Thoughts From Pastor Jeff on Being "Forgotten" By God

Dear Friends,

Pastor Jeff here. It has been a while. Seven weeks to be exact. For those who do not know, halfway through my vacation in September, I apparently did something that so injured my kidneys they essentially died or stopped functioning completely for weeks (neither I nor any doctor in the many hospitals I’ve been in since know what that was). Yet, to make a long story short, God has been wonderfully merciful and has slowly resurrected them from the dead, for which I am so thankful. Not totally back to where I was but I am a long way from almost going to be with him on Thursday Oct. 17.

In light of all that many questions, thoughts and concerns went through my mind. And at least one result was the thought below. I do not usually send out thoughts I put together, but those of others. This time is an exception. I wanted (felt I needed) to pass this along as it was helpful to me during one of the darkest times of my life. Hopefully it will minister to someone else who may be going through a difficult time.

ARE WE EVER FORGOTTEN BY GOD?

In light of what I have been through in the last seven weeks my heart was drawn to the words of Jesus in John 16:27. There Jesus says to the disciples, “the Father himself loves you…” The word for “love” there is φιλei in the Greek. And φιλei is brotherly affection. It expresses a sense of a fondness of affection. Some versions have even translated it, “the Father himself is fond of you…” or “the Father himself loves you dearly…” (NLT), or “the Father himself has affection for you…” (JND), all hoping to accentuate the close bond of affection Jesus surely hoped to convey to them by using φιλei instead of ἀγάπη - transliterated, agapē.

It leads me to point out in that message (to those who sometimes feel otherwise), “If you are a believer, the Father doesn’t just love you (in the sense that He sticks with you, because He has to, or because He’s promised to!) but that he actually likes you, rejoices in you, takes joy in you, and delights to fellowship with you.”

My experience of the last 7 weeks made me think of all the people I’ve spoken to in the past who expressed feelings (at certain difficult times in their walk with Jesus) that God had forgotten or abandoned them. He felt a million miles away. They couldn’t sense His presence in the valley of the shadow of death or despair.

It brought to mind another text, Ephesians 1:4, where we read, “He chose us in him (in Christ) before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in him.” And speaking of that same before-God-ever-created-anything timeframe, Paul adds in v. 5: “In love (this time using agapē) he predestined us for adoption as children, through Jesus Christ, according to His good pleasure, to the praise of his glorious grace.”

In regard to the thought that God could somehow forget us, think of what those two verses tell us. Looking back over a period of time that extends from before God ever created anything to our present day we see that God fixed His affections on those He predestined in love. Each one has been adopted as a cherished child in his family. Throughout all those ages – which included the time before creation, the time of creation, and all the events that have taken place since creation – he was working to bring about what he had purposed. On the basis of his loving decree made so many eons ago, he brought us by his grace to be the present-day recipients of the actual experience of that love though new birth by the Spirit and His unmerited gift of salvation.

So, it made me think: Throughout that entire time, and despite all that transpired from before creation until now, he stayed true to his decision to unite us to Christ and make us like Christ. He never turned back on it. He never forgot us. He never removed from us his love-spawned affections for us. He remembered us and watched over us in our sin and rebellion, was be kind to us when we stubbornly ran from him, showed us mercy and changed our hearts and saved us, fulfilling his eternal pledge to show us grace – despite all the countless things happening all over the globe, from the time of his decree to the time he brought us into his family by the Spirit of adoption which makes us cry, “Abba Father” (Rom. 8:15-17).

How, then, could I (we?) ever think that now, having been purchased for God through the blood of the only worthy One (Rev. 5:9-10) God would somehow forget us? After remembering us throughout all time, how could we think that He would somehow forget to be with us, or watch over us, or take his affections off in our times of struggle and hardship and longing for him to be there? There is a big difference between our flawed human ability to discern his presence, and his impossible-to-shake watch care and loving oversight over us (Rom. 8:28-39). Pain sometimes short-circuits our sense-receptors and makes it hard to feel the presence of the Savior, but that by no means he is not there.

Despite what we may feel, God’s promise is that such abandonment hasn’t happened, and won’t happen, because it can’t happen! When God promises, “I will never leave nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5) he’s calling us to believe he will NOT break His promise.

In the Bond of Christian Affection, Pastor Jeff