Have you ever felt that God has left you?
Not in a theoretical sense. Not the kind of question that shows up in a classroom discussion or a late-night debate about faith and reason. I mean something much more personal than that—something that settles into your chest and refuses to leave.
Have you ever felt that God was absent when you needed Him the most?
You were desperate. You prayed. You cried out. You did what you were taught to do. And nothing seemed to happen.
For some, that moment comes with illness. Your own body begins to betray you, or the body of someone you love starts to fail. You pray for healing. You ask God to intervene. You plead for relief, for improvement, for even the smallest sign that heaven is paying attention. But the pain continues. The diagnosis doesn’t change. The future grows more uncertain, not less.
For others, it comes through work or school. A situation that slowly drains the life out of you. Conflict that never resolves. Pressure that never eases. You wake up already tired. You carry it home with you every night. You pray for God to open a door—any door—but it stays firmly shut.
For some, it is financial strain. You are doing everything you know how to do. Working hard. Being responsible. Trying to be faithful. And still the bills pile up. You pray for provision day after day, night after night. And instead of answers, you hear only silence.
And over time, a question begins to form. Not loudly. Not angrily. Quietly. Wearily.
What do you do when God is silent?
What do you do when you are suffering and heaven doesn’t seem to respond?
Most of us don’t say that out loud. Especially not in church. But the thoughts still come.
Maybe God is busy.
Maybe He’s distant.
Maybe He’s avoiding me.
And eventually—if the silence goes on long enough—another thought slips in, one we don’t want to admit even to ourselves.
Maybe He was never really there.
If you have ever thought that, you are not weak.
You are not broken.
You are not faithless.
You are human.
What makes seasons like this so difficult is not just the pain itself—it’s the contrast. When we read Scripture, especially the Old Testament, God often appears decisive, active, unmistakably present. Israel cries out, and God responds. They are trapped, and He delivers. They trust Him, and He intervenes.
And we read those stories and think, That’s wonderful for them… but what about me?
God’s silence has a way of making us feel small. Not just overlooked, but insignificant. As if we don’t matter enough to warrant His attention.
And the way we speak to ourselves becomes harsh.
Maybe I’m not important enough.
Maybe I don’t matter.
Maybe I’ve done something wrong.
Maybe God helps other people—but not me.
That may sound extreme, but listen carefully—those words are not modern inventions. They are biblical language.
Psalm 22 says, “I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people.”
That is not poetic exaggeration. That is the honest voice of someone who feels abandoned.
And when we feel that way, it doesn’t just hurt emotionally—it shakes our faith. Because we are Christians. We believe in God. We talk about trust and hope. We pray publicly. We encourage others. But when our own prayers go unanswered and suffering continues, we begin to wonder what kind of witness we are becoming.
People watch us. They see no miracle. No visible rescue. No dramatic intervention. And to them, faith begins to look foolish. Imaginary. Unproven.
There is a simple illustration that captures this feeling with painful accuracy.
A preschool teacher once taught her class a song about popcorn. The children crouched down on the floor and sang together. At certain moments in the song, they would jump up and “pop.” Soon the room was filled with laughter and popping children.
But one child stayed crouched on the floor.
The teacher noticed and asked, “Why aren’t you popping like the others?”
The child looked up and said, “I’m burning on the bottom of the pan.”
While the world pops and celebrates, some of us are burning.
Life goes on around us. People laugh. They make plans. They move forward. And we are stuck—hurting, waiting, wondering.
And we ask the question that won’t go away:
Where is God when this is happening?
Where is He when we need Him the most?
Surely He doesn’t expect us to face this alone. Surely the God who brought us into the world, who has sustained us from our first breath, does not repay trust with abandonment.
And yet, when suffering confronts us head-on, it feels overwhelming. Not abstract. Not distant. Immediate. Personal.
Psalm 22 describes it with frightening clarity. The psalmist speaks of being surrounded—bulls encircling him, lions roaring, enemies closing in. It is the language of someone who feels trapped, outnumbered, and exposed.
And the body feels it too.
Tight shoulders.
Shallow breathing.
Sleepless nights.
A constant sense of tension.
Courage drains away. Strength melts. You feel empty. Exhausted. Ready to give up.
If any of this sounds familiar, hear this clearly:
The pain is real.
The sense of abandonment is real.
And even the guilt you feel for having doubts is real.
But you are not alone in this experience.
Everything we have described so far is not modern despair. It is ancient prayer.
It is Psalm 22.
David wrote it. A man after God’s own heart. A man of deep faith. A man who knew God personally—and still felt abandoned.
