Loneliness: Something to Offer God

[Music] ligonier ministries the teaching fellowship of rc sproul presents loneliness with elizabeth elliott this message is entitled something to offer god [Music] our first talk in this series loneliness was on we are lonely because we're human and then the second one was called inacceptance life peace my third talk i've entitled something to offer god as i've said earlier there are many forms of loneliness that i've never experienced but a friend of mine was divorced and she wrote this which she gave me permission to put into my book loneliness my joy is becoming less dependent upon my own immediate circumstances and more attached to what he is doing as limited as my understanding is now i know that he is a god who never loses a god who has taken the ultimate humiliation and defeat and turned it inside out somehow my ruined plans fit into his larger plans and so in the moments when i am forced to face my own loneliness i find that i'm not really alone at all it's always good to hear things said by more than one witness and i think of paul's words to the roman christians he said we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles these very things will give us patient endurance this in turn will develop a mature character and a character of this sort produces a steady hope a hope that will never disappoint us full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles it is possible if you know jesus christ but to know jesus christ to be a christian means a total unreserved identification with him in his death and in his resurrection christians are people who say that they believe in the cross but to say that you believe in the cross is one thing to be willing to die with him and to take up the cross and to follow him is something very different and there there is never a day that goes by for any of us i really believe when we are not given the choice between ourselves and the cross and the cross remember is when the will of god cuts across the will of man and we have the choice then of saying yes lord and know to ourselves if we say no lord then we cannot legitimately call him lord we talked about peace coming out of acceptance and if we have accepted fully the gift of loneliness this situation which we cannot change right now and i don't mean to be misunderstood as saying that there is never any solution here on earth for loneliness or that there aren't some things that you can do about it and there are plenty of books and thousands of seminars and all the rest of it that'll give you some how-to's and i don't mean to say that i'm against those various human methods at least some of them i wouldn't recommend that you go to the singles bar and sit there with your eyes ceaselessly scanning the room but those are not permanent uh i can't even call them solutions because what i'm offering to you i wouldn't call a solution either it is a way of handling something that we can't really handle somebody has not only somebody but a number of people have said to me when you lived in the jungle weren't you very isolated and i said yes i lived in one place where i was three days away from the nearest mission station three days by trail and canoe and i was in a position where nobody spoke any english except my three-year-old daughter who was certainly not a very scintillating conversationalist and she spoke the indian languages too so yes i've experienced loneliness and the question has often been well how did you handle it and i would hope that the things that i've already said to you would indicate that it's not a case of my handling it it's a case of my handing it over to god and that does not necessarily instantaneously change the feeling it may never change the feeling but it is something to be offered to god that's where i take my title for this talk we do have something to offer to god once i have accepted my situation my loneliness my human condition and said yes lord then the next thing that i can do is to offer to him what the bible calls the sacrifice of thanksgiving there are several sacrifices spoken of in the new testament and one of them is the sacrifice of thanksgiving and by the grace of god i can say thank you lord for this experience of loneliness because i believe in his love because i believe that in his love there is a purpose and i don't have to know what that is now i don't have to see how that fits into god's pattern the time will come when i will see that but in the meantime what is called for well you guessed it faith it's simply trust and again and again in my life where i've had experiences that have made me look up and say why lord his answer is trust me just trust me i do know what i'm doing i do have the whole world in my hands i've got everything that concerns you not only in my hands but on my heart now will you trust me and so i can say yes lord thank you lord and offer back to him the sacrifice of thanksgiving now there are some other things that we can offer as well one of them i've already spoken about and that is my will to be a christian is to identify myself wholeheartedly unreservedly and irrevocably with jesus christ in his death and in his resurrection and i surrender my will to him and say not my will be done echoing the prayer of our savior in gethsemane not my will but thine be done so i offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving i offer up my will and when i offer my will it is in the willingness also to share in christ's sufferings people have said to me you're always talking about suffering does a christian have to suffer and the answer is yes jesus said in the