I miss God!

Is He gone from my life? No.   I couldn’t get rid of Him if I tried.  Did I denounce Him? Never.

What I miss is freely having him as an ACCEPTED part of my life, a part of my family that everyone knows about.

Before I continue, I do openly express my faith and relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ anyway, and everyone who knows me knows about that.  I make sure of it!  His Holy Spirit is in me, I have died to self when I accepted him as my Lord and Savior, and I cannot even breathe or die against His Will.  Someone will have to kill me before they can get me to suppress my undying faith and joy in Him.  That being said, if that’s my fate, then I will (if able) make sure my last words going down are of the Lord’s love and grace (and hopefully another kind word for my kid and family members).

Reading the news can be a discouraging daily experience to witness so much suffering, depravity, terror, and mayhem from nature. And we are often forced to suffer because of others’ poor choices.

One of those choices affects us globally, and that is to insist that God (and especially the name of Jesus!) take a step aside and let us handle everything, because ‘we know better’.   And look where that got us all.  There’s so much goodness, delight and peace that we turned our backs on as well, so many great things about life to miss out on along the way because of that poor choice.

Personally, I miss watching little children being encouraged to go to God in innocent prayer, learning about His love in joy and peace, to grow up free and happy, educated and away from danger.

I miss having God inside schools, and knowing my kid is prayed for, with and about by other genuinely concerned staff and classmates.  Now we have to pray they survive a day without being shot or stabbed by some bully. Many schools did away with ‘moments of blessing’ or ceremonies for their students as well, just for the sake of a few who felt uncomfortable hearing God’s name or His conviction upon their conscience.  God was suspended from school.

I miss the days when we could all worship anywhere we wanted and not just in designated buildings called churches most of the time, nor told how to either.  But Muslims are allowed to do just that, even expected to interrupt their work or stop walking at certain times of each day, turn east and bow down to the ground to worship their god.  And they do it here in the USA too.  Why can’t I have that same freedom? And why can’t we express our same devotion, delight, and appreciation of God?  Where did we lose that?

Missing the days when we could talk about a loving God with a complete stranger and see the same joy in their faces as we feel within, discussing the big blessings He bestows us, and the best part of daily life was counting them.

I miss LIVING with common sense, civility, mutual respect for others, all based on an inner knowledge of accountability to God for our actions.  Kids used to play safe in their neighborhoods without fear of being abducted, shot or molested, jails were smaller and not over-packed. Our daughters and sons walked to a store or school without being raped and murdered.

I miss GIVING the general respect of natural affections, and protection of the unborn, a life and soul ready to be born and the hope a parent has for this child given freely by the Lord. Telling a woman to reconsider her unborn baby as a human being and cherish the life within can get you a term in jail, and audit by the IRS, or have some blunt objects or curse words shoved at you for reminding them terminating a pregnancy for convenience is just wrong.  I miss a time when most women didn’t even think about doing such a thing.

I miss the right to OPENLY WITNESS about the Lord Jesus’s forgiveness and renewal offered to sinners at various ‘festivals’ without being thrown into jail because it offended them.  Maybe we should have parades and festivals about the Lord and see how many of them come around to tell us about their depravity and we can have them thrown in jail for being offensive (remember disorderly conduct?).   Ha!   Not happening.

I miss HEARING that simple word of grace and request for direction to be given before the event, wherever the Lord puts me to enjoy a dinner, participate in a meeting, school event, service, or regular employment.

I miss LEAVING ‘In God We Trust’ on my currency, the Ten Commandments engraved on public buildings, all of our assemblies and political meetings starting with prayer for guidance in our decisions, crosses and nativity scenes at Christmas time without wondering if someone will have that taken off soon as well.

I miss WORSHIPPING freely and openly just as much as the folks who freely slam faith and are able to get away with it.

I miss the days of WAKING UP GRATEFUL to God, and not being immediately pulled into the vortex of melodrama and worry, confusion, coldness, fleeful backstabbing, and ungrateful attitudes that are displayed as normal life and entertainment on all venues of media.  This is the complete opposite of what the Lord intended life to be for us.  We all have so many more wonderful and worthwhile things to do and people to meet with that time.  But we waste that energy and resourcefulness on trash, hate, ingratitude and idleness.

Yes, I miss the God that many have proclaimed to love, serve and WORSHIP so proudly in the earlier generations, when they also received and accepted His love for us.  Many of us do remember that.

We who know that close walk and peace with the Lord will miss having the opportunity to SHARE a joyful “MERRY CHRISTMAS” without getting that ‘look’, or being terminated at a job for saying it.

We will miss our right to BEAR ARMS AND DEFEND OURSELVES from felons who love death and sin more than life and eternal redemption and peace, who want to harm us for nothing more than fun, fleshly desires and greed.

We will miss BLESSING a soldier for sacrificing his/her time and maybe even his/her life in battle because they will not be allowed to talk about God much less pray to Him openly for protection without harsh discipline.

We will miss FREEDOM by being content with what we have, not living above our means, and the freedom from enslavement to a life of ‘payment’ serfdom.  What was wrong with just having cash again?

We wilI miss RECEIVING God’s blessing for our lives – globally – our fellowship, our successes, our health, our happiness, our well-being, our comfort, our needs & wants, and for our future enough to forgive us, redeem us, love us, build us a future incorruptible Kingdom.

I’m sure a lot more can be added to this list, but all the danger, corruption, mayhem, sickness and horror we now seems to certainly be more ‘exciting’ than freedom to live without worry or fear.  It’s all because we think we could do it better and continually ask Him to step aside.  He has.

Are we happy now?