Paradox of Loneliness, Part 2

Pastor and Bible teacher, Dr. Michael Youssef, beginning this episode of Leading the Way. You are not faceless zero to the Father. You are not an insignificant nothing to the Father. God wants to move in from the outskirts of your dailiness, of your loneliness.

He wants to move into the very center of your being, where He can infuse life, where He can infuse hope, where He can infuse reason for living. There are well over 8 billion, that's billion, B, people living on the earth. And even if you live in a great big city where it seems like all 8 billion of those people are right there in your neighborhood, you still may feel alone today. But do remember that when you feel unnoticed or excluded or misunderstood, God is right there to meet you.

Hello. Welcome to Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. Today a look at how God wants to take your times of loneliness and make it a time of aloneness with Him. Here's pastor and author, Dr. Michael Youssef, to begin. In a small Lutheran church in Southern California, in a time they called a new pastor, a new minister to come and be their pastor. And it wasn't long after he got there, he realized that this church has not a clue about what being the body of Christ is all about.

And after a great deal of prayer, he decided to challenge them. I mean their feeling was that when you come to church, you don't talk to anybody, you don't greet anybody. You come in and you get through that ordeal which is called the service.

And then you get out as fast as a lightning bug and talk to no one. Well finally the pastor got up and he said look, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. As of next week I'm going to challenge each one of you to turn around to their neighbor and greet them in Jesus' name.

Well at the end of that service where the announcement was made, a man turned to a lady sitting next to him and he was greeting her and she said to him, wait a minute mister, this greeting business will not start until next week. How common it is for churches that are supposed to be a haven and a resource in overcoming loneliness often adds to loneliness. In my last message we looked at the loneliness that stems out of guilt and sin and disobedience to the father because disobedience causes to run and hide from him.

And the scripture showed us how to deal with this. In this message I want to look at loneliness that is rooted in isolation, loneliness that is rooted in alienation. Although isolation does not have to be physical isolation, although physical isolation can be very painful, yet loneliness of isolation can come from the feeling of not being appreciated, from the feeling of being taken for granted, from feeling of being ignored. It comes from rejection. It comes from not being understood. Now single people particularly feel this form of loneliness.

They feel it keenly and naturally they are sensitive about it. Well I began to learn about the feeling of singles and how they feel in terms of their loneliness. When I was happily talking to a single woman and very happily expounding to her first Corinthians chapter seven of how God has ordained that some remain single all their life. Upon which she bolted out of her saddle and she said, ordained my foot, bring me a man and I'll marry him right now.

Well I learned in a hurry not to take the scripture out of context. But as I reflected upon these words of loneliness of isolation, I felt these words of a precious sister who feels cheated and unfulfilled. Yet I want to assure singles that they are not the only people who have an exclusive right on the loneliness of isolation, on the loneliness of alienation. I have met husbands and wives who are desperately lonely though married. I have met husbands and wives who have gone their separate ways immediately after they said I do.

I have met husbands and wives who've managed to build huge thick wall between them. Husbands and wives who have lived in two separate ways, two separate worlds most of their married life. Husbands and wives who are so isolated from each other that their loneliness surpasses anything that single people experience.

But not only singles and not only married couples can feel the loneliness of isolation. But I've met teenagers whose loneliness of isolation is so great that you can read it all over their faces. Teenagers whose parents dominate their lives on the one hand or refuse to discipline them on the other. Teenagers whose parents lack of understanding of their particular pain especially growing pain. Parents whose self-centeredness leaves no room for them to express themselves. Teenagers who feel rejected by their peer, I've seen it on their faces.

They deeply feel the pain of luminous that stems from alienation. What about senior citizen? Well having been reared in a culture that respects and revere old age it is very difficult to comprehend the way many of our elders are treated. My main responsibility in Sydney as an associate director was basically to work with the students. Well I went to the director and asked him if he would add a little bit to my responsibility.

He was shocked and he said you're the first one to ever ask for more work. And for a couple of years I went and visited the elderly and all I've experienced firsthand the loneliness and the isolation. But I want you to turn with me to the scripture because in the scripture you're going to find every group that I've just mentioned is represented there. In the scripture there is examples, there are examples of those who have succeeded in learning how to conquer loneliness. But then there are those who have failed to recognize the loneliness and overcome it with the power of God. David is an example of those who have failed.

When his first wife Michael, the daughter of Saul, kept on nagging him, kept on criticizing him, what she did, she sent him into the arms of another woman. But then there are examples of men and women whose isolation and brokenness and alienation led to that loneliness but they learned how to overcome it. They've learned how to conquer it.

They've learned how to have victory over it. These examples would tell you and would tell me of how God can, and he will if we let him, bring you fulfillment and joy, tear down the barriers, heal the brokenness, restore the whiteness, mend estrangements, destroy strongholds that have been built up, replace the years that have been eaten by the locusts of anger, the locusts of unforgiveness, the locusts of bitterness. Joseph is an example of that. As a young man, he grew estranged among his siblings. Their attitude of hatred and jealousy toward him even spelt on his father who favored him. Joseph experienced the kind of loneliness that you and I will never know, will never understand. Growing up, Joseph was isolated from his brothers.

