Contentment Part Seventeen

Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering

Part Seventeen

But there is more. Jesus was not alone because the Father was with Him – but there was a point where even the Father abandoned Him. That is why He cries on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 15:34) fulfilling the prophecy that David wrote in Psalm 22:1, 2:

“My God, my God why have you forsaken me? Why do you remain so distant? Why do you ignore my cries for help? Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer. Every night you hear my voice, but I find no relief.”

We see even more suffering in Ps 22:6-8:
“But I am a worm and not a man. I am scorned and despised by all! Everyone who sees me mocks me. They sneer and shake their heads, saying ‘is this the one who relies on the Lord? Then let the Lord save him! If the Lord loves him so much, let the Lord rescue him!’ ”

Does this sound like the thoughts of man who is not in suffering? Who doesn’t know what depression feels like? Who has never felt loneliness? I don’t think so. Even though Jesus knew that He would have to suffer all of this, He still went to the cross willingly. He would eventually be forsaken by all, even the Father who loved Him; left lonely and naked on the cross. Yet, even though the Father had abandoned Him, He still He trusts in the Father. Ps 22:11 says ‘do not stay so far away from me, for trouble is near, and no one else can help me.’ Vs 19 says ‘You are my strength, come quickly to my aid.’ He goes even further than trusting, and praises God in vs. 23 “Praise the Lord, all who fear Him! Honour Him, all you descendants of Jacob! Show Him reverence, all you descendants of Israel!”

There is even more, because although Jesus knew prophetically that He would be raised up in the third day (when he says ‘destroy this temple, and I will raise it in three days’) He also didn’t know for sure. He was a man, living in a world subjected to time; and so the only thing He could do was trust the Father that the Father would indeed raise Him up on the third day, as the Father had promised. This is why Heb 5:7 says “He offered prayers and pleadings… to the one who could deliver Him out of death.” The scripture then says that God then delivered Him out of death ‘because of His reverence (godly fear) for God.’

So, Jesus both sets our example of the kind of trust we should have in God – in the midst of great suffering – even to the point of praising God for His goodness! Plus, we see that because He underwent such suffering we can trust in Him to give us the same strength in the midst of our suffering! Jesus shows great faith in the Father – that the Father would raise Him from death – and, because Christ now lives in us, He exercises that same faith in and through us. That is His promise to us! We have the very faith of Christ. We need only to rely and trust and obey Him, by the Spirit that longs jealously within us for our affection (James 4:5).

Contentment Part Sixteen

Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering

Part Sixteen

What sustained Christ through this suffering

We have already seen that although Christ was left alone, the Father was with Him as He went to the cross. That would have been a comfort to Jesus; but there was still a driving passion that took Him through the cross. He knew He was going to suffer incredibly, but He was willing to go through the suffering. After all, He says that He lays down His life willingly. (John 10:11.)

In the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night of His betrayal, Jesus prays to the Father that ‘if it is possible, please take this cup from me.’ But then He prays ‘not my will, but your will.’ Christ went through the suffering and loneliness of the cross, and also knew that this suffering was the WILL of the Father for Him. How could He claim that the Father loves Him so much in John 15, John 17 and many other places when He knew that it was the Father’s will to bring Him suffering? We know even further that it was the will of the Father to cause Christ suffering, because of a prophecy concerning Christ in Isaiah 53:10 ‘Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer…’

Jesus must have had a driving passion, a love for the Father to do His will, and a love for us to go through this suffering.

There is more that is relevant to what we are discussing in this chapter. In one sense, Christ was not afraid to go to the cross because He feared God. In Heb 5:7 it says ‘while Jesus was here on earth, He offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could deliver Him out of death. And God heard His prayers because of His reverence for God.’ In the AMP translation, it explains the word ‘reverence’ as ‘His godly fear, His piety, in that He shrank from the horrors of separation from the bright presence of the Father.’ So, Jesus had fear and reverence for the Father.

In another sense, He must have been afraid because else He would not have prayed to the Father to ‘take the cup away from Him.’ He also would not have prayed with ‘prayers and pleadings’ and ‘a loud cry and tears.’ There was the tension, but He ‘overcame the world’ so He never gave into fearing the world in any way.

