God Cares for the Lonely!
Let me ask you a question; how many of you have ever gone grocery shopping while you were hungry? How many of you learned your lesson for grocery shopping while you were hungry? What did you do while you were shopping? You saw the Twinkies and you were hungry so you thought, “Those look good. I’ll eat those.” Then you throw them in the cart. Then you grab a bag, or two, of potato chips. Not the Baked kind either, the greasy fried stuff. Then you go down the candy aisle and it all looks so good. The Snickers are calling out your name, the Milky Way, the M&M’s, the Reese’s Pieces, and the Twizzlers. They are all calling out to you and you’re hungry so you just throw it all in. You get home to find that you have had an interesting shopping experience. Let me tell you, grocery shopping hungry is especially dangerous for the college student. You never know what you’re going to come home with.
The only reason you grabbed all those things that weren’t good for you is because you were hungry. All of that food looked good to you. Why, because you were running on empty. You were hungry. You weren’t full. I want to talk to you today about being full spiritually. You see, when we aren’t full spiritually, we will throw anything into our cart of life in order to try to fill our voids. That emptiness in our lives is known as loneliness and many of us are lonely people. Our loneliness drives us to the store of life. There we are walking up and down the aisles. We are so alone and so we are looking for anything to fill our lives with something meaningful. We go up and down the aisles and just throw everything we can into the cart. “Oh sure, I’ll try some alcohol. Why not? Ooh, those clothes are nice. I know they will get me some attention.” So we throw them in the cart. “Hmm, I don’t have a significant other. I guess I’ll throw a few one night stands in the cart as well. All those people look like they’re having fun. Maybe I should try some drugs also. Maybe then I would be full.” As a result of loneliness in our lives, we are willing to throw anything into our cart to try to fill ourselves up. Unfortunately, all we have done is looked in the wrong place.
A Christian artist, Hawk Nelson, has a song out called Take Me. I want to read for you some of the lyrics from that song. “Can you hear me? Does anyone around me feel the way that I feel now? Cause from the window where I sometimes cry I just want to see Your face tonight. And I’m willing to lose everything I am. Take me under Your wing tonight. Make me so perfect in Your eyes. Hold on cause it will be alright. You’re not alone anymore.” Loneliness is something that a lot of people are dealing with. And a lot of those people are just like you.
Many of us grew up in large families. You might be the youngest one in that family. You might be in the middle of that family. You may even be the oldest one in that family. You’re surrounded by family and love all the time, yet you feel so alone in your own home. Something is missing and you don’t know what it is. You feel so alone. Many of us have many friends. At least we see dozens of people everyday. Depending upon your situation, you might see thousands of people everyday. Yet, in the midst of all these people that you are constantly around, you feel so alone. Sure you talk to people, they are friendly to you, you would even call them your friends, but you still feel so alone. You know, you’re not all that different from one biblical character. He is a guy that normally we view as a hero. He was a warrior, he was good looking, he was a leader, he was compassionate, he was a man after God’s own heart. That’s right, David. We see the evidence of loneliness scattered all throughout the life of David. Why don’t we start first by looking at his family life.
1. Alone in his family!
One of the first things we have to understand about David is that he is the youngest of 8 brothers. He had 7 brothers who were older than him and who had more right to a lot of things than he did. He was given the worst jobs in the family. I mean, they left him out in the field by himself with a bunch of sheep. Not really a glamorous position in the home. Our little David, a lion killer, a bear killer, the boy who would eventually slay a giant to keep the Israelite people free from captivity was alone within his own family.
One day in 1 Sam. 16, something interesting happens that changes the course of history for David though. God is fed up with Saul and the way that Saul is leading the Israelite people. So God has decided on someone who is going to be the new heir to the throne. God, tells Samuel the prophet, to go and anoint this person. Samuel doesn’t know who it is yet, but he just follows God’s leading until he finds this person. Samuel ends up at Jesse’s house, David’s father, and he tells him what he is doing. So Jesse parades out his 7 older sons. They were manly men, warriors themselves; men that Jesse thought surely God might have one of them in mind for the throne of Israel. However we find this in 1 Sam. 16:10 (read). These older boys aren’t good enough. So then let’s add verse 11 to the mix (read). “There remains the youngest”, is what most of your Bibles say. Do you want to know what the literal translation of that verse is? “I still have the runt.” That’s right. David was affectionately called “the runt” by his own father.
