Mensa Otabil - Is God Far Away? (11/03/2025)
Welcome to a brand new week. We go back to the Psalms; as you know, we’ve been studying the Psalms from Psalm 1, and now we are in Psalm 10. It starts with, «Why do you stand afar off, O Lord? Why do you hide in times of trouble?»
Psalm 10 has a relationship with the previous Psalm, Psalm 9, and we hear the theme here repeating itself. It begins with a question, «Why?» It’s a question that many Christians have asked the Lord in times of affliction. Many times, we want to find out what God is doing about our situation. «Why, Lord? Why is this happening? Why have you allowed this to happen or that to happen?» It’s obvious that this Psalm was written at a time when the writer could not feel God’s presence or see God’s work in the midst of something negative happening in his life.
The thing to note is that though the psalm starts with a question, if you read through the psalm, which we’re going to do, it ends with a bold statement of faith. The Psalms have that character where the psalmist starts with a question and ends with faith in God, which is where we always have to end in our walk with Him. There are two questions that he asks: first, «Why do you stand afar off?» This question does not doubt the existence of God. He’s not asking the question because he thinks there is no God; he says, «Why do you stand afar off?» So, he believes God is there, but God is distanced from him. He’s not asking for God to give him a verbal answer; he’s asking because he wants God to come and join him where he is. This is a call to God to act — " God, do something about my situation.»
Then the second question, «Why do you hide in times of trouble?» This goes a little further from standing. The psalmist is saying, «Lord, I don’t feel your presence when I’m in trouble.» I don’t get it; when I’m in trouble, it looks like you are not there. I don’t know whether you’ve ever been in that situation where you feel God is not there for you. You don’t feel His presence; you don’t sense His power, and something’s going wrong. It looks like God is just standing away from you. The question is, is He away from you? As humans, we are conditioned to work with our senses-what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we feel. When we can’t see something, taste it, hear it, or smell it, we begin to wonder whether it is there. Faith is not like that. We don’t walk by our senses; when we walk by faith, that’s why the Bible says we walk by faith and not by sight. In other words, we don’t need to see God to know He’s there. We don’t need to see Him at work for us to believe He’s at work.
So, if you’re going to walk with God or live with the Lord, you have to walk by faith. You can’t walk by your feelings; you can’t walk by how upset you are or how a situation is making you feel. You have to walk by faith, and faith comes by hearing the word of God. So then, whether we see Him or feel Him or not, we have to know He is there. How do we know He’s there when we can’t see and feel Him? We know by faith, based on His word. He says, «I am with you.» We believe He is with us. You may start the day with a question, but remember: God wants you to walk by faith and not by sight.
Let us pray. Say with me: Heavenly Father, I know you are always present. Help me to trust you even when I can’t see or feel your presence. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.