Hope: For When it Feels Like God Has Forgotten You

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Psalm 13

It is no fun feeling forgotten.

I still have memories of a time in middle school that I had to stay after for one reason or another and Mom had to come pick me up instead of taking the bus home. Of course, this was well before cell phones, let alone smartphones. And I just remember standing there in the school parking lot… watching… as I heard each new car come by and each one turning out not to be ours for what felt like a very long time. And I’m pretty sure I started to feel a little upset that I was left waiting for so long, and then as the minutes crept on, maybe a little more so scared that maybe she forgot entirely.

Well, I did not live out my youth in a dumpster behind the school. Naturally, she did show up. And all told, I don’t think I was waiting more than 15 minutes. When you’re young, that can be a scary long time.

But, it’s hard to feel like you’ve been forgotten by somebody. It’s tough when it’s someone close, like family or a friend. You were going to get together and they just… don’t show. They didn’t message you because… well, they forgot. And it’s a little harder when it’s not a one-off accident but you just sort of fade out of someone’s life. Someone you thought you mattered to. Maybe life changed and those regular opportunities that you saw each other stopped happening. One of you took a different job or the evening activity where you crossed paths is over. And now that the friendship would require active outreach to maintain… you’ve stopped hearing from the other person.

It can be really discouraging to find out you’re not as important to someone as you once thought. And since we’re dragging ourselves down the hole, let’s just go all out and ask – how much worse if it’s God who’s forgotten us?

I mean, you may know better. God doesn’t forget, you say. But that doesn’t stop the feelings. That doesn’t stop the question from cropping up sometimes. Let’s not pretend we’re too good to feel that way or that it would be somehow shameful and embarrassing to admit. Because our psalm for today comes to us from King David. David was one of the greatest kings of Israel and one of the greatest examples of faith in the Lord from the Old Testament. But David was human. David was sinful. And David had his times of weakness. Psalm 13 is just one example of his wrestling with that sinful nature, in this case struggling with feeling forgotten by God.

Listen to the start of this psalm and see if these words resonate with you at all:

    How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
      How long will you hide your face from me?
    How long must I experience worries in my soul,
      sorrow in my heart every day?
      How long will my enemy tower over me?
     Look at me. Answer me, O LORD my God.
      Give light to my eyes
         so I do not sleep in death,
       so my enemy does not say, “I have overcome him,”
         so my foes do not rejoice when I fall.

I read that, and it almost makes me want to cry. Big, manly tears mind you, but still. It’s heartbreaking to hear someone else suffering like that but perhaps even more so because I know exactly what that feels like. There’s so much trouble in our world and our lives, but we get through it because we know we have our God to lean on, that he is always there to help us… so how do we handle it when we feel like that’s not there anymore? If we start to question, doubt, or just plain think that God’s not helping?

Ridiculous, you might think. But falling into that is easier than you think. King David succumbed to it. Take a look at each of his laments and ask yourself if you’ve ever felt that way…

    How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
      How long will you hide your face from me?

When we suffer under a difficulty, when we pray to God for help and nothing changes, when days turn into weeks and maybe even years and it’s still the same… How long can we endure before our prayers turn into cries like this? How long, Lord? Are you listening? Are you there? Why are you hiding? Am I waiting at the bottom of a to-do list that you’ll never get to or have I dropped off your radar entirely?

     How long must I experience worries in my soul,
      sorrow in my heart every day?

And without help, without attention… how many days do you spend wrapped up in your worries, and how many sleepless nights does it bring? If God would just help, or at least acknowledge you, then maybe you could have some peace knowing this will be handled. But when it’s so painfully obvious that you’re on your own, you end up in that state where nothing gets done because all your time and energy is consumed by worry and sorrow.

      How long will my enemy tower over me?

And maybe this struggle is caused by more than just bad circumstance. Maybe there’s literally people acting against you. We talked about this last week. Maybe you have a particular thorn or two in your side. Maybe it’s just the random indifference or even spite of the people you meet day to day. But it’s easy to feel like you’re always losing against them, you’re always the one who has to bend and give in and give up, and it shouldn’t have to be that way right? If God were here, if God were on your side – how can you lose against mere people?

     Look at me. Answer me, O LORD my God.
      Give light to my eyes

And here’s the thing. The questions pile up. The evidence piles up. We wonder why God doesn’t help, why he doesn’t act, where is he at all. I mean, as Christians we understand and accept that this life needs to have some trouble in it. God said it will not be perfectly easy. But… when we’re in the middle of so much trouble, is it too much to ask him to at least explain a little? To “give light to our eyes” and show us why this is going on? It would be so much easier to bear if we could see the purpose behind it but so often it feels like we get nothing but radio silence from him. It can come to this point where maybe we accept the suffering but all we really want to know is, “why?”

         so I do not sleep in death,
       so my enemy does not say, “I have overcome him,”
         so my foes do not rejoice when I fall.

And maybe one last point that sort of drives home this idea that God is just not paying attention. Because what sort of message is it sending to the world when his people are the ones suffering the most, getting beaten down the most, and succeeding the least? If enemies literally kill us and God does not retaliate. If our lives are struggle after struggle against those that look down on us for being Christian, what does that say? They sit and laugh and rejoice because they win and we lose and we’re not clever enough to see how wrong we are because if God really were here, they wouldn’t be able to get away with half of what they do, right?

And you know what? When you consider the evidence that God has forgotten you… it can seem pretty compelling.

But… you can’t just look at half the evidence. David, after all his laments here, did not stop at that point. After listing all the reasons he has to despair, he finishes the psalm with these words:

    But I trust in your mercy.
      My heart rejoices in your salvation.
    I will sing to the LORD
         because he has accomplished his purpose for me.