Listen to how the psalm begins:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?”
That is not polite prayer. That is raw honesty.
David cries out day and night and hears no answer. He looks at the faith of earlier generations and feels unworthy by comparison. He endures ridicule and mockery from those around him. He struggles to reconcile God’s past faithfulness with his present pain. He feels surrounded, weakened, stripped of dignity and strength.
And then—without warning—those exact words appear again.
From a cross.
Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
This was not accidental. It was not a moment of loss of control. It was deliberate.
The Psalms were hymns. The people standing at the cross knew them. When Jesus spoke those words, He was not merely expressing pain—He was pointing to the entire Psalm.
And Psalm 22 reads like a crucifixion narrative written centuries before crucifixion existed.
Mocking voices.
Surrounding enemies.
Pierced hands and feet.
Bones exposed.
Garments divided by lot.
Jesus did not quote Psalm 22 because He felt abandoned and had nothing else to say.
He quoted it because He was entering the deepest human experience of abandonment—and revealing that God was already there.
And that changes everything.
But Psalm 22 does not stay in despair.
There is a turning point.
And that is where we will go next.
--- The Turning Point
Psalm 22 does not remain where it begins.
That matters more than we often realize.
If all Scripture gave us was language for pain, it would be honest—but it would also be incomplete. Psalm 22 is not merely a catalog of suffering. It is a journey. And like many journeys of faith, it does not begin with answers. It begins with honesty.
But somewhere in the middle, something shifts.
Not the circumstances.
Not the enemies.
Not the pain.
What changes is the direction of the psalmist’s gaze.
After pouring out his anguish, after describing ridicule and weakness and the feeling of being abandoned, David reaches verse 19 and says:
“But you, O LORD, be not far off;
O my strength, come quickly to help me.”
That word “but” is doing heavy lifting.
It does not deny the pain.
It does not minimize the suffering.
It does not pretend that everything is suddenly fine.
It marks a decision.
David does not move forward because the situation improves. He moves forward because he chooses to place his hope somewhere other than his circumstances.
He turns—deliberately—toward God.
This is important, because it tells us something crucial about faith in seasons of silence.
Faith is not the absence of questions.
Faith is not the denial of pain.
Faith is the refusal to stop addressing God, even when He feels far away.
David does not stop praying because God feels silent. He prays into the silence.
And then something remarkable happens.
The tone of the psalm begins to change—not gradually, but decisively. The lament gives way to confidence. The cry gives way to testimony. The language shifts from isolation to proclamation.
David begins to speak as though deliverance is not just possible—but certain.
“I will declare your name to my brothers;
in the congregation I will praise you.”
That is not the voice of someone whose life has suddenly become easy. It is the voice of someone who has chosen to trust God’s character even when God’s actions are not yet visible.
And then David says something that feels almost impossible given everything he has just described:
“For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.”
Wait a moment.
This is the same person who just said, “Why have you forsaken me?”
What changed?
David did not discover that God had been absent.
He discovered that God had been present all along—just not in the way he expected.
And this is where Psalm 22 begins to speak not only to David’s experience, but to ours.
Because one of the hardest lessons in spiritual life is this:
God’s presence is not always experienced as relief.
Sometimes it is experienced as endurance.
We often assume that if God is with us, things will get better quickly. That the pain will ease. That the door will open. That the answer will come.
But Scripture does not make that promise.
Scripture promises presence—not predictability.
And nowhere is that more clearly revealed than at the cross.
When Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He was not stepping outside of faith. He was stepping fully into it.
This is where we often misunderstand that moment.
We imagine Jesus crying out in confusion, as though He suddenly realized something had gone terribly wrong. But that does not fit the rest of the Gospel story. Jesus knew where He was going. He knew why He was there. He had already told His disciples what would happen.
So why quote Psalm 22?
Because in that moment, Jesus was doing more than expressing pain. He was interpreting His suffering through Scripture.
He was telling the story of what was happening—using the language of the psalm.
And the people standing around the cross would have understood that.
They knew Psalm 22. It was sung in worship. It was memorized. It was familiar. When Jesus spoke the opening line, the rest of the psalm would have rushed into their minds.
They would have remembered the mockery:
“He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him.”
They would have remembered the imagery of enemies surrounding the righteous sufferer.
They would have remembered the piercing of hands and feet, the dividing of garments, the public humiliation.
And—if they remembered the whole psalm—they would have remembered something else as well.
They would have remembered how it ends.
Psalm 22 does not end with abandonment.
It ends with vindication.
It ends with worship.
It ends with a feast.
