There was an old abandoned house in my childhood neighborhood. Us kids thought it was a haunted house. Well, there is one thing for sure – it was a forsaken place.
God wants us to have forsaken places in our lives, places that are truly abandoned. That is what Isaiah says in Isaiah 55:6-7. He says,
“Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God for He will abundantly pardon.”
You see, one of the things God is looking for when we seek Him and call upon his name is that we are willing to forsake our sinful ways.
The word forsake is a Hebrew verb that basically means to let loose. It means to release something, to abandon it. Now it is in that sense that it means to forsake, to relinquish it and let it go. That is what God wants us to do with our sinful ways. He wants us to forsake them, to let them go.
Now that is exactly what we do not want to do. We are sorry for our sins when we do it because it gets us in trouble. But then we end up doing it again because we will not let it go. We don’t forsake it, we simply try to manage it. But that never works and eventually it catches up with us.
This doesn’t just apply to the habitual offender, the alcoholic, the drug abuser, the pornography addict, and so forth. It also applies to things like anger and greed and lust and selfishness.
So, here is what God says: If you want to have victory in the Lord, you have to let it go! “Let the wicked forsake his ways…”
Now you know the real meaning of the word.
Hey, if you don’t let it go, it will turn around and bite you… every time!