Even though they shared the same food, they shared the same tent, they shared the same father, but he was totally isolated. And one day as his brothers blinded with hatred and jealousy toward him, they bound him up and they threw him in a dry well. As if this was not enough of loneliness, he was sold as a slave in a foreign land. Oh how he must have felt when he ended up in a strange country eating strange food with strange people, people who were worshiping strange gods. As if all this loneliness and isolation was not enough, when he ended up as a slave in Potiphar's house, the Bible records the very first case of sexual harassment in history.

Potiphar's wife probably was ignored and neglected by her husband and having no morals whatsoever, she began to harass Joseph. And yet Joseph's integrity and purity caused him to suffer injustice and consequently he was thrown into the prison with hardened criminals. Can you imagine Joseph's loneliness? Can you imagine his isolation in this miserable dungeon in Egypt? Can you imagine Joseph's loneliness and isolation, hated by his brothers, betrayed, separated from his father?

Imagine the emptiness of having no one to fellowship with, no one to worship with, no one to tell you about the God of your great grandfather Abraham and his promises, no one to comfort you, no one to tell you to look up, no one to encourage you, no one to pray for you. The pain of his loneliness and isolation must have felt like a bone crushing his bones. Yet through it all, Joseph learned to turn his pain of loneliness into trusting in God. He learned to turn the pain of his loneliness into aloneness with God.

In the distress of the dry well, in the loneliness of his cell, in the face of injustice and false accusation, he learned to commune with God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Joseph understood the paradox of loneliness. Joseph understood that aloneness with God, please hear me right, aloneness with God is a cure for the pain of loneliness and isolation. Joseph learned that aloneness with God takes away the sting of loneliness and isolation. Joseph learned that aloneness with God confronts the pain of loneliness and carries it away.

I believe the Lord Jesus gave us an example in this. That's why the scripture said that often he went away in a lonely place to spend time with his father. But you see, often Jesus was misunderstood. He often was falsely accused. Often he was pressured to change his directions even from the dearest and the nearest to him. Even his brothers in the Gospel of John, we read that they did not believe in him.

The chief disciples, Peter, had a different vision for that from that of Jesus. And Satan would not leave him alone. He constantly harassed him, constantly tempting him.

We only know one experience. We don't know how many times he must have come and tried to tempt the Lord Jesus Christ or how often he must have suffered from loneliness of isolation. And that is why he had to go and be away alone with his father and often read it in the Gospels. Often whenever he got away and spent time with his father, he was refreshed. He was invigorated. He was ready to come back to the valleys and minister again and heal again and feed again and touch again. We don't know how many times Satan must have come to Joseph in the prison and said, Joseph, are you pure and holy? He did not want to betray your employer. Joseph, you thought you were great and you had dreams from God.

Where are the dreams now? You're in the cell of Egypt. But Joseph would not give in to Satan's temptation.

He would not give in and said, yeah, you're right. But then the Bible gives us another example of a person who suffered what you can consider to be the ultimate when it comes to loneliness of isolation, mentally and physically. Well, we don't know her name. The Bible would not tell us her name, but we know her story. Luke chapter eight, a woman who was weak, friendless, alone, but she was desperately lonely. She suffered from a disease that made her ceremoniously unclean. Obviously, she was a single woman and if she was married, her husband would have had the right to divorce her because she became ceremoniously unclean because of the hemorrhage of blood.

In their mind, it was associated with sin. So she was ostracized from society as a whole because of her illness. Now, I want to tell you, please hear me right because there are seasons for loneliness and you might not be going through it now, but you go through it sometime. But this kind of loneliness that this Hebrew woman experienced in that Hebrew culture, you will never understand and I'll never understand. But she's not unlike many in our culture, many who are desperately lonely, many who occupy the pews in churches across the land. Oh, they're well-dressed, they're intelligent, but also lonely. They probably sit on boards of great corporations, occupy positions of influence, yet they might go home to mansions or townhouses or condominiums or flats or apartments desperately lonely. They share their private lives with very few if any and they know the meaning of alienation and isolation. They have one thing in common with this woman here who so tentatively, so timidly pushed away through the throng of the crowd and touched the hymn of Jesus' garment. They feel that they are only one in a crowd, that their inner anguish is not noticed by anyone.

But you know what? It was noticed by the most important one, Jesus. And this woman's mustard seed type of faith said to her, if you just get close, if you just touch the hymn of his garment, you'll be healed.

Just trust him, get close. You see, all on her mind was her physical pain. Now, some of you might be suffering physical illness. You know somebody who's suffering from physical illness. And all you can think about, all they can think about is their healing. All they can think about is their illness.

