Rabbi Schneider - Can You be Separated From God's Love?
Okay, here's a great scripture for you. Romans 8:39, "Neither height, or depth, or any creative thing will be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus". What an awesome promise to cling to! I mean, this is not a maybe. I mean, there's sometimes people, to me, I'm just speaking for myself, they take specific promises that maybe God gave to Israel, or maybe God gave to a certain person in the Hebrew Bible. And then they take those promises, and they apply them to themselves, and they say, "This is God's promise for me". But you can't take a promise that God necessarily made to somebody else and then apply it automatically to yourself. But there are certain promises in God's Word that we can apply to ourselves.
And Beloved, this is one of them. Because the promises in the New Testament are made for the entire church. And what God is promising here is this: neither height, or depth, or any creative thing can separate us from the love of God. The scripture goes on to say, "Neither things past, things present, nor things to come can separate us from God's love. We're more than conquerors through all these things". This is such a tremendous word to hang on to. Because a lot of times in life, we can feel like we're in no man's land. I mean, I don't know about you, but life is a mystery to me. I mean, even if I think of some of the places that I go in my sleep, I have no idea why I go to these places in my dream state, and why I'm there or what's going on, or different seasons that we go through in life.
You know, sometimes we feel really good. Oftentimes, we don't feel good. Life is hard. But the promise is that regardless of how we're feeling, regardless of what we're going through, regardless of what we're going to face in the future, "nothing," the scripture says, "will ever be able to separate us from the love of God". Even if we feel we're separated from God's love, it doesn't mean that we are separated from God's love, because feelings are not facts. Facts are defined by the Word of God. The grass withers, the flowers change, but the Word of God abides forever.
I want you to know, beloved, God loves you. His love will never fail you. Neither height, or depth, or any created thing can ever separate you, beloved child of His, from the love of God. He's got you safely in His arms and He's going to carry you all the way through into His bosom in the very end.