Where Is God In A Coronavirus World Series

Where is God in a Coronavirus World

Why do You stand afar off, O Lord? Why do You hide in times of trouble? – Psalm 10:1

Where is God in a Coronavirus World? Where is God in the midst of Coronavirus? Where is God in the agony of Coronavirus? Why doesn’t God stop the Coronavirus? This pandemic rises these questions in many people’s minds. The coronavirus pandemic is perplexing and unsettling for all of us. How is our faith.

Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors. It’s always hammered. It’s always being attacked but the Bible will always rise up to outlive its pallbearers. – G. K. Chesterton

I. Problems of the World

Psalm 10 verses 1 to 11, the psalmist taking about the Prideful people, Wicked people, greedy people, proud people etc.; Every one of us face problems from these kinds of people. How can we conquer what is working against us?

Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand Mountaineer, and explorer was asked: What is the biggest challenge for you when you climb mount Everest? He said interestingly; It is not mountains we conquer but ourselves. discouragement, disappointment, dispiritedness.

Problem in themselves do not make your life hell or heaven; it is your reaction or response of the problems. It is the reactions to the crises. It is the reaction of our faithful life. When challenges come your way, when problems come your way, how are your responses the problems?

Ill: A small storeowner was being pressured to sell his store to the owners of a large department store who had bought every building on the block, except his. The small store owner refuse to sell, and they eventually opened their huge store on either side of the small one, with a big banner running from one side to the other, proclaiming in huge letters "Grand Opening."

Feeling equally humble, the small storeowner did finally outsmart the large department store. Below the grand opening sign, across the front of his small store, the man put up a small banner over his door: "Main Entrance."

Well, that is one creative way to deal with frustration or disappointment or problems of the world.

Job lived in the problems of the world. You know, how he handles it? God knows everything whether it is good or bad, and that was his assurance. He trusts the Lord with all of his life.

Job 42:2 “I know that you can do everything; and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you.”

Job 10:23 “But He knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I shall come forth as gold.”

Job knows the power of the Lord. Though we live in the darkest situation, our faith should be like this. Nothing is impossible with our God.

Job 13:15 “Though he slays me, yet will I trust him; I will defend my own way before him.”

It was the greatest display of faith in the Lord to overcome the world.

Isaiah 55:8-9 “Some faiths are Commercial faith, some faiths are conditional faith, but Job’s faith was neither commercial faith nor conditional faith; it was a committed faith. My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”

Romans 9:19-21 “You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” 20 But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?”

II. Proposal to our God (12-15)

“Arise, O Lord! O God lift up your hand! do not forget the humble – Please do something”: Psalm 10:12

Psalmist knows God’s will is done in heaven. He needs it done on earth as well. The psalmist recognizes an important fact here. He is powerless to make the change. The wicked are beyond him, but they are not beyond God. The strength to conquer lies with God alone. “Lift up your hand” and remember the afflicted.

Sometimes God’s “No” means “Yes.”

Ill: Augustine in his autobiographical work “Confessions” tells the story of his mother Monica’s constant prayers for him. She wished that one day her wanderer son would become a committed Christian. When Augustine decided to leave North Africa and sail for Rome, she was horrified. She believed that with Rome’s cosmopolitan environment, he would go further astray. She pleaded with him not to sail and prayed with tears that God would intervene, but to no avail.

Later, Augustine inscribed these words in the Confessions as part of his recollection of the incident: “But thou, taking thy own secret counsel and noting the real point to her desire, did not grant what she was then asking in order to grant to her the thing that she had always been asking. God said, “No” to Monica’s immediate petition that her son does not sail to Rome in order to respond to “the real point to her desire” namely, her son’s conversion. After spending some time in Rome, Augustine traveled to Milan where he met Bishop Ambrose who played a key role in Augustine’s acceptance of the Christian faith.