Contentment Part Fifteen

Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering

Part Fifteen

God using loneliness for His glory and our good is how we can ‘consider it pure joy’

Because God changes our trials into things that will be for good (like we see in examples above) this glorifies Him. He is shown to be the abundant supply for all of our needs, plus shown to be victorious over evil by always working everything for good. Because God is committed to His own glory, and because He loves us so dearly, He is therefore always ready and willing to be our joy and supply in times of loneliness. He is all sufficient. All sufficient in love; all sufficient in power; all sufficient in need. So we hope in Him. This glorifies Him – so we can consider trials of loneliness as ‘pure joy’ because God will turn it around for His own glory and for our own growth. Here is another way God defeats loneliness.

The cross- the all sufficient God experienced our suffering
How awesome God really is, for although He is all sufficient He is also all understanding. Not just because of His infinite wisdom, but because Christ experienced all the suffering we experience first hand through what He had to go through on the cross. Loneliness is certainly no exception!

John 16:32 “But a time is coming, and has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.”

Here Jesus is telling His disciples that He will soon be crucified. He knows that He will be left all alone to go to the cross, and that is the point of why I am bringing it up here. Jesus went to the cross alone. All His friends and disciples abandoned Him. He didn’t have a wife. Everyone watched Him go to the cross, naked and alone. But it is interesting to note what He says – ‘yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.’ Here is a key to the promise God has for us: we might be feeling lonely – but never left alone. He will always be with us.

This promise continues in vs. 33 :
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Firstly, Christ tells us that His death will bring us peace. No more anxiety or worrying, because we can trust Christ. Then, He tells us that ‘in this world you will have trouble.’ Christ hasn’t come to bring us a gospel of comfort, but a gospel of peace. These are two different things. He has promised to give us peace and joy even in the midst of the trouble. This is why He can say ‘Take heart!’ because He has overcome the world. Christ has overcome the sufferings and temptations of this world, and so we can take heart – trust Him – in the midst of our loneliness, and temptations; and He is able to bring us peace and joy.

Contentment Part Fourteen

Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering

Part Fourteen

Here are some of the ways God works loneliness for our good:

Firstly, God uses loneliness to remind us that we need Him. Matt 5:3 says that “God blesses those who realise their need for Him.” God is a giving God, and will supply all our needs. When we feel lonely, God will turn it for good and for His glory because loneliness reminds us that we need Him. Then, when we realise our need and turn to Him, He gladly blesses us and supplies us. He is glorified – both to us, because we realise once again how wonderful He is, and to the world – because we become a witness to the World of God’s sustaining power and joy when we live joyful and grateful lives.

Secondly, He uses it to strengthen us. James 1:2-4 (NIV) says “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

God uses trials to strengthen us and bring us to a point of ‘not lacking anything.’ Loneliness can obviously be added in along with the many different trials we must face. Married people are also not free from this trial; many who are married will tell you that there are also times in marriage when you will feel lonely. I mention this to reiterate that, like before, ‘not lacking anything’ does not necessarily mean that God will give you a spouse. If we still feel lonely even in marriage, then that is not going to ultimately sort out the problem. A good spouse might help us not to feel lonely, yes, but a good spouse still cannot always be around – and cannot always be perfect! Only God is perfect, so rely on His love first to work through, and in, your loneliness.

Contentment Part Thirteen

Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering

Part Thirteen

Loneliness: God uses it

Loneliness is also a tool God often uses to remind us of our need for Him.

1 Peter 4:12, 13
“Dear friends – don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad – because these trials will make you partners with Christ in His suffering, and afterward you will have the wonderful joy of sharing His glory when it is displayed to all the world.”

There is more encouragement with loneliness. My point of bringing it up has been to show that we will have to probably often go through it. But, when we do, we shouldn’t be surprised as if this is something strange. Instead, we should be glad because we are suffering for Christ. It is God’s will that we be single right now, else we probably wouldn’t be. If we are suffering for Christ, who ‘gives us everything richly for our enjoyment’ (1 Tim 6:17) He will surely bless us with His abundant joy in spite of our suffering. Christ always makes up for it. That is why Peter could continue to say in 1 Peter 4:19:

“So if you are suffering according to God’s will, keep on doing what is right, and trust yourself to the God who made you, for He will never fail you.”