And all they ask God for is their illness. But you see, Jesus understood the depth of this woman's loneliness. The Bible said that the moment she touched the hymn of Jesus' garment, the hemorrhage stopped. The miracle has taken place. She was healed.

And you say, wait a minute. Jesus could have just left it at that. Jesus knew that power came out of him. Jesus knew that this woman was physically healed.

And that's enough, isn't it? They say, God, just heal me. If you can just heal me, God. Jesus could have let her keep her faith private. But no, he stopped and he sought to identify her.

Why? Because beyond her physical healing, Jesus wanted to bring her out of her loneliness and isolation and alienation. Jesus wanted her to come out and be freed from Satan's oppression. Jesus wanted to come out and be released from Satan's stronghold. Jesus wanted her to come out and be delivered from Satan's snare of her loneliness and isolation. That is why Jesus said, someone touch me. Jesus knew who she was.

But he wanted to identify her and give her courage. You may be someone like this woman or like Joseph suffering injustice and you're suffering in your loneliness of isolation and no one seemed to care and no one seemed to understand. You might be a person who is hiding in your office after hours. You might be hiding in the bottle of a Jack Daniel. You might be hiding behind some chemical substance abuse. You might be hiding behind sexual addiction and immorality. You might be hiding in the midst of a crowd. You might be hiding in the very church pews. And the Bible said there is a friend that sticks closer to you than a brother and his name is Jesus. But you have to reach out and touch the hem of his garment.

Please hear me. You are not faceless zero to the father. You are not an insignificant nothing to the father. God wants to move in from the outskirts of your dailiness of your loneliness. He wants to move into the very center of your being where he can infuse life, where he can infuse hope, where he can infuse reason for living. God wants to move in from the silence of your shame and from the bitterness of your battles to overcome the barriers as he did with this anguished woman as he did with Joseph. Reach and touch the hem of his garment today. For once he is in the center of your life.

Once you get him moving from the peripheries of your life, your loneliness will pale to insignificance. I'm going to tell you this and I'm going to conclude. You know we often sing the choruses and the hymns produced by Hosanna Integrity Music, Don Moen. Don's sister and brother-in-law who is a medical doctor have four children and both father and mother were up all night packing the van so they can go away on a long vacation. In the morning they began to head out and after a few hours was hit by a semi truck. Don's sister and her husband were not injured but the four boys were scattered all over the street from the impact on the van. They were all over the road, one in the ditch and one on the side of the road.

Three of the four boys have survived but the eldest boy as he was thrown out of the van hit his head in a fence post and killed him instantly. Don watched his sister and her husband live in that wilderness of loneliness and pain. He watched how they became isolated in their agony so he wrote this song. God will make a way where there is seems to be no way. He works in ways we cannot see. He will make a way for me. He will be my guide.

Hold me closely to his side. With love and strength for each new day he will make a way. He will make a way. By the roadway in the wilderness he will lead me and rivers in the desert I will see. Heaven and earth will fade but his word will still remain. He will do something new today. He will make a way. He will make a way.

God because he cares deeply for you will always make a way to meet you in your seasons of loneliness. Thank you for listening to Leading the Way. Want to hear more from Dr. Youssef? Learn online with the Leading the Way app or by listening to the podcast.

You can get more information when you go to ltw.org. Another way to find God in your times of loneliness is by meeting him each day through Dr. Youssef's 60-day devotional book. It's called My Refuge, My Strength.

Here's more about it. In times of trouble, where do you run? When bad things happen, where do you find comfort and assurance?

In times of national uncertainty, personal crisis or devastating news, how can we manage our fears for the future? Whenever we're frazzled, whenever we're frustrated, whenever we're flustered, the only safe place to return to is where we have housed the Word of God. In his newest book, My Refuge, My Strength, Dr. Michael Youssef takes you on a 60-day journey towards a deeper understanding of the peace God offers us through Christ.

One hundred and ninety-two pages full of encouraging devotions that explore powerful biblical examples and life-changing truths about our faithful God. Order your special hardcover edition of My Refuge, My Strength, from Leading the Way today. Request your copy from Leading the Way. Start by going to ltw.org. That's ltw.org. Oh, and you can always call and speak to one of our ministry representatives. Give us a call.

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Click the store link and then Digital Resources. Do it today. Well, that's our broadcast for today. Don't forget to join Dr. Michael Youssef for the next episode of Leading the Way Audio and consider participating in this month's Giving Challenge. Learn more at ltw.org. As we enter into the December Gift Challenge, I want to thank God publicly and thank you, your partners in the Gospel, for all that you have done during 2024 and all that you're going to do in the future, because God opened doors I never dreamed that he would open. So let me invite you to join us in this great opportunity of the December Gift Challenge. You can learn more about it at ltw.org. This program is brought to you by Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. Connect further with audio and video content at ltw.org or through your favorite social media platform, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and more.