{"id":33265,"date":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/gods-cure-for-loneliness\/"},"modified":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","slug":"gods-cure-for-loneliness","status":"publish","type":"sermons","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/gods-cure-for-loneliness\/","title":{"rendered":"God&#8217;s Cure for Loneliness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2005\/08\/18721.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n<p>\n      <em>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Illustration:<\/span>\n      <\/em>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\"> Here is a story of a preacher who after 18 years of\nministry quit and went into the business world lonely, discouraged, and\ndefeated. No, I don&#8217;t know him and I&#8217;ve never met him, but he could be any\nnumber of people that I have met. He could be one or two of you; and if we put\nhim back into the time of the Psalms he would fit perfectly, for he is the\n expression of the psalmist&#8217;s words that we&#8217;re going to study. Listen\nto his explanation of what happened to him after 18 years of serving God. He\nsaid:<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I realized those years had made me look and feel 10\nyears older than I was. I had spent those years holding people&#8217;s hands,\nsmoothing out countless interpersonal battles, working through church\nstruggles, preaching how many hundreds of sermons, baptizing people, marrying\nthem, burying them. As the church grew, so did the traffic to my office. I was\nnot surprised at this, nor was I unaware of my calling, the demands I had to\nface in serving. But in all that time I could not find a confidante, not even\nmy wife. Because most of the human problems I dealt with were confidential, I\ncould not find someone who could simply listen and pray with me. While I\nstruggled to find new and fresh sermon material, time for my own relaxed\ndevotional life disappeared. When the church reached 1200 members from the\nfirst 300, it was a sign of the great blessing of God upon my work. I accepted\nthat and I thanked God for it, but at the same time I found myself even more\nlonely as the demands on my time tripled.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">My family was grown up and away from me. When I saw\nmy children graduate from high school and then college, I realized I hardly\nknew them. I knew then I had to do something, though I was a little late. I\nconcluded I could not abide the lonely road any longer. As much as I sensed I\nwas leaving an arena with its joys and triumphs as well as its sorrows and\ntensions, I knew I had to find some area of work where I could establish normal\nhuman relationships. Maybe I was just not cut out to be a leader after all.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Those are sad words. If I were preaching to\npreachers tonight, every one of their heads would be bobbing up and down. But\nthe words are not much different than the words we have read in Psalm 142. They&#8217;re\nthe words of a lonely person who cries out for help. The 142<\/span>nd<span style=\"\" class=\"\"> Psalm is a beautiful\npresentation of the cycle of discouragement every person goes through at one\ntime or another in his life. <\/span><\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">You will notice as you look at the top of the psalm,\nthe heading calls it a &#8220;maskil&#8221; psalm. Bible scholars are not exactly sure what\nthat means. It is some kind of Hebrew annotation to describe how the psalm is\nto be applied in the Hebrew worship. If we had time, we would list for you the\n14 psalms that have that heading over it. That is not the important thing in\nthe superscription over the psalm. The important thing is the phrase which sets\nthe psalm in its historical perspective, for right next to the word &#8220;maskil&#8221; is\nthis phrase: &#8220;A prayer when David was in the cave.&#8221;<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">It&#8217;s interesting to try to figure out where this\nfits in the life of David, for if we can figure out where David is when he\nprays this prayer, we can understand what is going on in his life that triggers\nhim saying these words. As you go back into history you discover that there are\ntwo caves in the life of David. First of all, in 1 Samuel 24 there&#8217;s a\nreference to the cave of En Gedi. Though you may not recognize that name, I&#8217;m\nsure you&#8217;ll know if I tell you that something special happened there. That was\nthe cave where David cut off a piece of Saul&#8217;s skirt without Saul knowing about\nit. But as we try to take the events of the psalm as David describes it and the\nevents of what happened in the cave of En Gedi, they don&#8217;t mix. They don&#8217;t fit.\nAnd so most scholars do not believe this psalm comes out of that experience.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">However, there is another cave that is mentioned in\nthe life of David called the cave of Adullam. Turn to 1 Samuel 22, where there\nis mention of David&#8217;s involvement with this cave. It will help us to put this\npsalm in its perspective and understand it better. The greater context of 1\nSamuel 22 is that David is running away from Saul. Saul is trying to kill him.