world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer i have overcome the world but faith is the victory that overcomes the world we cannot see that there's any victory around us we see tragedy heartbreak disaster everywhere we look and most people most people's response if they believe in god at all is to shake their fist in god's face and then there are those who try to tell themselves that there isn't any god and we're all to mercy of chance but he waits in silence for you and me to say yes lord i not only accept this experience but i accept the possibility of entering in via this experience to your sufferings now do you think this is just an elizabeth elliott notion i trust that everything i say is backed up with scripture i don't always have time to give you the references for everything but i will give you the reference for this one first peter 4 12 and 13. colossians 1 24 and philippians 1 29 those are three verses that speak of this mystery of sharing in the sufferings of christ let me just read first peter 4 12-13 my dear friends do not be bewildered by the fiery ordeal that is upon you as though it were something extraordinary it gives you a share in christ's sufferings and that is cause for joy and when his glory is revealed your joy will be triumphant now can you understand that i can't i can't imagine how it's possible for me as an ordinary human being to enter into the sufferings of him who was crucified and bore all of our griefs and all of our sorrows and as f.w.h meyer says in his poem saint paul desperate tides of the whole great world's anguish forced through the channels of a single heart that's what happened to him and he in his mercy looks down at you and me and he says will you suffer with me will you share in christ's sufferings and in those passages in in the passage in colossians that i mentioned colossians 1 24 there is an even more mysterious word which is that these troubles these very sufferings that paul is referring to and he was in prison when he wrote this and i'm told although the scripture doesn't mention this but at in those days he was chained he would have been chained between two guards chained to these guards his left his left arm chained to the right arm of one guard and his right arm chained to the left heart arm of another guard can you imagine a situation like that and he said it is in my poor human flesh i am able to help to fill up the sufferings of christ yet to be endured for the sake of the body now there is a profound theological mystery there that's way beyond anything i can understand but i leave it for you to think about all i can mention in this brief time is that i am permitted the privilege of offering my will to god my willingness to share in his sufferings another offering is my trust just my willingness to say yes lord i don't have to understand it i will trust you i can trust him because i know there's a purpose that the measure of my suffering is meted out according to his wisdom and it is under his control it's never out of his control it may seem to be and there are times when we feel as if we're just overwhelmed and we can't possibly survive anymore and then we have a verse that comforts me greatly first corinthians 10 13 there is no temptation that has taken you but such as is common to mankind and god is faithful and will never suffer you to be tempted beyond your power to endure but will with the temptation make a way of escape so when you think that you've just had it and you can't take anymore just remember that the measure of that suffering is very carefully meted out and god knows where the end of your rope is you may think you've gotten there but he knows that there's still a little bit more and he also knows that he's the one that is there to provide the grace that you need and when the burdens grow greater the grace grows greater the grace will always be there exactly apportioned to the need so i can offer him my trust i can offer him my gladness gladness that the loneliness is in itself can you get this concept in your head i can't explain it to you but i can state it that the loneliness itself is material for sacrifice god has offered you something which by saying yes lord i'll take it and accepting it and offering it back with thanksgiving it then is in itself material for sacrifice and i have found this to be a life-changing fact when i have been devastated by sorrow or disappointment or loneliness or suffering of whatever kind to take that very thing itself whatever it is that stabs your heart empties your hands demolishes your dreams you take that very thing in a simple act of faith i would recommend that you get down on your knees that helps me and i like to be physical about things because i'm very much of the earth earthy and i'm not by any means very spiritual so it helps me to make my spiritual commitments to god in a physical way so i get down on my knees i lift up my hands and i put whatever that thing is my loneliness my disappointment my sorrow in my hands and i say lord i can't handle this you take it i offer it up to you and he knows how to transform it how is he going to transform it don't ask me i gave you the example of my friend daphne a transformed life which is in the in the process of being transformed herself she is given the privilege of helping to transform somebody else's and that's what we're here for the gift of loneliness is for the sake of the body for the sake of the world i think of a widow lady who was like a gift from god to our family when i was a young young woman i guess i was in college when my mother discovered this widow lady who was in her 70s who lived in the same town she was