NOT PERCEIVING GOD HAS LEFT US

“And he did not know that the LORD was departed from him”, Jdg.16:20

There is a huge difference between these three: God letting us down without leaving us; leaving us and letting us down; and leaving us without the perception of being let down, or without being let down, it only happening that the presence of God has been withdrawn to better places, from Saul to David and we carry on as king over Israel for another forty years. Of all three, this last one is the worst thing that can ever happen to any creature in the whole of the universe. We read about it in Ps.73 that God avoids it that people find in their personal lives reasons to repent and so come back to Him, for His anger against them hot and is already kindled. May God preserve us from that. The opposite may just as well become true: there is a David lost somewhere in the wilderness of this world, no throne, no food and God is still with him. Here is a perception of God having left us which is neither truthful nor something worse believing.

Trials are one great sign that God is either working on us as holy people or as unholy people who need something to be taken and to be pushed towards a holy God to find a radical change there, along with the motives to fully change that way. It is a shame that people are so grounded upon the idea of being materially blessed (or of being a blessing so they may be blessed themselves, eating from the crumbs which may fall from their table) that once something happens (or doesn't happen) meant to discipline and improve on them, they start believing God has left them. Being materially blessed is no true sign of God being with you at all, for it may well mean the opposite sometimes. God has no rules, for anything about blessings may or may never be true at all. How may times did Paul plead for bread in prison, being hungry there, and did not get it knowing Jesus said, "Whatever you shall ask in My name, you shall receive"? That was the same man who prayed over the dead and they kept their soul within. Did the fourteen years he spent in jail mean God was not with him or did it mean the opposite  after all?

God intends to have our full living along with our whole life saved from sin, from our own selves and from whatever turns stains and still seems harmless, so there may be no unholy thing in our (His) holiness feast within us. That alone constitutes His sole purpose to deal with us that way and He even said about it, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he looses his own life?” Our hearts are the privileged table to put anything on. Just as much as God desires to have His goods and His first and last fruits displayed on it to serve all who sit around it to eat from our hands and hearts, in the same way does the devil wish to turn it into Jezebel’s table to have prostituted and proselyte souls sit around it to eat and even share there from what they are.   

But, in many a way, I believe a Jezebel is blessed by knowing to be what she is. That kind of knowledge in her makes God wait wondering if she will repent or not. “And … the woman Jezebel, who calleth herself a prophetess… I gave her time that she should repent; and she willeth not to repent of her fornication”, Rev 2:21. There are people to whom God does not give a time chance or any other.

Evil is known to all such who practise it, not only known, but known as evil. Therefore, it is only expected that any evil person has a full report of mind and heart of whatever the opposite is as well, of whatever she or he is and of what to be turned into through God’s means and ways. Black turns anyone even more aware of white and vice-versa. In the reverse way, holy people are blessed, sometimes, by being tempted, since that sort of things turn them aware of what they should be even more and must yield unto to do even better and through better means of finding just how to be able to yield unto God. Through temptation, a certain kind of awareness of the opposite of it opens to the conscience of man for him.

The willingness to repent, then, is all there is to be hoped from a Jezebel, without force, yet fully done still in whatever details God is able to show to that person. Force is synonymous of unwillingness or of half-heartedness concerning some issue. A willing person is not aware of the force he must apply to yield to obey; such simply obey without any aware resistance against it, obedience being the easiest thing on earth for someone whose heart is fully yielded first and above all and never in the least divided about something – anything whatsoever. Force implies half-heartedness calling up for it to pile up against something. It is only wonderful to take knowledge from the fact that, even after any kind of unwillingness, God still graciously puts certain kinds of Jezebels into beds of suffering to have them repent. Let it never be said of them then, “And … mankind … with these plagues, repented not of the works of their hands”, Rev 9:20, for every curse of God on earth will only count as a gracious calling to a certain kind of repentance which is not lamentation for having lost earth’s treasures, but rather for having sinned.

Do you think and believe, perhaps, that such a person, like a modern Jezebel whom God goes as far as putting her under curses she bring herself into, is someone as worse off and as plagued as can be? I believe it is not. There is someone ten thousand times worse off than such: someone, in church or not, who does not even perceive God has left him and is not put in a bed of suffering, but rather on a bed of gold. May God preserve all of us from such things as will lead God to do something like that.

Church life is a certain treasure of deceit which easily prompts people into ways of such like presumption. But, the angrier God is against anyone, the least such a person will take notice of it being so. We read, quite often, about the unaware servant against whom God arrives unexpectedly and suddenly. Someone cursed expects a curse, but there are such who take not knowledge of being on the verge of an eternal curse because they fully expect a blessing and a full reward from a God they think they serve, prompted by sin’s hopes and deceiving lies within and without. And every time God mentions His coming, He always links it to servants who are unaware of the signs of inner sin, things like bitterness, greed, love towards money in church or in the job, unanswered prayers of some kind, prosperity while settled in sins of many a kind, lack of love towards goodness, impatience, anger, selfishness, self-righteousness of any kind, excusing of own sins and overlooking them and consequently try to save only all others, a stained tongue, among many others. These may not be direct sins, but consequent ones, since every sin has a breeding heart in itself.

There are such people who doubt whether God is with them right through or not, even having God close by to have them blessed at least in something else when not in the very thing they expect to be blessed. And, there are such who just know God is not with them as they go and that knowledge may well be regarded as the beginning of true and genuine faith, for faith is to able to believe truth and to look at it that way. But, none of these may regard their case as hopeless by seeing God against them, since faith is to acknowledge truth and any kind of doubt turns one aware of what to believe as well. But woe to prosperity preachers who praise God for stolen goods, for purses full on the way they still think, reassured, God has sent them into. Woe to such who feast in the assurances outside God’s Holy presence. Their belly will be their only reward and worm. Amen.

José Mateus