How long, LORD? Will you hide yourself forever? How long will your wrath burn like fire? Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David? – Psalm 89:46, 49
At some age, kids become professional questioners. One day everything is normal, life is humming along quite nicely, and then it begins. “Dad, why is the sky blue? How did it get to be blue anyway? Is there something behind it?” “Mom, why is yellow called ‘yellow’?”
You get the idea.
Kids ask their parents questions because they believe their parents truly know the answers. In a strange sort of way, it is the asking of the question that shows their greatest sense of faith.
This has all kinds of implications, doesn’t it?
For example, some people believe that to question God is the ultimate form of disobedience. Questioning God shows a lack of faith. I don’t agree.
Time and again in the Scriptures we come across people who cried out to God. They cried out to God because they knew that He had been faithful in the past, and that they needed Him to be faithful once again in the present. “God, where are you? I thought you were a loving God. Where’s this loving God that I thought you were?” Perhaps you’ve asked the same kinds of questions. When you and I ask hard questions of God, we are standing in the stream of this ancient tradition, one that is captured time and again in the Scriptures.
It is in the asking of your honest, gut-wrenching questions, the ones filled with anger and frustration, that you are expressing a deep sense of faith. We cry out to God, in frustration and in anger, because we believe that He is the only one who can do something about it.
Wherever you are in your faith journey, know that you can come to God honestly with your questions, your doubts, and your frustrations. It just might be the most faith-filled thing you can do.
GOING DEEPER:
Take a moment to write down some questions for God. Be honest, even brutally honest. Spend a few moments praying about these questions, bringing each one of them to God.
FURTHER READING:
Psalm 73; Psalm 89