FORSAKEN?

By Michael K. Farrar, O.D.

© God’s Breath Publications

 

Definition of Forsake: To renounce, relinquish, abandon, deny; an occupation or belief.

 

Forsaken is a horrible word when you think about it. If you have been forsaken you feel terrible. You are filled with emotions of rejection and betrayal. It cuts to the deepest core of your being. When someone who you care about has forsaken you, it is devastating. This is very likely how God feels when we forsake Him.

 

Forsaken is also a horrible word when it is applied to someone God has rejected because of their disobedience or sin. While God is a loving god, He is also just and righteous. He can forgive any disobedience, but if someone is unrepentant, He must treat him or her as forsaken. Such individuals become one of the “forsaken,” persons who fail to obey God and His Word and have no inclination to return to Him. They do not care to be forgiven for they are enjoying their sin and their rebellion at the moment.

 

The definition I found in the dictionary that I listed above is very interesting. To “forsake” is to renounce, relinquish, abandon or deny and it can be an action, a belief system or possibly even an occupation as if someone can make a career out of it. Someone who forsakes others is renouncing them as significant or influential in their life. To forsake God or someone is to relinquish any commitment to them. God or an individual are abandoned when they are forsaken. To forsake someone or God is to deny any significant relationship in the past, present of future. None of these thoughts are pleasant. To forsake is a drastic step in any relationship.

 

We forsake those we know when we fail to love or forgive. We do it when we treat ourselves as more important than anyone else. We do it when we place our needs and desires over those with whom we have relationships. We do it to God when we disobey His commands or quench the Holy Spirit by our actions or thoughts.

 

God loves people and He values His relationship with them. He sets down parameters for such relationships so that He will be honored but also that we will benefit as well. You might ask why God sets parameters on whom He will have a relationship with. Don’t we do the same thing?

 

We don’t just have anyone for a friend. We usually develop friendships with others whom we have common interests or who are fun to be with. We marry people who we love because of their personality traits and because we know they love us as well. You wouldn’t have a friend whom you had nothing in common with and you wouldn’t marry someone who didn’t love you.

 

God lays down guidelines for who He will love as His own. They must commit themselves to accept His Son Jesus as their Savior and agree to love Him with all their heart, mind and soul. When this commitment is made a relationship is formed and a special bond is established.

 

But when this relationship is tarnished by sin the bond can be broken. There is a rift in the relationship because the parameters of the relationship are ignored or broken.

 

Scripture is full of examples of people forsaking God and in turn this places God in the position of having to call them “forsaken” by Him. The results are obvious. God withdraws His love and protection from those who forsake Him.

 

Judges 10:13-14

“But you have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble!”

 

Jeremiah 5:18-19

“And when the people ask, ‘Why has the LORD our God done all this to us?’ you will tell them, ‘as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your own land, so now you will serve foreigners in a land not your own.’”

 

When people in the Old Testament disobeyed God and worshiped and served other gods, God forsook them. He could no longer fellowship with them because He had been forsaken. In a sense they had committed “spiritual adultery” with other gods. They had broken their relationship with their Heavenly Father and committed themselves to having a relationship with a false god.

 

Even today we can forsake God when we sin against Him. When we break fellowship with Him there are consequences. We face the effects of a life that is out of fellowship with God. We are under His grace in the New Covenant and He often and usually chooses to endure our rebellion and sin for a long time before He has to resort to removing His protection over our lives. But there can come a point where God will forsake us and leave us in our sin to live with our choices. He knows exactly how long to wait to do this. He knows when the only thing left for Him to do is to remove His protective hand from our lives and let us find the blind alley that our behavior and choices are leading us into. When we forsake God our life can get very ugly. When He forsakes us, it is a last resort effort to convict us to return to Him. Consider another verse below.

 

Jeremiah 2:13

“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

 

Here we see a scripture verse that is very interesting for it describes two sins that His Chosen People had committed. First they had forsaken God. Secondly, they attempted to live independent from Him seeking a rebellious self-sufficiency. Part of the consequences of such sinful actions are discussed in the passage above. Forsaking God, they turned from the only One that could supply “Living Water” for life and replaced it with an attempt to dig their own selfish well for water. Their efforts at such rebellious behavior only brought them an empty life devoid of spiritual nourishment and horrible physical consequences in the form of punishment. We need to remember this when we seek to forsake God with fleshly selfish behavior. If we do this we are falling into the example of the Church of Ephesus as described in Revelation.

 

Revelation 2:4-5

“Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place.”

 

When we sin against God He patiently waits for us to repent of our sin so that He can restore our relationship with Him. I don’t believe that we can lose our salvation when we rebel and sin if we have truly been saved, but when we rebel against God as a Disciple of Christ we have caused a rift in our relationship with Him. He patiently waits for us to ask for forgiveness. He works in our lives to stimulate repentance in our heart, mind and soul. He longs for us to return to Him, our spiritual Father, but he can’t force us to repent, He must patiently wait for us to have a change of heart, mind and soul…to turn from our sin…and ask Him to forgive us. Once we ask for forgiveness and repent of our wandering away from Him He forgives us and our spiritual relationship with Him is restored. How patient and loving He is to forgive us of our sin!

 

We need to take to heart some of the following verses to prevent any attitude we might have that could lead us to forsake the God who saved us.

 

Psalms 9:10

“Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.”

 

Psalms 22:1-2

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.”

 

Psalms 37:25

“I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.”

 

Psalms 119:52-53

“I remember your ancient laws, O LORD, and I find comfort in them. Indignation grips me because of the wicked, who have forsaken your law.”

 

Psalms 119:86-88

“All your commands are trustworthy; help me, for men persecute me without cause. They almost wiped me from the earth, but I have not forsaken your precepts. Preserve my life according to your love, and I will obey the statutes of your mouth.”

 

Jeremiah 17:13

“O LORD, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the LORD, the spring of living water.”

 

 

We are given the privilege of being sons and daughters of the Most High God because Jesus allowed Himself to be forsaken by His Heavenly Father because He took on all our sins. Matthew 27:46 records the words of Jesus as His Heavenly Father forsakes him. Read this verse below and attempt to understand the torture emotionally and spiritually that Jesus experienced as His Father had to forsake Him because of the sin He was taking upon Himself, YOUR SIN and MINE!

 

Matthew 27:46

“About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi,  lama abachthani’-which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

 

Seek God continually. Hold yourself accountable to walking in the paths laid down by His Word. Continue to fellowship with other believers. Serve God with your whole heart. Remain pure in thought and action by letting the Holy Spirit transform your heart, mind and soul. Commit yourself to never, ever forsaking the God who saved you, the God who provides for you each day, the God who desires with a holy passion to love you and have a relationship with you.

 

NEVER FORSAKE YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER…YOUR SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST and the HOLY SPIRIT who lives within you as a Child of God!