Not long ago, I got lost searching for a place I wanted to get to.  I had GPS instructions, but they were not exactly correct.  In fact, although they were followed explicitly, the car ended up on a long hillside in a rural-meets-outer-suburbia location that was all wrong.  And being in the car, I was just as lost as the car was!  I imagine many of you have at one time or another found yourself in a similar situation – maybe it was when you were a kid and got lost at the mall.  Maybe it was sometime in the past several weeks.   The worst part about being lost isn’t that you cannot find your way back (there are lots of ways to do that), but it is the feeling that you have been cut off, alone, and unable to reconnect with your friends or your family. 

Scripture reminds us that we are never as lost as we think we are.  Even though there are many situations that make us seem like we are spiritually out in the boondocks –  facing some kind of trouble, seeking a job, dealing with illness, wrestling with injustice, or missing someone we love – to name but a few.  We know how it feels – heartache, loneliness, grief, fear.  So how good it is to hear someone say something like this:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35, 37-39).  

The Apostle Paul wrote those words to Christians in Rome who were up against tremendous challenges.  He wrote them because they were true, and because they would build people up, and because they would help people reboot their lives in a Christ-like direction.

Have you wound up in a place that you do not recognize?  A remote location where everything seems unfamiliar?  A place where the road seems to narrow down from a broadly paved superhighway to a gravel wagon track?  When you reach such a place, allow the words from Romans to center you.

If events have made you feel far from God, if you are lost or hurting, physically, emotionally, spiritually, let God do for you what you cannot do.  God will always be there.  In Jesus Christ we know this is true.  Have every ounce of faith in the Lord and Savior.  Christ is there for you.  Christ can make you more than conquerors.  Let Him.

Yours in Christ,

John A. Dalles, Pastor