God, You Failed

"God, you failed me!”

Many of us have probably heard these words, thought these words, or even said these words. We get tired of waiting for God to do something. We feel like God’s inbox is full and our prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling and coming right back at us. So, in some cases and with some people, they give up and say “God, you failed me!”

I feel these words in certain areas of the Bible: Peter, Paul, Moses, Joseph, the disciples and the people that followed and believed in Jesus just to watch Him get crucified. The one that is probably the most obvious is David as he writes in the Psalms about feeling abandoned by God.

For this post, I was directed to a familiar story in the Gospel of John. In this story, we are going to see this happen as two women he frustrated with Jesus. The women’s names were Mary and Martha and they had a brother named Lazarus. Lazarus has talked ill and the women had sent for Jesus urging him to come quickly saying “the one you love is sick” (John 11:3) But Jesus stayed where He was for an additional 2 days.

“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days,”

John 11:5-6

So Mary and Martha waited and waited for Jesus and then watched as their brother slowly died. Then Jesus arrives (on His timing) and finds out the news from Martha first and then Mary.

“On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” - John 11:17-21

So Martha went to meet Jesus and the first thing she said was “You failed me!” Did you not here my cry? Did you not get my message? Why didn’t you come and help? Why did you leave me all alone? Why did you ignore me? Why did you fail me?

Martha and Jesus went back to the house and Jesus is greeted by Mary now who jumps up to meet him. She gives Jesus the same tone that her sister, Martha, gave him.

“When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”” - John 11:29, 32

They were both mad at Jesus. They both told him so as well. This tells me that we can get upset with Jesus. We can express our feelings to Jesus. We can tell Jesus how we feel. This also shows me that Jesus doesn’t get mad at us for our feelings and our moments anger and sadness. This is how I know:

“When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.

Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” - John 11:33, 35-36

Jesus cried with them. He felt their suffering. He does the same for us. He understands that it hurts. He understands that life can be unruly and that storms come up. But He is right there with us.

But Mary and Martha did not give up on Jesus either. They didn’t say “you failed me” and then turn away from Jesus. They walked with Jesus to see what He was going to do next.

“Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” - John 11:38-39, 43-44

There is always a joke here that says that Jesus had to specify and say “Lazarus come out” or the whole cemetery would have walked forward like a scene from The Walking Dead.

You see when we are waiting on Jesus to do something we think that He is failing us. When in reality we are failing Him. We aren’t trusting that He has the situation under control. We don’t trust that He will come through for us. So Jesus doesn’t fail us, in our lack of trust we fail Him. We forget that He says that He will never leave us (Deuteronomy 31:6 or Hebrews 13:5).

We just need to be patient and wait on Him to work. God isn’t on Eastern Standard Time or Pacific Standard Time. God isn’t even on Earth Standard Time! God is on God Standard Time. He will come through for us in His time. When you give up, God could have been right at our next step. But we turn around and give up.

So I encourage you with these words:

“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” - Psalm 27:14

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All Scripture is from the New International Version of the Bible, unless otherwise noted.

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