HAS GOD GONE OUT OF BUSINESS?

By Shirley Wiggins

Is God listening?  Does He listen to us when we are in trouble?  Is God aware of life in this new age?  Does God even care what happens to people in the world today? 

This is written from a woman’s perspective, but it is about life issues, and life applies to all people, without exclusions, and there are no age limits.

Life issues are emotional in nature.  No way around it.  Life affects us all and its effects are evident.

Recently, while browsing through an old journal, I found a list of some things I felt God was teaching me about life and about being a woman with a variety of roles in life:  wife, mother, mother-in-law and grandmother. 

After reading my thoughts, would you consider leaving a comment to share some of your observations about life lessons?  Is God your God?  Is God listening to you?

 I yell out to my God, I yell with all my might,
    I yell at the top of my lungs. He listens.

^2-6 I found myself in trouble and went looking for my Lord;
    my life was an open wound that wouldn’t heal.
When friends said, “Everything will turn out all right,”
    I didn’t believe a word they said.
I remember God—and shake my head.
    I bow my head—then wring my hands.
I’m awake all night—not a wink of sleep;
    I can’t even say what’s bothering me.
I go over the days one by one,
    I ponder the years gone by.
I strum my lute all through the night,
    wondering how to get my life together.
^7-10 Will the Lord walk off and leave us for good?
    Will he never smile again?
Is his love worn threadbare?
    Has his salvation promise burned out?
Has God forgotten his manners?
    Has he angrily stalked off and left us?
“Just my luck,” I said. “The High God goes out of business just the moment I need him.”  
    Psalm 77  The Message (MSG)   Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

I could identify with the life issues described by the psalmist as translated in The Message version of the Bible.  As you read it, let your mind remember times you also may have experienced some of these emotions. 

I don’t recall ever yelling out to God and certainly not at the top of my lungs.  I may have wanted to do that on occasion.  But I think fear would have prevented even the consideration of “yelling” with reference to God.  I would have been pretty convinced that if there were any yelling to be done, it should be Him yelling at me!

Even after the passing of many years, I continue to experience some of the same life issues that I did as a younger woman, but with a significant difference – a valuable and costly learning is slowly but surely taking place:  the certain knowledge that God is my God, and I am His child, and I know that He is aware of me, He cares about me, He is listening to me, and more importantly, He is trustworthy.

He has proven Himself faithful to me so many times and in so many ways over the course of my life that I know for sure that “the High God” has not “gone out of business!”

Like many others, I too, have spent some sleepless nights shaking my head and wringing my hands, feeling destitute of hope.

While Psalm 77:7-10 has expressed my anguish, verses 10-15 have been my continuing assurance:

“Once again I’ll go over what God has done, lay out on the table the ancient wonders; I’ll ponder all the things You’ve accomplished, and give a long, loving look at your acts.

O God! Your way is holy!  No god is great like God! You’re the God who makes things happen; you showed everyone what you can do— You pulled your people out of the worst kind of trouble, rescued the children of Jacob and Joseph.”

My comfort came, and still comes, in the fact that God is still God and He is good.  He is a proven in my life.  I now have a history with Him that attests to the truth that, just as in years past when ”He pulled His people out of the worst kinds of trouble” and “rescued the children of Jacob and Joseph,” so He pulls me and my family out of the worst kinds of trouble, and rescues us.

My anguish and my assurance find an anchor in the truth and reliability of God in His Word:   

"If you’ll hold on to me for dear life,” says God, “I’ll get you out of any trouble.
I’ll give you the best of care if you’ll only get to know and trust me.
Call me and I’ll answer, be at your side in bad times; I’ll rescue you, then throw you a party.  I’ll give you a long life, give you a long drink of salvation!”  Psalm 91:14-16  The Message (MSG

“We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us, in the order of Melchizedek.”  Hebrews 6:18-20  The Message (MSG)

This has been my answer:   every time we have relied on the Lord, He has rescued us.  His constant presence and provision and protection is still at work in our lives, as individuals and as a family.  

“Then Asa called to the Lord his God and said, “Lord, there is no one besides You to help in the battle between the powerful and those who have no strength; so help us, O Lord our God, for we trust in You, and in Your name have come against this multitude. O Lord, You are our God; let not man prevail against You.” ¹² So the Lord ^[a]routed the Ethiopians before Asa and before Judah, and the Ethiopians fled.”  2 Chronicles 14:11-12 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

As a result, this has become my life’s aim in every situation and circumstance:

“Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.”  1 Thessalonians 5:16-18  The Message (MSG)

 Life’s lessons help God’s people learn how to live in relationship with Him and others.  Certain principles are worth learning in life, and specific examples are to be found in the pages of the Bible from the lives of people in both the Old Testament and New Testament times. 

In my own life too, I reflect on the life lessons worth learning, as a woman:

------- a  wife,  dearly loved,  learns  love, happiness, submission to God, and every range of emotion from excitement to contentment;

-------a mother learns compassion, kindness, patience, and gentleness, bravery in the face of fears as she cares for babies and children, nurturing them to the courage and bravery they will need for the rest of their lives.  She learns to hold onto hope and release (slowly, yet surely) her protective grip on her children;

-------a mother-in-law learns love, humility, patience, kindness, forbearance, the yielding of a stubborn will, a releasing of her own personal ambitions and plans for her children; she learns to hold onto hope… still learning to release her stubborn grip on the control of her loved ones’ lives;

--------a grandmother learns the thrill of unconditional love from her grandchildren, and also the  close but separated relationships:  there are parents between she and her grandchild, and she learns to respect their authority, still learning to release her tight grip on her expectations for her family’s  lives.

A woman learns to entrust ‘her’ family into God’s strong, secure and certain grip on her God-given family.  And, at long last, we will all learn how to begin to “free-float,” “resting in Jesus,” as we learn to give God all the glory, and EVERYTHING else!

“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”    1 Corinthians 1:26-31 The Message (MSG)

May we all learn how to march in the band of Christ’s followers, blowing the trumpet to sound the call to come and worship the Mighty God, the Creator who yearns to be the Father to all who will come to Him through His One and Only Son, Jesus Christ.¹

May we all come together in praise to our God, who listens to our prayers and continues to lead His own people with a mighty hand of power and love.  Let us acknowledge His right to rule in His sovereignty: 

^16-19 Ocean saw you in action, God, saw you and trembled with fear; Deep Ocean was scared to death.  Clouds belched buckets of rain, Sky exploded with thunder, your arrows flashing this way and that. From Whirlwind came your thundering voice, Lightning exposed the world, Earth reeled and rocked. You strode right through Ocean, walked straight through roaring Ocean, but nobody saw you come or go. ²⁰ Hidden in the hands of Moses and Aaron, You led your people like a flock of sheep.  Psalm 77:16-20 The Message

 

 

 

 

¹  Have you run to God for your very life?  To be a child of God, you must first have a relationship with Jesus Christ.   John 3:16 says:

            “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever

            believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord of your life, I encourage you to pray a simple prayer confessing your sin and asking Jesus to cleanse you of that sin. As you repent and turn from your sin to Christ, and “confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved”. (Romans 10:9) If you have just prayed to receive Christ, tell someone, and go to church!