When Someone You Love Forsakes You, part 4

(This is part four of a multi-part article that looks at how you can cope when someone you love forsakes you. I will post each part separately to my blog at  www.inhimalone.com ). 

As we’ve seen, when someone we love forsakes us, God gives us examples from His own experiences how to cope with our grief. In parts one through three we’ve seen it’s good to weep when someone we love forsakes us. We can continue to love them, even if we must love them from afar. And we can also pray. 

Don’t ever stop praying for the person who has hurt you. How often do we find in the gospels that Jesus went apart from His disciples to pray alone? And don’t you think His lost sheep were often the focus of His prayers? Don’t you think He prayed also for their families? 

The Lord Jesus knew better than anyone else how we are all locked in a deadly and desperate spiritual battle. Since the Garden of Eden, Satan has sought to destroy the family unit because he also knows a house divided cannot stand. It is Satan who has blinded your loved one’s spiritual eyes, dulled their spiritual ears and hardened their spiritual hearts – all for the ultimate destruction of their souls.  

Pray! Only weapons of spiritual warfare are effective in this kind of battle for their soul – and for your soul. 

But what can you do for a person who has forsaken you and has already died?

Pray. 

Pray that God had mercy on them before they died – and hold on to your confidence that God did, in His mercy, give them one last chance to repent – even as they lay on their death bed, or before they took their last breath in an accident.  

As I prepared this message, I again thought of the Good Thief who died on the cross next to Jesus. It’s unlikely that any of that man’s relatives – including his parents – were on Golgotha’s hill, watching him die. They’d have feared to be associated with him, or the Romans might take them into custody and later crucify them as well. 

But while it is unlikely that any of his family heard his conversation with Jesus and the other criminal crucified with them, you and I know of the conversation. Luke records it here: 

One of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at Him, saying, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!” But the other answered, and rebuking him said, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43) 

Never lose heart. God’s mercy extends to everyone, regardless of their crime or how often they rejected Him. God’s mercy extends to every man and woman to their last breath. That’s why you can pray that God had mercy on the one who died without reconciling with you. You can pray that God offered him or her that one last chance to seek forgiveness from the Lord of love. Here is what the Scripture tells us of His mercy: 

“The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”  (2 Peter 3:9). And from Ezekiel 8:32: (Speaking to a faithless Israel, God said): “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,” declares the Lord God. Therefore, repent and live.” 

So, pray. Pray that God will have mercy on the one who still lives apart from you. And pray that God had mercy on the one who has already died, that He gave him or her that one last chance for forgiveness and eternal life. 

God gives us several examples from His own dealings with His creation of how we can cope when someone we love forsakes us.  He shows us how to cry, how to love from a distance, and how to pray. But there is at least one more thing we can do. We’ll look at that next time in part five.