The God Who Hides Himself

Then my enemy will see, and shame will cover her who said to me, “Where is the LORD your God?”Micah 7:10All Micah can say is that things will be different in the future, but as he writes, he has no compelling answer to offer the cynic who says, “Where is your God?” Micah is surrounded by trouble and God is nowhere to be found. He doesn’t know where God is, or what God is doing. This is wonderfully helpful, because surely all of us have been there—an illness strikes, a church splits, a business collapses, a son or daughter abandons the faith, or a tragedy strikes the family. If a cynic came and said to you: "Well then, where is your God in all this?" You would be stuck for an answer. You would have to say, "I don’t have a clue." This is an important (but often neglected) truth about the God of the Bible. He is the God who hides Himself. This is paradoxical because He is also the God who reveals Himself, otherwise we would not know anything at all about Him. But the Bible makes it quite clear that sometimes God hides Himself, even from His own people. “Truly, you are a God who hides himself” (Isa. 45:15). Sometimes we can’t make sense of our lives and we just don’t know what God is doing. But thankfully, our Christian faith does not rest on things always making sense to us. It rests on God’s promises. If you expect to always know what God is doing in your life, your family, your church, or your country, you will be disappointed. The secret things belong to the Lord. He hides them from us.Have you experienced God hiding Himself from you?