Sometimes life throws you a curve ball, whether someone you care for passes away or you end up in the hospital yourself and you wonder if you’re going to make it. Times like these you start to wonder if God is still with you or He has turned against you. It’s a sad thing to admit, but not a lot of us are as good as Job. The first thing we think of when we’re hurting is, “Why God why? Why are you allowing this thing to happen?” As if God is to blame. We get offended with the Lord. Instead of worshiping God like Job did, we automatically blame Him for allowing us to go through pain. We don’t want to talk to Him anymore. It’s like He’s punishing us and we’re offended with Him. When we’re offended with someone our automatic response is not to talk to them. We’re hurting and we want to shut ourselves away from the one that is hurting us.
Then there are those times when we do something we know we shouldn’t have done or said, and we feel guilty and bad about it. Instead of talking it out with the Lord we avoid Him. We’re like Adam and Eve. We run away from the Lord and we hide from Him. Often we turn around and like to blame someone else for our sins. We tell ourselves we wouldn’t have done what we did if they didn’t provoke us to it. Then when that doesn’t work, we convince ourselves that God surely is mad at us now and will likely punish us and reprimand us. We tell ourselves He’s forgiven us too many times and He’s likely sick of us by now. We’re too ashamed to talk to Him and so we stop talking to Him.
From my experience the only solution to all these presumptions of what God must feel and think about me, is to make myself talk to Him. There is no other way around it, we must make ourselves talk to Him. The sooner I talk to Him the sooner I can feel better about myself because again and again, He shows me that I err in my assumptions of what He thinks about me. Again and again He shows me I am very much loved by Him and He is always there to help me. He is for me and never against me.
The other day someone I love ended up in the emergency room and for a time there I thought the result was going to be cancer. When I went home I couldn’t talk to the Lord. All I could think of was, “Why Lord why?” But still that was better than nothing, at least I was talking to Him. In a little while, even though it was hard for me, I followed it up with, “I can’t do this life. I just don’t have the heart to do this life, Lord. Please help me.” And the Lord beautifully responded to me in my spirit and said to me, “Yes, you can. You have Me. I will help you.” And then He told me, “Everything is going to be all right. All is well.” He assured me that my loved one is going to be all right and that comforted me. That was enough. He comforted me and I found His strength.
Even though I was so upset at the Lord, I knew I couldn’t blame Him. He might have allowed it but it’s not His fault. He showed me again as in times past that Satan is very much alive and is creating havoc in people’s lives to destroy them. My only answer always is the Lord – talking to Him. I may go through suffering and affliction that might make me cringe and make me wish so much I could run away from all my pain, but still God is faithful. He will never fail. All I need to do is to talk to Him about it and let Him know how I feel and what I desire for Him to do for me. Because He is faithful and will never fail I can face this life.
But I will never know this if I don’t talk to Him even when I’m hurting. It may not be easy but I make myself. I even ask for His help to help me talk to Him, and He helps me. I tell Him exactly what I’m feeling and what I’m thinking. I’ve learned to just come out to the Lord and say what I think. I’ve learned in all my years of talking to Him that there’s no point in pretending to Him or hiding what I truly feel inside, because He knows everything about me already. There is nothing I can hide from Him. Again and again when I make myself talk to Him and fully open up my heart to Him, I always feel better afterwards. I can face life again.
Sin is another thing that can keep us from talking to the Lord but again in my experience, the sooner I confess to Him and ask for His grace and His forgiveness, the sooner I can feel better. I have come to the conclusion that I need to accept my sinful nature. I am a sinner, born a sinner. As king David puts it, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” {Psalm 51:5} There’s no other way around it, the sooner we accept that simple truth the sooner we will stop beating ourselves up for messing up and sinning. Don’t get me wrong though, this doesn’t mean I’m going to go and have a blast in sinning because you can’t blame me for it. Let’s not kid ourselves: sin brings death. When it’s all said and done, sin brings death. We can sin all we like because of the pleasure we get from it, but at the end of the day sin brings misery and separation from God. Who wants that? Sin has time and time again made me miserable. As Apostle James puts it: …and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. {James 1:15} So no, we don’t ever want to sin if it’s at all humanly possible. That’s why we need the Lord because we could never on our own save ourselves from our own sins, and have the death that sin brings taken away from us. But if we realize and accept that about ourselves, that we are sinners, subject to sin, and need God, then we can stop making excuses about coming to the Lord for His grace and His forgiveness. We can go to Him knowing that’s the reason why He came down and died at the cross in the first place, to save us from our sins. It doesn’t matter how many times He will need to save us from our sins in a day, we need to go to Him and talk to Him and find His forgiveness.