Maybe you’re the runt in your family. One of your siblings gets all the credit for everything. You are, or were for that matter, are blamed for everything that goes wrong. You weren’t given as many privileges and weren’t treated as well as one of your siblings. You are the runt. It is a lonely feeling isn’t it? Here you are, you want to offer the world what you have, but no one wants you. You’re the runt. So you live a lonely, solitary life in your bedroom, or behind closed doors. You feel so alone; you just don’t realize how close the God of the universe is to you. God is within touching distance of you when you are at your worst. When you feel the most lonely, God is closest to you. Look at v. 12 (read). You may be alone in your family, you may feel alone, but God has plans for you. God is closer than you think.
But it wasn’t just in David’s family that he felt alone. Even after he had made some progress in life and got a job working for the king, David still felt lonely.
2. Alone in his life!
David’s popularity began to grow around the kingdom. He even grew more popular than the king that he worked for. How dare anyone be more popular than the king! This rise of popularity for David began to make King Saul very jealous of David. One day while David was playing the harp for the king to try to soothe him, Saul jumped up and hurled a spear at David. David was quick and jumped out of the way. This began a very bumpy relationship between the king and David.
David eventually went on the run, doing his best to avoid the king at all costs. The king wasn’t all that happy about the fact that David had already been anointed as the heir to the throne either. So David is running from the king and spends 10 years on the run. Saul pursues him in caves and all over the kingdom for 10 years. David survives by living in caves and eating wild animals. He has just enough people with him that they are able to keep him one step ahead of King Saul.
On more than one occasion, God provided an escape for David by giving him the chance to kill Saul himself, but David never did harm Saul. You say, wait a minute, David had people with him? How could he be alone then? There were people helping him out. How could he possibly be alone? Well, you don’t have to look very far to find his writings. In the book of Psalms, we find hundreds of David’s songs. Words that he wrote from his heart that expressed how he felt. Let’s read a few of those from the Message version of the Bible. This is how David was really feeling. Psalm 6:6-7 says, “I’m tired of all this, so tired. My bed has been floating forty days and nights on the flood of my tears. My mattress is soaked, soggy with tears. The sockets of my eyes are black holes; nearly blind I squint and grope.” Doesn’t sound like a man at the top of his game to me. Psalm 25:16 says, “Look at me and help me! I’m all alone and in big trouble.” Psalm 35:13-17 says, “When they were sick, I dressed in black; instead of eating, I prayed. My prayers were like lead in my gut, like I’d lost my best friend, my brother. I paced, distraught as a motherless child, hunched and heavyhearted. But when I was down they threw a party! All the nameless riffraff of the town came chanting insults about me. Like barbarians desecrating a shrine, they destroyed my reputation. God, how long are you going to stand there doing nothing? Save me from their brutalities; everything I’ve got is being thrown to the lions.” And last, Psalm 102:7 says, “I am sleepless and lie awake, like a bereaved sparrow alone on the housetop.” You see, even with all of David’s popularity that he gained throughout his life, he still felt very much alone. Many times David even felt like God wasn’t helping him enough his time of need.
Aren’t you and I really the same way too? We have friends around us, we have people we like and talk to. We also, like David, have those who don’t like us so much. We might have good jobs, we have a great career, we have a lot of things going for us like David did, but there is still something missing. And through it all, we feel so alone. We feel abandoned, left alone to deal with our tough situations alone. Haven’t you felt that way before?