After everything he just listed off, how could David make such bold claims as this? Well, we’ll get into more detail about it, but it really comes down to this one word here at the end of the first line: “mercy”. In the original language the word here is hesed, a special word that really captures what God’s love is all about. My favorite way to bring it into English is “unfailing love”. And there’s a couple things about it that make it unique…

God’s love is unlike most love we know. We usually love as a reaction, regardless of which kind of love you’re talking about, whether it’s family, friend, romantic, or just about a good cheeseburger. Something appeals to us and we love it as a reaction. But, not God. God’s love has its origin within himself. He loves because he chooses to. it has nothing to do with us or who we are or how we act.

Even more than that he loves because it is a defining quality of who he is. So, God’s love is not something that changes by circumstance either. It’s not affected by what he saw on Facebook or the news that morning or that something he just ate is disagreeing with him like our emotions can be. He cannot stop loving us because it literally defines who he is. God’s love for you… is an objective fact.

And most importantly, God’s love has a singular, driving purpose. To do what is best for you at all times. That is all God does with his love, and the power and authority he has behind it. He only ever uses it to do what is best for you.

All of that is wrapped up in that word, hesed. And that alone is evidence enough to dispel the doubts that God may have forgotten us. We just trust in that mercy, that unfailing love. But the great thing about God? He doesn’t just stop there. He has left us so much proof that he loves you. So much proof that he does not forget, that he does not abandon. So, let’s take time this morning to consider the trail of evidence he left us.

From the moment the first people, Adam and Eve sinned, he was there to help. They broke his law, they condemned themselves and everyone after to eternal separation from God, and yet God came immediately and promised a savior. He promised someone who would undo the devil’s work and bring peace back between themselves and God.

Now we don’t possibly have time to get into every example, but from then on, the Old Testament of the Bible is largely just account after account of God’s faithful love to his people. Both taking care of them in the moment and, more importantly, guiding history to reach the point when we were ready for the savior to arrive. And those people constantly turned away, constantly rejected God, constantly complained, constantly forgot him. But all the evidence is there… he never forgot them. He never abandoned them. He always did what was best for them.

And of course, we reach the culmination of God’s unfailing love through history when we get to Jesus. When he became one of us so that he could go in our place. For all the times we’ve turned from God or doubted his love or failed to trust him…Jesus did it all perfectly and then sacrificed his perfect life so that our wrongs could be taken away from us. He suffered our punishment so we could be set free.

God… who does not need us. God… who we only ever antagonize. God… gave up everything and died so that we could be spared the punishment we rightly earned. And to prove it was true, he rose from the dead and proclaimed us forgiven in him. That is the full expression of his hesed, his unfailing love. Jesus is truly the best evidence that God has not forgotten you.

And even though it’s the best – it doesn’t stop there either – God keeps going! In the history that followed God still watched over his people and still guided his believers to spread that good news about Jesus across the world. He took care of those who loved him and he reached out through them to as many more as they could.

And through their effort and God’s guidance… you have been taught about Jesus. You have been brought to faith in him. And you have the truth and trust that lets you escape this world and go to paradise. God did that for you. He has never forgotten you, he is always thinking about getting you home with him.

But you know what? Let’s bring it back down for a minute. Yes, God has saved you through Jesus, and yes that’s all we truly need and it is the best demonstration of his love. But even back at our daily problems… he is still here. He has not forgotten you and he has not left you alone. And there’s more evidence. I know you have it. Look back over your own life. I’ll give you a minute. Look back and see the times that God has guided you, guarded you, directed you, cared for you.

Maybe that accident you narrowly avoided. Maybe a foolish decision you made that should have derailed your whole life but God corrected. Maybe it’s all the times God just let the right pieces fall into place at exactly the right time to bless you better than you thought possible. Just look, you’ll see the evidence that God has been there all along.

With that in mind, I want to circle back on our original problem… when we are in the midst of trouble we don’t understand and don’t seem to be getting help. Because none of what I just said suddenly will change the situation or explain what God is up to, right? The solution… is to build up our trust. See trust is what we hold on to when we don’t have proof or evidence that something is true. Trust is what we give someone when we don’t know for a fact how they will act.

Trust is what lets us say to God, “I am suffering. But I know you’re here. And I know you love me. And I believe you when you say this is what is best for me, even though I can’t understand or see how that is.” Trust does not need to understand everything God does, trust just knows that God loves us, and that can be enough. And in the end, when he does deliver us, like the boy waiting for his mom to pick him up from school, we’ll look back and realize, we weren’t really waiting all that long. God had it under control.

And so when we struggle about feeling forgotten by God… return to God. Go back to his word and consider his promises. Promises like this one:

     I will never forget you. (Is 49.15)

Doesn’t get much more direct than that, does it? And that’s just a sample. You’ll find that and many more scattered throughout his word. And then on top of that, you’ll find proof that he carries out his promises. Beyond the greatest promise and fulfillment of Jesus, you’ll see so many other times that God said he would act… and never once does he fail. The evidence is all there.

And, as if all that were not great enough, God’s word has a special promise associated with it. He promises to work through that word in his power to build up your trust in him. It’s not even up to you. Being in his word, studying what he has given us – he will do the work of building up that trust.

In the fullness of that trust, we can endure the difficulties. Not that we won’t occasionally lament. Not that we won’t have days when it feels like more than we can bear, but at the end of it all, we can repeat confidently with David:

    I trust in your mercy.
      My heart rejoices in your salvation.
    I will sing to the LORD
         because he has accomplished his purpose for me.

Amen.