Apostle Peter asked the Lord one day how many times we should forgive our brother who sins against us. Peter said to the Lord, “Should we forgive seven times?” The Lord said to him, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” {Matthew 18:22} Four hundred ninety times we’re told to forgive each other in one day! 490x! The point is, no one, not even the worst sinner among us can sin that much in one day. How much more then will the Lord Jesus Christ who gave His life for us at the cross forgive us of our sins if we ask for His forgiveness? So no, we have no excuse not to come to Him and ask for His forgiveness. Come to think of it, we sin the more if we don’t come to Him.
That’s the beauty of Jesus Christ. He has come down for the sole purpose of saving us from our sins. He knows we are sinners and need Him. That means, when we do sin because we are sinners, He will forgive us. So don’t ever hesitate to come to the Lord and talk to Him about your sin. If you’re too ashamed to talk to Him, speak to Him through your heart and connect with Him with your spirit. Ask Him to help you open up to Him. Sometimes I do get too cringed to talk to the Lord about my sin. But I do this “telepathy” thing in my spirit and say to Him, “I am so sorry Father.” I know He knows exactly what I am talking about and right away in my spirit I can feel His grace and His love and forgiveness. That’s the beautiful thing about God. He knows our thoughts afar off. He understands us completely. But we will never understand the depth of His love for us if we don’t keep coming to Him and keep trying Him to prove Himself to us.
The Lord loves to prove Himself to us. No matter how challenging our situation is in this life we can definitely talk to Him. Just ask Him to help you to talk to Him whatever it is you’re having a hard time talking to Him about. Don’t hesitate to try Him out because He loves you so much. The sooner we can talk to the Lord about our pain and about our sins, the sooner we will feel better about ourselves and about the Lord. The more also we will come to love Him. And don’t try to make atonement for your sins either. Don’t think by trying to do good to someone and trying to treat your children better, or your spouse with more respect God is going to get the hint. He doesn’t work that way. You have to talk to Him about it. He does the atoning. As a matter of fact there’s no atoning we can ever do to make up for what He’s done already at the cross. Only He can take our sins away. We could never do it. We have no power in us to save our own selves. He’s already given us His body for the atonement of our sins. No amount of good works will save us. The Bible states it is Christ that saves, never us.
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”{Ephesians 2:8-9}
The sooner we talk to the Lord and face Him with our fears and our hurts, the sooner we will feel better in our soul. In the process we will find a Savior that is full of grace, mercy and compassion. Prophet Jeremiah puts it this way:
“It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” {Lamentations 3:22-23}
Prayer
Father I thank You that Your mercy and compassion never fails. I thank You that Your love endures forever for me. I thank You that You gave Your life at the cross for the sole purpose of saving me from all of my sins, and giving me Your wonderful Spirit so that I can belong to You forever and ever. I thank You so much for You Lord Jesus for Your wonderful work at Calvary because through it I can find Your grace, Your love, and Your forgiveness.
Father, sometimes it is a challenge for me to come to You and open up to You. I’m always afraid of Your judgment. But Your word said that You did not come to our world to condemn us, but to save us. Sometimes I go through pain and suffering that hurt me so much it is hard to talk to You about it. Sometimes I feel You’ve turned against me. But please Lord Jesus, help me anyway to come and talk to You. Help me Father to talk to You all the time because Lord, Your love endures, You will never fail me. Please Father, help me to have faith in Your love for me and talk to You. I know Lord that the only answer to all my unhappiness in this life is in always having a wonderful heart to heart talk with You. Your love is faithful, You will never fail me. Help me Savior to talk to You everyday and be transparent with You. I ask this in Your most wonderful and precious name, Jesus. Thank You, Father. Amen.
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Rp9/2017
