Once Separated

Have you seen the movie, Oh God? It’s about a grocery store manager who has an encounter with God. The Almighty (played by the 90 year old, cigar smoking George Burns) appears to Jerry (played by John Denver) many times throughout the movie; in a car, in the shower, over the radio. The experience is rather unnerving for Jerry and the reactions of others to his run in with God are varied, as expected.

I have conversations with God in my car. I haven’t seen Him, I haven’t heard an audible voice, and I haven’t smelled cigar smoke, but I know it is God speaking to me, because what He has said, what He has spoken to my heart, has come to pass.

I believe God wants to speak to each of us today.

Several weeks ago I was on my way to work and God spoke to me in the form of a question. And the question came with the answer embedded in it, like the music on the radio is embedded in the radio signal. His question was, “Do your sins cause a separation between you and God?” How would you answer this question? If God had asked you this, what would your response be?

Be careful before you answer.

If this question had been asked of me ten years ago, my answer would have been a quick and absolute, “Yes! My sins separate me from God.” But the young, self-strong, self-righteous, and self-confident man that I was has faded into the past, humbled by the years. Yet a new man has risen in his place; God-confident, God-assured, God-made. It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. Yet I still live, and live fully. Joyfully and gratefully. Without regret. And this has been a work of His Spirit in me.

Today, with this new mind set (the word in Greek, the language of the new testament scriptures, is metanoia), I answer that question not out of self-confidence, but rather out of true confidence, as a student who has been trained by a kind and gentle Master. And my answer is a deep and firm, resounding “No, my sins do not separate me from my God.” For I have been forgiven; completely, utterly, perfectly, through and through. All sin, past, present, future, has been paid for. Christ died once for all sin.

We are loved deeply by the One who knows us completely, by the One who so loved us that He gave His Son. Every flaw, every good part; every sin, every victory. He sees it all, yet for those who have received this gift, this payment of their debts, He sees only the good. Know that.


Live loved my friends.




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