How to Celebrate...February
How to Celebrate …
February
This is the month of chocolates and of valentines … of sweethearts and of candlelight dinners. It is the month of romantic love songs and sweet remembrances of days gone by. February … it is the month when we are all reminded how desperately we want to be loved and to give love in return.
It is also the month of loneliness …and of broken hearts. It is a time of yet another Friday night alone … and the hollow ache of memories that will surely never happen again. February … it reminds us often of all that ways that we are not loved.
I don’t know what condition your heart is in this February of 2021, but I know the One who loves you unconditionally. I know the One who gave His life for you and who has promised never to leave you or forsake you.
So, as you pick up the pieces of your heart, and determine to make it through this month with at least a measure of joy, I’d like to share with you about joy in loneliness, joy with difficult people and the joy of disappointment.
Dear, dear friend … you can celebrate February even if you are lonely … even if there are difficult people in your life … and even if you are sorely and completely disappointed. Oh, yes! You can!
What is loneliness?
Loneliness is simply feeling as if no one sincerely cares about you or is interested in your life beyond surface interactions.
It is assuming that nobody desires to listen to your thoughts or quietly understand what is going on in the recesses of your heart. Loneliness might be identified as believing that even if you did have a friend who knew your whole heart, they probably wouldn’t like it or accept it.
If loneliness is not recognized and lovingly healed, it will certainly be the precursor to depression. So how is the feeling of loneliness healed? Is there an answer to the vacuum of the soul?
“I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.”
— hebrews 13:5
If you are dealing with loneliness today, let these powerful and timeless words from Hebrews bring comfort to your damaged heart.
You serve a God who will never leave you alone!
His promise is sure and you can build a life upon it …no matter what your relationship status is … you are not deserted by the One who knows you best and loves you most.
You are not forsaken in any situation or at any moment in life. He is with you: what glorious relief! The enemy wants you to believe that you are alone, but according to the Bible, the greatest book of truth in all of history, you always have Someone by your side.
A time of loneliness is one of those strategic moments in life when you must remember that your feelings often do not tell you the truth:
“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? ”
Whenever your heart tries to convince you that you are all alone and that no one cares about you or your life, you must once again choose to believe the truth of the Scriptures rather than the instability of your feelings. When it comes to loneliness, you must open your Bible and agree with the Word of God and not with the emotions that threaten to alienate you.
The final words that Jesus spoke to His disciples were specifically and lovingly chosen to remind them of His perpetual presence. He assured them that even though they would no longer be able to see Him with their human eyes, He would undeniably be with them always!
“I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
The words that Jesus spoke to His disciples are as true for us today as they were for His followers then. He is with you. Remind yourself of that truth in your darkest hours.
In my seasons of loneliness, I have reminded myself numerous times that there are at least two ways that will help me walk through the door to God’s undeniable presence: fellowship and worship.
“For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”
This Scripture teaches us that when believers are with each other, He is with them also. If you want to spend time with God, try spending an evening with a group of people who love Him. If you feel alone, invite some people over who love to pray, and guess who else will walk in your door? Find a small group Bible study or a church where the presence of God is real and cherished.
The second way that lonely people can place themselves in the direct presence of the Lord is through the choice to worship.
“But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.”
God dwells where praise is full and strong!
If you long for your loving Father to make Himself known and manifest in your life, then you should spend time worshipping Him. The Lord shows up when a man or woman of God rises above events and circumstances with a heart that is overflowing with pure worship. If you deal with loneliness, turn up the worship music and then lift your hands in the air because He is there! You are not alone. Sing out loud and sing out strong! He is there! Sing in the car and make a melody in the shower, and He will be with you. Whenever you have made a conscious choice to worship, you have just placed yourself in His presence.
You can sing loneliness away when you take your eyes off your circumstances and place them on Jesus, who has promised to stay closer than a brother or a sister. You can usher loneliness right out the door when you attach yourself to the unmatched joy of worshipping!
How wonderful it is to know that Jesus will never leave us or forsake us! The assurance that He is always with us just might be the loveliest and most comforting promise in the entire Bible.
But honestly, if you are anything at all like me, there are some moments in life when you just simply ache for “Jesus with skin on.” There have been situations where I felt isolated and just needed another person to touch me. There have been circumstances of solitude where I have throbbed with the desire for someone—anyone—to audibly say a few kind words to me. Please don’t misunderstand me. I certainly had the sweet reassurance that Jesus was indeed with me. But oh, how I longed for just one empathetic squeeze of the hand from a friend who cared about me!
During such moments, I have had to learn that it was up to me to reach out. If I was alone, there was a reason for it, and generally the reason was me. I needed to relearn the lesson of maturity that my parents had taught me decades earlier: If you need a friend, then be a friend.
“if you need a friend, then be a friend.”
My prescription for your lonely soul is this: make an assertive and definitive attempt to reach out to someone else at least once a day. If you are still uncertain about what this might look like, read on.
