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January 12, 2022 12:00 am
Welcome to the end hatchback at the town for Wednesday, January 12.
God is our strength. No matter what difficulties we face, activity theories points he sees it as the source of your strength when you are lonely.
God is not bizarre that you not be lonely, but rather that you not have room and that we bill for around and most of all, the Jesus Christ is our friend, above all of her friends all the way from the beginning of time. God has bizarre that you and I live in fellowship and companionship and intimacy with him and with those about that is the will of the father is always been his will and when you not look around us today we see people who are so very very lonely. We won the open time squad their loan with the Sunburst specific reasons for that and that's what I want to talk about in this message entitled the source of our strength when we are lonely. I want you turn if you will to Hebrews chapter 13 I want to read simply a part of a single verse in Hebrews chapter 13 and verse five.
You recall that in this passage beginning in the first verse. This passage is about relationships.
For example, he talks about loving the brethren not neglecting strangers and entertaining them and remembering the prisoners and speaking of marriage and so, for then he says in verse five. Let your character be free from the love of money, being content with what you have, for he himself is said I will never desert you know will I ever forsake you. I will never leave you nor forsake you right in the middle of this passage about relationships. God injects this awesome promise I will never leave you. I will never desert you.
I will never forsake you. The only person who could possibly make such a promise is God himself. Loneliness is one of those experiences whenever space we like to avoid it at all costs, and it is an emotion and experience that comes our way. It can either be like a hello all our life, or it can be something that is short-lived.
That depends upon our response to it. That's what I want to talk about in this message.
When I think about loneliness. I know in my own heart that it is a painful emotion that comes to all of us at certain times in our life. Sometimes it is prolonged like a deep deep dark valley. Sometimes it is just passing and is only momentary is one of the most excruciating emotional pains. Anyone feels and you and I live in a whole world of people out there who are extremely long feeling disconnected with family disconnected with husband wife disconnected with parents of the children disconnected out with a group that wants they belong to disconnected to their homeland, and if they have got come to this country. For example, from a distant place that separation anxiety that that brings about a feeling of being disconnected somehow from someone we love or something that we hold someone we hold dear to us. It is a plague that has no prejudice doesn't make a difference how rich you are famous you are, how poor you are how uneducated you are. It has no prejudices, loneliness creeps in, and sometimes it comes rushing in. And sometimes so overpowering that it drives people to all kinds of situations and circumstances in their life. Well, let me distinguish for a moment between loneliness and solitude loneliness we say is a is an separation anxiety that brings about a feeling of being disconnected is something that happens to us. We all like to avoid solitude on the other hand, is a choice to be alone. Solitude is a time that my mind and my motions can drain away all the pressures and for those moments. I don't feel the pressure of the demands of others.
Solitude is a time for refreshment.
Solitude is a time for creativity. The most creative moments of our life are often times when we are alone. Loneliness is a whole different issue that you can be alone without feeling lonely and on the other hand, you can feel lonely and be in the midst of a tremendous crowd of people that you know and people who know you, but you can still feel the eighth of penetrating ache of loneliness that when you look around loneliness has permeated every single area versus side I think about. For example, mothers who are at home all day long and the only have either. Maybe one small baby are maybe two or three children to adults to talk to maybe live in a place that is distant from their nearest friend is a sense of loneliness that can overcome the husband's gone all day long we are growing up in age of children.
I don't mean young people, I mean children who already sensing this awesome feeling this terrifying feeling of being left alone in a world that is full of violence and crime and bloodshed and horror and fear. We live in a society of fear and think about all these little children who at home by themselves and they watch all these things that happen on television. And you wonder why they're afraid and you wonder why they're angry.
They're angry because they're there tired of being left alone alone by themselves.
I think about. For example, retired people who been working all the years and is what they been denied the same boy if I can just retire back and this worked like an attack that he is what I'm gonna do, and so they retire from the midst of a large group of people and they come home and that if he's married or if she's married to the spouses thereof that may not be there. That particular time and so what are they got a got this empty house or empty apartment into condominium and there they are, and that they were just working and living and struggling and saving and investing for this day never stays calm.
