There are seasons when trusting God comes easy... almost effortless. Prayers get answered. The door opens. Provision comes. You can see His hand throughout many areas of your life. And then there are seasons when you can't.
You pray and nothing seems to change. You ask for direction and hear silence. You believed for healing, restoration, provision, or breakthrough, and instead life became harder.
This is the place where faith gets tested.
Pain, heartache, and quietness has a way of making us question things we were certain of when life was good.
God, where are You? Do You see this? Are You really as good as I believed You were?
Scripture doesn't hide those questions.
David felt forgotten by God. Habakkuk asked why God seemed silent. Job wrestled desperately to understand his suffering. Even John the Baptist, after publicly declaring who Jesus was, found himself sitting in prison asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” -Matthew 11:3
God is not intimidated by our questions. And to be honest, faith isn't pretending something doesn't hurt. It isn't forcing yourself to smile while your heart is breaking. Biblical faith is being able to say, “God, I don't understand this, but I'm still bringing it to You.”
One of the greatest dangers in a painful season is allowing temporary circumstances to redefine the character of God in our own minds.
Don't build your theology around your worst day or your most terrible chapter.
The disciples could have done that at the cross. Consider those moments... everything they believed seemed to have collapsed. Jesus had been arrested, beaten, crucified, and buried. If they had judged God's faithfulness entirely by what they could see on Saturday, they could have concluded that God had failed. But God had not failed.
They were standing in the middle of a story that wasn't finished. Sunday was coming.
This might be exactly where you are also. This doesn't mean every painful situation in our lives will suddenly resolve the way we want. Some losses remain painful. Some prayers are answered differently than we hoped. Some questions may not be answered in this lifetime. Our confidence is not that we will eventually understand everything, our confidence is that we know the One who does.
When circumstances make you question God's goodness, look beyond the circumstances and look at Jesus. The cross already settled the question of whether He loves you. Gethsemane settled the question of whether He understands suffering. The resurrection settled the question of whether darkness gets the final word.
So tell Him when you're disappointed. Tell Him when you're angry, confused, exhausted, or afraid. You don't have to perform for Him.
Just don't walk away because you cannot understand what He's doing.
Sometimes the strongest prayer you can pray is simply, “God, I don't understand You right now. But I still trust You. Help me in my acceptance.”
A difficult season may change your circumstances. It may change your plans. It may even change you. But it does not change Him. Try to remember, your season may have changed, God didn't.
~Devin
Devin Osborne
The Early Church