Don't Leave Me Now

Psalm 26:1-2

To You I will cry, O Lord my Rock:

Do not be silent to me.

Lest, if You are silent to me,

I become like those who go down to the pit.

Hear the voice of my supplications

When I cry to You.

When I lift up my hands toward your holy sanctuary.

Perhaps it's just human nature, some kind of instinctive separation anxiety that stems from Adam and Eve once having perfect communion with God, before they ate themselves out of house and home and had to go looking for a place to live outside the presence of God. God has always provided the way and means for His people to return to Him; unfortunately we don't always use them.

Perhaps it's an awareness of just how ungodly we really are. In our fleshly, fallen state, we are so far removed from being like Him, we sometimes cannot fathom the depths of His love for us, and we fear that one day we're going to do one too many stupid things, turn around, and He'll be gone.

Perhaps it's because we allow so many cares and concerns to cloud out the conscious realization of His promised presence. If we don't "feel" Him or "hear" Him or "see" Him, we begin to think that He's not there after all, that we are being allowed to walk alone.

It could be any number of things, but I know there are days when I think, "God, please don't leave me alone now. This is when I need you most!" If God stops walking with me, I know that I cannot go on. If He does not go with me, I will not go up from here. If He abandons me, I might as well give up, because there is no sense in continuing without Him walking by my said. Our enemy would like us to believe that God has left us to go the distance alone, and that we might as well quit because there is no use in finishing. But that's just a foolish deception.

Jesus promised that He would never leave us nor forsake us, that He was with us always, even to the end of the world! God's word says that He never slumbers nor sleeps, that His eyes are always watching, His ears always attentive to our prayers. We have the promise of the Almighty that He will never let us go...but we can walk away.

When I start feeling like maybe I've been forsaken or forgotten, I know in my heart that it is not God who has moved. When it feels like I haven't heard His voice quite as frequently or clearly as I know I should, I know in my heart that it is not because He has stopped speaking, but rather that I have stopped listening. It is not God who needs to return to me, but I who should return to God! For He has never failed me once, and He's not about to start failing now.