Where Is God When It Hurts?

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.