It can be easy to worship God when your life is going well, with good health and with family and good friends around, but there are times when all is not so well and we are struggling and He seems far away. David, who God called "a man after my own heart" sometimes felt like that. In fact it comes up in many of the Psalms. In Psalm 42 David remembers the times when he lead the procession to the house of God with shouts of joy and thanksgiving but then says "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?"
Of course God had not left him, just as He doesn't leave us. This is our God who loves us, who sought us out and in Jesus and through his death and resurrection brought us into a relationship with him that will last for eternity. David even in his darkest days was able to say "Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God." Job had similar thoughts "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him."
Paul had a lot to say about hope too, which included hope to know the presence of God's Spirit with us day by day in this life and also what Paul sometimes called "the blessed hope" the expectation of Jesus' return when "God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.""
- Ian Gilmour
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