Are you able to relate to major league pitcher Dave Dravecky’s feelings that God was not with him when he had to make a decision to have his pitching arm amputated because of advancing cancer?

Have you ever felt God was Missing In Action? Well you certainly are not alone.

This morning scripture lesson reveals Job frustrations and feelings of abandonment.

King David cried out,

Jesus shouted from the cross,

Whose fault was it that God could not be found?

Did God turn His back on David because he committed adultery with Bathsheba and put her husband in harms way so that he could be killed in battle? You might be able to say this had David written this Psalm after his sin of adultery and murder. However David wrote this Psalm before he was even king.

What about Job? Scripture states,

You can not point your finger at anything he had done to cause God’s disappearance. You also can not say that God’s absence wasn’t due to a lack of trying by Job to find God.

So why does it seem that God is Missing In Action?

Like Job’s friends who concluded that suffering is the consequence of sin. How often have you asked, “What have I done to deserve this?”

We look for a logical explanation for suffering, misfortune, and trials. Rick Warren points out in his book The Purpose Driven Life “sin does disconnect us from intimate fellowship with God.” While it is true it is wrong to see such events as God turning his back on us. Nowhere in scripture will you find verses to support that claim. On the contrary you will find scripture that affirms just the opposite to be true.

So how do you explain suffering and misfortune?

Scripture states,

This means bad things happen to good and bad people alike. While we might not feel God’s presence in the storm, that does not negate His presence.

Why then do we feel God is M.I.A.? Why did Job say,

Our problem is that we often confuse feelings with fact. Christian author Philip Yancey wrote, “Any relationship involves times of closeness and times of distance, and in a relationship with God, no matter how intimate the pendulum will swing from one side to the other.”

Consider your own relationships, those with your spouse, your children, your parents, and your friends? Haven’t there been times when you have felt this awesome closeness and times when you felt distant? Do those feelings cause you to question your love for that person?

“The most common mistake Christians make in worship today is seeking an experience rather than seeking God…Seeking a feeling, even the feeling of closeness to Christ, is not worship.” (Purpose Drive Life pg.109)

Scripture tells us that we will not always feel God’s presence.

WHY does God hide His face? God hides His face so we can mature in our faith, in our trust, in our worship of God.

When a child is born he/she is totally dependent on his/her parent for everything. Birth begins a weaning process. The child must be weaned off the bottle. The child must be weaned off baby foods. The child must be weaned off total dependency of Mom and Dad and begin doing things for herself or himself. The weaning process begins on the first day of school and goes on and on. Can you imagine a parent doing for their ten year old what they did when the child was ten days old? This would be foolish. Our parents needed to let us go so that we could become mature adults. We are still dependent on our parents for love even though we have independence.

For our faith and trust in God to mature we need God to hide His face. We need dry gulch times in our lives. We need storms in our lives. God uses them for the building up of our faith.

Another common mistake Christians make in life today is that in the storms we forget God’s promises that we learned in the calm of life. Trials and tribulations, storms of life do not negate God’s promises, if anything they reinforce the truth of God’s promises. God does not change when the circumstances of our lives change. God is and always will be just as Job found God to be. God is all knowing, all-powerful, all present, all loving, etc.

When God seems to be M.I.A. embrace Paul’s advice,

Do as Job did, declare your confidence in God.