Why Are We So Lonely?

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

It is madness to try to live on a spinning sphere that is flying through space at hundreds of miles an hour and be on your own not knowing who is in control of it. That's where a lot of our fear comes. We are lonely because we will always be lonely without God. I can be your friend, somebody else can be your friend, and a husband or a wife can be your friend for so long. But finally, we are all lonely because there is only one who really makes us feel at home and that's the dear one who put us here. So, when you play games with Him and lose the sense of His presence, you become a real lonely person. The situation is like this air around us.  If I decide to hold my breath and not breathe, it doesn't matter what you say about the air being all around me. I will just look at you and my face will get bigger and bigger and I'll look as if I am going to explode. Then I'll fall, faint, and eventually die, even though the air is all around me. If I don't breathe it in, it won't do me any good.

It's the same with God. If you fail to perceive His presence and recognize Him and acknowledge Him and be real with him, then you fail to receive the benefit of His life into your life -- and that's where we said many of us are. Many of us feel we are in a "catch-22" situation. We feel yes, that's right. I do pretend because I am not like Him.  I have feelings of lust at times and would be embarrassed to death if He knew about them. He does know about them, but we keep pretending. The pretend game is stupid but we do it. And there are things that I want in my life that I don't think He wants me to want. And so, I just couldn't look Him in the eye. I couldn't look Him in the eye.  I don't see how I can look Him in the eye unless I change. I don't see what's going to change me unless He changes me. And how can He change me if I don't recognize Him? How can I get close to Him if I am like I am? And how come I be other than I am unless I get close to Him?

Of course the amazing gospel is, that God out of the great love He has for you, has taken all the things that you have ever done, all the things that He has noted in His spiritual memory, all the hard things you have said to people, all the dirty things you have thought, all the dishonest things you have done and on the page of His memory, He has torn them up. He has brought you close to Himself out of sheer love. He has done that. But you keep on pretending and evading Him as if He doesn't know what you are.  He not only knows what you are, but He has lifted you up to be beside Himself. At this moment He regards you as being beside Himself. He is treating you as being beside Him and He is willing to give you all that He has. But because you don't believe that, you erect a barrier against Him just as I do if I don't breathe.