\nHe&#8217;s jealous. He&#8217;s angry. He&#8217;s mad. He sees David as his archrival. He&#8217;s chased\nhim all over the countryside, and he&#8217;s after his head. Finally we read in 1\nSamuel 22 (<span style=\"\" class=\"\">nasb)<\/span>:<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">So David departed from there and escaped to the cave\nof Adullam; and when his brothers and all his father&#8217;s household heard of it,\nthey went down there to him. <\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was\nin debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him; and he became\ncaptain over them. Now there were about four hundred men with him.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">David is running from Saul. He now finds a place of\nrefuge, and look at the description of the people who come to be his cohorts\nand his comforters&#8221;everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt,\nand everyone who was discontented.&#8221; Four hundred strong of those people come to\ngather themselves around David as he&#8217;s running away from Saul. In the midst of\nthat experience, in the cave of Adullam, David writes the words that are given\nto us in the 142<\/span>nd<span style=\"\" class=\"\">\nPsalm. It seems rather strange that he describes his loneliness until we\nunderstand the kind of people who are around him. But it isn&#8217;t hard to figure\nout how the kind of people who are described in 1 Samuel 22 would make a man of\nDavid&#8217;s caliber feel rather lonely when he was thrown in among them. They\ncertainly weren&#8217;t the kind of people he could confide in. They weren&#8217;t any\ncomfort to him. Here he is a refugee, a refugee from the wrath of the most\npowerful man in the land, and he&#8217;s holed up with the four hundred men described\nin 1 Samuel 22.<\/span><\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">David gives a detailed description of his loneliness\nin Psalm 142.<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">So now he sits down to write, and he writes the\nwords we just read and describes how he feels. I&#8217;m so grateful that he has done\nthat because it makes me feel better to read how David felt in that situation.\nHe&#8217;s descriptive. He goes into great detail to describe the emotional feelings\nof being alone. I&#8217;ve read tons of literature on loneliness in preparation for\nthese messages. I haven&#8217;t read anything that comes close to the beauty of\nDavid&#8217;s description of what he felt. Let&#8217;s trace through the experience of this\nman and his emotions.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">The first thing he says in verse 3 is that he is\ndisoriented. He says, &#8220;My spirit was overwhelmed within me.&#8221; Like some fierce\nflood has rushed down upon him and he can barely stand up against its might.\nLiterally the phrase means that his spirit is muffled upon him. When his way\nand his spirit is so wrapped up in trouble and gloom, his spirit is muffled\nwithin him, and it&#8217;s a picturesque phrase of his spirit trying to reach out and\nexpress himself, but even that is muffled. And he&#8217;s overwhelmed. He&#8217;s lost his\nway. He can&#8217;t figure out what to do. He&#8217;s totally disoriented. His powers of\njudgment are gone, and there he is.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">He goes on to say that not only is he disoriented,\nbut he is deserted. Notice verse 4. &#8220;Look to the right and see; For there is no\none who regards me.&#8221; These lonely words, &#8220;No one cares for my soul.&#8221; Total\nabandonment. Rejection. Isolation. Hunted by Saul, abandoned by his friends,\nand surrounded by the world, David was alone.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Disoriented and deserted, he goes on to say that the\nresult of those two things in his life caused depression. He was depressed.\nVerse 6, &#8220;For I am brought very low.&#8221; Literally it means to go into a valley\nexperience emotionally, to be brought down to the lowest ebb of human life. He\nnow turns his thoughts of disorientation and desertion inward and it begins to\nmake an impact upon his own spirit. He is depressed. All of his hope is gone.\nAll of his joy is gone. He can&#8217;t think about anything positive in the future.\nHe is at the lowest point in his life. In the language of today, he is bottomed\nout.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">He has no hope for the future. Listen to his words\nof defeat in verse 6. &#8220;Deliver me from my persecutors, for they are too strong\nfor me.&#8221; He&#8217;s defeated. It&#8217;s one thing to be depressed and to have some hope\nthat some day things are going to get better. But David is down at his lowest\npoint, and he sees no hope of it improving. He sees around him that all of\nthose who are against him are stronger than he is. He realizes that he does not\nhave the strength in his little band of men to go after those who are after\nhim. He feels the walls closing in around him, and there is no way to escape.\nDefeat is just around the corner, and he describes it in terms of doom. He\nsays, I am in prison and there is no way out.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Those are picturesque words, aren&#8217;t they? What\ncauses a man to feel like that? It might be that those emotions come upon a man\nwho is serving God in a place of leadership and his position of servanthood\nisolates him from every other person because of his position. It may be that\nthose kinds of emotions are felt by single people. How many of you who are\nsingle have come to say to me, &#8220;Pastor, amen. I know what you are talking\nabout. I understand that. It is a lonely world.