GOD'S EVERLASTING LOVE "For I am persuaded that neither . . . depth . . . shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." – Tomorrow:
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: 'For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:35-39, NKJV)
There are human depths that stagger the imagination. Both in the body and in the soul, we can plummet to such depths as cause fear to rise in our hearts. David referred to these as "the depths of the earth," and knew God could bring him back from them. "Thou, which hast showed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from THE DEPTHS of the earth" (Psa 71:20). Once he said, "Out of THE DEPTHS have I cried unto Thee, O LORD" (Psa 130:1). When testifying of deep and profound personal struggles, the Psalmist described it in terms of experiencing profound depths. "DEEP calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts: all Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me" (Psa 42:7). These are times when the troubled spirit, like Job, cries out in anguish: "changes and war are AGAINST ME" (Job 10:17). Our souls, like that of Jacob the patriarch, can be brought to cry out, "all these things are AGAINST ME" (Gen 42:36). Can depths like that separate us from the love of God?
Deliverance is described as coming out a deep and horrible place, where hopelessness nearly matured, and misery seemed invincible. Thus the "sweet psalmist of Israel" said, "He brought me up also out of an HORRIBLE PIT, out of the MIRY CLAY, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD" (Psa 40:2-3). Can horrible pits and miry clay separate us from the love of God?
When God led Israel out of Egypt and through the great and terrible wilderness, the Spirit spoke of the deliverance in this way: "so he led them through THE DEPTHS, as through the wilderness" (Psa 106:9). How their faith was tested in those massive wastelands! Of those forty years Moses said, "And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth" (Deut 8:2-3). Can depths like that separate us from the love of God?
Let no person doubt that such circumstances can arise. There are times when the depths of human contempt are felt. There are times of deprivation and destitution. No person of sound mind seeks these occasions, but God has led some of us "through the valley of the shadow of death" (Psa 23:4), and we have learned that even there we can "fear no evil!"
Lazarus experienced the depth of being a beggar full of sores: "And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores" (Lk 16:20). Joseph was laid in fetters in prison (Psa 105:18). Can extended depths like that separate a person from the love of God? Daniel had to spend a night in the lions' den, into which he was thrown (Dan 6:16-17). Paul and Silas were beaten and left in the stocks of a cold and dark "inner prison" (Acts 16:23-24). Jeremiah was thrown into a pit, in which he sunk down into the mire (Jer 38:6). Can depths like that separate us from the love of God?
Even in the service of the Lord, great depths can be experienced that defy explanation, and cause sorrow to come over us like torrents of defiling water. Paul testified that he experienced such times. Of a time when he was in Macedonia he said, "For, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears" (2 Cor 7:5). Again, when he was in prison, and his fellow laborer Epaphroditus was with him, waves of sorrow swept over him. Epaphroditus almost died – right there with Paul. Of that occasion Paul wrote, "For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow" (Phil 2:27). Another time, when he was giving a defense of himself, he said, "all men forsook me" (2 Tim 4:16). Another time he wrote, "only Luke is with me" (2 Tim 4:11). Still another time he wrote of Timothy, "For I have no man likeminded, who will naturally care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's" (Phil 2:20-21). Can depths like that separate a person from the love of God?
For those in Christ Jesus, there are no depths into which the love of God cannot reach, and from which it cannot extricate them. Depths of human experience are not to be the subject of human speculation. They are not the proper environment in which to ask "Why?" These are realms in which you must live by faith, which reaches higher than the "sides of the pit" in which you may be languishing.
You must learn to talk to your soul – to counsel it in faith. Your "soul" can still have imaginations and wrong views. It can be cast down, morose, and in a pitiable condition. But when that happens – and it is inevitable that such times will come – exhort your soul! Talk to it! The Spirit moved David to share with us how to speak. "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance." And, when you have counseled your soul, left up your voice to the God who loves you. "O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember Thee" (Psa 42:5-6).
Depths, regardless of the fear, grief, and pain associated with them, have no power to separate you from the love of God! That, dear reader, is something to be believed!
PRAYER POINT: Father, I praise and thank You through Jesus Christ that You see the depths I experience, and can raise me out of them to stand on the solid rock of Your good promises. I am trusting You to do precisely that.