Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Psalm 22:1-18 Some of the most traumatic feelings a person can experience is being abandoned. Abandonment rocks our emotions with feelings of insecurity, fear, doubt, loneliness, failure, rejection, grief, sorrow and unworthiness, just to name a few. I’ve never experienced abandonment, but I know people who have. I know a fifty-year-old man who is still being healed emotionally of the abandonment he experienced as a young boy. Both his mother and father were alcoholics, and they would leave their two young boys on the beach alone at night while they partied at the bars. Later this man’s father killed his mother. Imagine the trauma of abandonment he felt.

Can God heal such deep emotional consequences of abandonment? The good news is that Jesus Christ on the cross provided the healing needed for abandonment. The psalm today is a prophetic psalm that David received in the spirit. It describes in detail the death of Jesus and even relates how His garments were parted and had lots cast for them after He gave His spirit into the hands of God the Father. On the cross, Jesus quotes the first verse of this psalm, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The reason God turned His back on Jesus and separated Himself for a moment from Him was because God has purer eyes than to behold evil. In that moment in time when all of our sins were laid upon Jesus, He who knew no sin became sin for us so that we could be made the righteousness of God in Him. This act is more than our human minds can comprehend. Jesus was abandoned by the Father for all those who have experienced abandonment in their lives so that they can be accepted by the Father and never experience the feelings of abandonment again.

The fifty-year-old man who was abandoned can find healing for his soul. The first step he must take is to believe Jesus purchased this healing for him on the cross. The next step is to see himself crucified with Christ. Each pain of abandonment he experiences today is a deception from the enemy. The enemy wants this man to remain wounded, fearful and in self-hatred. This man is in a prison of deception that can only be penetrated by the truth. He will know the truth, and the truth will set him free. The key to his healing is to believe Jesus bore his abandonment on the cross and receive the acceptance and the love the Father has for him. Jesus gave a condition to receiving the truth that will set anyone free. He said, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31­­-32). Jesus speaks these words of truth to all who have experienced abandonment “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen” (Matt. 20:20).

READ: Exodus 2:11-22; Matthew 17:10-27; Psalm 22:1-18; Proverbs 5:7-14