An excerpt from my journal.
“Surrender is painful,” people say. Perhaps that is true. But nothing is as painful as being separated from God. Nothing. Nothing is wrong with it to be separated from Him. Nothing. Nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39). Nothing can separate a parent’s love for their child, but either one can choose to do things that put up barriers between them. The love may be just as real, but is love really love if it’s not expressed? Isn’t that the definition of grief? The desire to express love, but you can’t because the person is gone or at least unavailable? Is it the very definition of grief to have love you wish to give God but you can’t because you’ve put up walls, barriers, and limits? Is it grief in God’s heart that His love can’t flow to you because of the same?
Which makes me wonder this. If we can’t work to earn our salvation or relationship with God – that’s all part of what was won on the cross – if we have approval and acceptance already through the cross – and therefore, how can we bring Him displeasure… (this is a terrible run-on sentence…) Is it the barriers that we make that bring Him grief? Is it not so much the specifics of our actions as much as the barriers that we build and the resulting separation that truly grieves Him?
How much was Jesus willing to pay so end the separation? Millennia of separation; He and God and the Holy Spirit endured it. Sometimes, there was a glimpse, a place where the veil thinned, and they could walk in some semblance of a relationship with those made in Their own image. Christ chose separation to heal the gap. He left the throne of heaven; He left constant relationship with the Father.
How much did God suffer from this separation? We hear Jesus say, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The songs tell us that God turned His face away. The scriptures don’t say that. We hear nothing from heaven, because it was the darkest hour the earth had ever seen: A place where God and His son were separated. The grief. The love that desperately wanted to be sent and received. But it couldn’t. It was trapped in the heart of the Father; there was no Son to receive it. He was gone. Dead.
Hebrews says that Jesus did it for the joy set before Him (12:2). I’m sure God did it for the joy set before Him, too. Though we don’t hear about what God was thinking. But I digress.
We get so caught up in our actions. Should I mow the lawn? Should I eat this food? Should I talk with my neighbor? Should I be part of this ministry? Should I do this, should I do that; is this a sin, is that more holy than other things I might do?
Relationship with God isn’t about do’s and don’ts. Yes, there are hints of what hurts God’s heart. But when we associate the action with pleasure or pain, we miss the point. Saying something unkind doesn’t break His heart just because of the words. The words are words – powerful in their own right, true, but still words. The breaking of His heart is that the power of the words throws up barriers between Himself and us. That’s the pain point. Everything He tells us to do – or not do – is to save both of us the pain of separation.
Bringing displeasure to God is the creator of separation anxiety. Most of us don’t realize it because we’ve never been consistently in relationship with Him enough to recognize the symptoms. We feel the separation from God when we sin, and we translate it into shame and regret. Conviction is the realization of our separation. There’s nothing wrong with realizing that we’re wrong. It’s like turning right on the road only to see a landmark and realize that we should have turned left. It’s the sign that we’ve made a mistake, and it’s time to do something about it.
God’s greatest desire is to have that pure and clean relationship with us. That’s why He was willing to be separated from His own Son, willing to experience grief that He should never have had to suffer. Knowing that you will see someone again someday helps. But there is still grief.
Somehow, we have to move beyond the shame and regret. Those are just an outcome of refusing to deal with the separation; believing a lie that says God can’t love and forgive people like us. You don’t have to believe that. And if you threw yourself, hook, like, and sinker, into the arms of Jesus and a full-on relationship with Him, you would begin to realize just how much your repentance means to Him; just how much love really does cover a multitude of sin; just how much He loves you.
We were never made to be separated from God, and we can be connected to Him – always, every second of every day, now and forever.
