Life can be lonely.
I'm sure that is a redundant statement.
Many people would probably follow a statement like that with - "Duh!"
I totally understand that.
Life can be lonely. People come and go
in our life. People abandon us. People aren't always there to help when you
need them. Let's be honest, people fail us.
But what do you do when you feel like
God is failing you? When all you have is God and it feels like He isn't
there?
Hebrews 13:5 says this:
"Keep your lives free from the
love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'"
Over the summer, I was met with the
feeling described above. I really didn't know what do with all of this emotion.
I knew the words in bold. I knew that God was there and that He would never
leave, but I was still battling this feeling of loneliness. People told me that
God was there with me. I heard pastors telling their congregations stories and
referencing the words in bold of that Scripture. But even though I knew that,
it wasn't helping at all.
That's because we can say all we want that
"God is always there", but we are human and don’t always “feel” the
presence of God. The Bible tells something about loneliness right from the
beginning.
After God had created the world and
gave Adam his instructions, He said:
“'It is not good for the man to be
alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.'"
Genesis 2:18 NIV
So God knew right from the start that
man should not be alone. He knew from the start that man could not do life
alone. We need people to interact and do this thing called life. When that element
is missing or infrequent, loneliness can come aboard and start whispering all
kinds of things to us and make us feel worse and that is not the way God wants
it.
We also find something else out right
from the very beginning. After Adam and Eve ate
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they were hiding from God,
we see these words in Genesis 3:
“Then the man and his wife heard the
sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the
day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord
God called to the man, 'Where are you?'" - Genesis 3:8-9 NIV
God was there with them. He was walking
in the garden looking for them. This to me feels like something that happened
often, if not daily. But when God could not find Adam and Eve, He called out to
them. When they finally made themselves known and told God everything that had
happened and God handed out their punishment for disobeying His one rule. We then
see God do this for them:
“The Lord God made garments of skin for
Adam and his wife and clothed them.” - Genesis 3:21 NIV
God did not abandon them. God did not
leave them where they were. God still provided for them. God was still there
for them. God still looked on them with love and compassion and knew that they needed
something and met that need.
I want to end this post with the
following verse:
"So we say with confidence, 'The
Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?'"
- Hebrews 13:6 NIV
God is for us. God will provide for us.
God will take us through whatever we facing.
As we saw in this post loneliness is
not what God wants for us. Loneliness is a feeling that the devil puts on us
and then amplifies it by the feeling it creates or by the voices of other
people.
But there is only one voice that speaks
what is true and that voice is God's voice. I had to learn to filter the other
voices out and hear God's voice.
_________________________
Questions or comments... please email breathequestions@gmail.com
Edited by Kay Beam