Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The Silent Cry of the Lonely Heart



Throughout time, there has always been a deep loneliness and an empty void in the heart of man that is painful, and it cries out to be met. It expresses itself as a deep yearning that is palpable. So profound is the loneliness that it is often felt as an intense desperation to find someone to take the emptiness away.

In reality, that aching inner yearning is the heart cry of the human soul that is searching for God. It awakens in a child like a tender flower, but sadly, through time, it is quelled, suppressed within and often silenced throughout the growing up years.

The stress and strain of life often anesthetizes this yearning and most people find a myriad of things to sooth and numb the emptiness within. If we were truly honest with ourselves, we all need significant times in our lives where we can experience the peacefulness of complete and total silence…. blessed solitude. Those precious Quiet moments are where we can make a heartfelt exploration of our deepest questions and pose them before the Almighty God of the universe. 

The Gentle Whisper of a Loving God

God is timeless, yet He pauses, draws near to our hearts, and listens to what we are truly saying when no one else is really listening. 

With the tragic falling away from God that took place with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, man turned away from God and lost his pure and unhindered communion with his Creator. Mankind has since been left with a spiritual vacuum and a profound painful emptiness.


The Lonely Place of the Human Heart


The Quiet Place within the heart of man, where he walked in the cool of the garden with God, became instead, a lonely place. Every person who has ever lived has experienced the awareness of a profound inner thirst, deep within the heart. 

We discover in life that no amount of money, fame, possessions or power can satisfy the longing within or fill the emptiness. History has proven that whatever man attempts to use to fill that void never brings permanent fulfillment or genuine inner peace. Instead, there is an acute dissatisfaction with what was thought to be the solution to fill the emptiness within. Life is lived in a lonely Shadowland, unseen by others, but seen and understood by God. 

Only God can Heal the Lonely Heart
  
Loneliness is an unquenchable soul thirst that only God can satisfy, for it is the expression of the homesickness of the human heart for intimate communion with God. Sometimes you can be missing one person, yet it feels that your whole world is a lonely place. Why is that? It is because unrequited love has awakened the deepest need within, and that is a longing to find the Edenic innocence, and complete serenity of The Quiet Place, where God walks with you in unhindered communion.

David described this yearning as a deep thirst:

“Just like a deer that craves streams of water, my whole being craves you, God. My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God.” Psalm 42:1-2

God Alone Understands our Loneliness

Loneliness is the unquenchable thirst that nothing on earth can satisfy.  In spite of all of the sentimental poetry, romantic novels, tender musical ballads, or passionate love stories depicted in movies, there is no earthly relational experience that can truly satisfy the innermost loneliness of the human heart. 

We all need love and the companionship of intimate others, but the deep loneliness that abides within can consume us, and is a result of our soul being homesick for an intimate relationship with God.


The Human Heart is Thirsty for God's Love

Jesus identified the deepest need within mankind as an awareness of an inner thirst that cries out to be satisfied, conveying that every person knows that they are insatiably thirsty, and void of a lasting  true happiness.
 
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”John 7:37-38

God Reaches Out to Each of Us

When God awakens our thirst for Him, He does so on an individual basis. When we become conscious that He is drawing us to Himself, we are aware of our inestimable separation from Him, and discover that it is on the basis of His grace and mercy, saturated by His love, that we are given access to His heart.

"By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 1 John 4:8-10

God Opened the Door to His Heart

God has sought us through His Love, and bought us through His Grace, for we had a debt that we could not pay so He paid a debt that He did not owe.


"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

God Invites Us to be Near His Heart

When God brings us home to Himself, He then invites us to sit by the fire, and then He fills us with His comforting peace and all encompassing love.

"By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 1 John 4:8-10


The Only Way to Heal the Lonely Heart

Our deepest need is to bask intimately in the fullness of God’s love. There is nothing apart from God that can truly fill the inner void, because that place within that was lost, was created by God, for His Spirit to fill, and only He can dwell there. For Adam and Eve, the Quiet place was experienced in the external beauty of the Garden of Eden, and in their continual communion with God.

Jesus Christ has provided, through the sacrifice of Himself, access to the very heart of God. The Quiet Place has now become an internal reality through His indwelling Spirit, where we can worship and commune with God. In reality, the painful experience of loneliness in one's life, should open a pathway to the heart of God. It is a blessing of gain, disguised as loss.

When Loneliness Gives Way to Peace


"That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the believer's what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:16-19

The Blessedness of The Quiet Place

The Quiet Place....a blessed pause in life, where you set aside a time of uninterrupted solitude to meet with God. Precious moments, where you share with Him your love and draw strength from Him to do His will. Nothing on earth can replace what God has available for you, as you meet with Him intimately in The Quiet Place.