&#8221; Maybe those emotions can be\nfelt by a person who is growing old, who seems to be growing right out of his\nexperience and memories and opportunities with those around him. These emotions\nare often felt by the suffering and sick. Sometimes surviving a spouse that you\nhave lived with for many years brings those feelings of alienation from God.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Sometimes breaking up with somebody that you love\ncauses these feelings. Young people, you know about that. Sometimes divorce\nbrings those feelings. Sometimes being a stranger in a new country or in a new\ncity triggers them. I&#8217;ve had the privilege of shaking hands with people at the\ndoor who have said to me, &#8220;Pastor, we just moved here,&#8221; and they name some town\nof which I have never heard.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Sometimes those feelings come because we are\nseparated from our parents and from our loved ones. We said  to our\nparents this week as they headed back across the country. Though we didn&#8217;t go\ninto all of the things David expressed here, we felt a kind of sadness and\nloneliness.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">We have felt all of these emotions David describes\nat one time or another, but perhaps not at that level. But I have good news for\nyou. David doesn&#8217;t just tell us what it felt like; he gives us a clue regarding\nhow to deal with it. What I&#8217;m going to share with you in the next few moments\nis a formula that&#8217;s found in this psalm, that is the best way to deal with\ndepression and loneliness I have found in the Word of God. Some of what I may\nsay is going to surprise you because it&#8217;s  honesty, and yet it is no\nmore honest than the words of David. So listen carefully and don&#8217;t forget to\ntry what God tells you to do with this information.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I watched David in the midst of his lonely\nexperience; I see him with all of these emotions being expressed, and I ask\nmyself, <em>What would he do?<\/em><\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">David deals with his loneliness by verbalizing his\nemotions.<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">The first thing I notice is that he verbalized.\nThat&#8217;s step number one. Notice how carefully the Scripture records the fact\nthat David cried unto the Lord. Verse 1: &#8220;I cry aloud with my voice to the\nLord. I make supplication with my voice to the Lord.&#8221; Verse 2: &#8220;I pour out my\ncomplaint before him. I declare my trouble before Him.&#8221; Verse 3: &#8220;When my\nspirit was overwhelmed within me You knew my path. In the way where I walk they\nhave hidden a trap for me.&#8221; Verse 5: &#8220;I cried out to you, O Lord. I said, &#8216;You\nare my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.'&#8221; Verse 7: &#8220;Bring my soul\nout of prison that I may give thanks to Your name.&#8221;<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Over and over again David says, <em>I cried unto\nthee, I expressed how I felt unto thee.<\/em> He verbalized his problem. Now,\nthat may seem like a trite thing to say from a psalm, but let me tell you that\nthe first step toward healing from a lonely heart is to express what you feel\nto the God in heaven who is your Maker. To be able to come honestly to God and\nsay, &#8220;Lord, these are the feelings within me. I&#8217;m crying unto you. I&#8217;m opening\nmy heart to you verbally. This is what I feel like. This is where I am.&#8221; Our\nprayers are so denying. We come to God with our pious platitudes and we do all\nof our praying on the surface while deep down in here we&#8217;re hurting\ndesperately. Somehow the best friend we have in the world, the One who has\ncreated us and redeemed us, has never yet heard the cry of our heart out of the\ndespair of our situation.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">One of the things that David teaches me is thisit&#8217;s\nall right to tell God what you feel. That&#8217;s the start. That&#8217;s how a friend\nshould be free to talk with a friend.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <em>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Illustration:<\/span>\n      <\/em>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\"> There&#8217;s a little book of writings called <em>Psalms\nof My Life<\/em>. In it, the author tells us about an experience where he is away\nfrom home and away from his loved ones and he&#8217;s staying in a motel, and he\nwrites this little prayer, which is the prayer he prayed to God. I think he&#8217;s\ncaptured what I&#8217;m talking about. This is what he wrote:<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Dear God, I am alone tonight, all alone, a thousand\nmiles from home. There&#8217;s no one here who knows my name except the clerk, and he\nspelled it wrong. There&#8217;s no one to eat dinner with, no one to laugh at my\njokes, no one to listen to my gripes, no one to be happy with me about what\nhappened today and to say &#8220;That&#8217;s great.&#8221; No one cares. There&#8217;s just this lousy\nbed and the slush in the streets outside between the buildings. I feel sorry\nfor myself, and I have plenty good reason to. Maybe I ought to say I&#8217;m on top\nof it, praise the Lord, things are great; but they&#8217;re not. Tonight it&#8217;s all\ngray slush.