What Does Rebellion Look Like?

Since yesterday morning, several folks have said to me, “Clint, you talked so fast in the sermon, I couldn’t get those five points you gave about the way we isolate ourselves from God.” So, I thought I would pass them on to you this morning. 

Remember that we have a tendency, like God’s people of old, to forsake God. To forsake means “to abandon, to cast aside, to turn away from.” This is the greatest form of rebellion against God, especially since  the greatest form of righteousness is to stick fast to God, to cling to God (Deut. 10:12, 20). As we withdraw from God, or isolate ourselves from Him, essentially we cling to ourselves and instead of Him. To isolate ourselves from God means that we undertake a subtle effort to hide or deny the truth while playing our wonderfully deceptive fellowship games with God. We do this by guarding and protecting the areas in or lives in which we are most vulnerable. 

There are five reasons for our isolation. 

1. We are by nature private people. -- Some of us find it extremely difficult and unnatural to open up to God about our inmost secrets, struggles, challenges and sin. We have to learn little by little to let God have all aspects and areas in our lives. 

1. We are hurting or betrayed people. -- We have a tendency to take the effects of our relationships with each other and project them onto God. Because of this tendency, we tend to interact with God in the same way that we interact with people here in this world. If someone has hurt us or betrayed us, we shut down. We think that God will betray or hurt us in the same way and therefore shut down with him. We protect our feelings and thoughts from him just as we do from each other.

1. We are rejected people. -- Often we are rejected by other people as we make our complete selves, warts and all, known to other people. We are thus afraid that God is going to reject us as well. But, he is not! He always welcomes his children and loves us unconditionally. We must learn to trust this promise by being open and vulnerable with Him. 

1. We don’t want to put the effort into it. -- It takes a lot of work to know how God is going to respond to us and to develop a trust in him. Our natural, sinful default response to sin in our lives is to withdraw from God in order to protect ourselves. It takes time and energy to build a trusting relationship with God. We have to know and train ourselves through the intense study of His Word to automatically run to Him. Instead of abandonment and withdraw being our default we must make adherence to God and approach our default response to the realization of sin in our lives. 

1. We are deceived people. -- Many of us have lived in sin and in the lie of sin so long that we have come to believe the lie as true. Sin has become ingrained in our lives. We are afraid of the change encounter with God, or, more sadly, we don’t want a change encounter with God. We don’t want to change. We are comfortable with our current lives. We are comfortable with our sin. We don’t want to admit our sinfulness, and we don’t want to admit our failure. We don’t want to say I am sorry. 

I pray you have a great day that God draws you closer to him this day. May your growth in Christ be evidence of your relationship with Him and your repentant hearts. God bless you all. 

CHD

Helpful Scripture Passages:

Psalm 51

Romans 5:1-11

Romans 8:1-11

2 Corinthians 5:11-21