We Have Lost God

"Thirty and two years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed without being desired" (2 Chronicles 21:20)

The average person in the world today, without faith, and without God and without hope, is engaged in a desperate personal search throughout his lifetime. He does not really know where he has been. He does not really know what he is doing here and now. He does not know where he is going.

The sad commentary is that he is doing it all on borrowed time and borrowed money and borrowed strength - and he already knows that in the end he will surely die! It boils down to the bewildered confession of many that "we have lost God somewhere along the way."

Man, made more like God than any other creature, has become less like God than any other creature. Created to reflect the glory of God, he has retreated sullenly into his cave - reflecting only his own sinfulness.

Certainly it is a tragedy about all tragedies ... that man, made with a soul to worship and praise and sing to God's glory, now sulks silently in his cave. Love has gone from his heart. Light has gone from his mind. Having lost God, he blindly stumbles on through this dark world to find only a grave at the end.

Lord, may I not live and then "depart without being desired." Instead, may I find fulfillment and purpose in You. Direct me to that end, I pray. Amen

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God Was Forced Out

"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16:24)

Before the Lord God made man upon the earth, He first prepared for him a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are called simply "things." They were made for man's use, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.

Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and things were allowed to enter. Within the human heart things have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.

The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

Lord, deliver me from this dependence on material things. If You need to completely remove some things from me, help me to be willing to give them up in complete submission to You. Amen

~A. W. Tozer~