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">We say, <em>Should a man ever talk to his God like\nthat?<\/em> Don&#8217;t you think God in heaven knows that&#8217;s what you feel? Do you\nthink it&#8217;s a surprise to him? Don&#8217;t you think your Father in heaven is a friend\nwho is close enough to you and cares enough about you that he&#8217;s willing for you\nto come and cry out of the despair and loneliness of your soul and verbalize\nwhat you feel?<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <em>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Illustration:<\/span>\n      <\/em>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\"> I remember the first time I had the courage to\nverbally and audibly tell God, &#8220;Lord, I really don&#8217;t feel like talking to you\ntoday. I really don&#8217;t. I want to feel that way and I know I should feel that\nway, but, Lord, in my spirit and in my heart I just don&#8217;t feel like talking to\nyou today.&#8221; Since I&#8217;ve been here there have been a few Mondays like that. But\nyou know, that&#8217;s the beginning place. God can take you from where you are to\nwhere you need to be.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">David deals with his loneliness by visualizing his\nemotions.<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Now the second thing to do is this. You visualize.\nListen to what David said. Verse 2, &#8220;I pour out my complaint before him. I\ndeclare my trouble before him.&#8221; David didn&#8217;t just describe how he felt, he\npainted God a picture. He said, &#8220;Lord, I&#8217;m going to lay this thing out for you.\nThis is where I am. You see these sorrowful people you sent down here to help\nmethe distressed, the debtors, the discontented. These are the folks that are\nAnd he paints the whole sordid mess for God. He just lays it out in front of\nhim. Take a look at this, God. Look at this! I know how he feels. You should\nsee some of the pictures I&#8217;ve painted God. You should see the picture I painted\nafter I&#8217;d been here one week. It was a big canvas. David said, &#8220;I poured out my\ncomplaint before God.&#8221; He let him see the whole thing. That was not only good\nfor God, that was good for David.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">The thing that David teaches us not only here but in\nhis other writings is that it&#8217;s all right to visualize your problem as long as\nyou keep it in perspective. Do you remember when the people of Israel were at\nKBarnea and they all went over there to look at the Promised Land? The\nmajority of the reporters came back and they painted a picture of the giants\nand all of the problems over in the land. What did they say? They said, &#8220;Hey,\nwe&#8217;re in trouble. Those people over there are big. I mean, they&#8217;re like\ngiants.&#8221; What was the rest of it? We&#8217;re like what? Grasshoppers. So the picture\nthey painted was the picture of <em>them and us<\/em> in the same frame. Then\nJoshua and Caleb went, too, and they came back and got their paintbrushes out\nand painted the same thing. Did they forget the giants? No. They painted the\ngiants. But they didn&#8217;t paint <em>us<\/em>. They painted <em>God.<\/em> Didn&#8217;t they?\nThey painted the giants and God, and put them in the picture. You know what a\ndifference that made? That&#8217;s why they could vote for the project instead of\nagainst it, because in the frame where their picture was were the giants and\nGod instead of the giants and us. You know that&#8217;s what we do so often. We paint\nour problems and we put ourselves in the frame with them instead of with God.\nWhat a difference God makes in any painting.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Verbalize it. Visualize it.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">David deals with his loneliness by recognizing that\nGod already knows what David is telling him.<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Now, here&#8217;s step number three. <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Recognize, verse 3, that God already knows\nwhat you&#8217;re telling him. That&#8217;s so neat. Verse 3, &#8220;When my spirit was\noverwhelmed within me,&#8221; notice this, &#8220;you knew my path.&#8221; Sometimes we tell God\nall these things like we want him to find out. He already knows. Sometimes we\ncome to him so tentatively. &#8220;Lord, I&#8217;m not sure I should tell you this&#8221; He\nalready knows.<\/span><\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">It&#8217;s hard to tell somebody\nbad news. It&#8217;s not nearly as hard to tell them if they already know. The\nScripture teaches us over and over again that &#8220;he knows the way that I take;\nwhen he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold,&#8221; Job 23:10. Psalm 37:23, &#8220;The\nsteps of man are established by the Lord.&#8221; When we come to visualize and to\nverbalize our problem of loneliness before God, we need to recognize that he\nalready has seen this show before, and he understands. What comfort and\nencouragement that brings to our hearts. What courage it instills within us as\nwe pray.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">David deals with his loneliness by realizing God&#8217;s\nprovision.<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Now notice fourthly, we\nrealize our provision in God.