“The word of the Lord came to Exekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the Lord was on him.”
You don’t have to search very hard to find a great rescue story. The best ones begin with a person getting lost and turned around, only to find him or herself in a place where they do not know where to go, lost. Lost and with no way out, they have to wait to be rescued. Someone comes at the last moment and saves the person, and the story has a happy ending.
Satan plays an evil trick on us. The trick starts by telling us that we don’t need God and His stuffy Christian ways. We can afford to get a little western, if you will, no one will get hurt, especially not you. You deserve some fun and relief from life. So you take the bait and off you go. At first, it starts out with a small infraction or sideways step out of line, and all seems okay, so you begin to take steps further away from the path. You start covering your life with lies and hiding your ways with just one more little white lie after another. Soon enough, you’re telling lies to cover up those lies. You have slowly faded away from the path of the Lord. A slow fade to a place where you are master of life and you have taken control, in short, far from the Lord.
At this place, Satan whispers in your ear, “You don’t need God at all. See, everything is going fine. Just stay away from those crazy Christian friends who always mock your choices in life. Who do they think they are?” Ezekiel was in a town near Babylon, exiled from his homeland by force. Away from the temple of God and the daily life of the priest he knew so well back home, the Israelites around him had been taken into captivity because of their choices to not listen to the Lord over the past hundreds of years. Yet, so far from home and what he knew as the place of the Lord, the Lord had His hand on Ezekiel.
Your actions have brought you this far and have put you in a place far from the Lord, maybe. Among a group of people who grumble and complain about life and proclaim, “If God were real, you wouldn’t be here. It’s all God’s fault anyway. He abandoned us, and even though I prayed back then, I heard nothing.” Today, read the third verse of the first chapter of Ezekiel above. There, right where he was, in a foreign land, away from home, among the worst sinners, serving pagan masters, the hand of the Lord was on him. You are never too far away to have the hand of God in your life. He promises in Hebrews 13:5, “I will never leave you nor forsake you!” He is always with you to the ends of the earth. Try saying good morning to Him, you are never too far.
Prayer: Father, we are never too far from Your hand of grace and mercy. When we mess up, You are ready to pick us up when we repent. I pray that today I look for You in every place, every circumstance, every problem, every good, and every bad time. I pray that my mind is programmed, through Your Holy Spirit, to always seek You in all things. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Let It Go 
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