Enjoying God's Company // Dealing with Loneliness, Part 3

When loneliness strikes, it can be the bleakest, darkest, most inhospitable place on the planet … in the universe! If you've experienced loneliness, you'll know what I mean. But in that loneliest of places, at that loneliest moment, as things turn out, you and I – we are never alone. I wonder on a scale of 1-10 how content you feel in your relationships; zero is desperately lonely, ten is stunningly fulfilled. This week, we have been looking at loneliness from A Different Perspective. Because loneliness is a disease that is afflicting people in plague proportions, more work, more money, less time with the family, less time being part of a community. So we have a silent social pandemic that is sweeping the globe. The question is, what to do about it? Yesterday, we talked about the first of two people who can help you with loneliness – that person is you. If you missed that program, you can listen to it again on our website, I'll let you know how you can do that at the end of the program. Today, I'd like to introduce you to the second person who can help you with loneliness without ever having to make a phone call, or open the front door. This man, a carpenter by trade, knows all about lonely places and what to do with them. Have you ever thought about Jesus being lonely? Now here is the Son of God who becomes a man … little boy, grows up as carpenter's apprentice with his Dad and He becomes a carpenter. And then His public ministry begins around age 30. He has a dozen or so close disciples, many more who follow him around, huge crowds, who flock to see him and hear him speak and be healed by him. There are people clamoring to get a piece of him. This Jesus had rock star status. There was one time He healed a leper and said to the leper, "Look, just go and show the priests, don't tell anyone". (Yeah right!) Luke in his Gospel, (Luke 5:15, if you want to look it up), Luke writes this after the healing of the leper: Even though He told the leper not to tell anyone, obviously the leper did. And the news about Jesus spread more and more, so that crowds of people came to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Isn't that amazing? By choice, Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. That word lonely means solitary, desolate, uninhabited places, to pray. Jesus knew exactly what it meant to be lonely. Here is the Son of God, He has been with God and in God, and part of the God Head, part of the Trinity for all eternity – Father, Son, Holy Spirit. He steps out of that and becomes a man. He was surrounded by people who didn't understand. God was doing a new thing through this Son of His, Jesus, a new thing of grace. Jesus would go to the cross and be beaten and reviled and crucified and killed. The religious hierarchy, they hated Him, they plotted against Him. In fact, they were so threatened by this radical Jesus, eventually, they killed Him. The disciples (well most of them, most of the time), they just didn't get it. Jesus was misunderstood, misquoted, misrepresented and mistreated. Jesus, of course He experienced loneliness. He was called to do something radical that people didn't understand. Imagine being surrounded by these twelve Disciples who, who you know will be the foundations of the church when you go. And for the whole time, they just didn't seem to understand. Every now and then, they'd have a flash of insight but most of the time they didn't get it. Who did Jesus have to talk to? Who was His peer? Who was His equal? Who was His support? He experienced everything that you and I have to experience and loneliness is one of them. Jesus has been lonely in a crowd and He makes a decision, a decision of choice. He withdrew often to a lonely place and prayed. Why did He do that? Well, despite His superstar status, the one relationship that gave Him His strength (to give out all that He gave out) – the one relationship sustained Him, the one relationship that gave Him wisdom and love, and grace – was the relationship with His Father, God (in that lonely place). I mentioned yesterday that I went through a lonely time in my life about ten years ago, when I went through a marriage breakdown and divorce. And I experienced loss, and betrayal, and hurt, and fear, and loneliness … what a poisonous cocktail! I was in a new city with new people around me, a new empty house. And I remember meal times, sitting down at the dinner table that used to have a family around it, and now there was just me. At the dinner table, my aloneness became so desperately lonely. And in that lonely place, I got a growing sense and a knowledge that Jesus was there. And I prayed, I talked, I listened, I read, I learned who I was and enjoyed my own company (I talked about that yesterday). That was great, but in that dark and lonely, and desolate, isolated place there was one light shining – and that light was the presence of God. That light was Jesus in ...