And further on in chapter 5:10, 11 he says “In His kindness God called you to His eternal glory by means of Jesus Christ. After you have suffered a little while, He will restore, support and strengthen you, and He will place you on a firm foundation. All power is His forever and ever. Amen.”

Even further encouragement; Peter says in 1 Peter 5:7 to ‘give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about what happens to you.’
We see that God will give us a share in His glory which is our ultimate joy, and therefore He will always make up for whatever we may have had to suffer in this world.

He also gives us joy now, and at the end of this life He will reward us even more as we finally share in His glory. He restores and strengthens us and places us on a firm foundation. He uses this kind of suffering for our GOOD and for His glory. For ‘we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28, NIV.)

Contentment Part Twelve

Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering

Part Twelve

Listening to God – the key to thinking God

This is why a quiet time, prayer time, or whatever we may call it is so important. We will drown in the opinion and voice of the world, and in our own selfish thoughts, unless we keep an ear onto God’s Word and continue to savour His glory in our lives. We must spend time with God, meditating on His Word, studying His Word, and listening to His loving voice telling us all about how awesome He is and how He loves us and cares about us. And where is His voice? Where do we direct our prayers? To the heavens? Much of the time, we think that is where we will find God. But the scriptures tell us otherwise – He is now living inside us, so we listen to His voice from inside us – not a voice in our minds or heads, but a voice or a ‘nudging’ – often spontaneous – inside our spirits.

We must get to know our God, so we know that He is good and that He is worthy and all powerful, so that we can fear HIM and TRUST Him. We must KNOW someone to trust them. We must KNOW God so we can trust Him and know that He will provide all our needs, and will give us a life of joy, love and peace. Unless we know Him, we won’t know how powerful and sovereign He really is, and so the fears of the world will grip us and overcome us. But if we humble and submit ourselves before God the devil will flee (James 4:7). He can no longer whisper his lies to us about our future. We know our future is in God’s hands, and that God has good plans for us.

So ‘do not conform to the pattern of this world, let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect His will really is.’ (Rom 12:2.)

Contentment Part Eleven

Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering

Part Eleven

There is life and peace for us if the Holy Spirit controls our mind. 1

But this may only seem half-encouraging, because we are still left open to wonder ‘Well, HOW can I ensure that the Holy Spirit then controls my mind?’

Vs 9, which is Paul addressing the believers of Romans, tells us “But you are not controlled by your [flesh]. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you.”

How do we know the Spirit of God lives within us? If we have accepted Christ Jesus as Lord we have received the Spirit of God. And the promise is the Spirit of God WILL transform and control us, so long as we continue to surrender our lives to Christ. So our lives will follow what Vs 15 says, ‘You should not be like cowering, fearful slaves.’

God gives us further encouragement in Isaiah 8:13, which I mentioned earlier:

“Do not fear anything except the Lord Almighty. He alone is the Holy One. If you fear Him, you need fear nothing else.”

Hallelujah! Only God is the Holy One. Only He is all powerful. Only He is sovereign. Only He is worthy to be feared. And now, we no longer need FEAR anything, except God, because Christ has set us free, caused us to be adopted into God’s family – all because He died on the cross – and He has sent His Spirit to control our thinking and cause us to think on what is ‘excellent, and worthy of praise.’ 2

So what is good and excellent and worthy of praise? Christ. The Kingdom. The cross. The glory of God. And so long as we continue to pray that God would consume our thoughts with these things, there will be no time and no desire to think of anything else. God gives us the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16).3 We won’t have time or the desire to think of ourselves, and get introspective and worry about our future or be in fear of what others think about our present status. There will be simply no time to wonder about whether we will be lonely for the rest of our lives. That, coupled with the fact that we now LIVE continuously with the presence of God, we find that we are actually not alone at all. Loneliness is a passing feeling, but it is not here to stay.

1. I want to really reassert that Christ’s ‘controlling’ is both spiritual and natural. In other words, His Spirit can control our thinking, but also control our bodies natural methods of thinking.

2. We’ll be looking at this same portion of scripture when addressing lust. Lust also bears certain links to fear, and loneliness can also link to it in some way. The battle with lust is also in our minds, because most of our spiritual battles appear to take place in our thinking. It would be confusing for me to bring lust in here, so rather I decided to take a look at it in a separate chapter.