But behind the scenes, God was working. God was preparing the throne for David the entire time he was on the run. God was working to keep David safe even though David had enemies and made many mistakes while on the throne. God was with David and was giving David amazing things. That’s why I want to encourage you by saying…
3. God is closer than you think!
God is always closer than you think. So many times in our lives, when we are at the bottom of the barrel, we feel so abandoned. We first like to blame God and say that it is His fault. “God, if you had been here for me, this wouldn’t have happened. God if you really loved me, people would like me. God if you were really there, I wouldn’t feel this way.” And we like to blame God when we feel alone. It’s not His fault, He’s right there beside us. Even in the life of Jesus we find this. Look at John 16:32 (read). Even in the life of Jesus when He could have felt alone, He recognized the fact that God was still with Him.
God has promised us over and over that He will always be with us. That He will never leave us or forsake us. He promises us in Gen. 28:15 (read). Ps. 9:10; 37:25; 94:14; Is. 41:17 all say that God will not forsake us. He will not abandon us. Even in our loneliest moments, we can know and be assured that God is right there beside us. Deut. 4:39 says, “Know this well, then. Take it to heart right now: God is in heaven above; God is on earth below. He’s the only God there is.” Psalm 68:8 says, “God makes a home for the lonely.” God is always with you.
Loneliness isn’t real obvious to the outside world. In fact, if you told someone that you were lonely, they would probably be shocked. “Why are you lonely? You have so many friends. You have this and that. How could you be lonely?” But for those of you out there who feel lonely so many days, you try to fight it, but loneliness just keeps consuming you, there is an answer. The answer is God. The answer is to turn to God for help, to turn the Him because He has all the answers anyway. Maybe you’re like the Ziggy cartoon that shows the small pudgy man, sitting alone in a boat, drifting toward a tunnel with the sign above, “Tunnel of Meaningful Relationships.” Loneliness is a problem in our society. In fact, the people on the list who are found to be lonelier than others are: college students, divorced people, welfare recipients, single mothers, rural students, housewives, and the elderly.
In order to point out how lonely people can be, Charles Swindoll offered this ad as an illustration from a Kansas newspaper. It read, “I will listen to you talk for 30 minutes without comment for $5.” Swindoll said, “Sounds like a hoax right? But the person was serious. Did anybody call? You bet. It wasn’t long before this individual was receiving 10 to 20 calls a day. The pain of loneliness was so sharp that some were willing to try anything for a half hour of companionship.”
Are you one of those people today looking for companionship? Are you looking for a meaningful relationship, but you are in the boat alone? God wants you to have that meaningful relationship with Him. So how do you find that relationship with God? This answer is James 4:8 which says, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” You draw near to God through prayer. Hebrews 4:16 says, “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it.” If you are here today and you are a Christian, then God is right next to you, but He won’t shove His way in uninvited. When you are feeling the most lonely, if you would stop and spend some time in honest prayer to Him, and you honestly are trying to draw near to Him, that is when you will find Him. He isn’t far from you, but you do have to ask Him for help. So if you are feeling lonely today, spend some time in prayer. Draw near to God and to His throne of grace and that is where you will find the help you need. If you are here today and you aren’t a Christian, all you have to do is decide that you are ready to give your life to Christ. God is right next to you as well, but He’s just waiting on you to make a decision. Do you want Him or not? Maybe you don’t know how to do that, and that’s okay. You can come and talk to me afterwards or anytime that you have questions, and we will help you find God!
So let me ask you again, what are you filling the cart of your life with? We look for love, acceptance, and satisfaction in all the wrong places. We look to alcohol, other addictions, pornography, popularity or anything else that we can get our hands on. I am here to tell you that God doesn’t want us to live that way. God wants us to know that He is right there beside us. You know, God is closer than you think. Many times in life, when we feel alone, we believe that God has left us also. That’s simply not true. God is right there beside you. Jesus Christ Himself said in Matthew 28, “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” What a wonderful promise! Even when you are alone, you’re not! Whether or not you choose to turn to God when you feel alone is up to you, but you can’t say He isn’t there. You can’t say that you are alone and that nobody is there for you, because God is right beside you. You just have to include Him in what’s going on. He will be with you always, no matter what you are facing, you don’t have to face it alone. He is there.
