Romans 1:24 “So God abandoned them to their hearts’ desires, which led to the moral corruption of degrading their own bodies with each other.” (CEB)

Have you ever seen and abandoned building? It’s a sad thing. When there is no one around to care for it, repair it, and maintain it, the building falls into disrepair and slowly begins to be destroyed.

The same thing happens to us when we abandon God.

God abandons you to your own ways and that is when the decay starts.

When you abandon God and His authority; trading the worship of God for the worship of self or something else, God steps away and allows you to do as you wish. God doesn’t impose Himself on you. He is there and desires a sincere personal relationship with you but only if you are willing. Forced love and worship is folly and insincere.

God steps away for a reason. He steps away so that you will see the uselessness of life without a relationship with God. When you step away from God by worshiping your “self”, you eventually become enthralled with seeking to please your “self”. The focus on the “self” leads you to seek a replacement for an eternal God in your life. You try to find joy and happiness in external pleasures and these external pleasures are centered on the physical body.

Pleasures of the body encompass activities such as sex, drunkenness, euphoria from drugs, and even the accumulation of wealth and objects. Since none of these will ever fully satisfy the need for God in your life, you eventually seek variations on these pleasures as replacements for the ones that don’t satisfy the need and you go deeper and deeper into them justifying your actions to yourself.

This seeking of pleasure is inexhaustible and you end up like a person digging a hole in the sand. The deeper you go, the more sand falls into the hole and eventually buries you so that you cannot get out by yourself.

This is the purpose God has in stepping away. When you are in a hole so deep you can’t get out of, you may get to the point where you either give up or ask for assistance. God is there for when you ask for assistance to get out. He has a purpose in backing off.