Day eight
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” Isaiah 54:10
I don’t know where you are in your walk with the Lord, maybe you grew up in the church and have always had a relationship with him. Maybe you have only recently become a follower of Christ or maybe you haven’t even made a decision to follow him and are just curious about what it looks like to follow Jesus. Whatever your journey is right now, I think you can identify a time in your life that you felt abandoned by God. At those times in our lives, it’s hard to read things like, “for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. (Deut. 31:6) This is a promise from God, so why is it that we feel so distant from him? There are many different answers for that, depending on your situation and where you are in life. It could be that you’ve never asked Jesus to be your Lord and savior, he is a gentleman and would never go anywhere uninvited. You need to ask him into your world in order for him to rock your world- so to speak. (Can you tell I work with teen agers?) It could also be that you have a habitual sin in your life that is creating a wall between you and God. He is holy and pure and therefore cannot be in the presence of sin. When we bow our knee to the sin in our lives we become a slave to that sin and the Bible says in Matthew 6:24 that “no one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.” God of course does not want to be distant from us and that is the very reason that he sent his one and only son, Jesus, to break the shackles of sin forever. When we accept Jesus to be the Lord of our lives, we are freed from the bondage of sin. However, if we continue to keep going back to our old habits and way of living, we once again bow our knee to that sin. We have to continually devote ourselves to God in order to despise the sin that tries to creep into our lives.
Sometimes, though, we can live a life glorifying to God and be walking very close to God and still not feel his presence. You listen to people talk about these amazing, spirit-filled encounters with God and wish that they, too, could experience this. Why is it that some people ‘feel’ this and others don’t? I usually hear this from people who have grown up in the church, learning about God their entire life. There is a difference, though, between head knowledge and heart knowledge. You can know everything there is to know about God and what he’s done and who he is without ever “knowing” him personally and intimately. New Christians also struggle with not ‘feeling’ his presence; they will compare their experience to others who had this intense emotion that overwhelmed them to the point of surrendering to Christ. Whatever your journey had been you need to know that although some people do have an overwhelming emotion in the presence of God, every encounter with him is different and unique. Just like each relationship in your life is different, each relationship with God is different and cannot be compared to someone else’s. Being in the presence of God is not about a feeling or emotion, it is about surrendering to his will and choosing to follow him in faith. Jesus knew that this would be difficult for some and that is why he said, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.”(John 20:29)
Our verse today is yet another promise; God knew that in life things would be changing all around us. Our situations and circumstances shift and move constantly, he knew that our faith may dip and even plummet at times. The great news is that although our love for him may falter and sway, his love for us will never change. If you let this fact truly sink in and allow it to penetrate the depths of your soul, it should give you an overwhelming sense of peace. That peace is God’s covenant with you, his promise that he will never leave you or forsake you…. Ever! No matter what you feel or do not feel, no matter what distance you hold him away from you or what walls you put up between you. He will never leave you and his love for you in unwavering.
Today’s Exercise: Interval Training
Interval workouts are any physical activity that involves a series of low to high-intensity exercise workouts interspersed with rest or relief periods. You may choose to do this on the treadmill or bicycle or even jump in on class at the gym. Whatever you decide to do, keep in mind that during all the highs and lows of your workout that the air around you is not changing. It is there to keep you alive, filling your lungs with life giving substance. God is the same way, no matter how things change around us, his love will always be there to fill us up and keep us moving forward. Cheesy? Yeah, maybe, but it’s true.