EVER FEEL ABANDONED BY GOD?

• Your prayers seem to go unanswered.

• Evidence of God’s working is scarce.

• You and fellow believers languish while the godless appear to flourish.

Is this God’s cruel joke? Or could there be a Divine reason behind our sense of abandon-

ment?

Is it possible that God, who is intent on teaching us to live by faith, purposely removes

evidence of Himself from us in order to strengthen our faith? What quality of belief is

required when His documentation is everywhere present?

Our faith is in its purest form when, amidst scant evidence for the existence of God, we still

choose to believe.

This was precisely Job’s experience: Seemingly abandoned by God, and having sustained

great personal loss, he exclaims,

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him… I go forward but He is not there, and backward, but I cannot

perceive Him. But He knows the way I take and when He has tried me I shall come forth as gold… He

performs what is appointed for me… ” (Job 13:15; 23:8, 10, 14a)

A person who elects to walk with God in those bleak periods of spiritual desolation is

indeed a lethal instrument in the hand of God.

Consider C. S. Lewis’ perspective from his writings in The Screwtape Letters. In the following

monologue Satan is coaching his protégé Wormwood:

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human

looks (around)… a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and

asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

As a fellow pilgrim, may I ask you: “Have you resolved in your soul to follow the Master, whether

there is evidence or not? Whether He blesses you or not?”

Of such a person God is well-pleased! (Hebrews 11:6)