Aloneness: How God Can Use Our Biggest Fears and Sufferings to Save Us

For most of my life I was restless and searching for fulfillment. In other words, lacking completeness. My happiest moments during my young adult life were when I had a boyfriend. I could see how unhappy I was when I did not have a boyfriend, but did not see God, or anything wrong with feeling unhappy without a boyfriend. I just thought that was the way I was. I associated happiness with love. I had that part right, but I was looking in the wrong direction. I was looking horizontally instead of vertically. I was looking to people instead of looking upward to Jesus.

From the outside looking in my family did not look different from many other families. I am the youngest of three children. I have two older brothers, so I am the only girl. I loved the attention brought by being the youngest and the only girl, but there was also a feeling of loneliness, of being left out. My brothers always had each other, even at home. If they did not have friends to play with they had each other.

At the age of six I developed a very close friendship with two girls that were sisters. They were one year apart in age. We quickly became best friends and spent our childhood seeing each other almost every day. We spent most of our days playing at their house. We used our imagination and always created imaginary stories with whatever we played, whether indoors or outdoors. We frequently played board games, school or with our dolls after school. I dreaded the time when we had to stop playing and I go home for the evening.

I decided that it was not fair that I had to go home by myself while they were able to play together all evening. All I could see was my loneliness. I could not see God or how He was working in my life back then. Instead of looking for fulfillment in God and using these life experiences for personal growth, I turned away from God and turned into myself. I responded with self centeredness. I responded with feeling sorry for myself, resenting my mom for not giving me a sister and by filling that loneliness with people and things. I deflected and casted blame. I blamed my loneliness and my unhappiness on others.

There are so many children out there who do not have a brother or sister and have chosen not to respond in the manner that I did. This is why the responsibility lies on ourselves and we are not to cast blame and be the victim. I chose to see myself as a victim instead of God’s child growing through life experiences. I chose to glorify myself instead of glorifying God. I chose to be the center of my own Kingdom. That choice early in my life led to a lifetime of not holding myself accountable, blaming people and situations for all of my unhappiness and also depending on people, situations and things to bring me happiness.

Living in this manner is a vicious cycle that would have never ended if it were left up to me, but God showered me with His mercy. He chose to save me at the lowest point of my life by allowing my biggest, number one fear to become a reality; utter and complete aloneness. For the first time in my life I came face to face with the one thing that I was most fearful of being and feeling. How is it possible for God to save me by allowing such pain and suffering come into my life?

He allowed me to be taken away from all that I held precious to my heart and from everyone and everything that I depended on for happiness and fulfillment. In doing so, by taking me away from everyone and everything, I was finally able to see Him and be only dependent upon Him for saving. I finally looked upward. I finally truly saw God.

God allowed me, by my suffering, to see what had been missing in my heart. He allowed me to see why I was filled with a restlessness that could not be permanently filled by myself, a person or thing. He allowed me to see that what I was lacking was fulfillment. Imagine a puzzle that is missing its last piece. When that happens we are filled with a feeling of unfulfillment. That is how it feels to live without God in our life. God allowed me to see there was a piece missing in my life. That piece was Jesus.

Once I prayed for forgiveness, repented and asked Jesus into my heart, I felt free and complete. I felt whole. Jesus filled that empty space within my heart that I tried to fill with myself, my desires and anything else I thought I needed to fill that emptiness. This is the meaning of finding freedom in Jesus. He freed me from the burden of my sin while also freeing me from my self-centeredness.

I am finally at peace and feel more alive now than before coming to Christ. The restlessness I have felt for 47 of my years is gone. The love of Jesus now fills my heart. I no longer depend on the love of others to decide my happiness or define my identity because my happiness and identity is in Jesus.

If you do not feel the peace, joy, life and love of Jesus in your heart, I pray that you will ask Jesus for forgiveness of your sin and ask Him into your heart and life. Just believing in the existence of Jesus is not heart and life changing. One day we will all be held accountable for this decision, so I pray that Jesus is placing His effectual call on your heart right now. Peace be with you.

Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Finding Contentment in Being Created in the Image of God

Before I became a Christian I hated just about everything about myself. I hated my hair, my nose, my lips, my hands, my voice and my fingernails, to name a few. I even hated the gifts God had given me by wishing for the gifts I did not have. I wished I could sing better and wished I had the gift of artistry. I was never content with myself and how I was created by God. By feeling this way, I learned I was actually hating God’s perfect creation and also hating Him.

How often, especially in today’s world, do men and women want to be different than how they were created by God? As I have expressed, I have been guilty of this in some way, just as most people are. Many people make decisions based on how they feel or what they think is right or wrong. What is wrong with that, you ask? This is a humanistic approach. Instead of God’s word being their authority, they have become their own authority. In other words, they are their own God and what they think or feel is right; more right than our True Triune God.

One danger in being our own authority is that our views change. We can have a certain view about something today and then change our minds and have a completely different view tomorrow or next month. We can be a Democrat for twenty years and then change our minds and agree with the Republican views. We can judge someone’s actions based on what we think is right in our own eyes and say, “If that was me I would never do that. I would have done this…” Suddenly, six months later we are faced with the same circumstances and what do we do? We do exactly as the other person did that we had previously judged, said was wrong and we would never do.

