"I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud, And your sins like a heavy mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you." Isaiah 44:22 NAS

In the last devotional we looked at how sin makes us draw away from God and feel distant from Him. The heart of God always has one purpose toward us. His purpose towards His creation since the fall of man has been reconciliation. As you read through the Old Testament you see His heart always calling out to His people with the desire that they would return to Him.

That they would repent of their ways, give up the idols and false god's and turn their faces back toward the God of heaven and earth. We see this in 2 Chronicles 7:14-15 where the Lord says, "and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

We believe in the Son of God whose entire purpose was to cause us to return to the Father. He made the way for us to repent meaning to change allegiance from the prince of darkness to the God of heaven. His purpose in willfully dying a horrific death, paying the price too high for us to pay and being raised from the dead was so that we could freely return to Him and find perfect reconciliation with Father's heart. His perfect love says, "Return to Me!"

We see this in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19. It says, “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation." When we return to Him we find several gracious results. The first one is that He will never turn away His face from us when we humbly come to Him.

We see an example of this in 2 Chronicles 30:9 where the last part of the verse says, "...For the LORD your God is gracious and compassionate, and will not turn His face away from you if you return to Him." He promised that He would never leave us and never forsake us (Heb 13:5). Even when we feel like king David when he wrote, "For my father and my mother have forsaken me, But the LORD will take me up (Ps 27:10)."

The second result that happens when we return to Him is that we find deliverance from sin, death and the enemies of our soul. We see a picture of this in 1 Samuel 7:3. It says, "Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, "If you return to the LORD with all your heart, remove the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your hearts to the LORD and serve Him alone; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines."

Remember today and always that the Lord will not turn His face away from us when we return to Him and He will deliver us from our enemies. Whether we are returning to Him from a long time of being out of fellowship or just at the end of a day of life’s battles He will restore your soul. Next we will see a third result of what it means to return to Him. Have a blessed end of your week.

In His Great Mercy,
Adam