Do you know what it’s like to be at your moment of greatest need, greatest weakness, greatest fear – the moment when you needed God most – and yet felt that he wasn’t there? To feel full of despair and the world to feel empty of God? There is no greater suffering or misery in life than the experience of being God-forsaken.
During such a season, you know what the Bible promises: God works all things together for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28). You know, in the end, he will wipe away every tear. But in those moments, all those words seem hollow and out of touch. When you feel forsaken by God, it’s not an intellectual problem; it’s very much an emotional one.
I have a friend who calls this deep heart struggle “emotional doubt.” He says, “I know what I’d say to someone in my situation. I know all the answers and solutions, I’ve read the theology books. But my emotional sense of God’s absence is far stronger than all of that knowledge put together. I need to feel that God is there.”
Even if we know all the right answers, to feel that God is absent completely throws our world into turmoil. Do you know the experience of being in that dark hour? Jesus does.
In Mark 15:34 we hear the famous cry of Jesus, quoting Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The cross was a profound experience of God-forsakenness. Jesus, at the moment of his greatest need, greatest suffering, greatest loneliness, feels God has abandoned him.
The Bible is so honest about human experience. The central event of the Bible – the cross – doesn’t show happy, beautiful people with happy, clean lives doing happy, productive things. It shows the awful reality of God-forsakenness.
If the shame of the cross is worse than the physical pain, the God-forsakenness is worse than the shame. So what does God have to say about this experience? Jesus, God himself, saves us from God-forsakenness by experiencing it in our place on the cross.
The cross shares in our sense of God’s absence.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is the only time in the Gospels that Jesus refers to God as “God” instead of “Father.” Calling God his “Father” displays Jesus’ intimacy and trust as his Father’s son. Yet as Jesus takes upon himself our abandonment, it seems God isn’t the tender, attentive Father, communicating with him and reassuring him. He is the distant, invisible, mysterious Creator and Judge.
If you’re in your dark night now, thinking, “Why go on hoping in this God who deals with me so harshly, who seems so absent?”—what do you do with those thoughts? Bring them to God. Don’t step over the line of unbelief. Even though in the Christian life we often feel like God is absent, he has promised to never leave or forsake us. The strange and distant God was the very one on the cross crying out, “Why have you forsaken me?” He isn’t as distant as you might have thought. God may not be with you in a way you expected or wanted right now, but he is with you in Christ.
Jesus’ final words in Matthew are “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mathew. 28:20). Much of the Christian life consists of clinging to this promise and trusting that Jesus’ promises are deeper and truer than our passing experiences or emotions.
The cross leads us to God’s Word.
How does God expect me to respond when I’m experiencing God-forsakenness? It might be helpful to think of it as a path that God is calling you to walk – a dark path whose distance you can’t make out. One thing the image of a path does for us is promise movement. We’re on a journey, and so things will change along the way. It says I’m moving toward a destination. What do I need in order to be able to walk that path? Jesus on the cross shows me I need the Word of God.
In order to walk the dark path, you have to express out loud your experience of God-forsakenness. The Bible (particularly the Psalms) gives you the words to express what you’re experiencing.
Many Christians today understand the importance of being honest with God. We recognize that we need to tell God that it feels like he failed us, that we are angry with him. The Psalms say that an essential part of our worship is crying out, “Why have you forsaken me?” And God gives us permission to do that.
This is an important insight. But there are many people who go too far with this, saying, “It’s time to get honest with God. He’s failed me, he’s violent, he’s regressive…I’m done trusting him.” Our complaints, our “honesty” could lead us to unbelief, bitterness, hard-heartedness, and self-pity. Maybe our expectations of God are misguided. Maybe we don’t know what’s good for our lives. Maybe we’re too sure of ourselves. “The fool gives full vent to his spirit” (Proverbs 29:11).
So as I take up my cross and walk that dark path, I have a dilemma: I have to complain against God, but my complaints cannot be trusted. God’s Word trains us how to complain in a healthy way that leads us deeper into who he is and does not harden or embitter us. The biblical way to complain about God is to complain to God.
We need God’s Word to do this because other people’s words and our own will often fail us. Even Jesus is misunderstood in his desperation: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli Eli lema sabachthani?’ That is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, ‘This man is calling Elijah’” (Matthew 27:46-47).
When we express our despair, often people just don’t get it. Or they offer us cheap comforts: “And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on the reed and gave it to him.” (v. 48) Or they throw vague Bible references at us: “But the others said, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him” (v. 49).
Like Jesus, we need the Word of God because the words of men are often such a failure. Jesus, as he walked the dark path of God-forsakenness on the cross, found God’s Word to be his source of strength. If he held to God’s Word as his comfort and guide, then it must be so for us as well.
The cross models perseverance through suffering.
Matthew’s account of Jesus’ suffering on the cross ends, “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit” (Matthew 27:50). Jesus completed the path that was set before him. He was faithful to the end. His spirit wasn’t taken from him, but he yielded it. He persevered. His perseverance is a model for us in our dark hour.
This may not feel like a word of compassion, but it is still important. Our lives, especially when they’re hard or disappointing, demand that we persevere.
In C. S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters,” the demon Screwtape warns his nephew Wormwood about the greatest danger they face in their fight against their Enemy (God):
Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
Christian obedience despite discouragement and suffering terrifies the powers of darkness. Why? Because it shows the power of God in our weakness.
Walking the path of suffering requires perseverance. If you’re in that dark hour, you need grace and empathy, but you also need someone to say, “Stand fast.” There are going to be seasons in your life when it seems every trace of God has vanished, and you’re asked to obey nonetheless.
Even now, if you’re the one looking around the universe, and God’s goodness and beauty are hidden, stand fast. Walk with Jesus rather than away from him. He will see to completion the work he has begun in you (Philippians 1:6).
What have been the darkest hours you have walked through? What did they feel like? Where was God? Are you in a dark hour now?
If yes, then you’re experiencing in small form what Jesus experienced in full force on the cross. In this turmoil, you’re becoming like Jesus. In fact, there is no way of becoming like him without it. There is no Christ-likeness without periods of God-forsakenness. Can this truth help you endure? Maybe today what you need most is to go to your Lord, the one who suffered in your place, and say, “I will stand fast. I will receive this cross from you. I will wait because you have already gone to the cross and been victorious for me.”
Nate Walker is the lead pastor at Christ Church Bellingham and the author of The Deep Deep Love of Jesus: 50 Reasons for the Cross of Christ, from which this article was adapted.