This Fellowship Meeting is for EVERYONE! We hope to see you/talk with you this evening.😊

In order to use Zoom, you will need to download the app to your smart phone or tablet, download the software to your computer, or call in by phone. Please contact Alicia to get this information if you do not already have an invite. Email: connect@thereach.online

Wednesday May 20, 2020

Your Daily Dose of Inspiration:

Isaiah 59:1-2 Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; (2) but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.

And that is the next great and even more terrible fruit of sin, separation from God. This particular consequence will mean very little to those who do not know God. The majority of the world goes about their day, living in sin, being separated from God and being entirely unaware of it. It is not until we acquaint ourselves with the Lord that we can truly appreciate how terrible it is to be separated from Him, to be cut off. Adam and Eve knew what it was to be in the presence of God, how terrible it must have been to then be cast out from before Him.

Genesis 3:22-24 Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever—” (23) therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. (24) He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Understand that it is not God’s desire that we be separated from Him. He made us to be close to Him, to be so intimate that our natures become like His. But when we allow sin to be in our lives, we cut ourselves off from Him. For He is holy and that means that nothing which is unholy can be in His presence.

Romans 8:7-8 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. (8) Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

What was it that Christ cried out when on the cross? “Father, Father, why have You forsaken Me?” When Jesus became our sin, He felt the terrible separation from God that sin imposes. This is why God sent Jesus, because He knows that if sin is allowed to remain in us, it will continue to separate us and will eventually banish us eternally from that source of all life.

2 Thessalonians 1:9-10 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, (10) when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

-Jared Freeman, “The Weight of Sin”