Nothing Shall Separate Me? So.....???

When trouble surrounds my own life or the life of other Christians I know, I've developed this mindset the past few years that has really been burrying me. I hear others talk to me about the old adage of 'nothing seperates you from God's love though,' like that is REALLY going to pay my rent, or make physical pain stop, or fix bodily problems, or heal the hurt of the broken relationship, or how bad it hurts when someone has some inate ability to make you feel like crap for things you do that are remotely not good without said ability to affirm you of any good from small to large. Really? I'm not separated from God's love? So it's all dandy? I think a lot of us, new or old Christians, start to hear this from the lips of our friends, or from the words on the page, "Well, those things are bad, but at least you are saved! The fact that you know God means more, so the hurt/pain/disappointment/etc isn't that important." ZINGER. I'm pretty sure above interpretation of others' words or of the Bible is a MISinterpretation encouraged and proclaimed loudly by the enemy of my soul, Satan. BECAUSE it's not that I am or WE are victors in Christ above all things just because 'He should be enough to make other things not matter or feel,' or that 'He should be enough so that whatever it is isn't SO important it has THAT much impact on you,' RATHER, what the MEAT of the passage in Romans 8 (and parrotted other places) is, and what the INTENTION of our well-meaning & theologically sound friend is the following: because NOTHING can tear us away from Him and HE WILL HELP US, we WON'T die/be crushed by the physical pain, bodily problem, broken relationship, awful person. We HAVE Him (JESUS), so we don't have to FEAR the things around us or being without something we desperately WANT. The circumstance may be terribly sad, even woefullyg sorrowful. We may ache and hurt, but we HAVE Jesus ON OUR SIDE, so we are NOT alone. And then the REAL prayer is that we can have a tangible sense, a feeling, an awareness, of what that truth MEANS. And how HE is comforting us and providing and protecting and teaching, etc. God isn't there as the task master or the silent father who watches us hurt and says "Yes, well, if only you had behaved rightly you wouldn't be in this situation," or "Well, you want to be holy, so you must suffer this pain. Deal with it. You don't even know the half of pain yet." Ummm no. If I'm thinking God is thinking or saying any of that to me, then I'm listening to Satan's lies about God, I'm being Eve and I'm in the garden standing beside a tree. BECAUSE God is there to take care of us and give us supernatural grace. Why would He send Jesus??? Incarnate Himself into a human body??? and then a couple thousand years later decide to be a jack*** for lack of a better word who does not act loving in the least? He wouldn't! So perhaps we Christians, when we get discouraged, need to remind ourselves, 'wait, God is not a _______ (fill in the blank with whatever negative interpretation of God is your favorite). Instead, HE LOVES ME. We use the terms I love you and God loves you so much that they probably lose their luster for a lot of us very easily. So when we read that no tribulation shall separate us from the fact that God loves us, and we don't think too much beyond just the mere sound of the words across our lips or through our minds. Or at least, I don't. I think 'meh, God loves me,' but He also wishes I were more holy and didn't sin so much and wasn't so obsessed with my first world problems. BUT it's A LOT MORE THAN THAT. God loving me is a packed to the gills fact. The real test, or the real challenge for me, is believing that that love REALLY is there, especially when everything around me that I can see says it's a lie. Perhaps my glasses need re-calibration. Perhaps my view of myself needs adjustment. Satan is the accuser!  Perhaps the devil on my shoulder highlighting the negative and lying to me needs to be flung off. Perhaps I need some more good, godly people actually encouraging me in the spite of awful circumstances. Perhaps it's a potluck dinner filled with all those things. But if I can believe that God REALLY loves me as my GOOD FATHER, as the good father like on all the old 90's prime time sitcoms (that analogy helps me a lot for some reason- you know Danny Tanner, Dan Conner even, all the Dad's that regardless what their kids do, in the end, are FOR their kids because they love them!!!!!), THEN I am definitely on the road to being more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus. Chambers writes, "Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver and Paul is deluded, or some extraordinary thing happens to a man who holds on to the love of God when the odds are against God's character. Logic is silenced in the face of every one of these things. Only one thing can account for it- the love of God in Christ Jesus. 'Out of the wreck I rise' every time." 

Today, God wants to walk with me and help me. Not because I read the bible this morning or sinned minimally so far as I can remember yesterday, but because God is FOR me. I am HIS. HE gives me immense worth and purpose. If I believe otherwise, I'm believing something that is not true.