Jonah 2:8
Here are 4 reasons you should let someone go if God removed them from your life.
1. When God Deletes Someone from Your Life, It Is an Opportunity to Be Strengthened in Christ
Godly relationships always help our walk with God. A healthy relationship is a like a good book. Good books should never replace the Bible in our lives. Rather, a good book will make us want to read the Bible more. Likewise, when you truly have a healthy relationship with someone, their presence in your life will make you want to seek God’s presence more, not less.
One reasons God removes people from our lives is when these people are getting in the way of our connection with Christ. Our hearts are always looking for help. When we have a bad day, a bad week, a bad month, or even a bad year, our hearts crave something from the outside to come in and make us happy. Our inner being always craves balance. When we are feeling low, we want something or someone to come in and bring us up.
There’s nothing wrong with allowing people to make you happy and bring you joy. This pleases the Lord. As Galatians 6:2 states, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” But the danger arrives when we start using someone to replace God’s space in our hearts. Like an addiction to a drug, we always build up a greater and greater tolerance to outside assistance. Therefore, we always need more and more of this outside assistance to feel better. This is when things get out of balance.
The only way to bring your heart back into balance is to remove the crutch. Again, using the analogy of a drug addiction, the only way to bring your body back into balance is by stopping the use of the drug. It will be really painful at first because you have become dependent on this drug. You will have to go through a period of withdrawal. But if you go through this season of pain, your body will regain chemical balance when you stop adding this outside chemical drug to it.
This is what happened to Israel when they left Egypt. When they were finally free and no longer slaves, they had to learn how to depend on God again. They were so used to their captors giving them food and housing that when they no longer were in slavery, they feared they would starve and die in the wilderness. They actually wanted to go back to their dysfunctional relationship with Egypt because they had not yet learned to trust the Lord, “And they said to each other, ‘We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt,’” (Numbers 14:4, NIV).
Likewise, if you become dependent on someone who is unhealthy for you, God will remove this person like God removed Israel out of Egypt. It will be painful at first because you will be going through a season of withdrawal. Your heart will be recalibrating. You will have to learn to trust God again because you’ve been putting your trust in this person for so long. But if you let this person go and you fight through the pain, eventually you will regain your dependence on God and you will no longer need this person in that unhealthy way anymore.
2. When God Deletes Someone from Your Life, It Is Addition By Subtraction
This world is broken. Not everything that happens is good. Certainly God can use everything that happens for good when we trust him, but I’m certainly not saying that every time someone is taken out of your life this is always a good thing. People we love die. Good relationships get broken up for bad reasons. And sometimes this world causes us to go through things that God never wanted us to go through when he first made Eden in it’s perfect state.
However, there are other times in life where a relationship is truly toxic. Sometimes we have become so warped by the dysfunction that we have come to believe this bad relationship is what normal relationships should look like. When you are in the middle of a storm for a really long time, it’s possible to think this storm is just normal weather. But it’s not. When God takes you out of the storm, you then begin to realize how bad it really was.
This happens in relationships too. If you have been chasing someone who has been stringing you along, giving you just enough attention to keep you interested but not enough commitment to keep you healthy, when God removes this person, you will see how much better your life is now. Or perhaps someone was extremely negative and always tried to tear you down no matter how positive you were trying to be. Or maybe someone took advantage of you and used you in manipulative ways. If you stay in that mess for long enough you will begin to believe this is acceptable. This is why Hebrews 12:1-2 (NIV) instructs:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
God often adds joy to our life by removing sorrow. He gives us health by taking away poison. He helps us run faster by telling us to throw off sin. In short, if God removed someone from your life who was unhealthy, let them go because it is addition by subtraction.
3. When God Deletes Someone from Your Life, It’s Always to Make Room for Something New
Using your present to cling to the past causes you to ruin your future. If you need a new life you need to let go of that old life. The past will never come back into the present. Life is always moving forward and never backwards. The only thing you can bring into your present is the future. The past will always be the past.
Throughout the Bible we are taught the principle that we can never out give God (Ephesians 3:20-21). But to take you must let go (Jonah 2:8). To live you must die (Matthew 16:25). And to receive the new you have to remove the old (Ephesians 4:22-24). As Matthew 19:27-30 states:
Then Peter said in reply, ‘See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.’”
4. When God Deletes Someone from Your Life, You Must Let Them Go Because Fighting God’s Will Only Leads to Missing God’s Will
One of the most powerful lessons every human needs to learn is acceptance. God is God and there is no other. He decides what happens and what won’t happen. He writes the words and turns the pages. We are characters in the story with free will, but in truth, he knows the end from the beginning. To follow God, we must accept that he is God and not us.
All we accomplish when we refuse to accept his will is a wasted life. If God truly removed someone from you, eventually you have to accept this. You can pray about it for a while. You can ask God to bring this person back. You can take the steps you may need to take to make the relationship work once more. But if all this fails and it becomes clear God has removed this person and they aren’t coming back, your only option is to accept this. If you don’t, you drown in the sea of denial.
When God deletes someone from your life, you must let them go because fighting against God’s will never works. All you are doing is missing God’s better path for you. God has a good plan for your, but you must follow him and accept his will if you want to experience his good plan for you.
As Philippians 1:6 states, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
