Verse of the day: Judges 6:13, Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”
Have you ever felt like God was far away? There are times in our lives, and walk with Christ, that we feel as if God is not present with us in our times of trouble. Well, I want to tell you that you are not alone in feeling this way. There are going to be those times in life when we feel like God is not present, and that He just does not care about what is going on in our life, because we do not see anything happening. We have seen God working in our life before, and we hear the testimony of other people, and how God is working in their life, but everything is static in our own. This is when we begin to question, like Gideon, “O my Lord, if You are with me, why then has all this happened to me, my family, or my loved ones?” The one thing that Gideon fails to acknowledge, or realize, is that God has been present all the while Israel was suffering. It was not God who moved away from Israel, but Israel who moved away from God. We often question God’s inactivity in our lives, but fail to realize that God did not move. instead, it was us who moved away from Him. Hebrews 13:5-6 promises that the Lord will never leave us, nor forsake us. If we would just learn to be content with what He is already blessing us with, and seek Him alone, we would be more in tune with His presence in our lives. The fact of the matter is that God is always present in us, as born again believers. 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 tells us, “Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, 22 who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” 1 Corinthians 3:16 also confirms God’s presence, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” God said something to Israel that is applicable to us as His children. In Isaiah 59:2, God said to Israel, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.” If we harbor secret sin, and if we insist on compromising our Christian life, by seeking the things of the world, and neglecting prayer and the Word of God, the Lord will go silent in our lives. We know that nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:38-39), and we have already said that we are sealed and indwelt by the Spirit, thereby being secure in our salvation, but God can certainly choose to be silent and make us feel as if He were not present. We see Jesus ability to be present but unrecognizable when he walked with two disciples on the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24). All the while, these two men walked with Jesus, but did not know it was Him until He opened their eyes. Sin in our lives will have this effect on our walk with the Lord. Israel had sinned against God, once again, and now Gideon is questioning God, when he should be questioning Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. There will be times when we feel abandoned and feel like God no longer loves us. 1 John 3:20-21 reminds us, “For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.” God is always present and His love for us never changes. He may have to discipline us from time to time, and may even have to become silent, in order to get our attention, but He will never stop loving us. It would behoove us to stop and consider what is going on in our life, and what we are doing that has caused us to move away from God, before we point a finger at Him and accuse Him of moving away from us.
Today, God extends an invitation to you to accept His gift of salvation (Rom 6:23). Will you accept it? Anyone who calls on Jesus, by faith, in repentance, confessing your sins, will receive eternal life. Do not put off calling on Him, and receive Him and His gift of salvation today (Rom 10:13).
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