God Is Here

God Is Here

Prayer: We pray for those who feel forgotten and unseen, may they know that they are remembered and seen by you God.

Help us to partner with you to remember the forgotten.

We pray for those we know who struggle with mental illnesses, anxiety and depression. We pray that there will be resources released to help, enough staff employed and finances given towards mental health services nationally. Help us to be a friend and a listening ear to those who suffer. Fill us with compassion and wisdom.

Ultimately, we pray for those who wrestle with sorrow, that they may know your victory over those dark thoughts which currently seem to triumph.

Search our hearts to reveal those we hide our faces from, the outcast, the stranger or the homeless. Change our hearts, that we may turn our faces towards these people and see them as your beloved children.

“We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in.”1 ~ Barbara K. Lipska

Focal Text: Psalm 13 (NIV)

1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and every day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

3 Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

4 my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”

and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

5 But I trust in your unfailing love;

my heart rejoices in your salvation.

6 I will sing to the Lord,

for he has been good to me.

Introduction:

There are times when we think God is missing, but God is closer than we think.

Finding God is easy! God is just not always where we think God should be.

We will perform “laser surgery” to remove the distractions and impediments which make God hard to see.

Where is God? God is here!

Big Idea: We can see God better when we get out of our feelings. David frequently claimed that God was slow to act on his behalf. We often feel this same impatience. It seems that evil and suffering go unchecked, and we wonder when God is going to stop them. David affirmed that he would continue to trust God no matter how long he had to wait for God’s justice to be realized. When you feel impatient, remember David’s steadfast faith in God’s unfailing love.

If you’re...

1. Feeling Forgotten? - Psalm 13:1 - Prayer for Deliverance from Enemies- To the leader. A Psalm of David. - 1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

a. Anxiety-How long, O Lord? Sometimes all we need to do is talk over a problem with a friend to help put it in perspective. In this psalm, the phrase “how long” occurs four times in the first two verses, indicating the depth of David’s distress. b. Depression-Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? David expressed his feelings to God and found strength. By the end of his prayer, he was able to profess hope and trust in God. Through prayer we can express our feelings and talk our problems out with God. He helps us regain the right perspective, and this gives us peace.

When nothing make sense, and when troubles seem more than you can bear, remember that God gives strength. Take your eyes off your difficulties and look to God. God is alive and in control of the world and its events. We cannot see all that God is doing, and we cannot see all that God will do. But we can be assured that he is God and will do what is right. Knowing this can give us confidence and hope in a confusing world.

If you’re...

1. Feeling Forgotten?

2. FeelingPain?-Psalm13:2-- 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?How long will my enemy triumph over me?

A.Physical Pain- How long will my enemy triumph over me?

There are also external consequences since the psalmist—no longer convinced or certain of God’s active presence in his behalf—wonders whether the enemy can be held at bay much longer (13:2).

B. Mental Pain-How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?

The experience of God’s absence has inward emotional effects on the psalmist. His sense of abandonment leads to inward “wrestling” with thoughts (13:2—“I take counsel within myself”) and daily “sorrow” (yagon, “torment”) in his heart.

If you’re...

1. Feeling Forgotten?

2. FeelingPain?

3. OrFeelingUnstable?-Psalm13:3-4- 3 Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;4 my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”

and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

a. Lifeless -Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

Without the hoped-for divine intervention, the psalmist can only anticipate rapid decline, defeat, and death.

b. Alone - The psalmist’s sense of desperation is voiced in a series of pleas to God that expand in almost inexorable fashion:

Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

If you’re...

1. Feeling Forgotten?

2. FeelingPain?

3. OrFeelingUnstable?-

God’s Response Is... 4. I’m Here! - Psalm 13:5-6 -5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.

He gives me His...

a. Steadfast/Unfailing Love- But I trust in your unfailing love;

The psalmist finds the grounds for hope in God’s —“unfailing love.” The term has more of “loyalty” or “enduring allegiance” about it than the emotions we normally associate with “love.” The context is one of commitment to a covenantal agreement between parties—perhaps a king and a vassal. The covenant partner who demonstrates enduring loyalty to the covenant relationship and faithfully fulfills his covenant obligations, not because he is forced to but because of a sense of commitment to the relationship—such a person is said to do (“unfailing [covenant] love”).