3. This kind of reasserts my previous footnote.

Contentment Part Ten

Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering

Part Ten

The cross – The battle is in our minds

For clinically or non-clinically depressed alike, the battle is in our minds. We’re focusing on loneliness here because that is what really affects the single. Although, I must also say, that lust and sin is also what can cause us to be depressed. I say this because if we are suffering from a lust problem (which, as singles can indeed be a problem) we may get depressed and fear that we are falling short of God’s standard – or our own standard (i.e., I’m a better Christian than this!).

This can also aid a certain type of depression, or just add more rubbish and self-stabbing wounds into our depressed mind. Because the main battle is in our mind (and, what we think eventually effects our bodies, while at the same time our bodies effects the way we think) we need to focus on the awesome work that Christ did on the cross to free our minds from this slavery, and heal our bodies to respond correctly. Depression takes away our faith in God, which is precisely what the devil wants to do. In the chapter on lust I’ll talk about how guilt is not of God, for ‘there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.’ (Rom 8:1.)

Why we are slaves to what controls our thinking

We FEAR loneliness because we THINK we will always be lonely. Instead, Christ has a better way for us. He wills for us to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our mind.’ (Romans 12:2, paraphrased.) Christ has the power, by His Spirit, to control our minds and cause us to think correctly – on whatever is excellent and worthy of praise. (Phil 4:8.)
Romans 8 talks about living in the Spirit. Rom 8:2 says that ‘the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you through Christ Jesus from the power of sin that leads to death.’1

I can say that ‘Christ has freed us to fear God’ because I can link up that fear of anything else is a sin. We are commanded in the Word to ‘fear God and worship Him only’. If we fear something other than God, we are in fact implying that God is not all powerful and does not have sovereign control. It’s a sneaky form of idolatry, because the end result is selfishness (which means, our idols or the thing we serve is now ourselves).

I understand this may not seem terribly encouraging right now to say that ‘well, you are in fact sinning against God and possibly in idolatry if you do not fear Him’, but Rom 8:1 says ‘there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus’. So once again, the good news is Christ has set us free from this as well so let us trust Him.

Rom 8:5,6 continues “those who are dominated by the [flesh] think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. If your [flesh] controls your mind, there is death. But if the Holy Spirit controls your mind, there is life and peace.”

1. Some translations say ‘the LAW of the life-giving Spirit has freed you…’ and this contrasts the WAY that the Spirit works (i.e., the LAW – the way it governs) to the LAW of the flesh (i.e., the way it governs). The implication is that the Spirit places the law of GOD in our hearts, the law is now no longer external or ‘written code’ but is now Spirit and living and active within us. Also, I think that the Spirit does indeed GOVERN us – He is not just an invisible ‘force’ or ‘nice feeling’.

Contentment Part Nine

Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering

Part Nine

The spiritual and the body (including the emotions) are inextricably linked. When we are sick, it is difficult to get into God’s presence and to trust Christ (which is why, it is good to get others to pray for us). Clinical depression is a sickness of some sort, because your body is no longer functioning as it naturally should. You’ve almost depleted your mind-resources that allow you to cope. So, if you are struggling with depression you should share your problem with Christian friends and your elders. Let them continue to pray and encourage you.

There really is nothing to be embarrassed about. Any medication, which may be necessary, should be taken upon their and your psychiatrist’s consultation. If anxiety eats away at our natural chemical resources it is important to find a way of building up these resources again. This is why I would support seeing a nutritionist and building up the resources with good natural vitamins, and getting exercise and eating correctly. All of this stimulates our mind, which is where the real battle is taking place. Not just on a thinking level, but also in your mind’s natural (bodily) response level. God created the brain in a certain way – your emotions are also forms of natural reflexes. The prescribed drugs are usually just mood altering drugs, not drugs that build up our natural resources. There may be a time when they are necessary, but not for the rest of our lives.

But none of these things can really replace what Christ can do.

The ROOT cause I believe is fear. This could also be why so many more people are suffering from this problem these days, because society and the media hold over us their standards of how we should look, how much money we should earn, how our partner’s should look – and that we should always have one! We fear not meeting the demands of our peers, and society, and the media – and we no longer fear God.