<\/span>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">We\nverbalize and we visualize and we recognize God knows. Now we&#8217;re going to\nrealize what we have in him. Verse 5 says: &#8220;I cried out to You, O Lord; I said,\n&#8216;You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.'&#8221; You see, what&#8217;s\nhappened to David is he has started down here on the cycle. He&#8217;s moved up and\nhe&#8217;s gradually come around the top. Now all of a sudden instead of seeing his\nproblem in center stage, his problem has moved off to side stage; and God has\nbeen moved into the middle, and he sees God big and strong, and his problem\nbegins to fade away. He sees God as his refuge and his portion, and everything\nstarts to fall together and to fit.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <em>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Illustration:<\/span>\n      <\/em>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Someone has\nwritten about this matter of God being our portion in the land of the living; I\nthink these words capture the whole thing. They put it this way, &#8220;Friend,\nthere&#8217;s no living in the land of the living like living on the living God.&#8221;\nThat&#8217;s what David was saying. He saw his problem, but he then saw his God and\nhe realized all that he had in him.<\/span>\n      <\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <em>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Illustration:<\/span>\n      <\/em>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\"> Sort of like the picture we\nhave back in Daniel. Do you remember when the Hebrew children were in the fiery\nfurnace? The Scripture says they looked into that flame and they saw one in the\nmidst of that flame like unto the Son of God. It is through a picture in\nHebrews 13 that God tells us he will never leave us nor forsake us.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <em>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Illustration: <\/span>\n      <\/em>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">It is another way of\nexpressing what Isaiah the prophet expresses in Isaiah 43:13 that when we go through\nall of those hideous experiences like fires and waters and floods and\ndifficulties that God goes through those experiences with us.<\/span>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">\nPlease, note that the Scripture says that he doesn&#8217;t go into those experiences\nwith us; he goes <em>through<\/em><\/span>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\"> those experiences with us. That means there&#8217;s going to be an end to\nthem. Annie Johnson Flint has captured this in her writing about Isaiah&#8217;s\npromise. She writes:<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">When thou passes through the waters deep the waves\nmay be and cold, but Jehovah is our refuge and his promise is our hold. For the\nLord himself hath said it, he the faithful God and true. When thou comest to\nthe waters, thou shalt not go down but through.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Seas of sorrow, seas of trial, bitterest anguish,\nfiercest pain, rolling surges of temptation sweeping over heart and brain, they\nshall never overflow us for we know his word if true. All his waves and all his\nbillows he will lead us safely through.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Threatening breakers of destruction, doubts,\ninsidious undertow shall not sink us, shall not drag us out to ocean depths of\nwoe, for his promise shall sustain us. Praise the Lord whose word is true. We\nshall not go down or under, for he sayeth thou passest through.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">What an encouragement. The God who is our refuge and\nour portion has promised to get us on the other side of the lonely, difficult\nexperience. That was what was firing the soul of David when he came to the end\nof that prayer.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">David deals with his loneliness by summarizing his\nvictory.<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Now, you see him working through all of this. You\nsee him verbalizing and visualizing and recognizing and realizing. There&#8217;s one\nlast thing at the end of the psalm. He summarizes his victory. Read verse 7:\n&#8220;Bring my soul out of prison so that I may give thanks for your name.&#8221; Now\nnotice, &#8220;The righteous will surround me, for You will deal bountifully with\nme.&#8221;<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">You see where David has come in just a few verses of\nScripture? From crying out unto God in his lonely despair to finally the\nconfidence in God that everything is going to be all right and that no good\nthing will he withheld from them that walk uprightly. God is going to deal\nbountifully with him.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">You know what&#8217;s wrong with most of us? We try to get\nto verse 7 without walking through the other verses. We pull our belts in and\nstand up tall and say, &#8220;Oh, God will take care of me. I&#8217;ll be all right. He&#8217;s\ngoing to deal bountifully with me.&#8221; This is instead of honestly coming to that\nafter we&#8217;ve gone through the whole cycle. It&#8217;s all right to do that. You see? I\ndon&#8217;t know if that makes you feel better, but it sure makes me feel like I&#8217;m on\nbetter ground when I see that&#8217;s where David&#8217;s been. If it&#8217;s all right for him,\nit&#8217;s all right for me.