lonely she lived in a great big old rattling empty house by herself she was stone deaf but she was to me an icon of godliness the very visible sign of what true simple humble cheerful godliness is all about she came to be a helper in our house and she would come in the daytime and one of us would always have to go and pick her up and when i was home from college in the summer time or whatever i would often be the chauffeur and i would have to go over to her house and it was really a bleak miserable horrible place and there would be a little sign in the on the door that said i am home please come in because she couldn't hear the doorbell she couldn't hear a knock she couldn't she had no telephone and she had such trust that the lord was going to take care of her obviously anybody could have walked in and done anything they wanted to her but i would have to walk in and walk through the house till i found her and as soon as i found her you know i tap her on the shoulder and she'd look up with this radiant smile and say she'd say in her funny voice because she had no idea what she sounded like oh here you are and then she'd come and get in the car and whatever the weather was if it was beautiful sunny day she'd say oh it gives folks a chance to do what they want and if it was a miserable day sleeting or raining or snowing she'd say oh it gives folks a chance to do what they want and everything was just fine with her and she came to our house and she would make piles of brown sugar cookies and gallons of applesauce and she would sit and entertain my invalid grandmother and she was a ray of sunshine and a godsend to us and i thought of how in her widowhood she spent her whole life giving to others in fact she took care of the 95 year old man across the street she was always talking about him as an old man she herself being only about 75 didn't think of herself as old at all and she talked about when they get old they gets like this and that and she would describe old mr voorhees across the street she had only one son and as far as we could tell he never came near her never did one single thing for her but we became her family and she became absolutely indispensable to us and i've thought of how without any self-consciousness that woman laid down her life for us she made her life an offering for us she had no interest in herself never talked about herself was interested in everything that we did and she was the visible manifestation of what jesus meant in matthew 25 verse 40. where he has told them that when i was hungry you fed me when i was naked you clothed me when i was sick you visited me when i was in prison you came to me and they said when did we ever see you naked when did we ever feed you when did we ever give you clothes and his answer was inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brothers you have done it for me and i think how that's exactly what mrs kershaw did i feel sure that she is going to be so far ahead of me and probably others in heaven because jesus said the first shall be last and the last shall be first in as much as you've done it for one of the least of these my brothers you've done it for me so her life was an offering her service of sacrifice was an offering i think of anna in scripture she was a widow 84 years old in the temple when mary and joseph arrived to have jesus dedicated and circumcised and anna recognized him immediately and went out and told people about the child that had been born but we read that she spent her days she had only been married seven years and then had been a widow until she was 84. so that's a lot of years of widowhood assuming that she was married as a young woman but the scripture says she spent her time worshiping fasting praying and giving thanks in her widowhood she had something to offer i think of mary and martha and lazarus all of them single and all of them living together and they made a home for jesus it's very plain from the scriptures that jesus loved to go to that home in bethany where mary and martha and lazarus lived we don't know much else about them except that they did make a home for him and it was a place of refuge and a place of peace for him in their loneliness so instead of the ceaseless hungry search for fulfillment that we see on every hand around us the search for companionship and for solutions will you waste your enem will you waste your energies and your time and your strength on trying to figure out the whys and the hows of how god is going to do this these are secrets of his or will you simply trust him some of you i'm sure are familiar with the poem the hound of heaven and i'm not going to read you the whole poem it's a very long one but it's a story of a man and i'm told that he was an alcoholic francis thompson and he had tried to find god in every way that he could and then he decided to try to fl to flee from him he had sought for god in nature and in the faces of children and he says this i fled him down the nights and down the days i fled him down the arches of the years i fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind and in the midst of tears i hid from him and then he tells how he tried romantic love he tried the love of children he tried nature while still with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace deliberate speed majestic instancy came on the following feat and at last the hound of heaven chases him to earth and he hears a voice around him like a bursting sea which says all which i took from thee i did but take not for thy harms but just that thou should seek it in my arms all which thy child's mistake fancies as lost i have stored for thee at home