I am being a bit vulnerable here by sharing my own experiences. I never suffered of depression as much as others, and temperaments can also affect the way we experience depression. Some of us are more introspective than others. But I would really like to encourage those of you who feel that this is too great to overcome that at the cross Christ died to heal us completely, and give us life and life to the full. This can be a natural body thing, but it’s also a spiritual thing; and Christ is the great physician! Trust Christ and fear God only. I am convinced you will see breakthrough as you focus on Christ alone. As you consider ‘everything else worthless’ and no longer fear if you will be able to live up to your own or the world’s standard, but instead pursue Christ.

Paul says in Gal 6:14 “Because of that cross, my interest in this world died long ago, and the world’s interest in me is also long dead.”
I would encourage you to continue reading this chapter and not close it off as an ‘overly simple approach to a complicated problem’. I believe the devil and the world’s philosophy has gotten us to believe this problem is more complicated than it really is. Let not our biggest fear become depression itself, either. Christ has come to set us free, and give us joy even in the MIDST of this sort of suffering. “Do not fear anything except the Lord Almighty. He alone is the Holy One. If you fear Him, you need fear nothing else.” (Isaiah 8:13.)

Contentment Part Eight

Chapter 4 :
Contentment
Fear of loneliness and suffering

Part Eight

Clinical depression

For those that suffer from clinical depression, this all may sound like an overly simple approach. I realise this. I’m not attempting to write a book on overcoming depression – especially this kind of depression. But let me speak first, as an encouragement, from experience. I know that I went through an incredibly depressive spell for many years because of misplaced fear – I feared being lonely, I feared wasting my life away at a job I didn’t enjoy, I feared not being able to earn enough money to make my parents (and peers proud). I feared not having a ‘future’. I feared I wasn’t ‘cutting it’ on leadership at church. I feared not having friends. I feared that I was not, and wouldn’t, be able to live up to my own standards; or my parents’; or my friends’.

I also feared not living up to expectations both I had and others had of me in relationships. The world expects us to always have someone around our arms. They say we must have a girlfriend or boyfriend, else something is wrong with us. Many times this kind of pressure is even coming from our parents.

As a result of failed or non-existent romantic relationships, we may fear that something is wrong with us. We’re not attractive. We’re not funny enough. We’re too weird. We’re too soft. We’re too hard. Our hair always looks funny. The list continues and continues. (Oftentimes I wonder why I keep listening to this voice of the world when all it ever does is put me down!)

This fear of so many things caused me to be anxious all the time, and it plunged me into many years of depression – sometimes very serious, other times bearable. I think coupled to it was a very stressful job, a hectic after-hours schedule that included bands, music, responsibilities at church and overtime at work. The result was for years I never could just ‘chill-out’ and take some time to spend with the Lord and just think about things. My body got very used to being stressed. Oftentimes if I wasn’t worrying about something I would worry about the fact that I’m not worried (something we all do).

Now, I don’t know if I had ‘clinical depression’ as I never went to the doctor or anything to find out. But I certainly did have a form of depression that I don’t think could be described as just feeling down. Many times God would touch me with His presence but there would be times when straight afterwards I would be plunged into even deeper depression.

The depression was like a tiredness or an emotion that would overcome me at the strangest of times – almost like my emotion or my strength had been depleted. I would be having the greatest time with my friends, and then it would suddenly hit me. Like a change of mind I couldn’t control. I would have the most awesome of days, full of hope, and the next day I would be so incredibly down and feel completely hopeless. My very insides would feel sore in a way that could only be described as ‘heart-break’ when, in fact, I often didn’t even know what my heart was broken about. My thought-life was a mess; I thought all sorts of negative things about myself that were not true; and I was unable to overcome habitual sins that began to rule areas of my life.

I totally believe that the core root of the problem was fear – one day I would fear this, the next that. My personal theory is that the constant anxiety (which also showed itself in my body in other ways) ate away at my natural chemical resources like serotonin, which doctors say a lack thereof can cause clinical depression. Second to that, I don’t discount the fact that demons try and take advantage of these kinds of situations and place people into a spiritual cycle that needs to be broken.