Where is god sermon

The two adult men were dead, but the child right in the middle of them was so light that he remained still alive. And Elie writes in his book these words, and I quote: 'For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes.

We had to look at him full in the face, he was still alive when I passed in front of him - his tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed. Behind me I heard a man asking 'Where is God now? Here He is! He is hanging here on the gallows'. That night the soup tasted of corpses'. This man's experience in what we could term - it would be an inaccurate term - but we could term it the nearest thing, perhaps that this earth has ever experienced, near to hell on earth.

When he looked at it, when he saw the suffering, when he saw the anguish, when he saw the pain that fellow man could inflict on their fellow human beings, he was forced within himself to ask the question: 'Where is God? Where is He? I wonder have you ever asked that question? Perhaps a situation in your own personal life, perhaps a situation of someone that you know about who is in a terrible turmoil, who is in terrible illness, sickness - whatever it is - and you look at them, and you look perhaps on the television screen and you see the things that are going on in our planet - children that are like skeletons - and you cry out within yourself, you maybe wouldn't say it in church, you maybe wouldn't talk to your fellow Christians about it, but you ask yourself: 'Where is God?

Where is He when this is going on? Is God dead? Is God really there? Is there a God at all? I wonder have you ever asked the famous question - three letter word that is probably the question that's asked by children all the time, but if we're honest with ourselves, as big children, we ask the question every day of our lives at times: 'Why? Something inside us builds up until our emotions and our soul, our very inner being, cry out to man and to God, and ask: 'Why is this allowed to happen?

Why is God letting this happen? Why is God even doing this? Where is God among all of it? Some would say that humanity is futile. Humanity is futile, all of this life on earth is totally worthless and pointless. The contemporary artist Francis Bacon believed that women and men were futile wretches, there was no point to any of it.

He writes: 'Man now realises that he is an accident, that he is completely a futile being, that he has to play the game without reason' - there's no point to it at all. The French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre believed that because, as far as he was concerned, God did not exist 'life was no ultimate attitude at all'. Samuel Beckett conveyed that attitude, and conveyed that philosophy of life in his play 'Breath'.

Do you know what the play was? The play consisted of 30 seconds, there were no actors, there were no conversations. The whole of the script was a simple sigh of human life, from a baby's cry to a man's last breath before he died.

That was his summary of life. This attitude to life, this attitude that it is pointless, that there is no God in it, that God - if He even is there - is looking on as a spectator, laughing, He doesn't care about us - this philosophy of life is taking over our society today, and it can even lead, ultimately, to suicide. The writer Ernest Hemingway believed that, quote: 'Life is a rough track leading from nowhere to nowhere' - and, on the 2nd July , Hemingway shot himself with a shotgun and he blew away his entire cranial skull.

No point to it at all. And perhaps if we could see, with a supernatural telescope, into the heart of Ernest Hemingway we could perhaps see a question - an indelible question - forged upon his heart with a dagger: 'Where is God? Where is God in the midst of my pain?

Where is God in the midst of my heartache, in the midst of my mental stress, in the midst of my illness, in the midst of my broken relationship? Where is God now? Where is God when my husband leaves me? Where is God when my wife dies? Where is God when that child I loved is taken away? Where is God when my business fails? Where is God when my roof caves in? Come on! Take down the facade, Christian.

Take away the mask, Christians - answer the question, it's worth answering: 'Where is God when these things happen to me? Have you ever asked that question? David, in the Psalm that we read, asked exactly the same question. But he asked it because there were those around him who were asking it of him, and he got to hear it so much that he began to imbibe it and think it himself - and he began to say, 'Where is God?

Where is God in my life? The background to the Psalm that we read this morning is simply this: that David, and some of the Jews, were exiled far north of Palestine. He was taken away from Jerusalem, he was taken away from his home, and in a foreign land, in foreign sod, he cries out for his homeland. He misses it. But remember that David was a King, and David was the King of the people of God, God's chosen people, and perhaps the thoughts were coursing through his mind: 'Why has God forsaken His people?

Why am I here in a foreign land? I can't go to the temple to pray, I can't bring my daily worship to God'. And people were walking by him of another religion, of another nationality, looking at him and saying: 'Where is your God now?

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who tells fables about going across [the] Red Sea, about earthquakes, and lightning from heaven, and ten commandments? He delivered you out of Egypt. Where is your God now? So David becomes downcast in his soul, and for all we know he could start think that question himself: 'Where is God? I want to ask you this morning, in your life this morning - believer or unbeliever - is there a spiritual drought? In your life, like David's, is there a drought?

