And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”   – Mark 15:34

There are times in your life when you WILL feel abandoned by God.  You will face trials and hard circumstances; and you will experience pain, frustration, unmet expectations, and suffering.  And in those moments, your ability to long-suffer and patiently endure will correspond directly to how much you believe the Gospel.  To believe the Gospel is to believe that the overwhelming way in which God rightly & necessarily withdraws from unholy, unrighteous, sinful beings like us was experienced on our behalf by Jesus.  In other words, Jesus assumed the abandonment of God for you.  If you are in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17) God cannot abandon you.  That is not to say that you won’t experience trials, or suffering; but rather, it is the Gospel-Truth, that God will not abandon those who are in Christ, that will enable you to patiently endure the trials you face.