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Wondering What to Believe?

  1. Does Nature Give Proof of God?
    8 Digging Deeper
  2. Can I Hear God's Voice?
    8 Digging Deeper
  3. Who is God?
    8 Digging Deeper
  4. Who Wrote the Bible?
    8 Digging Deeper
  5. Can I Trust the Bible?
    7 Digging Deeper
  6. Is there a Right and Wrong?
    7 Digging Deeper
  7. Why Does God Allow Evil?
    9 Digging Deeper
  8. Who Am I?
    7 Digging Deeper
  9. What is the Meaning of Life?
    7 Digging Deeper
  10. Does God Love Me?
    5 Digging Deeper

Probably at one time or another, everyone who knows and loves God has felt that God is not listening. Throughout the Bible, there are stories of people who felt that God was far away and that life was crashing in on them. The Psalms are filled with honest and realistic feelings of not being heard by God. One-third of the psalms are laments. Again and again, the psalmists express their feelings of disappointment and forsakenness by God. For example, have you ever felt at times like these psalmists did?

Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?  (Psa. 10:1)

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?

2How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (Psa. 13:1-2)

But I, O Lord, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.

14O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me? (Psa. 88:13-14)

When we have problems, when people betray and forsake us, when things don’t work out the way we wanted them to, when we are sick and weak, when grief and suffering overwhelm us, when we fail morally or when we suffer a great disappointment we may feel that God is not near.

When the psalmists felt this way, they called on God, expressed to God their feelings and confessed their need for the Lord to act. In the psalms that express doubt and fear, the psalmists usually confess faith and trust in God by the end of their psalms. For example, Psalm 22 begins with “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” As the psalmist thinks about God and confesses to Him his honest feelings, he concludes that God really does listen and care for him. He praises God for his loving care and deliverance.

Prayer and action cure doubt. Instead of worrying, perhaps you could pray. How could this instruction from the Apostle Paul help you: “Worry about nothing, pray about everything, and be thankful in all things” (Philippians 4:4-6).