Separation from God is an interesting subject.

I felt separated from God for over a month. In the RU Men’s Home, I was privileged enough to do chapel, as unworthy as I am. In my posts, I try not to get too personal, because I want my blog to focus more on expounding the truth that God gives me to the world, rather than what is going on in my personal life, but it will be a mixture of both.

With that being said, I was living in complete rebellion to God. Rebellion is the same as witchcraft. I began to idolize a girl in my life. I began to idolize this girl, and then my leadership asked me to take her out of my life when she began to wander away from the Lord. Let me just say this: your leadership always has your best interest in mind, and even if they don’t, God does, and can I just say, God works through your leadership to reveal His will for your life.

I took that girl, and placed her in my life where God should have been. I created an idol in my life. That was when the descent in my walk with God began. She consumed my thoughts. Nothing bad, but just what she was doing, how her day was, how her devotions were, praying for her. My thoughts were her. What’s so bad about that? My thoughts should be about God, and Christ, and His love for me, and His precious and holy Word.

Then my leadership asked me to stop talking to her. That’s when I stepped out from underneath the influence of the Holy Spirit, and began living under the influence of the flesh. The time I’ve spent at Reformers Unanimous has literally been the best year of my entire life, but I’ve also had the worst month of my entire life while I was here, and that was the month I was separated from God. I lost my peace, and my joy. I lost every aspect of my walk with God. The pain was unbearable. It hurt. Physically hurt. In Matthew 27, the only time Jesus cried out to God was during the ninth hour, and that was the most painful moment in Jesus Christ entire life, I believe, was that separation from God. Isaiah tells us that God’s hand is not slack, that He cannot save, nor is His ear heavy, that we cannot hear, but that our sins have separated us from Him.

I wanna tell you, I have never felt so far from God. Even when I was saved, and I thought about it, I thought God was with me. Every time I opened the Bible or heard someone preach, they mentioned obedience, and God would tell me “Michie, be obedient,” but I didn’t listen. Finally, the pain became to the point where I wanted to do anything I could to numb it. I did what I know best, and that’s drugs. When I came home that night, I had to call my boss, sobbing in tears at the realization of what I had lost. I don’t mean the year sobriety, or the respect of my colleagues, but rather, my relationship with God. We began to take steps of action to correct the errors in my life. The entire time, God was calling out to me, saying “My child, I love you, I forgive you, come back to me.”

I want to close with a Bible verse: Jeremiah 31:3

The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, [saying], Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.

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I want to talk to you guys today about a fruit of the Spirit. This fruit is joy. Galatians 5 is where we learn that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, gentleness, faith, meekness, and temperance, and that there is no law against those things. So, we see then that as we yield to the power and influence of the Holy Spirit that the outcome in our life will be selfless love, a calm rejoice in all of life’s circumstances, freedom from worry, so on and so forth. Today, I wanna talk about joy, because joy has been severly lacking in my walk with God as of recently.

Alright, so, this is all going to be taken out of the book of Philippians. Philippians was written by Paul at a very tumultuous time in his life. He was in the Roman jail. And yet, in spite of all this, we find him encouraging the church at Philippi to “rejoice in the Lord.” The first time in Philippians that we find him using this phrase is the first verse of chapter 3. “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord.” The word finally basically means in conclusion. The rest of the book is about rejoicing in the Lord. One such way of rejoicing in the Lord is forgetting those things which are behind. What do we mean by this?

Forget those things which could become a discouragement to you. In my Christian walk, I recently had a severe fall, a severe backslide, as I had been living in self-righteousness in over a month, and my walk with God was almost non-existant. For almost two weeks I was extremely discouraged about what had happened, because it was consuming my meditations. The events leading up to this falling away, along with the events that took place, and they were all very discouraging to me. The devil continued to bring them to remembrance and I was so weak in the Lord. A smile on my face was almost non-existant, and I had most definitely lost my joy. You see, joy is in spite of your circumstances in life! I had lost my joy! Well, I needed to forget about my past shortcomings, and keep pressing on, keep going, to know Him! Forget about my shortcomings, and run, run the race to reach supremecy in my relationship with Christ, pressing toward the mark for the prize. Chapter 3 is one of my favorite chapters, and I suggest an in-depth study of Philippians 3 by anyone who is struggling with joy, but I also recommend looking at chapter 4, which is where I will be expounding.

In chapter 4, Paul tells us a second time to “rejoice in the Lord,” and the exact phrase he uses is “rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice,” so he has told us, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to always be rejoicing while surrounded to the limits by the Lord, and in chapter 4 he gives us another way to do this. Philippians 4 says

Rejoice in the Lord alway: [and] again I say, Rejoice.
Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord [is] at hand.
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things [are] honest, whatsoever things [are] just, whatsoever things [are] pure, whatsoever things [are] lovely, whatsoever things [are] of good report; if [there be] any virtue, and if [there be] any praise, think on these things.