rise clasp my hand and come some of you feel as though you've lost a great deal maybe some of you have recently lost someone that you love remember these words all that i took for thee i took not for thy harms but that thou might find it in my arms now it'd be very easy for us to get hung up with the house and the wise how are we going to find whatever it is we've lost in his arms now it's very easy for us to have lost someone who is a christian to imagine that someday we will see that person again in heaven but other things that you lose stored for us at home i have stored for thee at home he said did we only fancy it at la as lost well we can't ask too many questions i've made a list of some of the questions that people asked in the scripture can god spread a table in the wilderness has your god been able to save you from from the lions can these bones live again how is the lord to save jerusalem is this your care for the widow you can see that there's a note of slight derision not sarcasm in some of these questions which way are we to turn why wait any longer for him to help us where can we buy bread how can a man be born when he is old how can you give me living water how can this man give us his flesh to eat how is it that this untrained man can teach what is the good of that for such a crowd remember when the little boy brought his five loaves and two fishes one of the disciples said that what is the good of that for such a crowd who will roll away the stone some of those questions you'll recognize and you'll know what the answers were so the second thing that we have to offer for god to god i gave you a list under number one primarily the sacrifice of thanksgiving the sacrifice of your will the offering up of your trust and now your obedience and i have found the most wonderful therapy in my periods of deepest grief is obedience there is no consolation like obedience and when my first husband died i was living alone on a jungle station then trying to do everything that he and i had done together and i just found that by doing the next thing without trying to think about how i was ever going to get through tomorrow or even how i was ever going through this afternoon just doing the next thing it was in doing my duties faithfully and humbly before god offering up offering them up to him that i found the transformation of my suffering and i can't offer you any greater remedy than to seek your fulfillment in his arms and to recognize that this is your job here and now in spite of your feelings some of you may be suffering with the empty nest syndrome i don't see too many of you in my present audience who look as though you would be that age but there may be others who will be watching later and i had a letter from a friend of mine who was just on the verge of that very thing she had just married off her second daughter and she had just one left at home and she said this as painful and emotional as it seems now that amy will be at home only one more year i know that then there will be grace sufficient and a new set of marching orders and this gives such hope for the giver of the promise may be trusted and i believe that this is what follows loss of any kind a new set of marching orders a mother's loss of her child a wife's of her husband a lovers of his beloved a man's loss of his job devastating thing the loss of health of self-esteem of a home we have to have ears to hear what that new set of marching orders will be well there i was on a jungle station alone and i certainly was not catapulted to sainthood i went back over some old journals and i'll give you a little sample i got so impatient with the girls in school that i had to come downstairs for a while and write a letter just for a break then the afternoon held the instruction class for those who teach the children's meeting i feel helpless without jim he always taught that class a thousand little things come up constantly gasoline for the lamps where did he store it someone broke into the storeroom what did they steal i don't even know what was in it hector the teacher of the indian school came up to discuss his salary such a complicated business i don't even know i don't even understand it all but although my spiritual ambitions were high i just give you that little insight lest you think that the gift of widowhood and of loneliness catapulted me to sainthood it didn't i'm a very long way from it and it's been over all these many years since 1956 that god has been teaching me these lessons with tremendous patience with grace with love and he will do that for you if any of you feel as if you're just beginners in the school of faith and maybe you feel as if you've blown everything remember that it's one step at a time one day at a time and the next thing you do the next thing and the third thing the last thing that i can just barely touch on try to look at the invisible it's when we look at the circumstances around us that we fall apart the eye of faith sees beyond the stuff of this ordinary world when we're lonely we feel useless unloved helpless and we even hate ourselves remember that saint augustine said lord thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee loneliness is a wilderness but it can also be a pathway to god ask god to help you to see that pathway which leads to him to enable you to say yes lord i'll take it to offer it back to him with thanksgiving and then to offer him your trust and your obedience god bless you you

Channel: The Elisabeth Elliot Foundation

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Length: 30min 14sec (1814 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 12 2020