You see, David, in verses 1, 2, 3 and 4, he cries out to God, he says: 'As the deer pants after the water brook, so pants my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before Him?

You can see it, can't you? That deer, the bones sticking out of it all over, its skin and fur parched as it walks in the desert, its eyesight weakened, its tongue hanging out as it's looking for refreshment, freshness - it's looking for water, and it pants out for it.

And just in that same way, David is panting for his God, he just wants to see God. In all of his mess, in all of his crisis, in all of his anguish - all he wants to do is feel the hand of God on him and to know that God is there.

Like the traveller in a desert, like the spaniel in the hot day's sun, like the alcholic gasping for a drink, David is coming to God and David is gasping in thirst for Him. And in David's depression, in David's despondency, he has an insatiable thirst for God's presence - He wants God to be near him!

When we look at verse 2 we see that - we know ourselves that hunger, you can put up with hunger for a little while, but thirst is something that you cannot put up with - and it got so unbearable that he's crying out to come before God, he has an intense craving to see God, to meet God! Is that you today? Of course, every Christian should have an intense desire to meet God, we all know that.

But perhaps you're here this morning, and there is something in your life, like David - there is something that has shattered your life, there is something in your life that seems to have made it pointless. Your life, as far as you can see, is over and you're asking, you're just wanting - as if God could come down, and God could lift you up like a little child and take you and nurse you. You want God to be there. If that's you this morning, do you know what I want you to do?

I want you to thank God, thank God that you have a thirst after Him! It's not nice - and what many of us are going through may not be nice - but thank Him for the fact that you have a thirst, you long for answers! In verse 3 we see that David says: 'I stopped eating. I hadn't eaten for long time, and the only food I had, the only meat I had was the salt that was in my tears. My tears were my food, day and night! That's all I had! That's my diet! And you all know that tears show earnestness, don't they?

You never know a person's more sincere than when they shed a tear - and David's shedding tears In the midst of his sorrow, in the midst of his pain, he is at the end of his tether and he is crying out to God, 'Oh God, look at my tears'. And God says 'Look David, I'm taking your tears into a bottle, I'm counting them - they count before me, they're holy water! Your tears count in the sight of God. A sermon examining the fact that God is with us no matter how difficult the circumstance.

Where Is God? Psalms Where is God? That is a question that has been asked throughout the ages. Anytime there is a great tragedy people will ask Where is God in times of famine? Where is God in times of war? Where is God in when earthquakes and Tsunamis kill hundreds of How we can know we know God through opposition, growth, and salvation. How we can know that we know God. How can we know we know God?

Scripture: Acts Denomination: Pentecostal. When you face a problem that is beyond your ability to solve, Where is God? Just wait for God to act on your behalf.

Where God Is? Brown 1. Where Doubt Is Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer; and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the Scripture: Isaiah We all go through storms, we can either blame God for the storm or allow Him to be our source of strength in the storm.

Title: Where Is God? Text: Psalms Intro: Through out history there have been days that will never be forgotten. Roosevelt declared that Dec. Many here today still remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard of John F. RE: VA. A few weeks ago, I was given a list of 75 questions asked by our elementary kids about God. Scripture: 2 Corinthians , Mark To the unbeliever, He is nowhere. Either a man declares himself an atheist and literally believes God is -nowhere-, or, if he serves false gods, God is for all intents and purposes, -nowhere-.

In I Cor 2 Paul explained that spiritual truth must be Denomination: Orthodox. God works even in tragedies. They were friends because friends trust each other, talk to each other, and share common interests. No one can drive a wedge between them. Moses never knew where he was going with God, God didn't always provide a signpost to direct him, but it didn't matter. He knew with whom he was going, and that was all that mattered.

Moses was a real person who had real encounters with a real God. This relationship provided him with the direction and guidance he desired. If we want to know God's will, we must get to know God. The guidance hinges on the relationship. If we seek the Guide more than guidance, we just might see the sign we are looking for.

And, even more, we receive some wonderful benefits. We are a people who have grown accustomed to benefits. We want them. In fact, we expect them. Because God's presence accompanies us, we have some stupendous benefits.