You know what happens. All of a sudden looming up above them is this dark cloud of loneliness.
They are disconnected from what their life had been so fully attached to and that you can take any facet of society no matter what it is. It's the same thing. I think for example about pastors and sometimes will pass the verse begins his ministry and I want to say this to all of you folks out there who have a pastor sometimes you treat him as if from he's untouchable all you treat them as if you put them on this pedestal and he's the stay up there and you listed on here because he's holy and you not even anywhere close to holy and so what you do is you separate yourself emotionally from and what happens is that many pastors who may have large churches who are very very lonely. You know why because somewhere along the way. Somebody said to them that if you go to be a pastor you got a good pastor. You can have close friends forget it. If that's your attitude toward your pastor, you are damaging him emotionally because everybody needs friends and everybody needs intimate friends and everybody needs special friends and everybody needs close friends who ever came up with the idea that a pastor is not to have close intimate friends people that he chooses above other people to be his friend.
You choose your friends you've chosen your friends in your church and so oftentimes a pastor feels like will if he has special friends.
People think he's being prejudiced. He's not treating us all alike. Therefore, the skill is not the past. You get one just like you get one just like you know why because he's human friend there people out there who is suffering loneliness in ways that you and I would never dream of, and its effect upon them is awesome. And sometimes we think well you know if you're Christian, you're to be able handle all that.
So it shouldn't be any problem at all, but it is and I can think about.
In my own life. In fact, the first thing I remember in life is sitting up in the bed. The walls of this bedroom were brown wooden board walls. There was one kerosene lamp and I was sitting up in the middle of the bed with an earache and I do remember I was alone. That is my first remembered some life and I must've been about two years old. So for my first remembered some life is being alone. My father died when I was nine months of age and so this little boy and sodomy said he walked away. He's disconnected now in my rational mind is a two-year-old child and think anything of the sort which you see the subconscious. The true being inside of us understands more than we realize, and so he Dodwell. I do nothing about death. He was just gone. He walked away. My second remembrance of loneliness is amazing how we think will those things that that it'll make a difference in their life. Yes, they do my second remembrance was that my favorite playmate and he lived a few blocks down the street from me and I just loved and we had to be somewhere around four or five years of age because I know where we live. I can remember that my mom was gone all day and so a lady by the name of Ada kept me and she was real condominium which I shall forever be grateful. I remember when he would come to play with me and then he said, a lot got to leave. I can steal feel what I felt. Please don't leave, please don't leave. I remember what I would do. I would say to him if you won't leave is what I'll do. I would go down to the store which was a block away. I would buy some candy and charge it to my mother's account that is funded to you, but I was surviving loneliness.
I would charge it to my mother's account and come back and give it to him if he would stay a little longer. That's how lonely I was as a four-year-old kid because you see my mom how to get up and leave every morning early and she come on the late afternoon she came home she is doing Mother's Day cook meals, clean up, do all the things that a mother has to do. My mother never heard of such ideas. A single parent that that term uneven in you know you get your husband died and it's your job to raise your son. I remember the next thing in my life that caused me a great sense of loneliness, but when I started the school. I was too young. I was going to be six in September and I was only five years of age.
My mother had to leave every morning at 7 o'clock to go to work and so she taught me how to cook an egg and a piece of bacon and a piece of toast and so that was my breakfast some mornings when I delete a bowl of cereal and so she had to leave and so I did get up and fix my breakfast and when I left home, she was gone she worked in the textile mill and when I came home, she was still going and etched in my mind crystal clear to me just like somebody photographed it instead in front of my mind today I return of Matt get that long key and put it in the lock and there were two blocks.
I can still remember had sounded.
I member what I felt. I can see that lock right now putting the key in the lock and listen to it will unlatch and put in the second one, and thinking this is nobody home.
I'm going to be by myself and so I was by myself until she came home. I think my sense of loneliness was such that it was more true than I thought it was because I can remember walking out of my first grade class and my school teachers name was Mrs. Farrell and sweet kind of teacher and I can still hear her voice. I walk out the class.
