Have You Ever Felt Forgotten by God?

You’ve done all you can to follow as you see Him leading, and yet, despite your efforts and sacrifice, you see no fruit. You pray and ask for God to move—to give some encouragement—but the silence leaves you questioning whether you’ve done the right thing, if you’re in the right place… or if God even remembers you’re there.

I served as the lead pastor for our small local church for over eighteen years. In vocational ministry, it is very easy to feel useful to God. We often rely on common metrics to measure what we understand to be success or efficiency, and there are usually enough people around who understand the mission and will tell you what a good job you’re doing. That’s not always the case outside of those traditional structures.

The last six years of my ministry, I began to struggle with the “business” of church and vocational ministry. Over that time, I believe God led me to loosen my grip on that role, and three years ago, I stepped out of vocational ministry and moved across the country. Now, my wife Patricia and I have started our own business, and through that, we connect with the community, serve the families in our area, and build bridges of relationship over which we seek to point people to Jesus.

It sounds great framed that way, but this non-traditional approach has far fewer metrics by which we measure success and efficiency. The line between secular and sacred is less clear—there aren’t “church things” and “other things.” It’s all just life, and God is in the midst… at least, I hope He is.

I don’t see fruit. We’ve connected with people, to be sure. Some simply see us as an untapped resource, a bridge not yet burned where they can get some needs met. Others are more genuine friends. In either case, however, I’m not “Pastor Mike” to any of them. I’m just Mike. My efforts to “do things for God” don’t seem to really accomplish anything. Prayers seem, like throwing a balloon, sort of fall short, drift to the ground, and wander away in another direction.

I battle discouragement. I guess the keyword is “battle.” I don’t surrender to discouragement; I wrestle with it. I have to continually remind myself of those immutable truths: “Surely I will be with you to the very end of the age.” “God works all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.” “If any of youlacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously without finding fault.”

Like Jesus sparring with Satan in the wilderness in His fight against temptation, I too must remind myself of what is true and trust that God is doing something unseen by me. Probably in me, in fact. Maybe He’s teaching me to swim in the ocean of His grace without the life preserver of vocation or obligation.

I’ve been reminded of the apostle Paul, who, after a radical encounter with the resurrected Jesus, went through what scholars call Paul’s “silent years.” We can miss it reading through Acts, which only takes minutes to read but covers decades. We forget that years can lapse between sentences. For two years, Paul did nothing but seek God and reconcile what he learned as a student and a Pharisee to what he was learning about Jesus. Paul had to be “transformed by the renewing of his mind,” and God took His time with that process. You and I may be no apostle Paul, but doesn’t it stand to reason that God may lead us through a similar process?

Now that we live on a farm, we do a lot of homemade stuff. We make our own yogurt, process our own chickens, produce local honey, and squeeze our own juice. A juicer makes this easy, but when I’ve squeezed oranges by hand, I often have to reposition the orange and keep squeezing. There always seems to be more juice hiding in there. I think maybe I’m like that. There are things in me that need to come out. I thought those things were gone, but maybe I just needed to be squeezed in a different way, by different circumstances, to reveal that some of those old attitudes are still hiding in there. Old hurts are still tender. Old fears are still lurking. God sees, and He knows what He’s doing.

I used to preach that God will almost always do a great work in you before He does a great work through you. Maybe I need to revisit some of those truths and practice what I preached… seasons of preparation are never easy. We have to be further transformed from where we are (and maybe have grown comfortable) to where God knows we need to be for the next step of faith.

That’s what the wilderness was to Moses before the burning bush. That’s what the exile was to Daniel before the lion’s den. That’s what years on the run were to David before his coronation. And can you imagine what that one long day between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection must have been like for His disciples? It probably felt like years.

This is the hope that I’m clinging to: it won’t always be like this. God’s best is yet to come… and then maybe another season of struggling… but God is always faithful, and Sunday’s coming.