Hope in Who He Is
How do Christians deal with hardship?
When a hard season of life lingers longer than you hoped—sickness, grief, hardship—and it seems that there is no hope for relief, do you feel like God has left you alone?
We affirm that God only seems to be absent. God has made promises in Scripture to His people, to never leave you or forsake you. To always be your guide and friend. God is never away from you. He never leaves you alone.
But that doesn’t change your experience of your difficult seasons.
The truth of God’s abiding presence didn’t cancel out David’s sense of abandonment when he wrote Psalm 42. You may know the intellectual truth that is proclaimed in the pages of Scripture, that God is always with you, and yet you may still feel like He could not be further away.
Why? Because God’s ways are inscrutable. They are impossible to fully understand. God’s work in our lives is not always easily interpreted. His ways are often mysterious to us.
In Psalm 42 we get a glimpse of incredible grief.
David is grieved. His enemies taunt him: “Where is your God? He has surely abandoned you.” David is grieved enough, and then his enemies rub salt in the wound: “Maybe your God has no interest in you.”
Have you ever been so distressed, so confused by experience, so overwhelmed by the rigors of life that you say something like, “I can’t come up for air”?
Here is the picture of all that is overwhelming: his footing gone, and wave after wave submerging him. But do you see the language—Your breakers. Your waves.
While he may not have an answer to the “why” of his circumstances—he knows the answer to the “Who” of his circumstances.
For God’s people we must not start with “why.” We always start with “who.” Knowing God is in control doesn’t always fix the circumstance, but it preserves us through it.
David cries out to him. David does not question God’s promises. He doesn’t question God’s character. He expresses his experience and trouble—“Lord, it seems to me as if You have abandoned your servant. Why do I continue to go along? When will You act to relieve me?”
Certainly in hardship you feel grief. The temptation is to judge the Lord’s ways by our feeble sense; to determine His intentions only by our daily circumstantial experiences.
In the midst of hardship and doubt, David comes back to the same refrain: “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” He speaks to himself. He knows the answer to his longing and his despair: hope in God.
Take note: David’s comfort comes not from change of circumstance. For all he knows, he might die in the wilderness. His hope is in God’s character: God is my salvation. My Savior.
We aren’t meant to be circumstantial Christians. God does not intend for His people to live their lives driven only by their experiences. No matter our circumstance, no matter how hard and unyielding it may be, we can live with good courage, for we will one day be with God. We walk by faith, not by sight.
Like David, you must not trust your circumstances. You must trust God’s character. He is your salvation. Not money, or power, or plans, or good health.
Even in hardship we must hope in the Lord. We trust, like David, that God will see His people through one way or another. Your disease may kill you—but if you are God’s, death will not prevent Him from showing you His steadfast love.
What is our hope? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Pet. 1:3)
Christ is our hope. In him our judgment is taken away, for He died in our place. And to all who believe on Him is granted a living hope—the same hope that David expresses in this Psalm.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
Psalm 42:11