There are times when life just doesn’t make sense. You love God. You serve Him. You try to walk uprightly. Yet pain seems to find you like a heat-seeking missile. You look around, and the wicked are prospering, the proud are climbing, and the people who mock God seem to have the easiest lives of all. Meanwhile, you’re hanging on by a thread. That’s where Asaph was when he wrote Psalm 73.
He wasn’t an atheist. He wasn’t a rebel. He was a worship leader—appointed by King David himself to lead music in the temple. Yet even a man who stood in front of the congregation singing about God’s goodness found himself whispering, “Is it really true?”
This psalm is his confession. It’s raw, it’s honest, and it’s what we all feel when life hurts. Verse 1 opens like a creed:
> “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.”
That’s theology. He knows the truth. He’s recited it since childhood. But look at verse 2:
> “But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold.”
In other words, I knew God was good—but I didn’t feel it. My doctrine and my experience collided head-on. My creed said God is good; my pain said otherwise.
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1. The Honest Question
That’s the tension every believer must face: If God is good, why do the good suffer? If God is just, why do the unjust prosper?
You can quote all the verses, sing all the hymns, read all the devotionals—and still wake up some mornings wondering, Where is God when it hurts?
That question doesn’t make you faithless; it makes you human. Job asked it. Jeremiah asked it. David asked it. Even Jesus cried it from the cross. The question isn’t rebellion—it’s the cry of a heart that still believes God exists but can’t see what He’s doing.
Asaph looked around and saw the arrogance of people who defied God and yet thrived. He saw corruption rewarded, greed celebrated, and holiness mocked. He wrote,
> “They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong… Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure.”
There’s the ache. I’ve done right, but it hasn’t paid off. He isn’t saying righteousness doesn’t matter; he’s saying it doesn’t seem to matter now.
When you watch evil rise unchecked, when your prayers feel unanswered, when you see tragedy touch the innocent—it’s natural to ask: Has God lost control?
But notice: Asaph doesn’t start with atheism; he starts with disappointment. The greatest tests of faith seldom come from argument—they come from experience.
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2. The Hidden Reality of a Fallen World
The world is broken, and Scripture doesn’t hide it. Genesis 3 shattered everything. Sin entered, death followed, and creation itself began to groan. Pain is not an alien intrusion into an otherwise perfect system; it’s the natural consequence of rebellion against God.
Every sickness, every war, every betrayal, every tear traces back to that rupture in Eden. Evil exists because freedom exists—and freedom means the possibility of rejection. God could have made robots who automatically obeyed, but love cannot be forced. He wanted sons and daughters, not androids. So He risked rejection to make relationship possible.
The freedom that lets you worship also allows others to wound. The same rain that grows your garden floods another man’s house. We live in the tension of a cursed creation and a merciful Creator.
When we suffer, we are not experiencing an exception; we are feeling the weight of a world under sin’s gravity. But even here, God is not absent. The Bible never says God is the author of evil—it says He’s the sovereign over it.
He can permit what He does not produce. He can redeem what He does not endorse. He can weave the strands of human rebellion into a tapestry that still fulfills His purpose.
That’s why Joseph could look his brothers in the eye and say, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” The same event carried two intentions—one wicked, one holy—and God’s intention triumphed.
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3. The Temptation to Envy
Asaph confesses, “I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”
Envy is pain at another’s pleasure. It’s one of Satan’s favorite tools, because it whispers, “God has been better to someone else.” Envy questions God’s fairness. It rewrites our theology around someone else’s success.
Asaph saw rich people laughing, powerful people strutting, and healthy people boasting, while he carried burdens. He compared his faithfulness to their freedom and concluded, “I’ve wasted my time.”
That’s where bitterness begins—not in rebellion, but in comparison.
The enemy’s goal is not only to make us suffer, but to make us interpret our suffering as proof of God’s neglect. Once he can make pain look like divine indifference, he’s halfway to stealing our faith.
Asaph’s problem wasn’t just external injustice; it was internal perspective. His eyes were on them, not on Him.
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4. The Turning Point
Verse 17 marks the hinge of the whole psalm:
> “Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I understood their end.”
There it is. Perspective changes in the presence of God. The sanctuary doesn’t always change your circumstances, but it changes your sight line.
When Asaph entered the house of worship, he saw reality through eternity’s lens. The people he envied were standing on slippery ground. Their prosperity was temporary; their judgment was certain. Suddenly, the scales fell from his eyes.
He realized that the question, “Why do the wicked prosper?” is time-bound. Zoom out far enough, and the justice of God fills the frame. Life on earth is the first inch of an eternal line. Nobody’s getting away with anything—they’re just living on borrowed time.
In the sanctuary, Asaph saw two things: the fleeting nature of wicked success, and the steadfast nearness of God. His envy evaporated into worship.
He said, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth I desire besides You.”
That’s not resignation; that’s revelation. When you finally see God, everything else shrinks.
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5. The Presence of God in Our Pain
The sanctuary represents more than a building; it represents the presence of God. Pain drives us there. Suffering has a strange way of stripping away illusions. When life is comfortable, we talk about God; when life hurts, we cling to Him.
