Facing Our Loneliness, Part 1

Intensified candidate for Monday, November 15 all the technology available today isolating believers in Jesus don't have to feel that way, here's the biblical perspective on facing our loneliness. Do you feel disconnected from other people. Do you feel like you don't have anyone to share something with something deep in your heart.

Do you feel isolated, even when you're in a crowd you feel like somehow you just really don't know how to love someone ought to be loved by them. Do you feel you have this longing, deep insatiable hungry thirsting desired to be attached in some way. If feel like a stranger right in the midst of people that most of her. Maybe you know if those things are true in your life. Your suffering from something your suffering from something that you probably did not even realize and not only that, that suffering is having an effect upon your life in ways that you not even realize what what is it well the problem is that your lonely. There's nothing wrong with having lonely moments in life because we all do. But to be long delay to have a life of loneliness is not the will of God is not his plan. In fact, he said in the very first book of the Bible is not good for men and women to be alone. That is lonely does not mean that we should not have times when we are alone, but to live a lonely life. I just describe some of those feelings that a person has when they are lonely and that more people who are suffering from loneliness, then realize that the they know that something is missing that it can't tell you what it is they look around and see physically everything is there material.

Everything is there someone there but they still feel disconnected. They feel still feel that there's something not quite there. They don't feel fulfilled.

They don't sense intimacy with anyone that something very important missing in life. So let me remind you that God created you and me to have an intimate relationship with him. The Bible says he created us to bring him glory and honor what brings him more glory and honor and that you and I would live in an intimate, loving relationship with our heavenly father. That's why he created us.

So God has something awesome in mind for his children and loneliness does not fit into his plan.

So what I want to talk about in this message is facing our loneliness and I want you to turn if you will.

Psalm 25 and let me to simply say this, that no matter how lonely you may be able to say right in the beginning of this message you can be delivered from it. You can overcome it.

You can be victorious over it.

You do not have to live a life that is lonely, lonely moments at times situations and circumstances that create loneliness yes but you don't have to live in it. So look in this 25th Psalm is what he says who is the man who fears the Lord, he will instruct him in the way he should choose his soul shall abide in prosperity and his descendents will inherit the land. The secret of the Lord is for those who fear him letters to obey him, and he will make them know his commandments or his covenant buys a continually told the Lord for he will pluck my feet out of the net turned to me and be gracious to me to listen for.

I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are in Lori's ring me out of my distresses look upon my affliction and my trouble and forgive all my sin that you know he talks about being lonely and it also talks about sin pretty close together. Oftentimes they are very very connected. Oftentimes it is because of our sin that a person is lonely.

So what I like for us to do is I want us to define what loneliness is what is loneliness and I repeated, so that you can jot it down and I want you think about this as I ask you to consider these questions. Think about what the whole issue of loneliness is about loneliness is a separation anxiety that's brought about in our life by feeling disconnected. That is when we are disconnected from others disconnected from God. There is this separation anxiety. There is an anxiety that goes on inside of us. Maybe we can quite identify what it is you more than likely will think it's something else. Loneliness is very real.

Loneliness is not on the real. It is continually having an effect in the person's life who's living alone in life. So it's this separation anxiety.

That's feeling of being disconnected disconnected from what usually disconnected from someone are disconnected from the group, but primarily disconnected from someone if you've never trusted Jesus Christ as your personal savior you are disconnected from God, you are disconnected from his son Jesus you are disconnected from the things in life that truly, genuinely count you do not have the ability to genuinely love and to be loved the way God intended for you to loneliness is a spiritual problem it can become a physical problem relational problem. All kind of problems, but it is a spiritual problem because it begins with feeling disconnected, alienated, ostracized, whatever you want to say about your relationship to God.

So what you think about where all this began where where it all began. It it began in the Garden of Eden when man chose to disobey God and rebel against him. When you choose to rebel against God.

You alienate yourself you separate your several somebody says well but it does the Bible say that he says of all of us who believe is he'll never leave us nor forsake us correct. So he hasn't changed but we change and you know as well as I do, when you sin against God. You don't sense that oneness of fellowship you don't sense that intimacy and attention is them distresses them.

The separation and all the rest. God doesn't want us living that kind of like that's the way began, but people choose oftentimes to live separate from him and so they have to suffer the consequences as a result now when we think about the nature of it the feelings that a person has the feeling of the loneliness.

What is that comfortable. For example if there's a death of someone you love with your husband or wife or child or parent dear friend that gives us a sense of loneliness that doesn't maybe last a long time but you see some long and this is for a moment, and some is for a lifetime.

It depends upon how you respond to, and so death causes us to feel lonely in the field that loneliness deeply. There's a feeling for example of condemnation of God. If a person feels condemned by God, then there's no way to heavenly peace and joy and contentment and so one of the one of the primary reasons that people feel lonely is that they feel God's condemned why we look back in their past, they see sin in their life and and this one know I've asked God to forgive me, did he forgive yes he did and then usually following yes it is but but what, but I don't feel like it and so as long as you feel condemned by God. You going to feel lonely, why because, listen your creator created you for himself and a place in your life or him that nothing else, no one else can ever fulfill. Then there's the whole feeling that many people have well I'm unworthy I'm unfit I'm unwanted you know I don't I don't have a value when people have a very very poor self-image that lonely people because what they feel is this.

Nobody wants me. Nobody likes me. Nobody wants to be my friend. Nobody wants to invite me.

Nobody wants me. A part of their life and it's this absolutely continuous condemning of themselves. You talking about loneliness that creates awesome loneliness and listen. It doesn't stop with the feeling I'm here to tell you it will affect your life it will affect every single aspect of your life. Loneliness is a major issue and there are millions of people around us who are very lonely they don't know their lonely but if you listen to them.

