Psalm 22: "Why have you forsaken me?" - Roxy Tether

And some of you may remember a couple of years ago, I did an interview about my study.

So for those of you that weren't there, sorry.

But I can briefly summarise now.

So I chatted a lot about what I was doing in my study, a bit of an update.

And one of the things that I chatted about was some of my struggles when I had a bit of a crisis of faith.

So while I was studying, it was great because it raised loads of questions, but it clashed and collided with the time in my life where I'd gone from really feeling like I knew God personally, I heard God speak a lot, you know, I'd be impacted in worship time, I was moved in my reading my Bible and everything.

all that sort of thing to nothing and feeling totally distant from God.

And it just sent me into a bit of a spiral really.

It was really tricky and I'm really happy to chat more about it.

I just don't want to fill this morning.

So if anyone wants to hear more about that, I'm really happy to chat.

But yeah, I'd gone from like this personal deep relationship with God to suddenly feeling like is God even real? Like really asking everything and throwing everything up in the air.

And that was really scary because some of you may not have experienced this, some of you might, but for me, I'd built my life upon there is a God I've got a relationship with God and this this is the impact on my life I'd built my entire life on that and so suddenly I was going okay if there's no God like what does this mean and it was terrifying I was scared to face it and I was really scared to say anything plus I worked for the church so it was like you know a bit awkward there um so yeah it was really tricky but I I um I spoke to some people and I found a few really good people who listened, acknowledged my pain, my hurt, my forsakenness um but also helped me to process and work through it and the study gave me some good tools for that as well so um I sort of slowly rebuilt after that um Anyway, in amongst all this struggle was when I had to pick my dissertation topic.

And if you know me, you know I don't really like being told what to do.

So dissertation topic was great because I got to pick whatever I wanted.

All the other essays I'd been told by my lecturers, you know, here's the six questions or three questions you can choose from.

This was like, choose whatever you want.

And I was like, here's my opportunity.

So I was in amongst all this sort of struggle and doubt while picking the topic.

And so when we read this psalm, hopefully you'll see why I picked this as part of my focus.