What do you do when you feel let down by God? This is a common experience, and many people lose faith when they feel that God isn’t keeping his promises. One of the problems here is that we tend to see faith as a kind of transaction: ‘I do this for God and he does this for me.’ But this isn’t the life of faith. This is typical transactional religion and it never worked out for anyone. What God wants is a personal relationship, a relationship of faith. Faith is trusting God like a child trusts a parent. The psalms show us what faith looks like from the inside. God loves faith and he loves to see our faith manifested. So, he often gives us the opportunity to exercise and express our faith. We often find ourselves in situations where we feel that God isn’t coming through for us. What many people do in these situations is lower their expectations of God so that their level of expectancy matches their experience of God. This is the opposite to faith. Faith does not expect less of God but more, because God has promised great things for us. When the psalmists felt let down by God; when they felt that God wasn’t answering their prayers, they did something very important: they complained. They refused to lower their level of expectancy. They kept banging on the door just like the persistent widow that Jesus spoke about when he taught us about prayer (Luke 18). They would not give up on God. There is a wonderful childlike boldness in the complaints in the psalms.
What do you want to see God do for you?
Read Luke 18 and Psalm 74.
