When you find yourself wondering where God is in the midst of your hurt and the world’s suffering, take heart.
One of the most frequent questions I encounter as a campus pastor is some version of the question, “Where is God?” This question is asked by the skeptical, doubting, and faithful alike.
For the skeptic, the question, “Where is God?” is typically addressed in regard to the problem of evil. Where is God in the face of evil like childhood cancer, warfare, and global food crises?
For the doubting, the question is often a personal one. How can I genuinely find God in the midst of my search for answers about the world, and how will I know if I have found the true God?
Even those who strive to faithfully follow Jesus find themselves wondering where God is in the midst of the suffering and difficulty that so often characterizes our world and human experience.
But no matter who has entered my office to ask this question, my answer is relatively the same: He’s always closer than you think.
More Than Our Senses
No matter where we find ourselves on the spectrum of belief, the fact of the matter is that we simply do not see or experience God with the senses in the same way we experience the taste of food, the laughter of a friend, or the embrace of a loved one.
We tend to believe that what we can experience with our senses is all there is to the world, and if God is outside of the senses, where is He? Does He even exist? While addressing a conference of students in 1963, an Eastern Orthodox theologian named Alexander Schmemann described it this way, “It seems natural for man to experience the world as opaque, and not shot through with the presence of God.”
So, where is God?
What Kind of God?
Over 500 years ago, a guy named Martin Luther wrestled with a similar question. Unlike our culture, Luther lived in a society where belief in God was taken for granted. For Luther, it wasn’t a question of whether or not God was real or present. Instead, it was the question: “What kind of God is present?”
As a result, Luther wrestled with the weight of God’s presence. The notion of a perfectly holy God who demands perfection of His followers was a daunting and terrifying idea that could only mean judgment and condemnation. However, as Luther read the New Testament, he encountered a very different deity.
Later in his life, Luther offered his discovery of this truth in his reflection on these words from Paul in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Luther found here a very different picture of God. This is not the picture of an angry God who constantly demands more. It is the picture of a God who is present in love through the work of His Son Jesus, who gave His life on the cross for sinners. This God is so loving that He now dwells in the lives of His people by faith. Luther put it like this:
Christ and I must be so closely attached that He lives in me and I in Him. What a marvelous way of speaking! Because He lives in me, whatever grace, righteousness, life, peace, and salvation there is in me is all Christ’s; nevertheless, it is mine as well, by the cementing and attachment that are through faith, by which we become as one body in the Spirit.
The God Who Draws Near
In answering his question of what kind of God is present in the world, Luther actually offers an incredible answer to our question, Where is God?
He is living in you by faith. In His great love for you, God’s Son Jesus has united Himself to you by faith. When you trust and believe His promises, God is present in that faith. Jesus has so closely joined, or as Luther says, cemented himself to you that now everything true about Jesus is also true about you. His perfection, life, peace, and relationship with the Father are now yours. And now, the new life you are called to is lived with His strength and grace, fueling you as you live by faith in a world of suffering and brokenness.
And not only that, God wants to use you to carry this presence to a world that needs the healing only Jesus can bring.
I’ve found this truth to be profoundly impactful in my own moments of doubt. When I’m not sure what to make of circumstances in my life when I feel like I don’t know how to repair the messes I’ve made of things, when I’m sitting at the bedside of someone dying of cancer and don’t know what to say, or when I’m sitting with a college student who feels like they don’t know what to believe. Again and again, I find myself returning to the same simple thing:
Jesus is present in faith. Jesus has joined Himself to you. Jesus gives you His grace, His righteousness, and His strength. Jesus is enough.
When you find yourself wondering where God is in the midst of your hurt and the world’s suffering, take heart. Trust and believe in the grace that Jesus has poured out for you when He gave Himself up for you. All you have to do is put your faith in Jesus.
God does the rest. Because He’s always closer than you think.
