What Do You Do When Life Shows Up And God Doesn't?

What do you do when life shows up and God doesn’t? I know that is a tough question. In fact it is a question that many of us would be afraid to verbalize. What do you mean God doesn’t show up?

Picture this! You got out of bed this morning, just like you have for the past two thousand five hundred days. Your bed is not a pillow top mattress lying in the frame of a sleigh bed. Neither is there a comfortable nice Persian rug to place you feet upon as you swing them over the side of the bed. You don’t smell coffee brewing from the other room and when you go to wash your face there is no running water. Instead, you roll out of bed, literally. Your bed is on the floor, so you roll into a kneeling position so you can stand up. Your bare feet feel the cold and damp that seeps up from the floor, chilling you immediately. The coffee isn’t on because you are worried about starting a fire. There is no running water in the cave in which you slept. For the past several years you have awaken every morning knowing there are three thousand men who have one mission. They wake up every morning with one objective. Their intent is to seek you out and kill you!

No they are not outlaws. They are the law! They are the king’s men. These are men who have been commissioned to kill you, to destroy you. And the reason for this is because you did your job too well. You were given a job to do and when you came back everyone was singing your praises. Now, your boss wants to kill you for real.

I am talking about what you do when life shows up and God doesn’t. How do you handle those situations when life comes your way with its problems and difficulties? When you see problems everywhere but can’t feel God anywhere. David had been anointed to be king of Israel. It was not a position he had applied for. He had been minding his own business out in the pasture. Suddenly a messenger comes and says he is wanted at the house. The next thing David knows, the old prophet is pouring oil over his head. The next words he hears are that he will be the next king of Israel.

From that moment on, David’s life is turned upside down. It seems that he goes from one bad situation to another. Some of these are of his creation. Others are cast upon him through no fault of his own. He slays Goliath. David could not stand to hear a heathen shame the God that he served. He becomes a national hero. He is sent on a mission in hopes he will be killed. He wins a tremendous victory instead. The maidens sing his praises in the street. One evening he is sitting on his couch trying to enjoy his family. He hears unusual noises outside. It is the king’s men. They are there to arrest him. He slips out a window and runs for his life.

His companions are the rejects of society. They are men who are wanted by the law. They were men who are trying to escape debtors’ prisons. They have migrated to David. We are not talking about a few men. We are talking about six hundred men who have brought their families with them. You have heard of having problems with the “in-laws”? His wife, Michal, just happens to be the daughter of the king. Yes, Saul is also his father-in-law. Saul takes David’s wife and gives her to be the wife of another man.

The king has three thousand men looking for him everyday to kill him. He lives in caves. He is constantly in danger, running for his life. Always one step ahead of the law. He spares the life of his enemy on two occasions. Saul says he is sorry and promises to be good. Yet a few days later he is once again chasing after David. It isn’t until he leaves the country and goes to a foreign land that Saul leaves him alone. David, realizing he will never know peace, goes to Gath for security. When Saul hears this he decides to let David go.

So now things have changed. It is over! Life can become normal, right? Wrong! Guess again.
David and his followers are given the city of Ziklag to live in. The king of Gath offers his friendship. David, being so long without a friend and having all offers of friendship rejected, accepts his friendship. The five kings of the Philistines decide to go to war against Israel. The king of Gath asks David to help them. Join up with them to fight a common enemy. Now David is in a difficult position.

What should he do? Should he fight for those who have befriended him? Should he stick by his home land? He decides for safety’s sake he should fight for the nation in which he is living. He and his men join up with the Philistines to go to war against Israel. However, the other four kings decide it isn’t going to work. They would have David behind them and Israel in front of them. They are afraid David will attack them in the midst of the battle. David and his men are sent home. Rejected again by those he tries to befriend.

When they return home, they find another enemy has attacked their homes. The city lies in ruins. Their families have been captured and carried away. It is a dismal picture they find that day! Now, when it seems that nothing could get worse than it is. David’s men turn against him. He is being rejected by the rejects. The outcasts want to cast him out. They actually are going to stone him. Murder is in their eyes. Life has dealt them one blow more than they can handle.
What do you do when life shows up but God doesn’t? Where do you go, to whom do you turn?
I noticed there isn’t a lot of talk through those passages of God being there. It isn’t like other passages or stories. The hero is dealing with a situation and God says… and all is well. It seems to me there are several passages that span close to ten years of time where it looks like David is just living by his wits.

Now you and I both know the end of the story. We know that David goes from the cave to the throne. We know that Saul receives his just rewards. David ends up wearing a crown. We know that because we read the book and know how it ends. What we need to remember, David was living the story. He didn’t have the benefit of knowing the ending. There wasn’t a Book of Revelations with a twenty-first or twenty-second chapter for him to read. He was living the story right then and there. Life and showed up and it seemed that God had been given the wrong address and was somewhere else.

David did the one thing I hope to learn to do. The Bible says when David had come to this spot. It seemed as if all that could go wrong had gone wrong. When life had showed up and God didn’t seem to be there. The Bible tells us that David encouraged himself in the Lord! He couldn’t depend on anyone else. There was no one else to draw strength from. No one was there that would say it is all right, we are going to make it. We are in this together. So David had to encourage himself in the Lord.

There are going to be times in our lives when seemingly life shows up and God doesn’t. What will we do then? You and I both know that God is always there. Yet there are times when it seems like He isn’t. Job said he looked all around him. He saw the evidence of God everywhere. Yet he could not feel God for himself. He could not touch God and get the answer he was searching for. What do you do when life shows up and God doesn’t?

David encouraged himself in the Lord. I believe he reminded himself of all those times that God had kept him. David is on one side of the mountain and Saul is on the other. David somehow manages to get away. Oh, the list went on and on. When he arose from that time of encouragement, he led his men to a great victory. It is at that moment, the lowest point in his life that God shows up and begins to make his presence known. Not long after this, David is sitting on the throne of Israel as king.

Job said that he had put his trust in God. I don’t know where God is! I can’t feel him anywhere! Yet God knows where I am. He knows where I am going. He knows what he is doing. What is happening in my life is going to make me a better person in the kingdom of God. It is going to reveal those short comings that I need to get out of my life. I will be purified by this.
What will you do when life shows up and God doesn’t? Don’t despair and feel that God has forsaken you. It just feels like he hasn’t showed up. He is there and He does care. You are on your way to the THRONE! You will receive the crown!