Do you wish you had purpose? Do you struggle with a lonliness feeling inside? A deep void inside you that needs to be filled? Well I used to struggle with that when I was in Jr High. I struggled with the anger that consumed me. The lonliness of not fitting in with the more popular kids. The feeling of losing close childhood friends to a different clique. I started finding solace in the darkness. I saw the light but felt it didn't give me what I needed. I felt it had abandoned me in my most needed time. I felt that God had left me in the desert of life, without water or shelter.
Many of you feel this too. Many of you feel a huge hole in your life and try to fill it with worldly success. Some push themselves to sports, others to money and still some to power. These things become our god. They consume us. We spend our lives chasing the next best thing. Then there is that time when we start to feel alone and lost. Some how that hole in our soul that we have been trying to fill with our worldly pursuits can not be filled by those things. We then feel that we have no purpose in life. We strive to fit new things into that hole. We find drugs, sex and alcohol. But then we are addicted and overcome by this new god. We can't get ourselves out and then the true lonliness sets in.
How are we to overcome this? What is our true purpose? How do our lives get so messed up so quickly? Why are we so alone? I struggled with those feeling so many years ago. I had put so much anger in my heart for my circumstances that I started to fill my God shaped void with items that wouldn't fit. I wanted to be popular and cool. I wondered why God wouldn't give me the things I so desperately wanted. Why God would keep me in an abusive home. Why God wouldn't let me live with my father who loved me so much. Why I had to keep staying in a place where I felt so alone and unloved. I didn't understand it. So I looked for other ways to feel my void.
After high school I started selling drugs and doing drugs. I started partying and then I started to focus on making money. All these things didn't make me feel any better. They just kept getting me in to trouble. I felt guilty, I felt even more alone. Most of the friends I had during that time never really cared fo me. A few stole from me. But not one filled my void.
I remember going to this building one night. The preacher came out in shorts and a ball cap. I had never been to church like that. But that night I found something out. For most of my life I had been the one abandoning God. I had been running from Him. I was scared to finally admit that my anger came from myself. That my void could only be filled by the one true GOD. I surrendered that night. What a feeling that washed over me. My problems stilled existed. They didn't just vanish, but something did. My guilt, my shame the darkness finally came off. I was alive. I finally didn't feel alone anymore.
Today I still struggle with feeling God in my life. I struggle with understanding God's will. But now I do it knowing that He has my best interest at hand. He wants the best for me. Yeah I still struggle and feel alone. But I get to come back to Him and I get to walk next to Him. I only feel alone for as long as it takes for me to ask Him to hold me.
I hope that you can understand these things. Those feelings are normal. We all feel alone once in a while. I don't begin to understand how God works. I just know that He does work for me. You may be struggling with a void in your life. You may be struggling with a hurt or a pain. You may be running. But that night at that church I realized He is standing right there just waiting for you to ask Him to hold you.
Jeremiah 29:11 says this:
11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
So even before Jesus came God promised us this. What other religion or what other god can boast that promise. God gave us the hope through Jesus Christ. If only we are to believe in Him can we be saved from the death of sin. How easy, yet how hard to do. Most of my issues stem from pride. I keep thinking I can save myself. I can give myself peace. I don't need anyone to help me. But that only brings me to death.
My hope for you is to understand that the feelings of hopelessness are human. But the feelings of hope are divine. God Bless you today. Remember you are never alone.
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