How is your relationship with Jesus this very moment? Are you glad He’s holding onto you? One of the great sustaining encouragements in my own life has been the sure knowledge that God is holding onto me. As JI Packer said, in his wonderful book Knowing God, "Your faith will not fail while God sustains it; you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you." Isn’t that great? Our feelings may rise and fall; our enthusiasm for God comes and goes; but God remains steadfastly committed to us. This should be a great encouragement to rascals like you and me. So today, let’s stop and consider a familiar passage, but maybe in an unfamiliar application:

Who, then, can separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble do it, or hardship or persecution or hunger or poverty or danger or death? As the scripture says, “…we are treated like sheep that are going to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we have complete victory through him who loved us!  For I am certain that nothing can separate us from his love: neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the future, neither the world above nor the world below—there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)

We often hear this passage at funerals. What great encouragement to know that in death we will not be separated from God’s relentless love. We, the living, can go forward, knowing that our loved ones are with Jesus and that we will see them again. We joyfully embrace this promise to spend eternity with our loving Heavenly Father. But what about the present? That's part of the promise, too. Paul says, "neither the present nor the future." His promise is for today, right now, in this very moment. God stays with us. It’s you and me who allow things to get between us and God: things like worry, sin, selfishness. While these don’t separate us from God, they diminish a clear view of Him and His promises. He’s always there. As He said, "nothing can separate us." Let me ask you a question: What are you allowing to cloud your view of God today? He's right here with you...and that is very Good News!