Psalm 77: The Power of Remembering God When God Feels Distant

Remembering God

One way God leads me is by putting Himself, His word, and a repeated message in front of me. Walking through a situation where I could easily feel like God is distant, He brought multiple reminders to remember Him.

I will remember the works of the Lord;

Surely I will remember Your wonders of old.

Psalm 77

It all began early that morning when in my time with Jesus I read Psalm 77. Take a moment to read Psalm 77 for yourself.

Then throughout the rest of the day, He brought conversations and instances to me that kept bringing me back to the message—remember God.

When I finished reading Psalm 77, I wrote this in my journal:

Psalm 77 reminds me that at times in our faith journey we all will feel like God, who is the invisible God, is not present or listening or acting on our behalf. In those times, the way to overrule our feelings and perceptions is to remember. Remember the ancient stories of God and remember His voice, His responses, and His work in our own past life.

Second Corinthians 5:7 says: We walk by faith, not by sight.

These are the times when God is building our faith.

Reading Psalm 77 made me remember times when God felt distant, not present, not active, not interested in me or answering my prayers. During one of those seasons, I heard Beth Moore say that these were the times when we truly walk by faith. She made the point that the mountaintop experience of God answering our every prayer really didn’t require faith. When faith is really faith, we are believing God when nothing in our physical circumstances looks like God is present or working.

How I Have Known God

I carried this message with me throughout my day—because I needed it. I needed to remember how God had worked in my own life, especially in one specific difficulty I find myself bringing to Him all throughout the day. But right now, nothing appears to be changing, and that’s hard. I could think that God wasn’t listening to my prayers and probably once upon a time I would have. But now I have a history with God.

And I said, "This is my anguish;

But I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High."

Psalm 77:10

For the past thirty-one years I have walked in relationship with the Lord. Throughout those years I have known Him and experienced Him as my Savior, Lord, Redeemer, Father, friend, healer, helper, hope, strength, sustainer… There is no way I can list all the ways God has revealed Himself to me throughout my life without missing so much, so I will leave the list at that.

Recently I was a guest on a podcast, Remembering God with Brenda Savanhu. Brenda shared a few reels she created from our conversation for me to share on my social media. I saved the reels on my computer desktop.

A couple of hours after my time with Jesus in Psalm 77, I clicked on one of the videos to see what it was. It was me reading from a Max Lucado book that was instrumental in my initial encounter with Jesus on the night when He first stepped into my life. As I listened to myself read the words Jesus used to speak to me so personally thirty-one years ago, vivid memories flooded my mind.

The Night My Journey with Jesus Began

That night had been a long agonizing night of remembering my sin. Dark moments of shameful things that I hoped would never have to be seen or known by anyone filled my mind. A mental video camera played scene after scene of everything I had ever done. I cried from the depths of my being and literally felt sick over it. If I could change it, I would, but I could not.

All the while, Jesus was there in the room. I knew it. I felt Him. He was speaking to me. I remembered a partial verse I had heard in Sunday School—the wages of sin is death. I cried more because I knew there was no hope for me. I was a lost cause. No hope of change. No hope of heaven because I had been—too bad.

Heaven wasn’t for bad people.

Heaven was for the holy God, and holy people.

I decided my only option was to accept that heaven would not be the end of my story. But I had two beautiful little girls, and I desperately wanted a different story for them than the one I had lived. So I prayed, “Lord, just save my daughters. I realize that I can’t have heaven, but I will live for you if you will save them.”

That is how my story with Jesus began.

At 4:30am, I had not slept and had no more tears left to cry. But still peace and sleep would not come, so I got out of the bed and grabbed my Bible and a book, God Came Near by Max Lucado, on my bedside table. I curled up in the rocking chair in my living room and opened God Came Near to the bookmarked page where I had last finished reading.

He Forgot

When I opened the book, the title of the chapter was, He Forgot.

I read the beginning of that chapter on the Remembering God with Brenda Savanhu podcast and it is on one of the reels Brenda sent me.I want you to hear what God spoke to me through that book. Maybe you need to hear this for yourself. Maybe what you need is to remember who God is and what He says, rather than what you remember about a past sin-stained life.

During those first several years with Jesus, I returned to the memory of that night over and over again because I needed it. And all these years later, God brings it back to me fresh and new all over again.

Several hours later in my day, my husband told me about a conversation he had with someone who asked him what steps I took to get me to where I am today. The person knew I was a different person than I was so long ago. My husband told him what I would have told him myself. There weren’t steps.

My life change boils down to one answer—Jesus.

Jesus changed my life and it wasn’t instant or fast. Life change happened in a slow, steady walk with the Lord. However, if steps are what you want, I can try to give them to you—but you must know that all steps lead to Jesus.

Here is how my life change began:

1)    I had started going to church again after walking away fourteen years before that. I could not have told you this at the time, but what I now know is that the reason I was back in church was because God was pursuing me and drawing me to Himself.

We love because He first loved us.

1 John 4:19

Notice it’s not what I did first. It is what God did first.

2)    I recognized a lifetime of sin. All those awful things I remembered revealed a clear distinction between me and all my yuck and God and all His holiness.

“There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides you;

there is no Rock like our God.

1 Samuel 2:2

3)    I wanted something different. I didn’t want to live in the way I had lived. I wanted something different for me and for my children. The problem was I didn’t know how to have that. Honestly, it seemed impossible—not attainable. And it was.

But Jesus looked at them and said to them,

"With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

Matthew 19:26

4)    I had to accept the gift Jesus offered me—forgiveness. A life of putrid living forgotten. Crimson sin washed white. A clean slate—as if I had never sinned. A new beginning. A new me. So now let’s finish the rest of the verse that came to my mind the night my sin consumed my mind.

For the wages of sin is death,

but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:23

Do you see that it all points back to Jesus?

I did not choose to come to Jesus.

He chose me.

But I did respond.

I did receive.

And in every moment, in every encounter, in every weakness, in every impossibility, I look to Jesus and I remember:

Jesus said to him,

"I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

John 14:6

Jesus is and always will be my answer.

If you need more encouragement, in my latest‍ ‍HER Podcast, How to Trust God When Life Is Out of Your Control,I sat down with Jody Hudson and we talked about how God was present with her in a season when life felt completely out of control.

This conversation is a powerful reminder that even when life feels out of control, God is still present.

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