Church of the Nazarene -East Rock
When God Seems Silent
When God Seems Silent: “Do You still Trust Me?
The author of Hebrews reminds us in Chapter 4 that Jesus is able to empathize with our weakness, that he has experienced the temptations we do, yet he did not give in to sin.
This is the final message in our teaching series “When God Seems Silent”
So, today if you would say God seems silent, maybe you feel alone, abandoned, or forsaken, Jesus knows how you feel, he empathizes with you in that difficult place.
From the cross Jesus felt like God was silent, like he was forsaken. So he understands that pain, the difficulty of those seasons, and he longs to give you grace, mercy and help in your time of need.He was at that place before you were.
Do you believe that is true?
Through our series together we have addressed things like listening to God, avoiding sin, and waiting on God. Though these topics have all been distinct, they also carry a common theme, a common core value, if you will…And that common theme, is trust…If you trust that God speaks you will actively listen.
If you trust that God desires intimacy with you, and has your highest good in view, you won’t hold onto those sins that he is asking you to let go of.
If you trust God has a plan, and his timing is perfect, you will wait on him with confidence.
If we remove trust from any of these, God may very well seem silent to us.
Psalms 22:1-5
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
When Jesus cried out from the Cross, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” he was reaching back some 500 years to the words of King David in Psalm 22.Perhaps what should stand out to us today is that Jesus quotes a Psalm in those moments that acknowledges the pain and felt isolation, yet moves quickly to declaring Gods Holiness and his faithfulness to past generations.
Psalm 22
progresses from the desperate plea for God’s presence, to a declaration of trust. That is the essence of the journey we are invited on today friends-To acknowledge where we are and how we feel, but to move beyond that place, to placing our trust in God. To trusting him even when we don’t see it, even when he seems silent.
Will you trust him?
To trust God, we must bring together our belief in his existence and our faith in who He is says he is, into the everyday details and happenings of life.
And friends, when things are going great, when it all makes sense, trusting God in the details and next steps is easy- it’s exciting, thrilling even…But when things don’t seem to be going great, when it doesn’t make sense, when it doesn’t feel good or it’s hard- trusting God can be the hardest thing we are called to do as followers of Christ.
How could David (or Jesus) choose to trust?
What would that decision look like for you?
Where does that Journey begin? For David it began with two powerful words: yet you…Psalms 22:3Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises.
For David, the first step of trust was to look beyond what he could see, to move beyond what he could feel, to trust in who he KNEW God to be-He took that step by remembering the faithfulness of God to his ancestors before him.
That step can be hard- it can take us a while to get there even, but it’s a step we must take.
Whatever trust looks like for you today, God is worthy of your trust.
Trusting Him is ALWAYS the right decision for your life. Always…