April 27, 2023

Categories: Instruction

Burning

Sometimes the oddest of circumstances can be teachers. We haven’t asked a question. We are seeking truth. We are just going through life minding our own business and WHAM! Circumstances show us once again our Abba God can use anything.

I have really fair skin. I burn easily but that has never kept me inside or deterred me from spending most of my life in the sun. Whether I was with my family in a garden or in a boat fishing, the outdoors and God’s wonders have always been where I want to be.

This February when I returned from Honduras, I had to be treated for pre-cancerous places on my face. They give you a prescription for a cream and you apply it for a certain time. The pre-cancerous places turn red then flake off. No big deal. I’ve done it before. This time however, not such an easy treatment.

This time, my whole face became red. Not just the areas that needed to be treated. The medication gave me a chemical burn. It was most unpleasant The face felt the same way your hand might feel if you accidentally touched a stove burner. The difficulty was the burn never eased up. In fact, it became more and more intense.

So after three weeks, I stopped the treatment.

I had to wonder what in the world I could learn in this circumstance. (If you’ve got to be miserable, it might as well be beneficial in some way.) So, I just started talking to Abba God about it.

Here is what came to me.

I”m always saying in my prayers or conversations with Abba that I can’t live this life without Him and I certainly don’t want to be in eternity without Him. I can’t imagine the torment of being without Him. It feels like a deep, destructive burning, this absence of God.

So I went to scripture to check myself. In Matthew 5 and Matthew 18, hell is described as a fiery place. Then in James 3:6 when James is describing the tongue, he says the tongue is set on fire by hell. Sounds like a hot fiery place.

I say all this for this reason. I had come to the place I couldn’t bear the burning any longer. It had become almost intolerable. It taught me for certain I could never bear an Eternity apart from Abba with the burning knowledge that I was cast out and He was not coming for me…ever. One author I’ve been reading put forth the premise that not only will we be separated form God, we will be totally alone. Hope perished…Eternally.

My intent is not to be macabre. I don’t intend to to dark in tone. That difficult treatment just reenforced my conviction that I am in great need of a savior, but not any savior…The Savior, Jesus Christ.

Yeshua faced separation from God that day on the cross when all the sin of the world was placed on Him. Now we NEVER need fear separation form our Abba God. We are forever joined to the family of God by Yeshua’s finished work on the cross.

If you haven’t given Him your your heart and your life…just do it. Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. It’s the most important decision you will ever make…you will never regret it.

Share it with your friends!