Father Never Abandoned Jesus, He will Never Abandoned You

As one who has experienced the reality of an "orphan heart" I would say that my deepest and most pervasive fear is abandonment.  I know that there are probably those who had a great upbringing and struggle very little with this fear.  I also know after ministering to many in the last 18 years, that many have been impacted by this very core and primal fear.  I honestly feel like Father has peeled back many layers of the onion in healing and freeing me from this fear.  Yet I still find this fear exists in dimensions of my heart.  Simply being transparent and real with you.

I know in my mind the Scriptures, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5)  Yet I would say I like others may have distortions in both our head and heart theology.  Somewhere along the way we may have heard beliefs like, "God turned His back on Jesus on the cross because He could not look at sin".  It was so comforting to me when someone pointed out from Matthew 27:46 when Jesus cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" that Jesus identified with my experience of abandonment.  There was such a sense that finally someone understood but my heart was far from settled in God's love.  Since the core place of abandonment was my father's suicide when I was 6 years old, the belief in this broken part of my heart was that this is what fathers do (all including Father God).

At a core level I realize there is a core part of my heart that still believes this lie about all fathers.  I recently wrote about a broken "truster", now I am beginning to get revelation as to why.  I don't believe I am the only one who longs to trust God more fully and wholeheartedly, yet seem unable to live this out. There are times when an encounter with God transforms a dimension of our hearts, that later we can then articulate with our minds/logic.  Other times God takes us on a journey to change our thinking to the truth leading to us having a heart encounter with Him.  Is it heart theology or head theology?  I believe it is both that God is after transforming.

How are we as the Body of Christ going to go onto maturity in Father's love (1 John 4:18) and be a dwelling place of God if we are plagued by fear of abandonment?  Father must have dealt with abandonment at the finished work of the cross.  If we look at 2 Corinthians 5:19a we read, "namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself..."  I earlier mentioned Jesus on the cross saying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", this is taken from Psalm 22 but let's look at another part of Psalm 22.  It was common practice in this Hebrew culture for someone to start quoting a verse, everyone knew it was implied to quote the whole chapter.  Jesus quoted the first line of Psalm 22 to refer to the whole Psalm.  Psalm 22:24 says, "For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard."  Between these two Scriptures (there are many others) I believe we have built the case that Jesus identified with our abandonment but God overcame abandonment at the cross by reconciling us with Himself forever.  Since God dwells in us "in Christ" and the Holy Spirit lives in us, we can never be abandoned.  Now I pray for the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth to our hearts, so we can rest in Father's love.

Trust comes out of the heart (Proverbs 3:3-5), so if we have a problem trusting then there is a heart issue.  Trust is rooted in relationship and knowing someone, so for us to trust God we must know He has never abandoned us and never will.

Never Abandoned,
Bret