When You Feel Dropped by the Lord
Have you ever gone through a season where you felt dropped by the Lord? If you have not you will. It’s only a part of life, especially for those who seek God with their whole heart. We acknowledge God in all of our decision-making rejoicing in his goodness. Then, life happens. Not just once but again and again in a row. All the while, God is hidden and his voice sparse.
If we live on every word that proceeds from God’s mouth and God’s voice is faint; how do we proceed to live? We wait while we seek the Lord to renew our strength like Job. We also pay attention to God’s sparse voice in the wilderness season. Sparseness doesn’t mean, nothing at all. It’s just much less than what we are used to (Psalms 23:2.) It’s what we need right now.
I love God so much for including the story of Job in the Bible. He is someone who had a history of walking with the Lord in righteousness. So much so, that he, like many of us who love the Lord, was willing to endure the pain. The pain of suffering in righteousness without dishonoring the Lord. All the while, he trusted that the suffering would come to an end.
Job was Honest w/God & Others About How He Felt Dropped by the Lord
He felt dropped by the Lord. He felt that God was against him somehow. He was confused trying to figure out how his life flipped upside down from what it used to be.
“How I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me when his lamp shone on my head and by his light I walked through darkness! Oh, for the days when I was in my prime when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house when the Almighty was still with me and my children were around me. – Job 29:2-5”
I don’t know Job’s age at the time of this suffering, but he’d had some history with the Lord. One of the things that happens when we have a history with the Lord is after several trials and tests—we get tired. In our tiredness, we realize we aren’t where we were. We live in a place of loss as if walking with the Lord was then. And now, we don’t know where we are or if God is still with us. Job was honest about these feelings.
I believe God allowed this to be in his word to remind us to be honest with him during the in-between place where we feel dropped by the Lord. The place where we aren’t sure if God is still with us. It’s our honesty with God that invites him in to bring correction to us allowing us to get to the place he is taking us. All while eventually having the correct perception of God and ourselves.
During the In-Between Place of Suffering, Our Vision Gets Skewed
Job’s vision got skewed as he no longer saw God as a God of justice. He began to question the goodness of God. My vision of God had gotten skewed not long ago. I’ve experienced a lot of suffering in my life. Much of the suffering I’ve experienced has been in my mind and emotions. Therefore, no one could help me unless I invited them in. Even while inviting others in—I was unable to get the needed help from some as counselors and such had not been familiar with my experiences. Because of this, I looked at God primarily as someone who sustains us in hardship and suffering.
However, God is much more than just a sustainer in hardship. Although, he is that.
There is nothing worse than believing God is against you because if we do not have anyone else in this world—we expect to have God. It’s hard to maintain hope when we feel there is no support. We see Job, like us, at times, longing for his death or to have never been born for relief. Even in Job’s confusion, he held fast to his faith that God is still good and he would come out of this if he could just get to God. The vacillation in Job’s multiple views of God is much like ours during difficulty.
This is encouragement for us that when we feel our relationship with God is broken—we should still pursue and cry out to God. We should still maintain hope that God’s answer will come restoring us back to ourselves and God. And even though Job’s friends were wrong, it was nice that they came to sit with him. We should still value ourselves in that difficult place enough to know we are worthy of others checking in on us.
Job Longed for God. He Longed to Worship Him.
Job spoke in the above passage about knowing God intimately. That is significant of a life of worship. Something difficult to do when weighted down with the grief of loss over where we were before. Have you ever been in a place where you found it difficult to worship God due to the challenges of life? I have. I remember being in a place reading scripture and not being able to understand it. It said the below:
“You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. – Ps 145:16”
I could not understand the above scripture during my suffering. I asked God what does that mean? Am I reading the wrong interpretation of your scripture? I only know you as the God who keeps me during suffering. You provide for me. I am not lacking, but I feel like I know you the most as a God who helps me to continue to live right while suffering. I am not familiar with you satisfying my desires. I am familiar with dying to myself and my desires. This is an example of a skewed vision of God due to our experiences.
Yes, we have to die to our flesh, but the hope of God’s promises toward us is not to die during the suffering. The clearer we get in viewing God; the easier it will be to worship God as worship is an act of intimacy relating to the revelation of who God is.
Getting Back to a Place of Worship After Feeling Dropped by the Lord
The children of Israel had been in bondage for 70 years, exiled from their nation—the nation of Israel. They’d longed for the security of being in that intimate place of worship with the Lord. Hence, the perseverance displayed by Nehemiah, Ezra, Zerubbabel, and other Israelites in the rebuilding of the temple.
When they finished rebuilding the place of worship that God led them to build; they sang to the Lord saying, “He is good; his love toward Israel endures forever.” The exiled Israelites, like Job, had experienced feeling far from the Lord and again restored. That place of worship bought them back to seeing God correctly as not a God who abandoned them in exile, but a God whose love toward them continues.
They had points of discouragement, but they had to continue in obedience to build. When the foundation of the temple was lain, the people rejoiced and began to praise God. It was noted that the elders wept loudly, but the weeping could not be distinguished from the shouts of joy from the younger generation. I believe this is because God was bringing Israel back to a place of worship unto himself. This place of worship and communion with God is something the elders felt they had lost. Thus, the answer of worshipping again at the new temple met the deep longing they’d worried over in their hearts. God was revealing himself again to the elders and the younger generation alike. This was God’s way of saying you have not been counted out. I have not dropped you to the elders. I still love you.
Job Returns to Worship
We see, in Job 42, Job finally gets his meeting with the Lord and his response is humility and repentance for the skewed view of God. In the end, the latter days of Job were more blessed than the former. What Job felt he’d lost due to his suffering was not lost at all.
What can we learn from this?
Take our honest feelings and skewed perceptions of God to God. Don’t teach them to other people making them as confused as we are. We all will go through various challenges where we feel apart from God. It can feel as if we are starting all over again with God despite our vast history with him. Remain humble and see this process to the end. Trust that God will lead you with his word even though it is sparse when in a wilderness experience. We can trust that in the wilderness God will lead us beside green pastures. Green pastures represent the sustenance we need right now.
Green pastures are sparse in the wilderness. These are things that can sustain us while in a dry place. Green pastures are sustenance for sheep that abide in the wilderness. Figurative of us as God’s sheep and he the Good Shepherd, who while quiet much, still guides us in the wilderness. We will have to trust this. It’s always God’s will to draw us near to him. Like God, defended Job from his friends who falsely accused him of sin; God will defend us.
Read Isaiah 45 again and again for encouragement. It shares a prophecy about how God had planned way before Israel had gone into exile for them to be delivered out of exile and bought back into their land and a place of worship by God using King Cyrus. Vs. 15 shares how God was viewed as a God who hid himself but God came out in full glory to deliver Israel and declare them as his. Israel is a metaphor for the church. And we belong to God still. We are not dropped by the Lord.
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