When God Feels Silent | Matthew 27:45-50 | Chapel Hill Church Gig Harbor

When God Feels Silent | Matthew 27:45-50 | Chapel Hill Church Gig Harbor

Most of us know what it’s like to pray and hear nothing back. To cry out and wait, and keep waiting. One of the hardest parts of faith isn’t suffering itself, it’s suffering while God seems silent.
In this Maundy Thursday message, Caleb Bagdanov, Chapel Hill’s Student Ministries Director, walks us through Psalm 22 and the words Jesus cried from the cross — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — and what it means that Jesus himself knew what it felt like when God went quiet.
Two things anchor this message:

1. When God feels silent, we are invited to pray honestly: God is not fragile, not surprised, and not put off by our real feelings. David didn’t edit his prayers, and neither did Jesus. Neither do we have to.
2. When God feels silent, he is not absent: At the very moment Jesus cried out in abandonment, the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom. The moment that looked most like absence was the moment God was drawing nearest.

If you’re in a season where God feels far away, where your prayers seem to go unanswered, where faith feels like holding two contradictory things at once — this message is for you.