Do you ever feel all alone in life or in some struggle? Perhaps you fear that feeling or that prospect. Or you may run away from that fear by filling your life with many distractions, good and bad. We all have to deal with our essential aloneness and deep-seated fears that surround this. We go through the birth canal alone. (Even with multiple births each child comes through this unknown passage alone). We go through the passage to eternity without human companionship—of this realm—even if others are present at the time of death.
Some people struggle with this fear more than others. Early experiences of feeling abandoned (even if quite unintentional on the part of caregivers) can leave a hole which seems impossible to fill. This can fuel all kinds of addictive patterns in one’s life. Addictions (in the broad sense of the term) always cover pain in the area of intimacy with others. Disappointments. Losses by death or divorce or other circumstances. A sense of being betrayed, lied to, set up or manipulated. Emotional traumas of different kinds and degrees.
God showed me this connection between addictive patterns and underlying pain in the area of intimacy while I was studying for ordained ministry. (Once I trusted and obeyed God’s calling, my heart became open to much deeper levels of healing.) Jen and I were members of a church plant led by a wonderful pastor and his wife who were deeply committed to the ministry of inner healing or healing the hurts of life. On one occasion, the pastor’s wife had prayerfully written down on small slips of paper a number of truths she had learned about the healing process. She had placed these in a basket and had prayed that the right one would be picked out by the person who needed to receive that truth.
I had some reservations about this but decided to pray and trust the Lord. My slip of paper said that addictions are the result of unresolved pain in the area of intimacy. I sensed that this was indeed for me but I had to really pray into this to fully understand how it applied to me. There was resistance in me about this yet I knew it was a key from the Lord for me. Over many years the Lord has been confirming this connection for me and has inspired me to help others with this. It is still a struggle but there is continual movement toward the Lord’s ultimate healing. There have been many stages in this journey down the river of God’s healing and many breakthroughs but it is still a daily struggle between turning to Jesus as the one who will never leave me and my own efforts to quiet this fear and fill this hole. (I think this struggle is an aspect of what Paul is talking about in Romans 7:21-25.)
Where would I be in all this if I had not met Jesus? Completely blocked and unaware of the real issues of my life. It has been incredibly difficult to face underlying fears and issues even with Jesus but impossible without him! It is only because I know that He won’t leave me that I can face and overcome this fear of being left alone.
The wisest man of the ancient world, Solomon, tells us “there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24 English Standard Version). Although Solomon did not realize that this ultimately and fully applied to the Messiah who would come, in inspiring Solomon to write this short but powerful sentence the Holy Spirit knew. It is wonderful to have the kind of earthly friend described by Solomon and we should prayerfully seek to both find and be that kind of friend. But even our best friends and loved ones cannot fully meet our needs. They cannot fully understand us. They cannot always be there for us. We can feel alone even when surrounded by others. Others have their own struggles, preoccupations and burdens. Communication, even with real effort and prayer, is imperfect.
This is all part of being imperfect people living in an imperfect world. But it is also God’s design so that we must ultimately look to the only perfect friend, Jesus, who when we come to Him will never leave us. With Him in our lives we will never be alone. We will always have His friendship as long as that is our desire. Even when we wander off to rival ways of filling the void, He waits faithfully for our return. We will not be able to quell the fear or meet the need apart from Him. There is only one friend who was there when we were born and who will be there when we die and is with us at every point on the journey of life. I did not realize how close Jesus was until I began to believe in Him and draw near to Him. (See Romans 10:8-13.)
We do not always feel or even sense the nearness of Jesus (though at times we may and for these times we are very thankful) but we can trust in God’s Word that “there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” who will never leave us or forsake us (see Hebrews 13:5) and we know by faith that Jesus is always with us and we can learn to base our lives on this unseen but true and ever-present reality.
In this Lenten season of God’s Love, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” (James 4:8 ESV)
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