Never Alone: God's Promise of Presence

“Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you."”Deuteronomy 31:6 You know, it’s been a heck of a year and I was thinking about what I fear and one of the fears was loneliness...especially this time of year around the Holidays when we may have lost a loved one. I don’t think anyone is immune to this feeling when we look around us and it “seems” as everyone has it all put together. But we live in a world where we are more connected than ever before. We have enough “friends” that could serve 4 lifetimes. With all this connection though, we can often times find ourselves thinking we are lonely because everyone we see on social media is having the time of their life! It seems as everyone is getting married, at a party we aren’t invited to or a vacation we could never afford. All this outside social stimulus can leave us with a sense of lost and lonely. It’s easy to feel like we are the only one left out. We begin to fool ourselves with believing if we were at that party, on that vacation or married somehow we would be happy. But the truth is that changing external circumstances won’t truly change us; it is only an inward transformation that can do that.The older I get, the more I realize there is only one person who can complete any of us – and his name is Jesus. No matter how much we try to be sociable, at some point we will encounter the fear of loneliness if we are not in relationship with Jesus. This is because when we place our lives in God’s hands, we will never walk alone, wherever we go. As today’s passage says, God will never leave us or forsake us. Of course, we should continue to be social people, but we do so from the place of drawing confidence from Christ within us, rather than from the people who surround us.In my book, there are only two people we should seek first for approval; God and then ourselves. Be Nice, Grace Wins