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December, 2004

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LET GO OF LONELINESS
BY MARILYN CONRAD

My husband left our home the week after Christmas. A year later I dreaded the approaching holiday season—the first Christmas since the divorce. Our holiday celebrations held such good memories, including all the people who were in the congregations in the churches we had served. But now, after 27 years, there was no congregation, no Christmas program, no church to decorate. Even more important were the family memories. Our two sons, Craig and Murry, were now grown and the older son married.

My cry to God was for Him to help me make it through the next few weeks.

A dear friend of mine was widowed at the same time I was divorced, and we spent much time praying together. We recognized that we could isolate ourselves and nurse our hurt, dreading the holidays, or we could believe God and walk through the holiday season with Him and come out more healed! We chose to walk with God.

Checking the newspapers, we looked for all the holiday events we felt would bring glory to God and edify us. We attended the kickoff for the season with the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra, choirs, and ice skaters. Next, we attended the Oral Roberts University Christmas Concert, the Hanging of the Greens at my church, and a Christmas program at her church.

While singing Christmas carols, we held hands and tears streamed down our faces—a memory I'll never forget. Shedding tears was a necessary part of our healing, but we discovered that as we looked into the face of Jesus, it was difficult to cry!

Then my friend purchased tickets for a Women's Aglow banquet. We had wonderful seats near the front to hear the speakers. After the wife spoke she said, "Before my husband comes to share I have to be obedient to the Holy Spirit. When I entered the banquet hall tonight the Lord spoke and said, 'I want you to minister to Marilyn.' Well, I looked around and didn't see anyone I knew by that name. By faith I was going to ask for anyone by the name of Marilyn to come forward, but she was seated in front of me all the time." When we turned our chairs around to face the front after eating, she recognized me from the dress shop where I worked and had assisted her. Calling me forward, she began to pray for me and break the loneliness that had engulfed me the past year. She knew nothing of my situation and was totally unaware that each night I stayed downstairs in my house as long as I could because, when I reached the landing on the stairs, loneliness nearly overpowered me. She prayed for me and that spirit left and has never returned.

Next, she prayed in tongues, as was their custom, and her husband gave the interpretation in poetic form:

And now, my faithful one, I want to encourage you in the thing that I want to do.
And that is, I want to work more readily down deep on the inside of you.

I want you to seek me a little more diligently in the days ahead,
So that I will be able to work in your behalf and take away all the fear and dread.

And it will be at the time of fellowshipping with Me,
That we will be drawn together in a bondage that will not be bondage but great liberty.

And it will be a freedom to worship and to praise even among the throng,
And, you see, when you begin to do that you will find there will be no wrong.

For I will take it from your midst and begin to straighten out your life;
Yes, I will help you even to be that which would be that good and perfect wife,

Even though the enemy hath come in and divided and seemingly brought snares to trap people along the way.
I am going to turn the thing around and cause it to go the right way,

So you allow me to work as you draw near and close in your heart, but you will have to do that for the other to come in part.
And it is line upon line and precept upon precept that it shall surely come to pass,

So that you will be able to throw up your hands and say, "The Lord has delivered my heart's desire."
And, thanks be unto God, we will not wallow in the mire.

Praise God that my friend and I opened ourselves up to God and His healing power that Christmas season. Otherwise, I would have missed His wonderful blessings, including that prophecy.

I pray that, during the next few weeks, you will make the quality decision to let go of any loneliness in your life and be obedient to whatever God instructs you to do. Do not hang onto the past, good or bad. "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13-14

In Roget's thesaurus lonely is followed by these words: forlorn, forsaken, friendless, lonesome, rejected, secluded, solitary, unattended, withdrawn, bleak, desolate, isolated, remote, and unfrequented.

These adjectives describe how Satan would love for us to feel. When our hearts are broken and our spirits wounded, we often wrap ourselves in a blanket of rejection and desolation. Our emotions are so damaged that isolation and seclusion seem the only way out of the pain. We do not realize we are playing into the enemy's hands.

Loneliness and being alone are not synonymous. We cannot truthfully say, "I'm alone," if we know Jesus. He is always there and will never leave us or forsake us. He understands what we are going through. Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin."

Jesus knows the pain of both loneliness and being alone. He became sin for us on the cross—your sin, my sin, and the sins of the whole world were poured out on Him. And because God is a holy God and cannot look upon sin, He turned His back on Jesus. For the first time ever Jesus was alone, separated from His Father, and He cried out, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46

Jesus has been there. He understands what it means to be totally abandoned. He also understands how we feel in our loneliness and says to us, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."

In 1 Peter 5:8-9 we read, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world." So, it is up to us! Satan wants to devour your peace and build a stronghold of loneliness, but we can resist him. We must resist him. We must do what God's Word says and rise above loneliness. The decision is ours!

My prayer for each of you this holiday season is that you will allow Jesus to take any loneliness and replace it with his presence, power, and love. God bless you, and merry Christmas!