The latter part of the psalm speaks of a gathering. A celebration. A public declaration of God’s faithfulness. The psalmist describes a time when the afflicted will eat and be satisfied, when people from every corner of the earth will turn to the Lord, when even those who have gone down to the dust will bow before Him.
This language is not accidental.
In the ancient world, when someone made a vow to God and that vow was fulfilled, it was customary to hold a celebratory meal. This was not a private affair. It was public. And it was generous.
Friends were invited. Servants were invited. The poor were invited. Levites and outsiders were invited. It was a feast that said, “God has been faithful, and there is room at the table.”
Psalm 22 ends with that image.
And when Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross, He was not only identifying with human suffering—He was pointing toward that future celebration.
He was saying, in effect, “This suffering is not the end of the story.”
And then the psalm closes with a line that seals everything:
“For he has done it.”
In Hebrew, it carries the sense of completion. Accomplishment. Fulfillment.
In the language Jesus spoke, it is the same phrase He later uttered as His final words:
“It is finished.”
That connection is not incidental. It is intentional.
Psalm 22 begins with abandonment—but it ends with completion.
Jesus did not cry out from the cross because God had failed Him.
He cried out because God was fulfilling His plan.
And that reframes the entire experience of silence.
Because it tells us something deeply unsettling—but also deeply comforting:
God can be fully present in our suffering without removing it.
Jesus was not spared the cross.
David was not spared anguish.
Faithful people throughout Scripture were not spared pain.
But they were never abandoned.
This is where many of us struggle.
We equate God’s love with immediate relief.
We equate God’s care with visible intervention.
We equate God’s presence with comfort.
But the cross teaches us something else.
God’s deepest work is sometimes hidden.
God’s greatest victories sometimes look like defeat.
God’s closest presence sometimes feels like silence.
And yet—silence is not absence.
The cross looked like abandonment.
But it was redemption in progress.
Psalm 22 looked like despair.
But it was praise waiting to break through.
And the same God who carried David through his anguish, and Christ through the cross, is present with us—even when we cannot feel Him.
That does not make suffering easy.
It does not make waiting pleasant.
It does not make doubt disappear.
But it anchors us.
Because it tells us that our pain is not wasted.
Our questions are not condemned.
And our cries are not ignored.
And that leads us to the final question we must face.
If God is present even when He feels absent—
if Christ understands abandonment because He entered it—
then what does that mean for us now?
That is where we will end.
--- The Assurance That Holds
So where does that leave us?
If Psalm 22 teaches us anything, it is this: faith does not always move us out of suffering, but it does move us through it.
And that distinction matters.
Because many of us have been quietly carrying the assumption that if God is truly with us, things should improve. The pain should lessen. The door should open. The burden should lift.
But Psalm 22 does not make that promise.
Instead, it gives us something far more durable.
It gives us permission to speak honestly to God without losing our grip on Him.
David does not sanitize his prayer. He does not edit his emotions for spiritual acceptability. He says exactly what he feels—abandoned, unheard, mocked, surrounded, emptied of strength.
And God does not rebuke him for it.
That alone should change how we pray.
Because some of us stop praying not because we don’t believe in God—but because we are afraid of what we might say if we were truly honest.
We worry that our doubts disqualify us.
That our anger offends God.
That our questions signal failure.
Psalm 22 says otherwise.
It tells us that lament is not the opposite of faith.
It is faith refusing to go silent.
And that is exactly what Jesus models on the cross.
When Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He is not turning away from God—He is clinging to Him.
Notice the language.
He does not say, “God, why have you forsaken me?”
He says, “My God.”
Even in the depths of abandonment, the relationship remains.
And that matters, because it means that feeling abandoned is not the same as being abandoned.
Jesus experienced the full weight of human forsakenness—so that we never would.
He entered the silence so that our silence would never mean absence.
He bore the darkness so that our darkness would never be empty.
And because of that, our suffering is no longer proof that God has left us.
It is proof that God understands us.
This is where Psalm 22 becomes deeply pastoral.
Because it tells us that the question, “Why have you forsaken me?” is not a dead end.
It is a doorway.
Not a doorway to immediate answers—but a doorway to deeper assurance.
Psalm 22 does not resolve suffering by explaining it.
It resolves suffering by locating it within God’s larger story.
David does not suddenly discover why he is suffering.
Jesus does not step down from the cross to escape pain.
What changes is not the circumstance—it is the horizon.
The psalmist begins to see beyond his present anguish to a future in which God’s faithfulness will be publicly declared.
He begins to speak of a gathering.
Of worship.
Of satisfaction.
Of generations yet unborn hearing what God has done.
This is not optimism.
