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Pastor Doug Wilson is Senior Pastor at Bethany Church and West Covina Christian School — and a proud parent of three WCCS Graduates! He told our students three stories to help students think about the question that everyone asks in life, “Will God Be There?”
He shared his story — Jesus’ story — and each student’s story.
He read the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, and how Jesus in agony cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).
Every one of us, at some point in our lives, feels lonely, isolated, alone . . . feels like God isn’t there . . . and wonders whether God has abandoned them.
And Jesus knows exactly how we feel.
The Bible shows us how Jesus responded when he felt abandoned by his friends, and even by God. When He wondered whether God had forsaken Him, He takes action:
1. He talks to God.
(He prays. He connects with His Father.)
2. He speaks God's Word.
(Jesus quotes Psalm 22, which He had memorized, and which He
was trying to live out. Many scholars believe that on His way to the
Cross, and as He was on the Cross, Jesus was praying the Psalms.)
3. He tells God how he feels.
(He knows that His Father is interested in how His children are doing,
in what we are feeling, in what we are going through.)
4. He trusts God.
(He cries out, “My God”...even though He doesn’t sense that God is near,
even though He cannot see God, and feel God, and even through what
He is going through seems to indicate that God has abandoned Him.
He trusts God, and He calls Him “My God,” because Jesus believes that
God is who He has revealed Himself to be in Scripture: the God who
promised to never leave us, to never forsake us, to never abandon us.
Jesus teaches us how to live in faith; how to fully trust our loving Father . . . even when we’re going through the worst day imaginable.
Dallas Willard points out that C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters explains how “God has put us in a position where our will can go in either direction. We are responsible for our decision. It’s what we choose to see that matters. In order for us to have that choice, God leaves things so that we have to seek them. We have to seek, so that the promise of Jeremiah 29 can be fulfilled: ‘You will find me, when you seek for me with all your heart.’ “ In the quote from Lewis, Screwtape says to Wormwood:
“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human,
no longer desiring, but still intending,
to do our enemy’s will,
looks round upon a universe
from which every trace of him seems to have vanished,
and asks why he has been forsaken,
and still obeys.” |
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