Better than any k or HMO. Better than any expense account. Or the perks of a country club membership or the use of a beachfront condo. The benefit package of a relationship with God is as follows:. As the old hymn "In the Garden" says, "And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me that I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.

Our situations don't change God. He is still with us. During Gladys Aylward's harrowing journey out of war-torn Yang Chen, during the Communist take-over, she faced one morning, with no apparent hope of reaching safety. A year-old girl tried to comfort her by saying, "Don't forget what you told us about Moses in the wilderness," referring to God's promise of his presence to which Gladys Aylward replied, "Yes, my dear, but I am not Moses.

The God of the universe walks with us. He is our companion, our friend. The whole world may walk out on us. But God never will. We have his word on that. The rest that is spoken of here is a rest that comes while we are on our journey. It is a rest that reaches to the core of their being. It is not like a weekly day off, paid vacation, or guaranteed holidays.

It is not merely a cessation of activity, struggle, or of journey. It is a calmness and a security that comes through walking with God. In the Challenger space shuttle disaster, key NASA officials made the ill-fated decision to go ahead with the launch, after working twenty hours straight, and getting only two to three hours of sleep the night before.

Their error in judgment cost the lives of seven astronauts and nearly killed the U. In recent years, our most notorious industrial accidents - Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the fatal navigational error of Korean Air Lines - all occurred in the middle of the night with fatigue-stressed operators. Rest provides the compass points that show us where to go.

It gives us the physical and emotional endurance to make correct judgments. It is the solitude that gives us wisdom. The necessary tools for finding God's way. There's the story of the two birds perched high above a busy city watching all the people busily scurrying from one activity to another.

The Robin said to the Sparrow, "Why do those humans scurry to and fro? Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch lady known for her family's hiding of Jews during World War II, in which she was imprisoned, used to say, "Don't wrestle, just nestle.

A benefit of living in God's presence is that we can snuggle up close to our Heavenly Father, knowing that we can rest confident, secure, and victorious. Your people will be distinguished by this from all the other people on the face of the earth" Ex.

I suppose that we all desire to be distinguishable, set apart from the rest of society. God's presence does just that in our lives. Because of God's presence, we are holy people.

As has been stated before, holy means set apart, distinct. When we come into God's presence, we are on holy ground. And, we set aside one day a week - the Sabbath - as a holy day. The thrust of this text is that because of the accompanying presence of God, we are holy people. We aren't holy because we are weird, queer, or odd.

We are different because God's presence accompanies us. We are not different because of what we do, but rather because of what God does in and through us. A holy person takes God's accompanying presence seriously. Think about it. We are consciously aware of God's presence; it will impact our talk, our behavior, and our thoughts. It's worse than having the pastor play golf with you.

It's more powerful than having your mother go on a date with you. It is stronger than taking your children on a business trip. God's accompanying presence causes us to think different, act differently, talk differently, love differently, and serve differently. The accompanying presence of God calls us to stand out in the crowd, to be distinct, separate, and unusual.

He calls us to be different. Can you imagine being known by God? The encounter with God is an intimate experience. We come to know him and he comes to know us. Can you imagine the significance that gives to us? The Creator of the universe calling us by name. I once received a phone call from editorial cartoonist Mike Peters, complimenting me on a cartoon and saying that he and Jeff MacNelly had just been talking about how much they liked it, and when I got off the phone, I told my editor that that was the highlight of my career - just knowing that Jeff MacNelly knew who I was.

It's hard to explain, but to have someone great know who you are, brings a sense of significance to life. God, the greatest One in the Universe, knows us by name. In fact, he knows everything about us. Actually, God does provide signs for us. Granted, they aren't like road signs, directional signs, billboards, or a writing in the sky. But they are signs nevertheless. They are there, but sometimes we don't see them. When we are walking with God, when his presence accompanies us, his signs are all around us.

The glory of God is the weighty importance and shining majesty that accompanies God's presence. Michelangelo prayed, "Lord, make me see your glory in every place. Creation witnesses it.

The church embodies it. Christians reflect it. The glory of God is all around us. Moses came to understand, sense, and see God's glory. But Moses did not see the entirety of God's glory and neither will we. And the Lord said, "'I will cause all My goodness to pass in front of you.

The word goodness refers to the manifestation or essence of God's glorious attributes, most often thought of as the works of his hands. The goodness of God is the concrete experience of what God has done and is doing in the lives of his people. Moses experienced the goodness of God time and time again, but he did not witness all the goodness of God.