4.BRING AVAILABILITY TO MY COLLAPSE PSALMS 102:2

Hide not Your face from us in the day when we are in trouble

Problem after problem and we feel that God is obscuring His responses to our troubles. He’s playing hide and seek. How can He act that way when He is the only one who can solve our distress and difficulty? It feels like a perpetual assault where He is concealed. Can’t we come to grips, but this feeling won’t leave? Is this just an agony that we’ve self-concocted? Spurgeon writes “Our prayer is intensified into a cry, then the heart is even more urgent to have the audience of the Lord.^”

Our trouble is unbearable. William Cowper wrote

“That were a grief I could not bear, Didst thou not hear and answer prayer.”

Don’t depend on earthly comforters,

God is the wonderful counselor in a time of crisis

God is our refuge & strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear,

though the earth should change;

and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea

Psalm 46:1-2

We need trouble as our prompt to respond to God who disguises Himself in our troubles and stresses.

When we’re quick in including Him in each issue then He’ll be prompt in responding

Troubles should increase the intensity of our prayers not our doubts.

“Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.

Leave to thy God to order and provide;

In every change, He faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly Friend

Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul:

thy God doth undertake to guide the future, as He has the past.

Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know

His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,

And all is darkened in the vale of tears,

Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,

Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.

Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay

From His own fullness all He takes away.

Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on

When we shall be forever with the Lord.

When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,

Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.

Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past

All safe and blessèd we shall meet at last.

Be still, my soul:

begin the song of praise On earth, believing, to Thy Lord on high;

Acknowledge Him in all thy words and ways,

So shall He view thee with a well pleased eye.

Be still, my soul: the Sun of life divine

Through passing clouds shall but more brightly shine.

“We only learn through pain. It is pain that causes us to change. Pain may take us to a doctor for help. Pain may send us back to school. Pain may force us to dissolve a destructive relationship. Pain may bring us to God.” Williams, D., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1989). Psalms 73–150

To be frantic about God being this delusional hidden quality is really our own invention. This comes from our implacable natural inclination toward fictitious, imaginary fears. In our stress we create and believe delusions. We become hypochondriacs in our mind games. We dress the shadows of our existence in colorful costumes and ghoulish outfits. We lack faith, and decline in a dementia that our Lord Jesus detests and scolds. This attitude drives us from the reality of his constant care, denies us of sensation of his loving arms and lifting ability. God uses the legion of surrounding troubles for our good. For we need to come to the fact that the snags of life are not damaging difficulties. To say our Lord is hidden and ignoring our needs is turning our back to the only one who can save and will deliver from every hitch, nuisance, breakdown and difficulty.

We can plead that He reveal His face in our time of trouble but we are the ones that have turned our back on Him in our fears and doubts. He says: remember Me, think on Me, behold Me, meditate on Me. Then we cry, how can You Lord Jesus expect me to abide in Your love if Yo hide Yourself from me in the time of need?

The answer of course is He doesn’t hide at all from us but we hide from Him. We are demanding certain things. We want everything to work out our way and according to our approvable. If those expectations are not met we feel like the victims of things that we interpret as tragedy.

Eliaphaz says to Job: 

Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. Job 5:7

We feel that bad things only happen to fools and idiots.

He delivers us in six troubles: in seven no evil will touch us. Job 5:19

We think that nasty things only happen because we are wicked and this is completely false. Our fear is that we are freaks of nature and that our immense evil has caused God to turn his back to us in our trouble.

But Job answered and said, Oh that my griefs were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together! For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea: therefore my words are swallowed up. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinks up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. Job 6:1-4

Everything is from the hand of God. God is not hiding himself, but in trouble He is revealing Himself.

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of you, and answer me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have understanding. Job 38:1-4

Our life seems a continuous whirlwind. The wind appears to blow everything we thought we had of value away.

He has thrown me into the mire, and I am like dust and ashes’ I cry unto You, and You don’t hear me: I stand up, and You don’t regard me. You are become cruel to me: with Your strong hand You oppose me and are against me. You lift me up to the wind; You cause me to ride upon it, and it dissolves my substance.

Job even complained that he had cared for the troubles of others but he was being hung out and denied when terrors exploded in on him.

Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? Was not my soul grieved for the poor? When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness. Job 30:25-26

But the wind is not blowing us apart, God answers in the whirlwind: Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?  

Why are we feeling so abandoned, why are we accusing God? He has been with us the whole time. Gird up now thy loins like a man, Get a grip.

Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be serious, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ 1Pet.1:13

As we see the Lord in our problems things make sense.

In Job 38:4-6 God says; I put the earth together one molecule at a time; I’m in complete control of it.

In Job 38:7 He says; I’m in control of the Planets, the Angelic host do all my requests, nothing takes place outside of my authority.

V.8 the sea came from God’s womb. The turbulent Ocean is my infant at its birth, the sea came out of My bowels v.9 the clouds I make as a swaddling band that cradle the sea.

God brake the earth & the sea by his decree:

He made a vast chasm in the earth to hold the waters of the sea,

He provided as a sort of cradle to put this swaddled infant in;

God slashed the earth, raised the hills & sank the valleys,

He made channels to convey the waters that ran off the earth to their appointed place.

This is beautifully expressed, showing his wise plans. Everything God does is for our blessing.

We need to see Him in everything. He is not hiding. Job 38:10

So the LORD blessed the end of Job more than his beginning:

for he had fourteen thousand sheep,

and six thousand camels,

and a thousand yoke of oxen,

and a thousand she asses. Job 42:12

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.

In the world ye shall have tribulation:

but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. John 16:33

Confirming the souls of the disciples,

He exhorted them to continue in the faith,

He said that we must through much tribulation entering into the kingdom of God. Acts 14:22