Sermon Notes & Slides only.
No Audio. We are working on it and should have audio back up next week.
Read Psalm 42.
- Pray
Video. Luis CK (You can watch on our Facebook Page- facebook.com/goletavalleychurch.com)
Loneliness
- -We can all relate.
SLIDE- Loneliness is a complex and usually unpleasant emotional response to isolation or lack of companionship. Loneliness typically includes anxious feelings about a lack of connection or communication with other beings, both in the present and extending into the future. As such, loneliness can be felt even when surrounded by other people. The causes of loneliness are varied and include social, mental, emotional or even physical factors.
My Story.
- Biological dad was my hero! My mom and him divorced too young for me to really remember them together. He was a professional motocross rider. A worthy hero…
- -Every Summer I was meant to spend with him. But I mostly spent it with my Granda on his side and he would “visit”. Never thought much about it but this one summer, I was suppose to spend it with him! Just me and him. I was maybe 10.
1. AVOIDANCE
What if we were meant to experience loneliness? Loneliness confronts our pain. That we actually have it… Here, in our soul. Let’s be honest
- -Are we meant to experience pain?
- Mat. 10:22, “You will be hated by all”
- John 15:18 “If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first.”
- Story of Job confuses us. Satan asks to cause Job to lose everything except his life and God says “yes”????
- Jesus tells Peter, “Satan has asked to sift all of you like wheat”.
- -Imagine. “you said ‘no’ right?”
- -I prayed that your faith may remain.
- We don’t like it. So we avoid it.
A TV Series filmed right here in Santa Barbara called “An American Family”. It included divorce and the homosexual life of their oldest son. Pat, the wife and mother in the family, expressed this avoidance of pain well when she said, “I don’t like things that make me feel uncomfortable.”
But the consequence of this pain-avoidance were also expressed well by the eighteen year old son who said, “You see seven lonely people trying desperately to love each other- and not succeeding.”
MY STORY
-There I sat, waiting, my Grandma arguing with my other Grandma over where my dad was… all with a hopeful expectation that my dad would show.
- I started with Hope (My dad’s coming!)
- -Hope turn to anxiety, (Come on dad!)
- -anxiety to fear, (Please dad, just show)
- – fear to disappointment. (why didn’t you show?)
How do we avoid pain?
2. DISTRACTION
- -Latest studies show the cause of addiction is our inner sense of loneliness.
- -We would rather numb the reality than face it.
- -Relationships; people pleasing, pre-marital sex, pornography, insecurities, spousal abuse and violent relationships, Stockholm Syndrome, can all be linked in one regard to our deep sense of loneliness.
- Rat race of avoidance.
- -What are you distracting yourself with?
MY STORY
- I fell asleep wondering if My dad never showed. He was thrown in jail that night. It was drug related. At that age, you don’t have the skill set, at least I didn’t, to avoid it.
- -I had a step dad in my life who was trying to fill the gap.
- -Instead of receiving him, his efforts were a constant reminder of my pain. Our relationship struggled until I got older.
3. INJURY
- -Messianic expectations in “Maybe this time I have found what I have knowingly or unknowingly been searching for.
- -Pain Castle
- When avoid pain. We miss the other side of it… Healing.
MY STORY– Hume lake, Father to the fatherless.
- -I still needed healing
Loneliness to Solitude
- -What is the condition of your soul?
- -Reach in
SLIDE- Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?
- -American Christianity has done some damage.
- -Western idea and all but rejected the eastern idea of solitude and meditation.
- Jesus and solitude
Psalm 42
- vs. 1-2 Desire
- vs. 3 Doubt
- vs. 4 Remember
- vs. 5 An honest Look
MY STORY
- -Redemption group. Where was God? Right THERE with me.
- -Be ok with not being ok.
SLIDE- Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
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