Best Friend or Worst Enemy

Loneliness... It can be your best friend or your worst enemy.  Have you ever been in a crowded room and still felt completely lonely, not alone but lonely. I have. I felt like I was the only one who truly understood the feelings or thoughts I may have been having at the moment. I have found recently that I can allow this emotion to be a friend or a very dangerous enemy. It depends on how I allow it to have control over me or if I take control of it and use it to learn and grow. In recent weeks I have not written much. I took a break. It was not all by accident but more by the avoidance of wanting to hear what God was saying to me. I was in a situation where I was lonely and felt I could and should leave it up to God to make it better. What I wasn't willing to hear was that God will give me His strength but he is not here to enable me to not take responsibilty for my own actions and efforts in a situation. Like all parent/ child relationships if the parent does every thing for the child, they become so dependant on them that they will give no effort to taking any responsibilty for their own choices and their own lives. God wanted me to see that He did give me a choice because He loves me and doesn't want to force me to love Him. This would not be love at all. Today as I read Psalm 68 I read :

"God makes a home for the lonely;

He leads out the prisoners into 

prosperity, Only the rebellious dwell

in a parched land."

(Psalm 68:6 NASB)

In this verse the word for lonely in Hebrew was yachiyd which meant the life (as not to be replaced); desolate, only (child,son), solitary.  God will not take me out of my lonely situation but He has provided a home for me in His plan.  If I am willing to seek Him, He will lead me out of the situation into prosperity. I will not have to stay in the place of loneliness but I will move through it and into a place of growth from it. God doesn't do all the work for us and just pick us up and place us somewhere else. He stays with us through the moments and provides a better place for us if we are seeking Him. God doesn't wait until we are completely out of the situation to give us hope though. Psalm 68: 9 reads...

" Thou didst shed abroad plentiful

rain, O God; Thou didst confirm

Thine inheritance, when it was parched."

(NASB)

God provides even in the midst of things. The verses before verse nine speak of earth quakes and lots of rain. The situation I was in may have been very stressful and hard to handle at the time but God never left. I may have felt lonely and like no one understood but God wanted me to see He was there. Verse 19 states:

"Blessed be the Lord, who daily 

bears our burden. 

The God who is our 

salvation"

(NASB)

The word daily in this verse is translated as remains or doesn't leave. It isn't just once a day that God comes and checks in on our lives. He REMAINS with us. He satisfies our spirit. He fills us. We can choose to allow loneliness to take over our emotions or our lives and be our worst enemy. Or we can choose to settle into loneliness and find the love God alone can give us.