God Fading Out!

Genesis 31:53 [Moffatt], 27:35–36, 32:24–30

How has God faded out of the mind of this age?

Well the age, like thoughtful children, believed that the Toyland of material wealth was a sufficient world; then God faded out, smothered by preoccupation. As a prosperous New Yorker & his wife came to the small town where they had grown up, he said to her complacently ‘Well, that’s where we came from, dear.’ and she replied with an unexpected answer ‘Yes, & I am just wondering where we got to’. She felt the emptiness amid the plenty.

Professor Summer put it this way. “ I never consciously gave up a religious belief. It was as if i had put my beliefs into a drawer & when I came again to look for them the drawer was empty.”

The thing has happened to the generation that happened to the three generations of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob.

Jacob could say ‘’My father’s God, the God of Abraham, the awe of Isaac’’[Genesis31:24,Moffatt]. God was GOD of Abraham, the awe of Isaac; he had ventured forth with Him ‘his Friend.’ He was intimate & firsthand and real. But in the next generation, God was not ‘The God of Isaac’, but only the ‘awe of Isaac. He [GOD] had faded & become secondhand. Still Isaac stood in awe of his father’s God. In the third generation-in Jacob-the result of this gradual fading of God, began to be shown in the decaying morals of Jacob; moral rottenness appeared. He stole his bother’s birthright. he was ready to to take the main chance without regard to God.

The same thing has happened with us. our forefathers had a firsthand experience of God through the Evangelical Revival. The next generation clung to the church for their father’s sake, but God was only ‘The Awe’- the afterglow of a fading faith.

The third generation is reaping the result of a Fading Faith which is producing Decaying Morals & Decaying Civilization.

Our Loss of God is working out in moral decay. We are going to pieces morally, for we have gone to pieces religiously. We have lost God, & have thus lost the basis of morals. Jacob met God, on Jabbok’s banks, in his midnight wrestle,& emerged a new man. Unless we, like Jacob, find a moral renewal in finding God, we are done for!

O God, I know that with the loss of Thee, some cloud has dropped out of my symphony. Life has lost it’s music but now I see further. I see that I have no basis for action, no moral world that makes sense without Thee. I must find Thee again, as Jacob did.

Left to my own devices I have more bad days than good. Attempting to get everyone else jump through my hoops never had great success. Of myself, I know today that I am powerless over my past, my future and all people, places & things.

This led me to the awakening that I stand a better chance if I seek a new boss, The Creator of this world that I live in, including the power over my past & my futures.

I can recall in my dysfunctional moments of co-dependency, where manipulating others into being responsible for me, & not being successful, also the backlash suffered, led me to see that my way of coping with life, was one of victim & martyr hood.

Today, choosing to come from a place of Wounded Warrior Survivor, letting go of everything outside of me and giving it to God, unconditionally.