It is eschatology.
It is the conviction that God’s story does not end where our pain is most intense.
And that matters for us, because many of us are trying to evaluate God’s faithfulness in the middle of the story.
We want answers now.
Resolution now.
Meaning now.
But Scripture consistently tells us that faith is not about controlling outcomes—it is about trusting God’s character while the story is still unfolding.
And Psalm 22 insists on this truth:
God has not despised the suffering of the afflicted.
He has not hidden His face.
He has not turned away.
Even when it feels like He has.
This is where we must be careful.
Because when God feels distant, we often assume He is indifferent.
But the cross destroys that assumption.
If God were indifferent, there would be no cross.
If God were detached, there would be no incarnation.
If God were unconcerned, there would be no suffering Savior.
The cross tells us that God’s response to human pain was not distance—but presence.
Not explanation—but participation.
Not avoidance—but sacrifice.
And because of that, we can say something with confidence—even when we cannot say it with ease:
God may feel silent, but He is not absent.
That does not mean the pain disappears.
It does not mean the waiting ends.
It does not mean the questions evaporate.
But it means the ground beneath us is secure.
Because the same Psalm that begins with abandonment ends with assurance.
The same cry that sounds like defeat ends with completion.
“He has done it.”
It is finished.
That is not just a statement about salvation history.
It is a declaration about God’s faithfulness.
It means that nothing you are facing is outside the reach of what Christ has already accomplished.
It means your suffering does not disqualify you.
Your doubts do not exclude you.
Your weariness does not remove you from God’s care.
It means there is a table being prepared—a feast of grace—where the poor in spirit are welcomed, where the broken are satisfied, where those who thought they had nothing to offer discover they have been invited all along.
And it means that even now—even in silence—even in pain—your story is not finished.
So where are you today?
Maybe you are in a season where God feels close.
If so, treasure it.
But maybe you are in a season where God feels distant. Silent. Unreachable.
If that is where you are, hear this clearly:
You are allowed to cry out.
You are allowed to ask why.
You are allowed to speak honestly.
Just don’t stop speaking to God.
Because the God who heard David’s cry,
the God who sustained Christ on the cross,
is the same God who holds you now.
Silence is not abandonment.
Waiting is not rejection.
And suffering is not proof of God’s absence.
The cross stands as eternal evidence that God meets us not after suffering—but in it.
And because Christ entered abandonment for us, we can trust this promise:
God has not left you.
He has not forgotten you.
And He will not fail you.
Even now—
especially now—
He understands.
--- Appeal
Some of you are walking through a season where God feels close.
If that is you, receive it with gratitude. Do not rush past it. Let it deepen your trust and soften your heart toward others who are still waiting.
But some of you are in a different place.
You are tired.
You are carrying questions that have no answers yet.
You have prayed words that feel as though they never made it past the ceiling.
If that is where you are today, this message is not asking you to pretend that everything is fine. It is not asking you to manufacture faith or silence your doubts.
It is asking you to do one simple, brave thing:
Do not stop speaking to God.
Even if all you can say is, “My God, my God, why?”
Even if your prayer feels more like a groan than a sentence.
Even if hope feels thin and trust feels fragile.
That cry is not failure.
It is faith refusing to disappear.
If you are willing, choose today not to measure God’s faithfulness by how quickly your circumstances change, but by the cross that stands unmovable in history—proof that God meets His people not after suffering, but in it.
If you are in a season of silence, let this be your quiet commitment today:
I will keep turning toward God, even when I do not understand Him.
I will keep praying, even when answers are delayed.
I will trust that silence is not absence.
Christ has already gone where you feel you are standing.
And because He did, you are not abandoned.
--- Prayer
Gracious God,
we come before You not as people who have everything figured out,
but as people who need You.
You know the places where our faith feels strong,
and You know the places where it feels worn thin.
You see the prayers that have been spoken aloud
and the ones that have been whispered through tears.
For those who feel close to You today,
we thank You for Your nearness.
For those who feel distant, unheard, or forgotten,
we ask that You meet them with the quiet assurance of Your presence.
Teach us to trust You
not only when relief comes quickly,
but when endurance is required.
Help us to believe that Your silence does not mean absence,
and that our suffering is not unseen.
Thank You for Jesus,
who entered our pain,
who cried the words we sometimes cannot,
and who finished the work of salvation on our behalf.
Hold us when we are weak.
Anchor us when we are unsure.
And lead us forward with the confidence
that nothing can separate us from Your love.
We place our lives, our questions, and our waiting into Your hands,
trusting that You are faithful—
even now.
Amen.
