Perpetual illness, repeated injury, chronic unemployment, can’t take a trick. Relationship breakdown, business failure, loneliness with no company in sight.

Those of us who have faith in Jesus know of times when we feel close to God; our prayers being answered apparently assuring us that we are ‘in step’ with his will. But then things go pear shaped and we feel distant. We think something must be wrong. God’s stone walling me…so we must be out of step with his will…right? Or worse…he doesn’t care….or maybe not even there after all…or if he is…he isn’t worth believing in.

How do you as a parent teach your child to have faith in God when you find it hard to pray yourself? When you’re prayers aren’t being answered? When you feel let down by God? 

But how do you say that to a child? You don’t? Let’s be real, there are consequences either way.  If we talk frankly about our disappointment with God they may get upset, discouraged even. If we don’t discuss it and just pretend, putting on a stoic face, what will become of our kids when they finally hit rock bottom in life? Who will have prepared them for disappointment in God, if we never discuss it?

It goes like this, you pray and pray as a family and nothing happens.

The atheist among us would scoff and say, that’s proof God doesn’t exist. When God fails to lift a finger in tough times, how can you possibly believe he’s even there at all?

You’re child might justifiably ask…
‘What’s the point of believing dad, if it’s all going to be hard like this? If God’s not going to do anything, why believe in Him? What’s he good for?’

A child like faith, is promised with reward: ‘faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains’, said Jesus. New believers in Jesus often experience ‘tangible, imooooooooooonstant reward’; prayers answered, things moving on the way up. But those of us who’ve been around the block a few times know it’s not all up and up. We know there is times of…well, grief, grief…with God. Not grief because of our suffering or a death of a loved one, but grief at him for letting us down. Yeah , that’s it…that feeling of …betrayal. It’s that feeling that God did not come through for you when you stepped up to the plate.

Are we even allowed to say, ‘I’m disappointed with God’. We might come to that in our heads, maybe share it with our partner, but we’d feel like we are letting the side down if we said it aloud in church or worse…admitted it to our kids.

The story of Ruth

Ruth, as told in the story of the Old Testament, left Israel and went to live in Moab with her husband and two sons who married Moabite girls there. But all the men died leaving Ruth and her two daughters in law behind to pick up the pieces. Three widows. So when Ruth returns to Israel she says, ‘don’t call me Naomi, instead call me ‘bitter’ for I went away full and God has brought me back empty’.

Two things we should notice. First she believes in a sovereign God who is in control and ultimately has ‘permitted’ the events of her bereavement. She’s in pain and she wears that pain on her sleeve. But the story doesn’t end there…she does not give up on God…she goes back to Israel.

Is this a journey we can we share this with our kids?
We can spare them all the detail; they are not our psych therapist or counselor. So we mustn’t look for that there. But we do them a disservice if we ‘keep up appearances’; besides they’ll see through it anyway. Our kids will struggle to learn faith if they don’t see it in us. Naomi might not have reached God’s ‘goal’ in this episode in her life, but she hasn’t lost faith either. I like that she just says it like it is. If you keep reading Ruth, you’ll see she doesn’t stay in that mode for the whole book. I think the Scripture shows us that it’s Ok, it’s her journey and God is happy to work with that.

You might be thinking…wow how can we be looking at such a negative issue when we’ve just had the glory of Easter? Surely Easter puts a stop to any complaints against God and his so called ‘silences’.

You’re right of course, but I thought…straight after Easter? Yes that’s the perfect time to ponder the vacuum. It helps to have that backdrop so close behind us.

You might have a host of questions that attend this post, like:
-Can you really believe in a God who is supposed to be loving but let’s bad things happen?
-If God is there, why doesn’t he intervene?
-Surely if we can’t find him scientifically and he’s fails to show up when we need him most, that’s a good argument for his non existence?

I hope to touch on some of these as we move along in the future Purposeful Parenting posts on antonsantics.com. For now I just want you to consider and feel the weight of the issue.

I’ve got a little book I want to share with you that I’ve found heaps encouraging, plus some little stories that I know you’ll enjoy so keep a look out for the next post in the series as we explore God’s silence.

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