101 Things God Can’t Do: Day 3- God can never leave you

101 Things That God Can't Do: Day 3- God can never leave you¹

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Genesis 28:15

Isn’t it odd that many times we can be in the middle of a crowd and yet feel all alone? Inversely, when our relationship is right with God we can be all alone and yet feel his presence all around us.

In the book of Genesis it clearly states that man is made in the image of God. While I'm sure there are many wise and scholarly opinions of what that means, to me it simply means we share the traits of God. I believe one of God's traits is relationships. My God is a God of relationships. I believe he created us to love us and to be loved by us. The entire Bible is a history of the relationship between God and his creation and the love He has for his creation. God made us to long for relationships, whether it's love, friendship or companionship. More importantly however, God made us to desire a relationship with Him. It's built into us. It's one of our traits, just as it is one of God's traits.

Show me a broken person and I'll show you a person with broken relationships. Revisit the Ten Commandments, if you look at them closely, all relate to the relationships we have in our life: Relationships with our spouse, fellow man, our neighbor, our parents, with society, with God and even our own soul. He was warning us not to commit sins, specifically one which damage our relationships. Even modern psychology recognizes the built-in desire for relationships. A of famous forefathers of modern psychology, Abraham Maslow, determined that after our basic needs are met such as food, water, shelter and personal safety, we immediately long for meaningful relationships. It's built into our psyche.

God desires to have a relationship with us because he loves us. He has given us many promises, of which one is to never leave us. While I truly believe God never has left me, there have been many times in my life when I have left him. During those dark times, I thought replacing him with foolish behavior and worldly things would make me happy. All the while though I knew deep down inside that there was a hole in my soul. I know that God patiently waited by my side. He was waiting for me to simply turn towards him and begin to rebuild our relationship. The beauty is I never had to look for him, he was always there. I only had to say:

 “Hi, let's get close again”.

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All around the world people are trying
Deserted souls cry to be filled
Spirits left undone their hearts are hollow
I can see, in their eyes, hollow lives
And every heart, and every soul
and everybody's got a God-shaped hole
You may have tried to fill that hole inside
with an empty hand you reached in vain
Substitutes don't work, bandages only hurt

The only thing that heals is the hand of God
Nobody's meant to be left all alone
Our lives are much too short
to have an empty soul.

---Audio Adrenaline “God Shaped Hole”.

MW                              

¹Sparks, M. (1996). 101 things God can't do. Nashville, Tenn: Thomas Nelson Publishers.