God Cares For The Lonely Series

God Cares for the Lonely!

Let me ask you a question; how many of you have ever gone grocery shopping while you were hungry? How many of you learned your lesson for grocery shopping while you were hungry? What did you do while you were shopping? You saw the Twinkies and you were hungry so you thought, “Those look good. I’ll eat those.” Then you throw them in the cart. Then you grab a bag, or two, of potato chips. Not the Baked kind either, the greasy fried stuff. Then you go down the candy aisle and it all looks so good. The Snickers are calling out your name, the Milky Way, the M&M’s, the Reese’s Pieces, and the Twizzlers. They are all calling out to you and you’re hungry so you just throw it all in. You get home to find that you have had an interesting shopping experience. Let me tell you, grocery shopping hungry is especially dangerous for the college student. You never know what you’re going to come home with.

The only reason you grabbed all those things that weren’t good for you is because you were hungry. All of that food looked good to you. Why, because you were running on empty. You were hungry. You weren’t full. I want to talk to you today about being full spiritually. You see, when we aren’t full spiritually, we will throw anything into our cart of life in order to try to fill our voids. That emptiness in our lives is known as loneliness and many of us are lonely people. Our loneliness drives us to the store of life. There we are walking up and down the aisles. We are so alone and so we are looking for anything to fill our lives with something meaningful. We go up and down the aisles and just throw everything we can into the cart. “Oh sure, I’ll try some alcohol. Why not? Ooh, those clothes are nice. I know they will get me some attention.” So we throw them in the cart. “Hmm, I don’t have a significant other. I guess I’ll throw a few one night stands in the cart as well. All those people look like they’re having fun. Maybe I should try some drugs also. Maybe then I would be full.” As a result of loneliness in our lives, we are willing to throw anything into our cart to try to fill ourselves up. Unfortunately, all we have done is looked in the wrong place.

A Christian artist, Hawk Nelson, has a song out called Take Me. I want to read for you some of the lyrics from that song. “Can you hear me? Does anyone around me feel the way that I feel now? Cause from the window where I sometimes cry I just want to see Your face tonight. And I’m willing to lose everything I am. Take me under Your wing tonight. Make me so perfect in Your eyes. Hold on cause it will be alright. You’re not alone anymore.” Loneliness is something that a lot of people are dealing with. And a lot of those people are just like you.

Many of us grew up in large families. You might be the youngest one in that family. You might be in the middle of that family. You may even be the oldest one in that family. You’re surrounded by family and love all the time, yet you feel so alone in your own home. Something is missing and you don’t know what it is. You feel so alone. Many of us have many friends. At least we see dozens of people everyday. Depending upon your situation, you might see thousands of people everyday. Yet, in the midst of all these people that you are constantly around, you feel so alone. Sure you talk to people, they are friendly to you, you would even call them your friends, but you still feel so alone. You know, you’re not all that different from one biblical character. He is a guy that normally we view as a hero. He was a warrior, he was good looking, he was a leader, he was compassionate, he was a man after God’s own heart. That’s right, David. We see the evidence of loneliness scattered all throughout the life of David. Why don’t we start first by looking at his family life.

1. Alone in his family!

One of the first things we have to understand about David is that he is the youngest of 8 brothers. He had 7 brothers who were older than him and who had more right to a lot of things than he did. He was given the worst jobs in the family. I mean, they left him out in the field by himself with a bunch of sheep. Not really a glamorous position in the home. Our little David, a lion killer, a bear killer, the boy who would eventually slay a giant to keep the Israelite people free from captivity was alone within his own family.