Daily Devotions: One Morning

Isaiah 40: 27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD; my cause is disregarded by my God”?

What would happen if you were to wake up one morning and discovered that you had no belief in God? Would it change your life? Would it alter your relationships? Would it matter at all?

What if you had been asking God to change things in your life and that this non-belief was the answer? What if you had been so disappointed with God and hurt by life that you had no expectations of Him whatsoever? How would that change your attitude, opinions, and beliefs?

As the Western Church dips below its horizon of influence and power, more and more people are feeling this way. They wake up one morning and there’s no need to believe anymore. They stop going to church. They stop reading the Bible. They stop praying to God. After all, if the Church can’t get its act together and firmly state what it believes, then why should people believe anything?

Life becomes a process and each day is just another step towards oblivion. Existence is a temporal experience and faith is just a fantasy for fools who cannot face up to the fact that there is no purpose, no meaning, and no God. Secularism suffocates the soul and apathy advances throughout the mind, spirit, and body.

Such is the condition of post-modern human beings. They be. They live merely to be. God has no place in their lives, their hearts, or their choices. They are on their own in a vast universe that has no idea that human beings even exist and when they are gone, life goes on and nothing changes across the cosmos.

What a sad way to live! How much better to know that, as Paul once wrote, “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Prayer: Lord God, thank You for giving us life and for allowing us to know of Your presence, Your interest in us, and Your love given to us through Jesus. In His Name, we pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor at Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.