Turn To God When You Feel Alone Series

Turn To God When You Feel Alone

Jeremiah 29:4-14

Introduction

The holiday season is one that is filled with family, gatherings, food, and friends. It is also a time when loneliness is accentuated and often experienced. It could be the loss of a loved one or just the struggles of life that weigh us down. We feel like we should be happier - but it isn’t always so. Turn to God when you feel alone.

Jeremiah 29 is not centered around a holiday season, it is a message for everyone who understands what it means to feel alone. God allowed his people to be taken into exile by Babylonians. This painful experience was brought about after many warnings, Israel’s continued idolatry and abandonment of God.

Eugene Peterson: “Israel was taken into exile in 587 B.C. The people were uprooted from the place in which they were born. The land that had been promised to them, which they had possessed, was gone. They were forced to travel across the Middle Eastern desert seven hundred miles, leaving home, temple, and hills. In the new land, Babylon, customs were strange, the language incomprehensible, and the landscape oddly flat and featureless. All the familiar landmarks were gone” (p. 147).

Helpless and hopeless, they raise their lament…

“By the rivers of Babylon - there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willow there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” Ow could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? (Psalm 137:1-4)

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like an exile … disappointed, life falling apart with no assurance it would get better, hope growing dim… Turn to God when you feel alone. Jeremiah’s message offers us truth and strength for the days ahead.

1. Engage in the Life Around You

Jeremiah 29:4-6 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 

This is amazing and unexpected advice - the ‘false prophets’ were saying that the exile wouldn’t be long - just hang on. Jeremiah’s message is: put down roots, it’s going to be a while - your life matters right now, not just in the future. Peterson: “Your life right now is every bit as valuable as it was when you were in Jerusalem, and every bit as valuable as it will be when you get back to Jerusalem. Babylonian exile is not your choice, but it is what you are given. Build a Babylonian house and live in it as well as you are able.”

We are not always able to wait until times are better to experience hope again. We turn to God by living in the moment - and avoiding isolation. The Scriptures teach us to focus on “Today”. \

Matthew 6:11 “Give us today our daily bread”

Psalm 118:24 “…Let us rejoice today and be glad.”

Today - engage in the life around you and find what blessing God has for you.

2. Pray for The World Around You

Jeremiah 29:7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

Again - unexpected advice - praying for their captors? For those who had deported them to Babylon? It would have been easy for them to just focus on self- to be introspective and be sad about their circumstances. That’s a place we can visit, but not live. It robs us of the very job that God gave us. Lament is a viable form of prayer and relation to God and the World, but this encouraged them to look beyond themselves. Why pray for the world around us - even when there are things about it that cause us pain and make us unhappy.

-Ask God to be at work in the world, He hears those prayers

-When things go well in the world around us, we experience prosperity along with it.

-By praying for the world around us, we have opportunity to help show the world the glory of God.

We are here in this place and time to seek the welfare of others in our parish. Are we making it a better place? Are we praying for our parish? Doesn’t this prayer extend to our nation and world?

3. Focus on God’s Truth

Jeremiah 29:8-9 Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.