Wednesday; September 27

One of the things that should scare us to death is a fear that God will leave us alone. I think we have a healthy fear of being in an adversarial relationship with God and being on the receiving end of His retribution, but there is something else that should concern us. It is said that one meaning of the word “death” is separation. And if that is true, one scary thought is becoming dead to God. What if God were to say to us that since we were seeking self-sufficiency, He would let us have it? No, it isn’t so much that He would zap us for what we did, rather He would just leave us to our own devices.

Interestingly, this is a theme in the New Testament book of Romans. As Paul looks at the world around him, he warns about what happens when God just holds up His hands and says, “Okay, you do it your way”. On one hand this might seem like what we want, unfortunately, too often getting what we want isn’t all that great. Paul explains it this way, “Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.” (Romans 12:22-24).

Sometimes I wonder if the problem with modern society is less that God has sent something bad upon us and more that God is just allowing our own carnal wisdom to give us what we think we want. Without God’s protection and direction we are left to live with the consequences of human thought – and that is a scary thought!

Think About It!

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