Battling The Three Fears Of Captivity.

Title: Battling the three fears of Captivity.

Jeremiah 29:10-14

So many of us are stuck in the captivity of life that we have not been able to see clearly let alone hear from God.

You see when we search the scriptures for hope and future Jeremiah 29:11-14 comes to mind immediately. When searching for the faith to believe the unbelievable many of us need to get to a place where Hope and belief in a good future exist. So as we are looking at Jeremiah 29:11 I want you to open your hearts to what God would say to you this morning. You see Jeremiah in Jeremiah 29:10-14 we can see the cure for Battling the 3 fears of being in captivity. Because I believe there is a good future for this church. And some of us may be going through these fears right now. One of the first fears you go through when battling captivity is the fear of abandonment or being lonely.

So the first fear that we must tackle this morning is the Fear of Abandonment or loneliness.

1. Tackling the Fear of Loneliness in captivity. Jeremiah 29:10-11

a. Captivity-Defined: physical detention by force

i. The people of Judah

1. sinned year after year were allowed to be given in captivity in Babylon.

2. False Prophets spreading rumors.

a. Jeremiah writes to assure them…

3. Anyone with out Godly direction would begin to fear.

a. The first fear many go through is loneliness.

ii. Loneliness

affected with, a depressing feeling of being alone; lonesome.

2. destitute of friendly companionship,

3. lone; solitary; without company; companionless.

4. remote from places of human habitation; desolate; unfrequented; bleak: a lonely road.

5.

1. Loneliness is a feeling and also a disease to many in today’s world and it even has effect in our churches. Many of us Me including have been effected by loneliness. Whether it be real or just an attack of satan, many of us have battled loneliness.

Psychology Today The Dangers of Loneliness (Aug 2003)

Friendship is a lot like food. We need it to survive. What is more, we seem to have a basic drive for it. Psychologists find that human beings have fundamental need for inclusion in group life and for close relationships. We are truly social animals.

The upshot is, we function best when this social need is met. It is easier to stay motivated, to meet the varied challenges of life.

In fact, evidence has been growing that when our need for social relationships is not met, we fall apart mentally and even physically. There are effects on the brain and on the body. Some effects work subtly, through the exposure of multiple body systems to excess amounts of stress hormones. Yet the effects are distinct enough to be measured over time, so that unmet social needs take a serious toll on health, eroding our arteries, creating high blood pressure, and even undermining learning and memory.

A lack of close friends and a dearth of broader social contact generally bring the emotional discomfort or distress known as loneliness. It begins with an awareness of a deficiency of relationships. This cognitive awareness plays through our brain with an emotional soundtrack. It makes us sad. We might feel an emptiness. We may be filled with a longing for contact. We feel isolated, distanced from others, deprived. These feelings tear away at our emotional well-being.

Despite the negative effects of loneliness, it can hardly be considered abnormal. It is a most normal feeling. Everyone feels lonely sometimes—after a break-up with a friend or lover, when we move to a new place, when we are excluded from some social gathering.

Chronic loneliness is something else entirely. It is one of the surest markers in existence for maladjustment.

In children, it leads to all kinds of problems. Failure to be socially connected to peers is the real reason behind most school dropouts. It sets in motion a course on which children spin their way to outcast status and develop delinquency and other forms of antisocial behavior.

In adults, loneliness is a major precipitant of depression and alcoholism. And it increasingly appears to be the cause of a range of medical problems, some of which take decades to show up.

Loneliness, Cacioppo concludes, sets in motion a variety of "slowly unfolding pathophysiological processes." The net result is that the lonely experience higher levels of cumulative wear and tear.

In other words, we are built for social contact. There are serious—life-threatening—consequences when we don’t get enough. We can’t stay on track mentally. And we are compromised physically. Social skills are crucial for your health.

i. The great aspect of our lives is we have our Lord who will never leave us nor forsake us.

a. Over and Over again you see that God will not forsake His people when they turn to him.