I’m going to share on loneliness…

I’ve started a post on this before but felt that the Lord didn’t want me to share it…

It’s on my heart again and if I get to the end of this post and the Lord doesn’t stop me then I’ll post it…

I’m just going to share what the Lord has been taking me through on this subject…

Just because you have a lot of people around you doesn’t mean that you’re not lonely…

Loneliness is about feeling alone…

Feeling misunderstood or not understood…

Even when God tells you things that you’re not allowed to share with others – even in that – which is kind of like a secret between you and the Lord – you feel lonely…

We don’t like being lonely – naturally – none of us do…

But, I am beginning to see, that as we submit to this feeling and don’t fight it that loneliness can become our friend…

“You’re crazy!” you may say…

But no, once we are not afraid of loneliness anymore, loneliness becomes our friend…

We are “elevated” to a new place where in our emptiness we are complete…

Sounds strange, but this is what I have been experiencing…

I have “reached out” to alot of people over the last nearly three years since the Lord began to “bring me back” from the wilderness…

I don’t have many “close friends”…

I don’t feel close to many people…

I have “invested” myself into the lives of many people as the Lord has enabled me over these three years but I don’t feel close to many people at all…

The Lord has done this…

It has been His plan…

He has been teaching me about loneliness…

I am content…

Last night was quite a “turning point” for me and then just now as I’m sharing I’m seeing the victory which He’s brought me to (not saying that I am walking in perfect victory but I see it)…

I don’t want to leave this place…

I don’t want to “fight it” anymore…

I am content…

With my loneliness…

The pain of loneliness is greater than any physical pain which we ever endure…

The pain of loneliness is the greatest pain which we will ever have to endure…

There is victory over loneliness…

It doesn’t come in “defying” it (a word a close friend of mine has often used), it doesn’t come in “fighting back” or doing anything to oppose it…

It comes in surrender to it…

Jesus did this…

His greatest challenge wasn’t the fear of man – caring what they thought about Him while He was on the cross or the physical pain which He was enduring although this must have continually shot through Him – His greatest challenge was His loneliness…

He was all alone on the cross…

God, His Father wasn’t speaking to Him…

No one understood what He was doing up there…

And the One Person who did wasn’t speaking to Him, wasn’t communicating with Him, in fact He was punishing Him…

He had forsaken Him…

“Why did He forsake Me?”

The silence must have been deafening for Jesus…

“Why isn’t He speaking to Me?”

The doubts and the questions and the uncertainty – He’d never been alone from His Father before…

For All Eternity…

I have had a taste of this…

I have known what it is to be really close to someone and then to have that ripped away…

I have known what it is to have love in my heart for someone which can not be expressed…

I have known what it is to really want the best for someone but to be misunderstood as to be acting in a way which would be destined to hurt that person (as the Father could have been misunderstood as acting towards Jesus when He was punishing Him on the cross)…

I have known the pain of that loneliness…

Not to be able to communicate with someone who I really love and whom I have on my heart (knowing that that silence or lack of communication with them might be misunderstood by them to be “unloving”)…

I have been walking through this…

Why?

This question comes up alot…

Why?

Or “Why Lord, can I not share the things which You’ve been sharing with me with others?”

“Why do I feel ‘so alone’?”

And the answer is that the Lord is separating us for Himself…

The answer is that the Lord is separating ourselves from ourself…

He is literally tearing apart our old self from our new…

Separating all that is human from us so that what is Divine (of Him) will remain…

What is Love?

Is it a feeling?

What is Love?

It is submission to God…

Jesus loved the Father even when He was punishing Him…

He loved Him by not deviating from what the Father had told Him to do…

No matter how much that “went against” what He had ever experienced before…

He had no history to go on…

He was in “uncharted waters”…

Riding blind…

Isaiah 50 was being fulfilled by Him…

He didn’t light His own fire…

He was given the tongue of a disciple and He wasn’t rebellious and He didn’t turn back…

He knew that it was the Lord Himself who was carrying Him…

This is the place which He had come to and He kept His faith…

He was carried by the Lord through the pain…

I was on holiday recently and the Lord taught me about endurance through pain…

As we were leaving I jammed my middle finger into the towbar attachment by letting it go in a moment of distraction…

I was in terrible pain most of the way up to the campsite…

The Lord told me to “take the pain”…

I had to stop by the side of the road and let out a “scream” to the Lord that I just couldn’t take the pain and He said that He was teaching me about endurance…

Jesus endured the cross – He accepted that He was in pain and that the pain was not going to end, i.e. it was pointless praying to be delivered from it…

That was what the Lord was teaching me…

I came through in admitting that I couldn’t come through…

Next we went on a family walk in the Abel Tasman National Park…

I needed to carry a ridiculously heavy pack which the Lord helped me to pack making sure I used exactly the right stretchy things to secure onto the outside all the sleeping bags and tents…

Anyway, I was struggling uphill with this pack and just couldn’t handle it…

The Lord told me that I would feel the pain but that He was carrying me…

He showed me that that moment was the fulfilment of a picture which He’d given me one night in prayer in Manila…

I was very encouraged as that night in prayer in Manila He’d shown me that I was approaching a cross-roads, on the one branch (sort of like a “Y” intersection) was natural provision and on the other branch was supernatural provision…

I’d wondered what would happen but sensed that He’d get me onto the supernatural provision one although I didn’t know how…

The picture changed and I saw the Holy Spirit pushing me uphill…

This is what He told me was fulfilled on our family tramp…

The Holy Spirit was pushing me uphill, I would feel the pain but He would be carrying me…

I said to the Lord, “I’m not going to try to keep walking” so I stopped inside but my body kept walking (I’d done this previously in Manila on my training runs)…

So the rest of my life is the Holy Spirit pushing me uphill…

I will feel the pain but He will be carrying me…

He explained to me that this is the Fellowship of Sharing in His Sufferings…

Pain is to be endured…

Not to be prayed against…

Although some pain may come from the enemy…

To be endured meaning that you’re not fighting against the pain but accepting it…

This is supernatural…

I couldn’t do it…

I admitted I couldn’t do it but then He started to do it in me…

It was very exciting…

This is what Jesus did on the cross…

He let the Holy Spirit take control of Him and carry Him…

who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God (Hebrews 9:14b NIV)

He broke the power of loneliness…

He broke it by not fighting against it but by submitting to it…

He knew that His Father would look after Him and that was enough…

That was Faith and that was the Supernatural…

Wouldn’t we like to walk in the Supernatural?

That is the Supernatural…

To endure pain without pleading for it to stop…

To “take the pain” surrendered to God and know that no matter how long that lasts we are being carried by Him and feeling that pain but not carrying ourselves and not needing to “take control” or “strive” to try and endure or see it to the end…

Not calculating in our heads whether we’ve got enough endurance left “in us” to endure to any point in time but just trusting Him to carry us…

This is supernatural and comes as we give up – admit that we can’t do it…

God truly does oppose the proud but give grace to the humble…

God will never chastise us for admitting that we can’t do something…

That is the admission He needs to accomplish His will in us…

Love in the Lord,

Andrew