Sometimes...Sometimes when we cry out in our pain, asking God to make himself know, we can't find him. He seems faraway and distant, and we conclude that he just isn’t as good and kind and powerful as we had thought. Our weak faith is shaken, and we wind up distancing ourselves from God, because our own means of comfort seem safer.
Perhaps the most faith-shaking, fear-generating experiences are those in which God provides a blessing and then seems to pull the rug out from under us by taking away the blessing as soon as we get a taste of it. God is not who we thought he was. When we go through that sort of experience, our foundation is shaken to the core.
When we first discover that God isn’t who we’d thought, when he doesn’t turn out to fit our image of him, our fall into doubt or unbelief can be extraordinary, “Who is God if he is not the one I can count of to rescue more from bad things?” we ask. “Is he a God I can be close to after all? I’ve always gone to him with everything large and small. Does he care? Or have I been kidding myself all this time?” When our view of a loving God is called into question, we don’t know where to turn.
When God comes near to us, we are going to respond in one of two ways. Either we will cling to God in the midst of our fear, discovering in the process at that Jesus is for us, or we will run away from our only source of help.
The latter is easier to do.