She was then the talking on the teacher. I heard her say I like Charles friend got put that on the tape recorder and said in my mind. I can still hear Mrs. Farrell saying I like Charles my loneliness was so overwhelming that the one person to say I like being call my name registered forever on my mind. I wish I could say that those are the only lonely times in my life, but they haven't been. And they still aren't.
And I know that my loneliness does not even begin to compare with some people who've gone through. The dark valleys of loneliness that are absolutely indescribable.
Understand that and I would not share anything about my heart to say, look at me, but simply to say I do know what I'm about to talk about.
I do understand the eight the hurt, the pain, the sense of hopelessness, helplessness, the sense of being in a fog and cannot see my way out of looking long down that tuba not singing light at the other end of the tunnel and knowing that is on the inside of me and I can't pull it out is on the outside of me and can't get out of it is just there. I do understand what it means to feel loneliness, and yet also understand that God has not left us in a loneliness because it's never been his will across the below to be alone in solitude because we love him and want to be with him. Yes, but not the kind of loneliness I'm talking about and you see the results of that in people's lives can be absent destructive. It will either drive us in the destructive habits are will drive us to God and sometimes it does drive people to destructive habits while they become alcoholics trying to forget something and often times it is loneliness they want to drive out. Listen drive out those feelings.
But remember that loneliness is a disconnect. It is a separation anxiety brought about by feelings of being disconnected. That is, there is a loss of intimacy, a loss of touch and I get on drugs and they have affairs and that he get into all kinds of perverted sexual lifestyles they marry quickly in situations in order to get away from this feeling of loneliness they intensify their schedule until it's absolutely health breaking often times there is ill health and premature death.
And then of course the worst thing of all is that some people can handle that kind of loneliness feeling isolated. Thinking about feeling actually totally shut out and all of ostracized like an island in the midst of the universe and island all to yourself. So, will they do they say life is not worth it. I can handle their item of note, and they destroy themselves to commit suicide and I want to sell you my friend, if you want those persons who is exact around talking about you calling that fall and that all black cloud just lays in there and no kind of breeze will blow away and everywhere you turn, it states on the inside, gripping you tormenting you pressuring you, it's on the outside.
All around you, and you can escape you got everything you notice Kate you can escape use. Ask yourself the question Guatemala keep living because I've been disconnected, torn apart, separated from I'm out of touch there's no intimacy. So what's life worth if there isn't any connectedness, no intimacy, no real genuine fellowship with anyone.
I want to study my friend don't commit suicide because you see that's not going to seven of your problems and if you've never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior. You know what suicidal do it will bring you to the ultimate indescribable intensity of the very thing you're trying to escape because you see when a person vows about Christ. They are eternally separated from the very one who created them and the work very one who created them for fellowship and intimacy and companionship with himself is never the way out and when loneliness settles in in a person's life.
It can be horribly destructive in either drive you into those activities and those habits that are so destructive. You see when you seek and escape from loneliness by sin. All you do is just broaden the gulf between you and the one thing that you want most of all that is to be reconnected and that is a sense of companionship and oneness and fellowship and friendship. Sin just keeps it making it worse and making it more difficult that is never way out, my friend.
You were created for God. You were created to love him to fellowship with him to go in intimacy with him. Nothing in this world is going to bring you back into that relationship, but Christ and my friend there is not anything in this world it's going to give you a sense of fullness and completeness and oneness.
You may be the richest person in your town. You may have the most preeminence and acceptance in their eyes, but I will tell you there's only one thing I can fulfill the human heart.
On the one thing that can make you sense and experience that sense of being reconnected and oneness in joy and indescribable RNA piece being bound together, which means to be made whole and that is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that comes about when you confess your sins to him acknowledge that you separated from him by your sins and acknowledge that when he doubted the cross he paid your sin debt in full and when you receive him by faith and just letting him father, I've sinned against you. I know that I'm separate.
I feel the separation.
I feel this estrangement from you.
I want this. I want this reconnection. I want to be forgiven. I want to be what you want me to be. I'm asking you to forgive me of my sins and asking you to save me God for myself from my moments from wrecking my life.
He always answers that prayer thank you for listening to part one, and when we are in the ring if you like to know more about child family were intact ministries intact that OIG is typecast as a presentation intact ministries Atlanta, Georgia