Lord, why have you forsaken me?

This is the million-dollar question every believer has asked themselves, or the Lord at some point in their lives.

These words, spoken by Jesus Christ, while He hung on the cross have echoed through generations of believers.  Often, when we are going through hardships and seasons of loss, our minds quickly conclude that the Lord has forsaken us.  Maybe it’s because we have created this image that Christians should not go through suffering, or because we know God is good and allowing us to suffer is unlike Him.  Whatever the thinking behind it, the question of ‘why, the Lord has forsaken us’ and many other variations are close to our lips.

‘Why did I lose my baby?; Why did my marriage end?; Why did I have to endure so much abuse?’ These are questions believers ask. 

We have been given so many promises, many promises by Sovereign God, and we focus on that, as we should. He promised never to leave or forsake us, He promised that He is close to the broken-hearted.  Yet when life gets hard, we begin to ask these ‘why’ based questions, and most of the time, the only explanation is that there is no explanation why we have to go through so much loss, and why the Lord has allowed them to happen. 

The story of Job is one such story.  The Lord allowed one of His own to endure hardship and pain in an unimaginable way.  When we think about the story of Job, so many of us focus on what Job says in Job 3:25: that the thing he greatly feared the most has come upon him. As Christians, we often place the blame of Job and decide not to not be like him.  However, many of us miss what the Lord says about Job in Job1:8: ‘Job was blameless and upright, feared God and shunned evil,’ and yet he went through unimaginable pain, and the Lord Himself had allowed it.

We see Jesus, the Son of God, who dies the most horrific death, a man without sin, imagine that, and yet we as Christians have built this image that the Christian journey should be painless, and at the first sign of pain, we assume the Lord has forsaken us.

Now I don’t want us thinking that we should not ask God ‘why.’ That question is a part of healing and processing, and the Lord wants you to process the pain with Him at the centre, and so I understand that it is hard, there are some things you are going to go through that I cannot begin to imagine how you will feel. But Jesus knows how you feel, He has been through the worst of it, and so if you need to talk to someone who will understand, look to Jesus.  He once uttered those same words ‘Lord, why have you forsaken me?’, and so if anyone understands, it is Jesus. 

The one thing to remember in a season of deep pain and sadness is that God is good and He remains good despite what you are going through.  He did not allow what is happening to happen because He does not love you, to the contrary, God allowed it because He loves you, and we just need to trust that He knows what He is doing. He always wants the best for us. 

More importantly, do not go through hard seasons without Him, but place Him at the centre of the hardship, and whether you blame Him, or ask Him why, keep Him at the center of everything and walk through the season with Him, allow Him to heal and restore you, and hopefully strengthen your faith, so that you are rooted even deeper in Him than before.

I leave you with these last words from the Bible, spoken by Jesus in John 16:33 (NIV) ‘I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart! I have overcome the Lord.’  No matter what you are going through, labor to enter into His rest, and you will find peace in God.