Are You Lonely?

Are You Lonely?

 

Good Morning Friends,

 

Paul writes to the Corinthians in response to the existential loneliness, the emptiness inside that revisits them and us when we embrace a secular ecstasy that is born out of evil. At the heart of the problem is our separation from God…death. It is all a bit of a mystery but I imagine it is like the loneliness that Jesus experienced when his friends deserted him while still even in the suffering transformed by the love he felt for his friends. In today’s devotion we begin to see how the gift of the Spirit reconnects us to life. This scripture I mention is a precursor to chapter 13 on love, the greatest of gifts and chapter 14 which addresses the disorders in public worship experienced by the Corinthians. We learn that spiritual gifts are supernatural manifestations of the Spirit designed by God to carry out the work of Jesus through the church universal. Here God’s Spirit gets worked into our lives, our mind and our actions, ordering them for a purpose. The gifts in their totality, are designed to unify and propel our collective actions for good. They are mini resurrections in response to mini deaths. This can happen when we all realize that the reason we have spiritual gifts is for the common good. When we misunderstand gifts we misunderstand service. The Holy Spirit is the reality behind the gifts, not us. When it becomes about us, not God, we miss the mark and are doomed to fall back into that hole in our soul. The result is loneliness for us and a fractured body with divisive actions for the church. Each gift therefore has its primary function in the church to mature the body in community…the world. The benefit for us as individuals is to experience the body of Christ and His provision made manifest. Here in the face of emptiness we are to experience the faith, hope and love that reconnects us to God. Are You Lonely?

 

Scripture: Top of Form

Bottom of Form

4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; ⁵and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; ⁶and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. ⁷To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

 

1 Corinthians 12:4-7 (NRSV)

 

¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

 

John 15:13 (NRSV)

 

13If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,^* but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly,^* but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

 

1 Corinthians 13 (NRSV)

 

³²The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me.

 

John 16:32 (NRSV)

 

Message: Our purpose is to discover the unique gifts God has given to each of us and how they can be applied to God’s purpose. Spiritual gifts come from the same source…God. God knows them, gives them and expects them to be used. We must understand, discover and use them correctly.  So God hands out these gifts one by one: wise counsel, clear understanding, simple trust, healing the sick, miraculous acts, proclamation, distinguishing between spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues. God deploys these gifts for the greatest impact knowing exactly how to mix, mend, mature and mobilize all the connections activated through love. Know that His plan for you is really good. God will bless those who work together to help others become hungry for God. With God we can make the connections between becoming spiritually alive and experiencing the greatest desires of our hearts…a purpose in the love of God’s plan. But today’s message cries out for all those who have been ensnared by loneliness. Today’s message is that even as we are seeking a release from our loneliness, God is seeking us all out. We all experience loneliness that lurks behind all our successes. We all feel a uselessness that hides under any of the praise we receive. Friends, when we are using the gifts God has given us for God and experience in them faith, hope and yes love, we are never alone.

 

Pray that in our soul’s journey from its bodily home to its union with God that we have victory over any sense of loneliness and desolation. Pray we realize that only God can be with us all the time.

 

Blessings,

 

John Lawson