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Now, you don&#8217;t want to stay in verses one and two or\nthree or four. You need to get to verse seven, but you have to travel the road\nto verse seven. Some of you don&#8217;t need this message. You&#8217;ve been in verses\nthree and four and five all your life. I want to get you to verse seven. It may\ntake a little while. But some of the rest of you are pious, spiritual people\nwho think that you live in verse seven all the time, and it just isn&#8217;t so. We\nare so proud and so  and so determined we&#8217;re going to do it our\nway, and God has his plan laid out for us.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <em>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Illustration: <\/span>\n      <\/em>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Theodore Kyler tells the story of a woman who\nwas striving to find rest for her troubled soul. She was going through a bad\ntime, and was in her summerhouse all by herself trying to sort things out in\nher mind. She had lost her husband. She was very much alone. She was trying to\nput her life back together.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">She was sitting in the middle of the big, open room\nin her summerhouse. She noticed that a bird flew in the window. She watched\nwhat was happening absentmindedly. It was one of those big,  rooms\nand had windows up along the top, and the bird flew in the window and then up\nat the top realized that it was trapped and confined, and was trying to get\nout. And it flew against every one of the windows trying to make it out through\nwhere the light was coming in, and nothing. It just banged against the window\nand sort of fell back and then would fly to the other side and bang against the\nwindow and fall back.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Every time there was a little crack or crevice that\nit looked like it was possible, the bird just tried to force its way out of\nthat house. And she just sort of sat there watching all of this, taking it all\nin. She thought in her heart, <em>Poor bird, why do you not come down lower and\nyou would see this open door and fly out easily.<\/em> But the bird kept wounding\nitself against the closed window trying to force its body through every crevice\nthat it saw. And at last, its wings grew tired and it flew lower and lower in\nits exhaustion until it was on a level with the open door. And then seeing the\nway of escape, the little feathered creature suddenly found freedom, and soon its\nsong was heard in the trees outside.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">All of a sudden the light dawned upon this woman&#8217;s\nmind. She said, <em>I&#8217;m like that bird. I, through my pride and \nhave been trying to fly so high to see the door up there, and God has been\ntrying to humble me so I could see the door that was down here. <\/em>Her heart\nwas quieted and she realized, as the Psalmist did, that though her spirit was\nnow overwhelmed with difficulty, God still had an open door through which she\ncould find freedom if she would just stop her struggling and humbly wait for\nhis direction.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I think that&#8217;s the message God wants to get through\nto us tonight out of this psalm. It&#8217;s not wrong to be in difficult straits. We\nall go through them. If we haven&#8217;t, we will. We need to express where we are\nand tell God how we feel. We need to let him bring to us in the midst of that\nopen confession of our weakness the strength that is available to us through\nhis Word. Then we have to be willing to get down where the help is, swallow our\npride and our  and put all of the ideas that we have about our\nability to handle every situation without God all behind us and say, &#8220;Lord,\nshow me the door at whatever level, and I&#8217;ll go through.&#8221;<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">David\nJeremiah is senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in San Diego,\nCalifornia. His books include <\/span>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Before It&#8217;s Too Late<\/span>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\"> by Thomas Nelson Publishers and <\/span>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Overcoming\nLoneliness <\/span>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">by\nHere&#8217;s Life Publishers.<\/span>\n    <\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[306],"tax_ctp_authors":[1320],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[170],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[412],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_sermon_series":[],"tax_ctp_tags":[3762,3797,4383],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-33265","sermons","type-sermons","status-publish","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-david-jeremiah","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-depravity","tax_ctp_tags-discouragement","tax_ctp_tags-loneliness"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>God&#039;s Cure for Loneliness - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/gods-cure-for-loneliness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"God&#039;s Cure for Loneliness - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Illustration: Here is a story of a preacher who after 18 years of ministry quit and went into the business world lonely, discouraged, and defeated. 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