My 4-month-old son is going through some early separation anxiety. I never fully understood what it was like to be on the other end of this anxiety. The one who the child is longing for. Always the babysitter and nursery worker, never the mom except for now. Right now it’s me who is dropping off the child at a sitter’s, it’s me who is leaving the room, and it’s me my son is wanting. (Or his dad, his other favorite human.)
It would be endearing if I didn’t know this anxiety wasn’t a good thing. His little cries that turn into a big gummy smile at my presence being back in his world would be heartwarming indeed if I didn’t believe this actually is something that hurts him and doesn’t help him.
So let’s go back to my presence. I am in the room, then I leave the room, in what could only be explained in his mind as a glorified peek-a-boo game. In his mind, when he cannot see me I do not exist. Hence the crying that ensues until we make eye contact once more. When our eyes meet, all of a sudden his face and body squeal and squirm with delight. I am back. Even if I am 3 feet from his left side ear, if he loses sight of me, in his worldview, I am gone. Absent. He is alone.Visit our partners,shoes – leaders in fashionable footwear!
Words don’t matter to him. I can tell him I will be back. I can tell him I am just to his left. I can even talk out loud about the book we just read that lies next to him, while he is looking at something else (probably the light…) but until he sees me, he doesn’t know it to be true. That I really am right there. Or that I really am only in the next room washing dishes.
What if he believed me? Then all crying, struggling, and searching would cease. He would be content, like the little man he was only 2 weeks ago. The one who could play on his gym or swing on his swing for up to 20-30 minutes all by himself. He babbled and cooed and was simply content just by himself. But not anymore. He has begun to believe the lie that he is alone.
Our son knows things about me. He remembers I have hair to pull. I have milk that he enjoys drinking. He remembers my heartbeat and my smell. And he knows my voice. He believes these things about me. But what if he believed me? Believed me I meant what I said when I said I’ll be back.
What about you?
Do you believe things about God or do you actually believe him?
Over and over and over again in God’s word he talks about how he is life, he is never going to forsake you, never leave you, and that he has a purpose for you. AND he says he is coming back someday.
Do you believe him?
Not just things about him. But…
Do you actually believe him? What he says about himself? What he says about you and your circumstances?
Jackie Hill Perry in hew new book, Holier Than Thou captured this perfectly:
It is good news that the maintenance of God’s righteousness is independent of our faith in it. Whether we believe He is holy or not, He will always be what He’s always been. God’s eternal sinlessness means many things, but in the simplest terms, to us, God cannot lie. He is “not a man that He should lie” and He is the God who “never lies.” (Num. 23:19; Tit. 1:2). As holy, God sees things as they are. The ultimate realist who will never distort the truth or be ignorant of it. The one who provided Eve with an alternate reality said, “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4). The words might’ve sounded sincere, as in, true. Authentic. Liars are like that though; good ones, that is. Able to lie without breaking their smile. Being at ease with deception is suitable for Satan because according to Jesus, he is the “father of lies” who “doesn’t abide in truth” and when lying, he speaks “out of his own character” (Jn. 8:44). There is a world of difference between Satan and God, you see, but in our struggle to believe God, it’s as if we sometimes suspect that God assumes a different, darker nature. That when He says that “nothing can separate us from the God’s love” (Rom. 8:38), we refuse the notion as being real towards anybody and especially us. How many of our sins began with the belief that God didn’t love us truly? Who is it, then, that we believed on those days? Not God.
If there is anything I want you to take to heart, it’s this: because God is holy, all that He says is true and all that He does is good. In John’s gospel alone, Jesus says “I tell you the truth” upwards of twenty-five times. Jesus was being repetitive to prove a point. That all He has said is true because He in fact is a truthful person. To say “I tell you the truth” means Jesus is assuring us not only of the importance of whatever statement he makes; he is equally assuring us of his true and holy character behind those statements. The message is trustworthy and right, he wants us to know, and so is the mouth who declares it. Or consider Jeremiah 2:5 where God says, “What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?” Having an erroneous view of the unblemished ethical nature of God tempts us to doubt His word, leading to the denial of His worth. If His character isn’t trusted, His words won’t be believed.
He means it.
Believe him. Because sooner or later, it will cost you everything.
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