Sometimes God allows pain not to punish us, but to purify our desires. He’s not being cruel; He’s teaching us what really satisfies.
Asaph entered angry and left adoring. He walked in envying the wicked and walked out envying no one. Because in the end, he realized the greatest good isn’t the absence of pain—it’s the presence of God.
You don’t need every question answered when you sense that God is with you. The furnace was still hot for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—but once the fourth Man showed up, the heat lost its power.
When your life is a pain, God’s promise isn’t escape; it’s Emmanuel. He doesn’t always take you out of the fire, but He always joins you in it.
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6. The Cross: God’s Answer to Evil
If you ever doubt that God cares about suffering, look at the Cross. Christianity doesn’t offer a God who observes pain from a distance; it gives us a God who entered it.
The greatest evil ever committed—the crucifixion of the Son of God—was also the greatest act of love ever performed.
On Calvary, every argument collapses. We see a God who refuses to remain immune to our pain. The Creator stepped into His creation, absorbed its cruelty, and conquered it from within.
The cross doesn’t answer every “why,” but it shows us who God is. Atheism can’t do that. Philosophy can’t do that. Only the cross can look human suffering in the eye and say, “Me too.”
And three days later, the empty tomb declares that suffering is temporary, but glory is eternal. Evil had its Friday, but God always has His Sunday.
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7. What God Does Through Pain
When life hurts, we want explanations. God offers transformation.
Pain is God’s megaphone to a deaf world, C. S. Lewis said. It tells us something is wrong here—that this world is not our home.
God uses pain to refine, to realign, and to remind.
1. Refine – 1 Peter 1:7 says our faith is tested like gold in fire. Heat reveals impurities; it doesn’t destroy the gold, it defines it.
2. Realign – Suffering reorders our loves. It exposes idols. It forces us to ask what really matters.
3. Remind – Pain whispers, “You’re not home yet.” Revelation 21 says He will wipe away every tear. That promise only means something to those who have wept.
Sometimes we think God’s goal is to make life painless. No—His goal is to make us Christ-like. And that happens mostly through adversity.
Paul said, “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings.” Notice the order: resurrection power and suffering fellowship go together. You can’t know the power of His resurrection unless you first meet Him in the tomb of your trial.
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8. When God Seems Silent
Silence is one of God’s hardest answers. Asaph said, “When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before You.”
He admits he lost composure. Pain makes thinkers into beasts. We stomp, we snort, we want it fixed now.
But look what he adds: “Yet I am always with You; You hold me by my right hand.”
That’s grace. Even when we act like beasts, God keeps holding our hand. He doesn’t let go when we lash out. The silence isn’t abandonment—it’s restraint. God would rather hold you quietly than explain Himself verbally.
Parents know this: sometimes your child is in pain, and there’s no use explaining surgery or medication—you just sit beside the bed and hold their hand until they rest. That’s how God loves us through the long night.
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9. The End of the Story
Psalm 73 ends not with answers but with assurance:
> “But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge.”
The problem of evil will not be solved in the seminar room; it will be silenced in the sanctuary. Because ultimately, faith isn’t the absence of pain—it’s the presence of perspective.
Evil is temporary; God is eternal. Suffering is loud; redemption is louder. The cross proved it; the resurrection sealed it.
We live in the “almost.” Evil is dying, not dead. The world groans like a mother in labor, Paul said. Labor pain is awful, but it’s purposeful. Something is being born. Revelation 21 gives us a preview: no more death, no more sorrow, no more pain, for the former things have passed away.
The first tear ever cried in Eden will be the last tear ever wiped away in glory.
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10. Bringing It Home
So where is God when it hurts?
He’s where He’s always been—on the throne, and in the fire. He’s the God above you ruling, and the God beside you weeping.
He’s the God who turns graves into gardens, crosses into crowns, and sinners into saints.
He may let you walk through the valley, but never alone. He may allow evil for a season, but He’s promised to end it for eternity.
And one day, when you see the face of Jesus, you’ll understand that every unanswered “why” was answered by His presence.
When Asaph walked into the sanctuary, he didn’t get a new world; he got new eyes. That’s what worship does. It recalibrates your soul.
Maybe tonight your prayer isn’t for relief but for revelation: “Lord, help me see You in this.”
Because once you see Him, the question changes. It’s no longer “Where is God when it hurts?” but “Where am I without Him?”
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Conclusion
Pain will visit every life, but it doesn’t have to poison it. Suffering can either shrink your faith or deepen it. The same sun that melts wax hardens clay; it depends on what you’re made of.
Asaph learned that the nearness of God is his good. Job learned that seeing God is better than understanding Him. Paul learned that grace is sufficient.
And the cross shows that the worst day in human history became the best day for the human race.
So hold fast. When life hurts, lean into the One who hurt for you. When your faith trembles, remember: His hands still bear the scars. And those scars say, “I know. I’ve been there. And I’ve already overcome.”
