“It feels as if God has his back towards me,” my friend said from across the table. “I pour out my heart to him, scour his Word for answers, but I get nothing in return. It’s as if I’m talking to a brick wall.”
The bags underneath his eyes told me he hadn’t slept well the past few nights, maybe the past few weeks. His eyes filled with longing and desperation.
His church was going through a split, of which he found himself caught in the middle. Close friends of his joined both sides. He could see each point of view and didn’t know which one was best.
To him, it was mostly a matter of preference and he couldn’t figure out why people couldn’t simply lay their preferences aside and love each other like Jesus tells us to.
“There’s no life in our church, right now, and I sometimes find myself wondering what the point of it all is, anyway. We only end up arguing and splitting hairs over petty things. Does God care that we’re going through this?”
But church wasn’t the only thing bothering him. It was the most immediate issue—the “presenting problem,” as counselors say. For the past five years, my friend’s life had been unraveling before his eyes.
His dad had died from cancer when he was eighteen years old. He was the second born of six children. His older sister had married young and lived with her husband in another state. He was left to take care of his mom and younger siblings by himself and had few older men in his life to lean on.
Every now and then he would reach out to an older man in his church and they’d begin meeting together. But he had serious struggles. He was super depressed. Eventually, it seemed whoever he reached out to kind of lost interest and settled into similar clichés.
Just keep trusting God.
Keep digging into his Word.
Don’t believe lies from the devil.
“Does God care about all this? How does a person trust a God who doesn’t answer prayers? How do you believe he is good when it feels as if he’s set you up for pain? Furthermore, how do you not believe lies from the devil when feel more real to you than what people say is truth?”
These were the questions my friend poured onto the table as I sat there sipping my hazelnut latte unsure of what to say next.
Join Unfeigned Christianity to read the full article.
Become a paying member of Unfeigned Christianity to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content.
Already a member? Login
A subscription gets you:
✔ Subscriber-only posts and full archives (250+ in all)
✔ Exclusive podcast interviews
✔ The audiobook version of Live Free: Making Sense of Male Sexuality
