Honest With God: Finding Healing and Wholeness Through the PsalmsНамуна

“God, what are you doing here? Do you see me struggling? Have you forgotten about me?”

I shared earlier in this plan about how difficult it was for me to graduate from seminary, convinced my next step was a full-time position as a pastor, only to find myself working part-time at Starbucks. Those questions were my prayers over many weeks, during which I worked two or three jobs, going weeks without a day off.

I doubted God’s plan and questioned my own ability to perceive His guidance. I wondered if I had misheard Him or miscalculated my steps in following Him. It was a dark time for me that exposed my pride, struggles with control, and drew me into deeper dependence on God’s strength.

It was during one of those dark seasons that I discovered King David had walked this same path of doubt. In Psalm 73, he writes with stunning honesty: "But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." (Psalm 73:2-3 NIV)

David looked around at a world where bad people prospered and good people suffered, and his faith cracked under the weight of the contradiction. He didn't pretend to understand God's ways or offer simplistic explanations for life's unfairness. He just confessed his confusion.

But later in the same psalm, David reveals where his wrestling with doubt ultimately led him: "When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand." (Psalm 73:21-23 NIV)

David's faith didn't survive his season of doubt because he found neat answers to all his questions. His faith endured because he discovered that God's love for him wasn't dependent on his ability to understand God's ways.

During that time, I learned that faith isn't the absence of doubt; faith is wrestling with God in the presence of doubt. Before his death, Timothy Keller wrote powerfully about how to respond to doubt as a follower of Jesus.

“A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic.”

Honest questions don't disqualify you from God's love; they invite you deeper into His mystery. God’s action will not always make sense to you, nor will His plan align with your own. In those moments, you will be invited to trust His character and the promises He makes to you.

Tomorrow, we’ll explore what to do when even God’s presence seems distant.