David was faithful to God and trusted wholeheartedly in him, but he felt the pressure of his problems as much as anyone.

b. Salvation-my heart rejoices in your salvation.

Therefore, his heart can rejoice in God’s anticipated salvation. Instead of giving up or giving in, however, David held on to his faith. c. Song-I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.

He can sing songs concerning God’s goodness

Apply It!

In conclusion, If you’re...

1. Feeling Forgotten?

2. FeelingPain?

3. OrFeelingUnstable?-

God’s Response Is... 4. I’m Here!

Christ too experienced abandonment by God. His suffering was particularly severe on the cross—because of the sheer pain of it, the loss of his disciple band, and the obvious failure of any broad-based human response to his earthly ministry. Jesus expressed his greatest pain in the words of Psalm 22:1: ʾ(“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). Jesus’ example shows that it is not wrong to experience the abandonment of God, nor is such an experience necessarily the result of personal sin. Often when one is most firmly in the center of God’s purpose and will are attacks most severe and God seems most distant.

Like his Old Testament counterparts in the Psalter, Jesus stayed the course, choosing to remain faithful to the purposes of God throughout his suffering and death. We know that he was steeped in the Old Testament literature and used it to understand and articulate the character and purpose of his own ministry. He must have drawn much strength, courage, and understanding from such texts.

Finally, we must consider some practical responses to the question: “When God is absent, how do we regain a sense of his presence?” I will offer three from personal experience.

Voicing our complaint. Whenever we experience God as absent, we must vocalize our experience openly and honestly. I am not speaking here of talking incessantly to our family and friends about how distant we feel removed from God or complaining about how alone we feel. I mean instead that we should talk openly and honestly to God about our sense of abandonment. I don’t know what form this conversation may take for you, but personally I have found two avenues for carrying my own complaint directly to God.

One is through writing poetry that reflects the inward turmoil and anguish I am feeling. This is for me an effective way of opening up my spiritual and emotional wound to the sight of God. Journaling is a similar concrete way of expressing inner reflection in a less poetic form.

The other way I have conversed with an absent creator is through audible, spoken words. This is best pursued for me when I am alone—perhaps in the car or on a walk in the woods. I don’t want to be observed by those who might fear I am becoming unhinged. But actually speaking the words I think and feel has a way of getting out of my head and objectifying them. It also gives God a certain presence as the one to whom I am speaking—walking alongside me or sitting in the passenger seat of my car. By voicing my complaints—really voicing them—I acknowledge a continuing connection with God where none is immediately apparent.

Getting out of ourselves. Another way to begin to restore a sense of God’s presence is to turn my attention away from myself to others. When I focus on myself, I tend to increase my sense of isolation and aloneness. But when I turn my eyes and hands to others in compassionate caring and service, I bring them into my world and break my self-imposed silence. It is amazing how seeking the welfare of others opens me to the gracious action of God in their lives and ultimately in my own.

In the recent film Life Is Beautiful, a Jewish father who is taken to a Nazi concentration camp with his five- or six-year-old son chooses to carry on an elaborate fiction to protect his son from the desperate reality of their situation. They are in a competition to win an awesome prize and must be willing to suffer the constraints of the camp to ensure their chance of winning. The father mugs, spins tales, coerces the rest of the inmates into his conspiracy, and ultimately struts comically to his death in order to preserve the hope of his young son. Along the way the father communicates to his son, his wife, and other inmates that regardless of the ugly spin that humanity can put on it at times, life as God intends it is beautiful, and that beauty must be held on to even in life’s darkest moments.

In the community of faith. Finally, when God is absent for me, it is possible to catch a glimpse of him—or at least a testimony of his presence—when I stand within the community of faith. When I sit or stand shoulder to shoulder with my fellow Christians in worship, I can hear songs of praise to God even when my own heart is silent. Communion with God’s people is a down payment on the promise with which the psalmist concludes Psalm 13: “I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.”

Have you ever asked the question, “Where is God?”

What do you feel hinders you the most in your efforts to see God and experience His Presence?