When You Feel Abandoned by God

Mike Leake


It might seem strange counsel but I believe people that are often discouraged and prone to negative thinking need to hear things like this:

God has not abandoned any of us any more than he abandoned Job. He never abandons anyone on whom he has set his love; nor does Christ, the good shepherd, ever lose track of his sheep. It is as false as it is irreverent to accuse God of forgetting, or overlooking, or losing interest in, the state and needs of his own people. If you have been resigning yourself to the thought that God has left you high and dry, seek grace to be ashamed of yourself. Such unbelieving pessimism deeply dishonors our great God and Savior. (J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 88-89)

Doesn’t it feel like we’ve been abandoned at times, though? Doesn’t it feel as if we can pray Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”?

Packer himself likely had times of feeling “left high and dry”. As he recalls in his latest work, Weakness is the Way, Packer was a “solitary and rather somber child”. He “had to wear at school, for ten years, a black aluminum patch covering a hole in [his] head…and hence was unable to play outdoor games.” This, Packer says, left him “feeling out of most of what mattered”. He likely felt Psalm 22;

Forsaken.

Groaning.

Lonely.

Silent.

Scorned.

Mocked.

Weak…

Now to really feel Psalm 22 we have to feel it in its entirety. And that is what the above Packer quote is referencing. It’s right—and in fact quite like Christ—to express Psalm 22:1. But if you leave it there—without embracing the redemption of Psalm 22—you are accusing God of being less than He is.

Though we are the afflicted and we feel that in our bones, at the same time faith beckons us to cry out, “The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied.” Yes, this is true. I know it to be true because Jesus has fulfilled Psalm 22.

And because of this I know that the Great Shepherd will never abandon his sheep…including me. Even if I have engaged in the “unbelieving pessimism” that “deeply dishonors our great God and Savior”.

Jesus is just that great.

A Photo That Changed My Life

Mike Leake 1 Comment

It was an innocent enough picture, but it really shook me up.

There I was, iPad in hand, next to my then three year old son who was focused on playing with an iPod. Both of us with heads down; disengaged from each other and everyone else.

As I saw that photo I was crushed. “Dear God, no,” I prayed. I refuse to be a disengaged husband, father, friend, and disciple.

Once I saw that photo I vowed to change. No more will I be with people and have my nose in an electronic device—unless it’s for the sake of conversation or the meeting itself.

I fail at this at times. And sometimes it hits me how stupid it is that I’m playing some silly game, reading some pointless article, checking some insignificant news, or wasting away while I have life all around me.

This isn’t life no matter what Apple tries to tell you. This is not it, this is not what matters:

I believe that iPad’s and iPod’s can be helpful tools. They can help us actually serve people better. But if, as you see in this video, it directs our attention away from one another, they are deadly.

I often wonder if an iPad would be used by Caravaggio if he painted a modern day Narcissus. There we would be looking into a glass, seeing ourselves and everything that interests us, customized to our own liking.

I don’t want to be Narcissus. I want to look up and engage with people. Problem is, more often than not their heads are buried as well. I pray that we grow tired of looking at ourselves and keeping tabs on our own little worlds. And we actually start to look up again.

Maybe you are reading this right now on an electronic device. I want to encourage you to put down the iPad and vow not to spend your life staring into an electronic looking glass.

Look up.

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I’d also encourage you to read this article by Justin Taylor (and the one he links to in that article).

Today in Blogworld 07.17.13

Mike Leake

Is Jeremiah 17:9 True of the the Believer?

I absolutely love this article. A much needed corrective.

Where Do Prayers Come from in “The Valley of Vision”?

This is interesting.

Ministry Means War: 10 Lessons Seminary Never Taught Me

Yep.

Can you worship even when the music stinks?

This is a heart probing question. Aaron Armstrong does a great job of helping us check our hearts on this.

Yeah, I’ve got to play this:

How to Tell If Your Grace is Weak or Counterfeit

Mike Leake

I am guessing that many people have never actually read the Puritans. If they had they would not be able to maintain the view that Puritans are impractical men with their head in the clouds—helpful to nobody and a nuisance to all. These men were deeply helpful and excelled in soul care.

William Bridge is one of those Puritans. In his work, A Lifting up for the Downcast, Bridge gives seven differences between weak grace and counterfeit grace. If you are wondering how you can determine if your struggles reveal that you merely have counterfeit grace, Bridge hopes to open up for you the possibility that it is weak grace and not counterfeit*. Here are seven marks of weak, but true, grace.

  1. True grace, though weak, will not oppose more grace
  2. True grace loves examination; counterfeit grace likes to hide.
  3. True grace seeks to grow in knowledge of God
  4. True grace is engaged in the work of humiliation
  5. True, though weak, grace is always laying the foundation; counterfeit grace pursues another foundation.
  6. True grace is willing to learn from other people; counterfeit grace will not relish what is brought to him by the hand of another.
  7. True grace is very sensible of its own weakness

That fifth point is a little difficult to summarize. Listen to how Bridge expounded upon it:

[True grace] staggers at the promise, yet it goes to the promise; it doubts of Christ’s love, yet it runs to Christ; it stumbles, yet it keeps its way; it is ignorant of Christ, and not so forward in the knowledge of Christ as it should be, yet it lays the foundation, Hebrews 6:1. It is the fault of a weak Christian, that he is always laying the foundation, yet he is laying the foundation. (Bridge, 101)

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*I have modernized Bridge’s language where necessary.

You can (and should) purchase Bridge’s work here.