My pastor recently preached a sermon that resonated so
deeply with me that it literally sent chills through my body amid the
sweltering 90+degree weather. He was giving us the basics on how to separate
ourselves from the world’s influences in order to develop a stronger
relationship with Christ and the more he spoke, the more I kept hearing
something tugging at me saying, “it’s time to divorce!”
My mind immediately shifted to a story I heard on a radio
station in which a man wrote in to the show seeking advice from the hosts about
an issue he was having with his wife. Long story short, the man had an affair
with his boss, which resulted in a pregnancy. When the boss lost her job, she
asked to live with the man—and his wife—in their home. Surprisingly enough, the
man was upset because his wife didn’t want his mistress living with them, but
he wasn’t sure what to do because he wanted to keep them both living in the
same home—he was expecting a baby after
all…Of course, this letter made for great discourse on the radio program,
which routinely capitalizes off of the ratchedness of some of its listeners.
For almost 30 minutes, calls flooded in from all over the country with people
commenting about how crazy the man was for cheating on his wife and then having
the audacity to move his mistress in with them. Even I got caught up in it,
thinking about how this man must have bumped his head. “It couldn’t have been
me,” I thought.
It wasn’t until that sermon was preached that I realized it could be me. In fact in many cases, it
still is. Not as the victim, but as the actual perpetrator of such betrayal.
You see, I learned that once we accept Christ, we enter into a union with Him,
meaning the foundation for an intimate relationship with Him is firmly
established. But instead of letting that life we once lived and all the things
we used to do go, we instead try to drag all of that contradictory stuff into
our sacred relationship with Christ. We then become frustrated when it seems
like nothing is going right for us or our relationship with God isn’t as
fulfilling as we expect it to be. Instead of looking inward and seeing that the
problem lies within us and the choices we made, we tend to slip deeper into the
sin that has caused the separation from God in the first place.
As I am writing this, I am reminding myself that if I want a
genuine, powerful, mind-blowing relationship with Christ, there are some things
I am going to have to divorce in my life. There are some things that I have
tried to drag into our relationship that isn’t going to fly with God. God is
holy and it doesn’t matter how much I say
I love Him—it doesn’t matter how many times I go to church or pray – if I
insist on dragging things into our union that contradict His holiness, I will
never experience the things He has promised me in His word. If this blog
resonated with you in any way, it is my prayer that you too will be real with
yourself about the choices you are making. Ask yourself if these things are strengthening
or hindering your relationship with God according to His word (not your own
desires). If not, it’s time for a
divorce.
