Its good once again to share with you. Let us praise Him and sing: Blessed Assurance
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Let us go into a time of prayer and sing: There is none like you
Let us pray
Dear Lord, Your Word says that when we wait on You, You will renew our strength (Isaiah 40:31). Although my strength is depleted, I am choosing to rest and spend time in Your presence, recharging my battery. I refuse to run myself ragged, listening to the voice of the enemy that I should just try harder. I trust in Your infinite capacity of strength. It will never run out. Thank You for working in my weakness and pouring Your strength into me. Today I faced things that felt like too much for me. And tomorrow I’m going to face more of the same things and probably new challenges as well. I need Your strength. I need You to hold me up and stand next to me in life’s storms. Perhaps I never really understood how literal Your promises are to give us strength for the day. Maybe tomorrow could be my opportunity to learn what that means on a deeper level. But right now, I am praying for supernatural strength and healing to permeate every cell of my being so that I can find renewed strength beyond my natural ability. I know that this strength comes from You. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Please share with me in the Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
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Before we go to the word let us listen to the Staff Songster sing: Everywhere
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I’m Lonely
One of the most common prayer requests that I get is I’m so lonely, please pray for me. It never ceases to amaze me how we can be surrounded by people and yet, still feel lonely. That’s probably because loneliness has nothing to do with how physically close, we are to other people. It’s more about how emotionally connected we feel.
Loneliness can strike anyone, anytime, anywhere. I was reading a UCB publication on prayer. It shared a request from someone, it said this:
I ask you to pray for me for comfort from the Lord as I’m feeling really lonely just at the moment. I’m away from my family and friends overseas. And I ask you to pray for renewed strength and confidence for me over this coming year to lean more on the Lord, to lift up my worries to Him. Thank you so much.
It’s so natural, isn’t it? So real and every day, this problem of feeling lonely. Me, well, I’m blessed. I enjoy my own company and I enjoy being with family and friends. I’m ok spending time on my own and I must admit, it’s not often I feel lonely, but at times it does creep in. But we’re not all like that are we. Some people depend a lot more on company. Some are over dependent on others and that’s not healthy. But whatever our balance is, whatever our fix is, we can all end up feeling lonely.
There are two promises of Jesus that I’d like to look at today, in this context of loneliness. The first one, He made to His disciples, He said, “It’s good for you that I go away, because if I don’t go, the promised Holy Spirit won’t come.” And the second one was, He said to them, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
You put those two together and what He’s saying is this Just the way that He was physically present with those disciples, a couple of thousand years ago, by sending the Holy Spirit so He is spiritually present with those of us who say, “Jesus I want to follow you”, here and now.
On the one hand, people are desperately lonely. And yet on the other hand, they’re hungering for some authentic spiritual experience – something that’s more than pews, and choirs, and stained glass windows. People are craving for something that is real and alive. And sadly, people never put the two together.
We can do that. We can, in faith, put the two together – our problem of loneliness and our hunger for an authentic spiritual experience. Because if Jesus said, it’s good for you that I go away because I’m going to send my Holy Spirit to dwell in you, to make My home in you, through My Spirit … if that is true, if we can believe in that, even with the smallest bit of faith, Jesus wants to do something. Jesus wants to show the lonely that they don’t have to be lonely anymore.
I do remember a time when I was desperately lonely when I was going through marriage breakdown, 12 years ago. And Jesus did something in me and just gave me that little bit of faith that I needed to believe that He is here, right now. That the moment we say, “Jesus help me please,” He sends His Holy Spirit to comfort and counsel, tomorrow, forever, and ever because He will never leave us or forsake us. I believe that I can come boldly before the throne of grace. And that I’ll find God’s help with exactly the thing that I need at the time that I need it.
When we have a desperate hunger after human company that just isn’t being satisfied, maybe you’re there now, maybe this is something that you’ve got to tuck away for the future, if only we would just hunger first after God’s company, just as much. In fact, I don’t think that until we’ve been drenched in God’s company, in God’s presence, we’re going to be any good company to anyone else.
And in the same way, I don’t think we can really enjoy other peoples’ company, the full and rich thing that relationships with other people have to offer, until we’ve been so hungry for company that we’ve found in the company of Jesus Christ. That we’ve found the joy of that quite beautiful relationship with Jesus Christ, that can sustain us through every high and every low, and everything that this earth has to throw at us.
So often, Jesus allows us to wander in a lonely wilderness to give us the space to discover Him. And maybe, if today, you are desperately lonely, or you know someone who is desperately lonely, maybe today is the day that He is speaking to you and saying, “The reason I allow this loneliness is so in the midst of it all, you would hear my quite still voice. In the midst of it all, you’d notice I’m waiting for you. I’m here, I’m with you. I want to have a relationship with you.”
For me, as I look back on that time in the middle of loneliness, where I got to discover Jesus more and have an authentic relationship with him, maybe, I wouldn’t have discovered that fullness of life, If I hadn’t been lonely and bumped into Jesus in the middle of that and let Him change me. Let him take out some of the rubbish that was swimming round inside me.
I’m not perfect. None of us are. Some days, I’m just not that perfect dad, brother, son and friend. Some days I’m grumpy and tired. But you know something, most days, I’m not. Most days, I get to enjoy the life that Jesus gave me and enjoy the relationships that He has brought me because of that lonely dark time in the wilderness when there was just One Light. And that light was called Jesus Christ!
God has a plan. That plan is to bless us. And when we are starving and hungering for company and there’s just nobody around, there is – Jesus.! And He’s waiting.
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As we listen to he Staff Band play prelude to Lavenham. Let God's Spirit come and bring that peace that goes beyond all understanding. And know that you are never alone
The Benediction
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
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