Where Are You Now, God?

Welcome to the month of October! We are literally almost done with 2026. Can you believe that?

I ended the month of September with good news. Honestly, I didn’t even know how I felt throughout the day on September 30. Waking up on the last day of the month to two good news was something my heart wasn’t prepared for. And I pray that God will allow everyone reading this to also receive a piece of news that reassures you that He never left you. He is the 11th-hour God, and He is still in the business of doing good.

I am sure you are wondering about the title: “Where are you now, God?”

Let me tell you a story.

Last Saturday night, I was in bed feeling restless and thinking about a lot of things; the direction my life could have taken, whether I should have done this or that, and all the different “what ifs” that sometimes cross our minds.

We all have those moments when we try to help God figure things out. Or perhaps we try to figure out why our lives took a certain route in the first place. We look back and wonder, Where was God in all of that mess? And sometimes, even after everything we’ve been through, we find ourselves asking, Where is He now?

That was me that Saturday night.

I literally searched my heart and room for God. I was like, “God, where are You in all of this?”

Sometimes we search for God in decisions He never asked us to make. Sometimes we wonder where He is when the career we chose starts becoming overwhelming. Sometimes we question Him about the child we cried and begged Him for. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations and wonder how we even got there and whether God was there with us when we made those decisions.

So yes, I had my own “Where are You, God?” moment that Saturday night.

I didn’t get as much sleep as I had envisioned, but I knew we needed to be in church the next morning. Every time my pastor preaches, I somehow find an answer to the things that have troubled me the most throughout the week.

But tell me why this beautiful woman, who has always been a gospel singer, came to church that Sunday to talk about her newly released book and share her testimony and the title of her book was essentially the exact question I had been asking God the night before.

Can someone explain that to me?

I couldn’t hold back the tears.

I got a copy of the book, and I’m already halfway through it. While reading it on Tuesday as I waited to catch my flight, I couldn’t help but cry. I kept wondering how she was able to endure the pain she had experienced.

She shared how, after losing her husband during a mission trip in Jamaica, she cried out to God to send someone to hold her as she wept on the floor of her hotel bathroom. It was around the time of the terrible tragedy that happened in America on 9/11. A Jamaican housekeeper heard her crying from the hallway, knocked on her door, and asked if she could come in, hug her, and pray with her.

In that moment, she knew God was with her.

And for me, walking into church the very next morning after asking God, “Where are You?”, only to hear the very question I had been wrestling with through the title of a book, reminded me of something I needed to remember:

God is with me.

Sometimes we wonder where God is when we are experiencing the deepest pain or walking through the darkest wilderness of our lives. Some of us cry. Some of us blame God. Some of us shout. Some of us stop talking to Him because we think, “There is no way He let me go through all of this alone.”

But there is something I have been learning about God: He sees our tears.

Psalm 56:8 says:

“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”

Think about that for a moment.

The tears you cried when nobody was around. The tears you wiped away before walking into a room. The tears you shed while praying because you couldn’t even find the words to explain what was hurting. The tears that came when you received bad news, when someone disappointed you, when you felt forgotten, when you were waiting for an answer that seemed like it would never come.

God saw them.

Not one of them was wasted.

The Bible doesn’t say that God merely notices that we cry. It gives us this beautiful picture of Him keeping our tears in a bottle and recording them in His book. I don’t know what you are carrying as you read this, but I want you to know that your tears are not invisible to God.

And sometimes, when He finally answers, His answer doesn’t look anything like what we expected.

Think about Peter in Acts 12.

Peter was imprisoned, and the church was earnestly praying to God for him. Scripture tells us that while Peter was in prison, “earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.” Then God answered their prayer in a way that was almost unbelievable.

An angel came to Peter in the middle of the night, his chains fell off, the prison doors opened, and Peter walked out.

But here’s the part that gets me.

Peter went to the house where the believers were gathered and knocking at the door. A servant girl named Rhoda recognized his voice and was so excited that she ran back to tell everyone that Peter was standing outside.

And what did they say?

“You are out of your mind.”

These were the same people who had been praying for Peter’s release.

They were praying for an answer, and when the answer showed up at their door, they struggled to believe it.

How many times have we done the same thing?

We pray.
We cry.
We ask God to move.
We tell Him what we are trusting Him for.

And then, when He begins to move, sometimes we are surprised because His answer came differently, faster, slower, or in a way we never imagined.

I love this story because it reminds me that God’s ability to answer is not limited by our ability to imagine the answer.

There is so much more I want to say about Peter, the church’s prayers, Rhoda, and what happened when the answer finally arrived. So I will definitely be talking about Acts 12 in another post because there is a lesson in that story that I don’t want to rush through here.

Yes, life can hit us hard.

We often think God will answer how we want and when we want. But the trajectory of my own life has taught me that He is a God of wonders. No matter how much I plan, His plan for my life still stands.

I came across a post from Pastor Tony Evans yesterday that said:

“If you want to know the plan for your life, don’t look for the plan; look for the Planner.”

Maybe you are tired.

Tired of hearing another sermon.
Tired of hearing another motivational speech.
Tired of believing that your prayer could actually be answered.
Maybe you’re even wondering if God is anywhere to be found.

But I want to remind you: God sees your heart. He sees your tears. He knows what you need, and He knows when you need it.

Never stop believing.
Never stop trusting.

And always remember that His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts, just as Isaiah 55:8–9 reminds us.

Whenever those “Where are You now, God?” moments come for me, I take my Bible, open Romans 8, and hold on to His promises.

So whatever you are trusting God for; a job, passing that entrance exam, getting into the program of your choice, marriage, children, praying for a child who has gone off course, freedom from addiction, peace in the middle of anxiety, or simply clarity about where your life is headed, I want to encourage you:

Lay it down at His feet.

Trust Him with the questions you don’t have answers to.

Trust Him with the waiting.

Trust Him with the things you wish you could control.

And when you find yourself asking, “Where are You now, God?”

Remember that sometimes the answer is not that He just showed up.

He was there all along.