When God is forgotten, all that is opposite God happens.  When the government becomes self-serving, self-seeking, and self-motivated to take down and destroy everyone in its way the opposite of what God wants and who God is happens.  Why does God allow it?  God created the world to recreate itself so life would be orderly and sustainable.  God created humans to manage what He created.  God also created humans with the ability called “free will” to choose Him, to love Him back, to obey Him in all of life—or not.  When God is forgotten, peace turns to chaos and confusion.  Hate takes away Love.  Foolish, perverted behaviors replace wisdom, the skills for living life well.

What happens in our own lives when we forget God?

What happens when we set him aside, only to be brought out on Sundays or special occasions?

What happens when our prayers become only cries for help instead of daily conversations that grow our intimate, personal, holy relationship with Him, God of all, in Jesus Name?

We become religious without relationship.  That’s what happens and God is not pleased.

Isaiah 17, The Message

Damascus: A Pile of Dust and Rubble

^1-3 A Message concerning Damascus:

“Watch this: Damascus undone as a city,
    a pile of dust and rubble!
Her towns emptied of people.
    The sheep and goats will move in
And take over the towns
    as if they owned them—which they will!
Not a sign of a fort is left in Ephraim,
    not a trace of government left in Damascus.
What’s left of Aram?
    The same as what’s left of Israel—not much.”
        Decree of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.

The Day Is Coming

^4-6 “The Day is coming when Jacob’s robust splendor goes pale
    and his well-fed body turns skinny.
The country will be left empty, picked clean
    as a field harvested by field hands.
She’ll be like a few stalks of barley left standing
    in the lush Valley of Rephaim after harvest,
Or like the couple of ripe olives overlooked
    in the top of the olive tree,
Or the four or five apples
    that the pickers couldn’t reach in the orchard.”
        Decree of the God of Israel.

^7-8 Yes, the Day is coming when people will notice The One Who Made Them, take a long hard look at The Holy of Israel. They’ll lose interest in all the stuff they’ve made—altars and monuments and rituals, their homemade, handmade religion—however impressive it is.

⁹ And yes, the Day is coming when their fortress cities will be abandoned—the very same cities that the Hivites and Amorites abandoned when Israel invaded! And the country will be empty, desolate.

You Have Forgotten God

^10-11 And why? Because you have forgotten God-Your-Salvation,
    not remembered your Rock-of-Refuge.
And so, even though you are very religious,
    planting all sorts of bushes and herbs and trees
    to honor and influence your fertility gods,
And even though you make them grow so well,
    bursting with buds and sprouts and blossoms,
Nothing will come of them. Instead of a harvest
    you’ll get nothing but grief and pain, pain, pain.

^12-13 Oh my! Thunder! A thundering herd of people!
    Thunder like the crashing of ocean waves!
Nations roaring, roaring,
    like the roar of a massive waterfall,
Roaring like a deafening Niagara!
    But God will silence them with a word,
And then he’ll blow them away like dead leaves off a tree,
    like down from a thistle.

¹⁴ At bedtime, terror fills the air.
    By morning it’s gone—not a sign of it anywhere!
This is what happens to those who would ruin us,
    this is the fate of those out to get us.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Friends, I don’t know about you but I do not desire a life void of God and end up with my soul becoming desolate, “a pile of dust and rubble”, as the city of Damascus became!

When we forget God and all that He is and all that He wants to do for us and in us, we become an island of self with no options of significance and no relationship.  We become like an annoying “resounding gong or clanging symbol” of religion without a relationship based on God’s love as Paul wrote so eloquently in 1 Corinthians 13:

(Read, Relate, Repeat)

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

“Apart from me, you can do nothing.” –Jesus

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”  Jesus, John 15:5, NIV

Lord,

I cannot forget You! Thank you for saving my soul and making me whole.  Thank you for being with us always.  Thank you for loving us first so we could love you back in a holy relationship. Thank you for your word that teaches us.  Thank you for Your Holy Spirit that challenges, comforts, instructs, and encourages us in our relationship with You.  I love you with all that is in me.  Help me to love others like you love me. 

In Jesus Name, Amen