Another danger in being our own authority is that we can hate something one day and love it the next. We can hate our hair one day and then love it the next. We can love a tattoo and ten years later regret our original impulsive decision. We can be mad at someone one day, makeup the next day and be happy with that person again. We can hate broccoli at some point in our lives and then all of a sudden love broccoli.

Looking at this humanistic, self righteous approach, when were our views and decisions really the right ones? If you are honest with yourself, you will agree that this approach to rightness is contradictory. The point is, we and our feelings change, but the good news is that God and His word is unchanging. He and His word is the same today as it was 2000 years ago and will be 2000 years from now. God is Infinite, Infallible, Inerrant, Holy, Just, Almighty, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Sovereign, and all that is good. This is why it is so important for us to rely on God and His word as our authority.

After I became a Christian and began to study the Bible I learned how I was made perfectly in God’s image. Genesis 1:27,31 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them…..And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” To be made in God’s image means that we reflect the character of God. God’s character is good and perfect.

God does not make mistakes. When He created a person male or a female He did not make a mistake. When He created me as a female with fine hair, short fingers and big hips, He did not make a mistake. Psalm 139:13-14 “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” God knows us inside and out. He even knows how many hairs we have on our head. Instead of being thankful for how perfectly God made me I allowed my feelings and what I thought was good and right to determine how I thought I should look and should have been created. By hating God’s creation of me, my greatest sin is that I was sinning against God.

We all struggle with sin and our struggles with sin show in different ways. We all struggle with some kind of addiction/idol. Some of us struggle with food addiction, while someone else may struggle with alcohol addiction. Some of us may struggle with idolizing our bodies while others struggle with idolizing a celebrity. The bottom line is that our idol is our self because we want to think and do what we want, not what God’s authority says. Since our falling into sin by Adam, we each want to be God. This means we think we are right in the way we think and feel and no one can control us or make us think in a certain way. We are all guilty of self-centered self-righteousness.

The good news is that once we become believers in Jesus by repentance, asking forgiveness, and asking Him into our hearts, He sends His Holy Spirit to begin good work in our hearts. We will still sin, but through the sanctification (spiritual growth) process of our lives, we begin to hate sin and sin less over time. Once I became a believer and studied the Bible I found contentment in who I am. God knew me before I was born and He loves me. He created me, and in the eyes of God, He created me perfectly.

This truth is the same for you! Come to Jesus just as you are. There is no need to clean your life up before you come to Jesus. Come to Jesus and allow His Spirit to cleanse your heart, bring life into your soul and give you eternal life. Come to Jesus and you will be given life, freedom, fulfillment and a contentment you have longed for your whole life. Come to Jesus. Come!

Idols: What They are and How to Identify Them

Sometimes God will allow what is important to us, what we hold most dear to our heart, to be taken away so that we may see Jesus. Sometimes what we idolize is taken away, or our biggest fears become reality. We, as sinners, can create an idol out of anything. An idol is anything that takes priority in our lives over God. An idol is what we worship instead of worshiping God. An idol can be a person, a feeling, a desire, a thing, or an activity. The more obvious idols are drugs, alcohol or porn, but have you thought about the less obvious things that can become an idol to our hearts?

Our idol may be a celebrity, a friend or spouse, shopping, exercise, food, smoking, our body, our looks, our hair, jobs, money, social status, how popular we are on social media, gossip, job status, cars, clothing, or weight loss, for example. The bottom line is that what we want or what we want to focus on has become more important to us than God.

Another way to identify an idol is to ask if this thing, person, or feeling has become what we depend upon to bring us happiness. Is it filling something that is lacking within ourself? Does shopping bring us happiness? I am not talking about a fun day out with your girlfriends. I am referring to a deep need to excessively shop and purchase clothes or material items that we most likely truly did not need, but when we bought them it brought us happiness.

Here is the trick of the idol. We may mistake them as what will bring us happiness, but what we created as our idol will only bring pleasure. Unfortunately, pleasure is only temporary. This explains why we have to repeatedly go, shopping, for instance, because we crave the feeling shopping brings us.

Imagine if our person of worship is God. When our eyes are set on Jesus we are fulfilled with true happiness, joy and everlasting love. We will long for Jesus and to know Him by reading His word and studying scripture. We will long to commune with Jesus daily through prayer. The love for Christ will fill our hearts as the Holy Spirit cleanses our hearts of our idols. We find a love for scripture that we seem to thirst and hunger for, because Jesus now satisfies our cravings.

If you find yourself in a season of suffering, or at the lowest point in your life, how will you respond?
Will you deflect, find excuses, or blame others? Your response will be accounted for.
Can you see your idols and identify them? If not, pray for God to open your eyes to recognize the idols in your heart.
What is distracting you from seeing Jesus?
During your time of suffering, whatever that suffering may be, will you turn towards Jesus, or will you turn away?
Making excuses, deflecting, blaming = turning away from Jesus. Admitting your sin, asking for forgiveness, repenting = turning towards Jesus. I pray you turn to Jesus.