Will the Lord Reject Us Forever?
Passage to be read: Psalm 77
At night I remember my songs. I think and I ask myself:
“Will the Lord reject us forever? Will he never be kind to us again?
Is his love gone forever? Has he stopped speaking for all time?
Has God forgotten mercy? Is he too angry to pity us?” (Selah)
(Psalm 77: 6 - 9)
Everything that is part of our life looks positive. We tend to believe that things are normal around us without much disturbances. Regular events, with frequently meeting the same people goes on for a while, as we continue to live our life without much trouble. But then, a sudden pause.
Feels like life has paused for the first time in the last few years. Things do not move anymore. We find obstacles around; obstacles that keep us away from moving further in any direction. And then our heart begins to analyse what went wrong while fear begins to fill ourselves. We realise we had gone wrong somewhere by disobeying the Lord. Somewhere down the line we had depended on our little brain than the great wisdom of the Mighty Lord. We feel not connected anymore with His greater plans for us. We feel rejected.
I have personally witnessed and heard from friends, that after days of contemplation and great thought we finally arrive at this big question. "Will the Lord Reject Us Forever?" And this question, in such a fearful condition, means a lot. It teaches us a lot. The psalmist had the same question. In Psalm 77 we find the same disturbed mind with questions of fear and rejection. And Psalm 77: 6 -9 specially bring out the same questions that our hearts tend to ask in such times of fear and trouble. “Will the Lord reject us forever? Will He never be kind to us again? Is His love gone forever? Has He stopped speaking for all time? Has God forgotten mercy? Is He too angry to pity us?”
My dear friend in Christ Jesus. Today, you may be reading this with the same sense of fear and rejection. Even as you contemplate, you may be figuring out the same condition that this psalmist was in thousands of years ago. Recently you would have been having the same feeling. There may be a lot of questions in your mind and these questions always fill you with the fear of being rejected by the Lord your God. Why don't you just try and check out together with me the next few verses of Psalm 77. There is an assurance for you.
In just the next verse, the psalmist says, “This is what makes me sad: For years the power of God Most High was with us” (Psalm 77:10). Can you realise what is happening here? The psalmist is realizing and remembering the move of God that was with him throughout. He realizes the power of God that was amongst his people, the Israelites. And this realisation breaks him. The absence of the presence of God makes him feel miserable. And the psalmist continues to remember all the miraculous and powerful moments when God showed Himself among the people in the past. One by one, the psalmist goes through all the powerful moments of God's encounter with His people in the long journey. And this remembrance restores his faith in God Almighty. Wonder by wonder, miracle by miracle, power by power, as he had a recap of all the mighty things God had done in His life, the psalmist is once again drawn near to God. His dependency is once again on the Lord and not on his own understandings.
What assurance does this have for us? What does the psalmist's remembrance of God's wonderful ways in the past teach us? It reminds us of what we need to do. It reminds us of the quality time we need to spend in God's presence, remembering the path God has been leading us through. Things may be a total mess around us. Everything may be a failure. All that we stepped into may have an obstacle. We may be filled with the fear that we had gone away from God, somewhere down the line we had rejected His plans for us and may be having the feeling of being rejected. But let us do the same thing that the psalmist does. Let us humble ourselves in front of the Lord, kneel down before Him and remember one by one what the Lord had done. The memories would move you. The retrieval of years of thoughts would shake you. But at the end, you will realise that your dependency on God has once again been set properly. As you realised the mighty ways in which God had blessed you and had led you, everything that is in you would have surrendered once again to the Lord.
This is why birthdays are important for us. This is why anniversaries and special days keep us refreshing. Whatever worse your conditions may be. When you spend time with God in such milestone moments, God reminds you of all the wonderful ways in which God has led you in the past and slowly as you realise God's wonderful ways, you are able to once again restore your total trust in Him. It keep your walk closer with God as you continue your walk of faith. And God is not going to reject us forever!
I pray that we will run into God's presence whenever we feel that we have gone away from Him. Let all feelings of rejection and fear fade away as you once again realise how powerful God has been in your life, and let your self no more depend on your own understanding, but restore the total trust on God and depend on Him and His great plans for you.
May God bless you.
Yours in Christ,