You don't have to listen very long, and after a few moments, you find that it begins to trickle out in their conversations and their relationships the way they treat other people the way they respond to people they cannot love someone else and they don't feel loved. Imagine this going through your entire life and never feeling genuinely loved by anybody that has to be torment and that can't do anything but create loneliness. God never intended that you and I would live our lives without feeling, love, and the ability to love someone else but if you would genuinely lonely. It's going to be very difficult for you to love someone else until you're able to handle that until you're able to deal with one of those feelings. For example, is this when you have joy you excited about something. Listen, you have nobody to share with because life is all about sharing. It's all about relationships.

And when people are lonely they don't they don't feel like taking who wants to listen to. That's where they feel, who wants to listen to me. Who cares about what I care about what people oftentimes do, but we don't give them the privilege of expressing it and so oftentimes a person will go through situations and circumstances in life sometimes hard times they don't have anybody share with listen when you going through the valley. Everybody needs somebody to share their bad experiences with when you're on the mountaintop part of the part of the joy of being on the Mount is having some of the tell about it. And yet people who lonely don't feel they even want to because they feel they may be rejected. They feel like nobody cares and you see, it's like living in a cocoon and life isn't what you wanted to be is what God plan for you and that you are suffering silently the people all around us that many of you who are listening and you saying that's exactly where I feel I don't feel anybody cares.

I don't have anything to say. I don't think anybody wants my relationship why what is it about me anybody would want what is it about me.

Anybody can love and you see that's because your lonely and when you get lonely, it distorts your whole view in the search of you have yourself a distorted view of God and the storage of your of other people. You don't see them know it's it's hard to see that somebody could be excited about you and when the Bible says that he rejoices over us so much that they were adamant there's nothing about me that God can rejoice over. That's because you don't see yourself the way God sees you, and I think the many wonderful people who haven have great assets and abilities and talents and skills in oftentimes beautiful people, but there self-image is so poor and that loneliness is so overpower them, it's very difficult for them to believe that anybody could want them. Anybody could like them. Anybody could want to be with them. Anybody can will be their friend. Why, because that's the way they feel that's the damaging part of loneliness that we talk about where it all started. Well, one of the places it starts is, for example, early in childhood, that child comes along and they feel neglected by their parents and parents don't care and they do neglect and sometimes not because their parents neglect them. It's because of the circumstance and I can think in my own life that the first thing I remember in life and I don't know why this is so pictured in my mind.

It's like me, standing often looking at myself at that moment in life and I was sitting in the middle of the bed and I was by myself and I had a earache and I was trying and so because my father died when I was nine months of age.

My mother had the soda put me out and let other folks keep me in this lady Mean that they kept me in all these folks are Me.

I can even name them all and I lived in 17 different places. The first 16 years of my life and it evidence of insecurity.

Naturally and so I look back and think about that when I first started the school my mom had to go that she worked in a textile mill, so she had to go to work early in the morning and I had to get up and she taught me very early how to cook an egg, some bacon and piece of toast and so when I left school I left alone when I came home I was alone. I can still see that big black long kiwi hid under under the brick and the I would put in the doorknob. I can still see that lock and I would turn and think I will be by myself. Remember that and so I will I look back in those days and see how that affected my life. It affected my life in lots of ways in creating great insecurity. It took me a while to believe that God really and truly love me. It took me a while to be able to understand that God's love was more important than anyone else's love and that somehow, in spite of all that, that he loved me no matter what I felt about myself and so I said in the beginning I want to say again, it isn't the fact that you go into these longer times in your life. It's how you respond. So, by the grace and the goodness in the love and mercy of God. I turned to him because he's all I had in the fact that I had no one except my mom whom I love dearly and she did all that she could but she can take the place of a father and she couldn't help the Condor life. We had to start out with and then when I had a stepfather.

I was like the fifth wheel of the third party ostracize not wanted shut out condemned and you name it. In spite of all that God had to. He saved me early in life and not as a result, I turned to him because he's all that I had and he taught me in the midst of all that loneliness that always had him and that's why one of the first things that I began the draft I was saved is to memorize and favorite scriptures and one of them was I will never leaf you can hope for sake you. That was a basic anchor Burson my anchor verse for all of life is Proverbs 3, five and six trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path.

That is, I had that assurance and so the different reasons people are lonely and so some others as well. Do you feel sorry for yourself. Absolutely not. I don't about his pity him to simply say that there are reasons people grow up like that because God can deliver us and overcome that in a person's life. The question is how do you handle that.

It begins with being reconciled to God your creator through his son Jesus Christ. That's the beginning. That means that God because he loves you and he does, no matter how lonely you are that God because he loves you he loves me, he sent his only begotten son Jesus into the world to down the cross to pay for our sin debt in full so that you and I can become totally completely forgiven of all of our sin, and in the process.

That puts us in a right relationship with him.

Once that relationship is right through the confession and repentance of our sin, placing our trust in Jesus.

Once you do that, then the Holy Spirit comes in your life and what does he do, he begins to give guidance and direction he will draw you out of that loneliness.

He will enable you to be rescued from that come out from under that plan to get out of that shroud to remove all of that offer you and help you to be able to walk in a way that you wanted to walk for years in your life. You hold your in the young you can. The oldest people would say you can be delivered if you want to be and that's my prayer for thank you for listening to part one facing our loneliness. If you like to know more about Charles Stanley intact ministry intact satellites this podcast is a presentation of intense ministry in Atlanta, Georgia