He Is Series Jehovah Shammah (The Lord is There)— When You Feel Alone, God Is Already There

He Is Series Jehovah Shammah (The Lord is There)— When You Feel Alone, God Is Already There Ezekiel 48:35 “The circumference of the city shall be eighteen thousand cubits. And the name of the city from that time on shall be, The Lord is There.” When I read this name this morning, Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is There, I thought it was powerful. How many of us really needed to hear that this morning? How many of us needed to hear that the Lord is right there with us? So many of my friends that I have been talking to lately have really been struggling with believing this. Something I have really been struggling with over these last few weeks is when my head knows something, but my heart doesn’t seem to fully know it. Let me give you an example, in case what I just said doesn’t make sense to you. I know so strongly in my head that I don’t have to do anything for the Lord to love me. I know He loves me completely and unconditionally, no matter what I do. I will tell you this all day long because I know with my whole being that it is true for you too! However, then I will catch myself striving for his love anyway. The way it feels to me is like my conscious mind knows it, but then my subconscious mind doesn’t quite have it yet. It is still replaying old thoughts. This verse is nice because it reminds us that God is always there. I know many of you are struggling right now. So many of you are chronically ill and feel like you are never going to get better. Others are suffering from depression and anxiety, and it can feel overwhelming. Some of you are suffering because you are watching loved ones suffer, and you just want to make it better for them, and you can’t. I know you feel like God has left you. He has moved on to someone better. You feel He has decided you are not worth the effort and that He doesn’t want to waste His healing on you. That sounds harsh, yet it is how some of you talk to yourselves. Whether you know it or not, some of you feel God has left you because you aren’t worthy. I have some news for you, none of us is worthy. Not on our own, at least. However, Jesus took all of our sins and shame to the cross with Him so that we could be worthy. Here are some truths that I think we all need to know. First, God is always there for us. This is a fact. Even if we can’t feel God, He is still there. He never leaves our side. This may be hard for us to wrap our heads around. Especially if the people in our lives have not been there for us. If they have left us in our times of need, then we might think to ourselves, “Of course God is not staying, no one ever stays.” Have you thought about this before? What comes to mind is something from the devotional about the name Yahweh. It said that God is so other than us. He is not like us at all. For me, this was one of those things I obviously knew, yet I am not sure I ever really thought about it like that. You know how you can hear something, and although you know it is true, when you hear it said out loud, it just makes you think differently. I know that God is not like us, and yet we still assume He will do things like we do things. He will abandon us, He will reject us, stop loving us if we show Him who we really are. This is not true! God is not like us, and He will never leave you! The second thing is that God is actually closest to us when we feel the farthest from Him. This doesn’t make sense because why would we feel so alone if God were so close to us? That I don’t have an answer to. However, Psalm 34:18 states that "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” God is with you. He knows what you are going through, and He is taking every step with you. And if you are allowing Him to, then He is leading you every step of the way. He will step in if He feels you are going to fall. The image I just got is of a toddler learning to walk. As I wrote that last part, I could see a toddler trying to learn to walk, and it wasn’t easy, and they were struggling, but they were still doing it. I saw the Lord right next to the toddler as a loving father. Not rescuing them from this task, as they need to learn to walk, but right there, ready to reach out his hand if it looked like they were going to fall. The Lord is doing the same with you and me. He is walking beside us, ready to put out His hand when He thinks we may need it. He knows we need to learn whatever this hard time is teaching us, and so He is allowing it to happen. However, He is also right there to reach out his hand, or scoop us up into his arms to save us from danger we can’t handle. I heard something in the Mel Robbins Podcast yesterday that I just felt a prompt to share with you. The episode was called, “Simple Steps for Getting Unstuck: Do THIS and Change Your Life.” The one thing that I want to share with you from this was about resistance. In the podcast, they were saying that resistance is a part of life. When I think ...