All Alone

This is just me being real… and also kind of rambling about a scary thought that I wanted to share.

If you have never felt what I am about to describe then this will just be so many words on a page; but if you have, then I think we can get a tiny glimpse of what Jesus must have felt to be separated for the first time from God.

Have you ever experienced that pivotal point in your life where everything changed almost in an instant? And that change brought so much happiness and joy into your life that even months or weeks later you literally have to pinch yourself because it just doesn’t seem real. And if it is real the change was so sudden and fantastic that you are still holding your breath waiting for the shoe to drop? Maybe it was the time you met your husband or wife, your first child, your dream home or a gigantic promotion and pay raise. Whatever it was, it so radically altered your life that whatever your life was in the weeks before it occurred doesn’t even have significance to you anymore.

My journey to where I am right now is kind of crazy… and if you have read more than one or two things that I have written it isn’t something that’s real hard to figure out. I made a very serious and real commitment to completely give my life to Jesus in my early twenties and for next twenty years God blessed my family and I with everything. Awesome wife, awesome kids, awesome career, awesome income… I mean it was really everything most men pursue to consider themselves successful. And I thought I was still being Super Christian in the midst of it all... but if you had asked my wife back then; and she was honest with you; she would have told you I was the biggest egotistical, selfish jerk that walked the planet. And I was! And because I am also a really stubborn, thickheaded, know-it-all, God had to allow some things into my life that I think few ever have to face in order for Him to get my attention. And one of those things was His silence… silence for the last thirteen years. Not His absence, although if you had asked me in the middle of it all I would have told you that God bailed on me. I had so perverted His word and blessing in my life that I was never going to see Him or that kind of life again. I knew I was still saved but I was now one of those that got into heaven with their pants on fire and He really didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. (p.s. I was wrong). I still loved Him with all of my heart and missed Him horribly but I knew what I had become and was ashamed… I understood! But I so wanted to know Him again like I did before…

Now here I sit… that time of darkness and silence came to a close at the beginning of this year. I see the how and why of all that has been, and I understand. It is so different again that it is really impossible to describe. It is even better than what it was in the beginning with Him and I. And believe me I did not think that to be possible. And I don’t know why this thought followed but it made me shudder!

I knew in my twenties the joy of walking daily, hand in hand with God and also what it is like to (feel) separated from Him (although I never really was)! I also know what it feels like to have a deep and mature relationship with Him; one that comes from loving Him and with the best of your heart trying to serve Him for most of your life regardless of circumstances. To have Him look right at you and then change things in an instant to make Himself become part of your life again in indescribable ways. I literally feel like I need to pinch myself everyday, but I know it is God doing this so I am not worried. Yet, there is a side of me that is still holding its breath. It still remembers the pain of the last thirteen years, and is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And then I thought “WOW” What if He did it… I mean really did it! What if God really did turn His back on you… did not care or watch out for what happened to you anymore? Not just that absence of His word or touch (which by the way is horrifying beyond compare) but His actual physical absence. To have that wonderful pivotal moment of your life jerked right out from under you at the height of its glory, all in a split second!

Holy cow!

That is what the bible says He did to Jesus. Jesus cried out in His darkest hour on the cross “Father why have you forsaken me”. He was alone for the first time… but not like we would experience it, I mean really alone. For us, God promises; “He will never leave or forsake us”. So even though you don’t feel Him… He made a promise to be there and many more promises that talk about how He cares for you in the darkest of quiet times. But not so for Jesus! God could not even look at what was happening to His own son. Satan had loosed the dogs of Hell on Jesus and His Father had turned His back on Him for the first time in all of eternity.

If you have sat where I have recently been and could sit where I now am… you would have a couple of tears in your eyes at the moment… That is some crazy stuff! There is a BIG part of me, the flesh side of me that is scared to death… I NEVER want to go back to that feeling of not having God literally right by my side ever, ever again! And He promises to never leave it.

There will come a day when the sheep are separated from the goats… and darkness will come. The hounds of hell will be loosed in a place devoid of God. A place where there will be no one to save you, to protect you… a place where there will only be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

That is the place Jesus went for you and I… so we don’t have to.

And that is where everyone is going that you and I know and love, who does not also know and love Jesus.

Jus’ sayin’