So, based on this, I would like to show the way that this happens. He’s telling us to rejoice in the Lord. The word moderation means calmness. Joy is a calm delight. So, as we rejoice in the Lord, then people are going to see our moderation, or our calmness in the face of adversity. How do we have this moderation? Because we are not to be full of care for anything, but still yet in everything we are to come to God humbly, asking and making petition, with thanksgiving. As we take our concerns and place them up to the Father, then we can remove those negative problems and begin to focus on things that are honest, pure, just, lovely, of good report, etc. And so we see here that it’s a perpetual circle that continues. As we rejoice, and place all our cares and concerns upon God, then His peace will guard our hearts (our meditations) and our minds (our information) through Christ. Ya know, I would love to explain this peace to you, but it surpasses all understanding. You’re just gonna have to find it for yourself.

Love you all, and may God be with you. God bless.

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1 Peter 5:5-7 (KJV)

5 Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all [of you] be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.
6 Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:
7 Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

Alright, let’s start dissecting and defining this verse out for us. In 1 Peter, a major theme is submission, and that is continued here in chapter 5. Being that I’m a fairly intelligent 20 year old kid, (that’s right, I called myself a kid), submission is where I have a large problem, so this isn’t just for all you readers, it’s for me too.

Anyway, Peter here is exhorting all the young people to submit to the elders. Now, elders in the Bible can mean one of two things: an older person, or someone in Pastoral authority. In this case it is referring to Pastoral staff, however, I believe the inverse is true as well, that it could most definitely be applied to anyone who is considered older than you, and it could apply to people that are above you in the organization you work in.

Basically, this verse could be boiled down to this: every time you have an opportunity to deny yourself and be humble, not just to someone in authority over you, but to anyone and everyone around you, take it as an opportunity to be humble under God’s hand, because that what it is. When we do not submit one to another we are being proud, we are counting ourselves better than the other.

Let’s talk about submission for a minute. It makes me think of the Dennis comics. In one comic, he gets in trouble, and is told to go sit in the corner. He sits in the corner, but there is a thought bubble over his head as he thinks to himself “On the outside, I’m sitting down, but on the inside, I’m standing up.” Submission is doing it on the inside and the outside.

Now, about God resisting the proud. Did you know that God created the universe? Seriously. How many times do we actually think about the kind of power and might that went into creating this universe? About how big and vast the universe is? Well, the Bible tells us how big the universe is to God.
Isaiah 40:12

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?

A span is measured as the space from the end of the thumb to the end of the little finger when extended, or nine inches. The entire universe is only nine inches to God. Do you really want Him resisting you?
So, now comes the question: how do we humble ourselves under the might hand of God? We can clearly see how mighty God’s hand is because of how big his hand is compared to the universe. So how do go about being humble? It’s simple: cast all your cares upon Him. I don’t think that these verses are separate. In fact, the colon in verse 6 tells me that they are not separate. When you cast all your cares upon God, then you can submit to what He wants you to do. The Bible tells us that He cares for us, and as such begs us to cast our cares upon Him, and when we do so, we can humble ourselves, and He will exalt us in His time.

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I got this from someone on Facebook. His name is Rob Abernathy.

(John 3:16) For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
(John 3:17) For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

I prayed for a message,
And here’s what God gave.
It’s a list of the people
That JESUS… can save.

He can save a lost father,
And save a lost mother.
And by grace through faith save…
Your lost sisters… and brothers.

He can save your lost children
From the world’s path of sin,
And They’ll stop living for Satan,
… And start living for Him.

He’ll take a dirty ol’ sinner.
And pull him out of the mud,
If they’ll only just trust
…In his precious shed blood.

He can save your lost neighbor
And THEIR Daddy and Mama.
He can even save someone….
Like Ba-rack O-bama

He can save any Muslim,
Buddhist, Mormon or Jew,
Or a lifetime church-goer,…
Who’s just been warming a pew.

He can save those who’ve tried
To live life on their own,
Not knowing the way
To make Heaven their home.

He can save any liar,
any drunkard, or thief.
Did I mention he could save
our Commander-In-Chief?

He can save the lost scientist,
Who has denied His creation.
And, I’ve read,… in a day,
He will save a whole nation.

He could save on a deathbed,
But I think it’s preferred,
That you get in before then,
And LIVE… by His Word.

He can save anybody,
He can save every-one.
Who’ll just trust and believe,
On God’s precious Son.

And, I know he can do it
And I know that it’s FREE,
’Cause He PAID IT ALL,
And he did it for me.

And not just for me,
But for you, and the rest.
He can remove all our sin.
’Far as East is from West

“For… all… have…. sinned”
None righteous,… not one.
And the wages are death,
But God’s gift… was His Son.

So make a list of ALL people,
Alive and breathing today,
That’s a list of the people
That JESUS… can save.

—- Rob Abernethy 1/25/2009

What do you think?

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