When You Don't Get It, God Does Get It

I want to thank you for this opportunity to share from God’s word with you today. KC and Simone send their greetings as well but they could not be here today. They’re probably sleeping right now.

I have come to appreciate my being here with you all at SEFC more and more. The adjustment to another country and culture has not been easy and I am still in the process of adjusting to it. Yet I have appreciated how everyone has been so helpful. Plus I can say that God has taken care of me.

Most of you know that I hate bananas. There is no food I don’t like any worse than a banana. A couple of weeks ago I shared at the women’s luncheon and we went around the room with each person having to tell us something she liked and something she did not like.

While it may not be eating a banana for you, it might be something equally unpleasant, that if you could have your way, you would rather not have to deal with. While in the Christian life many times things are going very well for us, there may be those times when things are not going so well. It might be like my having to eat bananas the rest of my life. We don’t get it. When I say we don’t get it it means several things; we don’t understand it. It’s not making any sense to us. We don’t get it. Have you ever felt this way? You’re doing what you believe to be God’s will for you. To the best of your knowledge, there is not any unconfessed sin in your life and your number 1 desire is to obey God and be faithful to Him. And yet what you know to be true about a loving and holy God does not make any sense in view of what you are facing in your life right now.

Psalm 77 addresses this question. I guarantee you that you will not be the first person to ask the questions we’re going to look at. But this Psalm also addresses what to do in these circumstances. I want us to look at several things.

Before we go further into this Psalm I want us to understand that discouragement, sufferings and things that we don’t understand, are part of the Christian life for all of us. This is my first point. When these things happen to you, it is not mean you have sinned or God is punishing you. The problem, as we shall see later is when we choose to dwell on these things.

Psalm 77 was written by Asaph in a time of great personal distress. Although the specific nature of the distress is not given here, from just reading the first 9 verses, we can see that he is very troubled and distressed at what is happening in his life right now.

In verses 1 and 2 we see him crying to God in his distress but with no relief. If we continue in verses 3 and 4 he can’t even sleep. And in verses 5 and 6 as he looks back on how God had previously dealt with him, he is probably thinking, “God I don’t get it. Why is this happening in my life?” “I thought you loved me.”

As I mentioned just a minute ago, these experiences are part of the Christian life.

My next point is that when you feel the same way the Psalmist did, go to God with your problems. Tell Him how you feel. You won’t be the first person who has felt this way. And God knows it and understands.

I felt like this 3 years ago. I’m single although I don’t want to stay that way forever. And I met a nice young lady at my church and she said she would like to get together sometime. So we did and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening with her. I remember her saying how it would be nice to have somebody to do something with, like go to a movie. I couldn’t agree more. And so I had hopes of spending more time with this woman and for a relationship to develop. However when I saw her at church a couple of weeks later and I could tell, after a few minutes of talking with her, that she was not interested in me, I felt despair, just like the Psalmist did. And I remember sharing with a friend later that day, how this didn’t make any sense what was happening. It was like God has given me a desire for a special relationship but it is not happening. I didn’t get it. But God did.

Sometimes we can talk ourselves into believing that we shouldn’t feel this way, and that God will not like it if we come to Him like this. I believe nothing could be further from the truth. If we’re distressed it is okay to come to God like this. Even if we don’t get it he does.