road you are on…
• Let’s roll the film even further…where you will be when you stand before the judgment of God? This is what spiritual thinking is all about. Spiritual thinking says…think ahead!
• That is exactly what Jesus tells us to do on sermon of the Mount... Matt 7:13-14 "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
• Once again… Spiritual thinking looks ahead…so where are you headed? This is the key question…where is your life going? The road you are on now determines where you will end up…
III. WE DISCOVER… God transforming of our hearts
• Ps 73:23-26 Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
• What a remarkable transformation this person has gone through… how did this happen? What brought on this incredible transformation?
• Answer… He met God in the midst of the crisis… he discovers that God was always there for him… He discovered that God held him together enough to get through his difficult situation… he discovered that somehow God navigated him through the tough times… and he discovered that God alone gave him HOPE!
• The end result was…the revelation that the only thing he really needed was God! … And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
In conclusion:
• Let’s look at the whole picture… the psalmist had a problem at the beginning because he was saying…I was trying to please God…obey God…pray to God…but life still came crashing in… and God wasn’t giving him what he expected!
• The psalmist went on to say… my life does not square up to what I think it is suppose to be…I am not getting from God what I want. And he was tempted to throw the whole faith deal away… because he wasn’t getting the blessing from God, that he thought he should get.
• But while he was enduring his hardship, he discovered a God that he didn’t know!
• This is important… so catch this… It is only in the midst of trial do we experience a revelation of God that can never be experienced during a season of success or peace!
• The end result being him saying that he has now come to the point in his life where the only thing he wants…is God! I don’t want God plus something else…I just want God. I’m not looking forward to heaven because I’m going to get Jesus and something else…I am looking for to heaven because I am going to get Jesus!
• This is what the Lord is trying to do in our lives… he is trying to get our fingers pried off the death grip that we have on this world and the expectations we have about how we think life should be.
• And then… God wants to change the very desires of our heart… that we would only want Him!
• All those expectations we have… that insistence that if we don’t have this particular thing… your life is going to be a failure… need to be let go!
• He is trying to open up our hands and say to us… if you just have me… Jesus… that’s enough!
• And so the question becomes… what is God asking you to let go of… so that you can get more of a hold on him?
• This is the secret to being changed from a cat to a dog! Let’s pray…
