Do you ever feel like God has abandoned you? Psalm 21-23

Psalms 22:1 (NASBStr)

 My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?

 Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.

In the above verse David is crying out to God and seemingly not finding any relief or an answer to his prayer.    This entire Psalm (22), of course, is the Psalm that highlights Christ's crucifixion.    Since hanging others on the cross did not happen until the Roman world, this entire Psalm is a prophetic Psalm and David speaks of a crucifixion he didn't and wouldn't actually experience.   Yet, David did "feel" the pains he addresses in this Psalm.   He speaks in this first verse about being in a place where he doesn't sense God's presence.   He of course knows God is omnipresent and will actually write about that in another Psalm (Psalm 139).    Yet, here he has a feeling of abandonment.     We should note that in Psalms 21:2 he just wrote and boasted that God hears the King and hears in a blessed way.    He will also confess to a similar good thought in Psalms 22:24, later in this Psalm.    Yet, he begins in the place of abandonment.   This is a place we all find ourselves at some point and time in our lives.   God is not gone, obviously.  Yet, if "feels" that way at times.   God is the God who is always there.  We don't always feel what we should, and do, by faith know.   God hears us, even when we can't sense it.  Of course, later Jesus will utter these same words on the cross and, for Him and only Him, they will be true.  God will forsake His Son on the cross to death.  But, so that we don't have to experience that state of loss ourselves, as believers, God is always present with us.  Christ made that possible.  He told his disciples to go out into the world and he would be with them "always" (Matthew 28:20).    Our faith should not be bent by feelings.   Our feelings should always be bent by our faith in an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God.    We might feel like God has forsaken us but as we seek Him out in prayer we will be brought back to the place of faith and renewed sense that He is still there and never left ... just as David does as he travels from verse one to verse twenty-four of this passage.