“If you find yourself far from God, remember: He isn’t the one that moved.”
I have heard so many people imply there was a time that God abandoned them, that they could not sense Him or that they felt as though He wasn’t there, and usually, there is a build-up before I get to the heart of the matter, but today, I just want to jump right in. I understand feeling isolated from friends and from family, but feeling isolated from God is not something I understand. The very world we live in was created by God – the trees, the Sun, the Moon, the stars, the birds, the Heavens, the sky. I could literally go on. We are surrounded by God’s creation and we, ourselves, are His creation. So, I challenge each of us; before we say God is not with us or He’s silent or in any way, we have to first ask ourselves, have we attempted to reach Him? Have we paused and not just for a second or a minute, but have we sat in His presence? Have we quieted our minds, our televisions, and disconnected from our phones to really and truly hear Him?
Something, I think we truly forsake is that God is creative. I mean, the world was a blank canvas before He created it in its entirety. From nothingness, He created beauty, but He’s also creative in other ways. There is not one means of communication He uses to reach us.
He has spoken through donkeys, through writing on the wall, through world events, and really, however else He chooses, so why are we so quick to believe He cannot get creative with His methods to communicate with us? Do we really think God, who sacrificed His only son to save mankind and to reconcile our relationship with Him, would do that just to abandon us? The issue we have is that we believe we cannot have conversations we have with each other with God, but that is limiting a God who has proven that there is no limit to His power and to what He will do for His children whom He loves. We may think God isn’t talking to us, but even if we feel that way, it doesn’t mean we go on with our lives praying He speaks and continuing to say we can’t hear him in the meantime. It means more is required on our part to reach Him.
The truth of the matter is that God is always speaking to us in a myriad of ways, but because it is in a way we do not recognize, we assume He is not speaking at all. Instead of seeking Him more and attuning ourselves to be able to identify His voice when He speaks, we just say He’s not there, but that is so far from the truth.
God could very well make us all worship Him, but that isn’t the way He went about things. He gave us free will so that we could choose. He has done everything for us and it is up to us to choose to pick up the Cross, to follow Him and draw near with faith to Him. The ball is, and always has been, in our court and if there’s ever a moment we don’t feel His presence, then we have to evaluate our own lives because He has always been here and will always be.
Jesus, in His time here on Earth, reminded His disciples that His physical presence did not mean He was no longer with them. Matthew 28:20 says, “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” The same is true for us today. Jesus, an extension and portion of God Himself is with us.
We have God in three persons, three means of accessing God and of Him being revealed to us, so we should never feel alone. In fact, we can’t. Despite what our flesh and the enemy leads us to believe, God is quite literally everywhere including within us by way of the Holy Spirit.
We have Christ interceding on our behalf daily, and we have God the Creator and dispenser of life who wakes us up each morning specifically because He is with us and has work for us to do. If we ever feel lonely or abandoned, we ought to dig deep within ourselves that we might find God, silence the enemy who is doing his very best to discourage us from believing God is not truly with us, and never forget the superpower we have in prayer which is the best way to reach Him.
I will put it like this and leave you to reflect: When you’re on the phone with someone and they can’t hear you or you can’t hear them, how many things do you try until you can hear their voice again? And if we can make a concerted effort to hear someone on the phone loud and clear, how much harder will you work to hear the voice of your Father who is offering you new life, who has intrinsically better plans for you, who is offering rest unto all those who are weak and heavy-laden and really, so much more?