Give to someone else in a kind manner as often as you are able. Don’t even pray about it—just do it. Your loneliness will be cured when you find that you are more concerned about someone else’s needs than about your own solitary and miserable state of existence. This is not as difficult as you might think at first. Begin by just smiling at a fellow shopper in the grocery store aisle or striking up a conversation with someone while you are in line at the post office. Write a note to an old college friend and reconnect with her. Bake some cookies and take them to a young family from church. Call someone from your Bible study that you’d like to know better and make a coffee date with her. Ask your pastor if there is anyone at church who is also dealing with loneliness and make a plan to get together with that person. Encourage a young mom by telling her that she is doing a good job. Invite a widow out to dinner on a Friday night. Knock on your neighbor’s door with a new magazine or a treat from the bakery.
Go out of your way to simply be a friend.
Do you ever wonder why God allows difficult people into your life?
I must admit, my emotions would be 99.9% perfect if it weren’t for people!! Difficult, frustrating people barge into my peaceful world and disrupt my stability with their instability! The nerve of difficult people!
Why can’t I just meet Pollyanna, Santa Claus and Mother Theresa along my life’s journey? Why does my life seem to be filled with the Grinch, Barney Fife and an ugly stepsister or two?!
Have you ever had a friendship with someone and then used these words to describe your relationship, “Well, she just brings out the worst in me!”
I have come to realize that often God places difficult people in my life not to bring out the worst in me ... but to bring out the best in me!
Perhaps the reason that the Lord allows our lives to collide with difficult people is not to bring out the “selfish” in us ... but to bring out the Jesus in us.
It is when I am trying to build a relationship with a fractious person that I must rely not upon my own natural inclinations and preferences but I must stay on my knees and pray for the fruit of the Spirit to be mine in abundance.
I believe that when Jesus wants to strengthen our ability to love, to encourage, and to comfort He sends a difficult person into our lives ... special delivery from Heaven!
I think that what scares me about this entire philosophy is that I just might be someone else’s difficult person! Now ... that’s a sobering thought indeed.
God, in His infinite wisdom and goodness, challenges me to love the unlovable ... to care for someone who spits in my eye ... and to talk kindly about someone who has ruined my reputation with their gossip. God loves me when I am at my very worst – and He calls me in every situation and with every relationship to be like Him. His plan for my life is that I would be less like the human version of me ... and more like the loving version of Him.
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”
When you walk in love and choose to be kind rather than throw an emotional tantrum, you are saying, “I will act like my Dad! I have the family gene that enables me to love difficult people! It’s what Christians do!!”
When you imitate God and love your husband ... smile at your ornery neighbor and listen to your loquacious sister ... you smell good! You don’t smell like verbal vomit but your life becomes a sweet aroma that wafts up into the nostrils of God.
When we respond with heartfelt love to others’ dysfunction, I have a feeling that God, the Father, is smiling down from Heaven and proudly declaring, “Look at my delightful child! She is acting just like Me!”
“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
This particular verse calls us not to respond with emotion to the difficult people in our lives but to respond with love and with prayer. God has created you at this time in history to be a conduit of His love and He has pointed your life straight toward fussy, irritable people.
God sent His Son, Jesus, into the world because we were the difficult people who needed forgiveness and love. Don’t allow difficult people to rock your boat emotionally or to steal your peace and joy. But allow people to bring out the family resemblance in you ... because after all ... you do look just like your Dad!
Are you disappointed today?
Have you ever been disappointed?
If you are older than 5 years old, you know exactly what disappointment feels like. It is that gut level feeling of just being sad ... and at times sick over what might have been ... what could have been ... what should have been.
Disappointment is such a difficult emotion to process. Unfortunately, disappointment, this particular regret of the soul, has the capacity to take a person to his or her knees in the hopeless place of “if only” ... a place where hearts can be permanently paralyzed … where dreams are dashed … where goals are paused …where destiny is changed.
Or is it? Does disappointment actually have the power to change one’s destiny? I think not!
“And not only this, we exult in our tribulations knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance, and perseverance,
proven character, and proven character, hope. And hope does not disappoint because the love of God
has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit
Who was given to us.”
—ROMANS 5:3-5
Hope does not disappoint!
Some of life’s holiest moments are experienced during times of unwanted and undeserved disappointment. God loves to meet sobbing, wandering children in the valley of setbacks and in the wilderness of discouragement.
He lives for the moment when you come running back to Him because life has let you down again.
When you feel that your life has fallen apart ... He meets you there. He is lovingly putting the pieces of your life back together.
When you mistakenly believe that you have been defeated one too many times ... He is there. He is perpetually cheering you on.
Truly, if you ever hope to experience victory again in your life, you will go to Him because victory only happens through Him … in Him … because of Him!
So what does one do when dealing with the pain of disappointment? What is the panacea for those achingly bitter moments in life?
Disappointment is able to produce a work of grace and power when handled with humility and hope.
Disappointment can be your finest hour when you place your well-laid plans at the foot of the cross and humbly ask Him for His appointment.
When your heart is a mangled mess ... hope has the power to heal.
When you are nauseous with regret and heartache ... trust gives life meaning again.
“And we know that all things work together for the good to those who love Him and are the called according to His purpose.”
Do you want to know what I believe? I believe that Romans 8:28 means exactly what it says it means.
We serve a God so powerful and so wonderful that He is able to knit together the mangled mess of our hearts into something breathtakingly beautiful.
When we concentrate on simply and passionately loving Him ... He is working behind the scenes of our lives to take every disappointment we encounter and work it to our advantage.
Although your heart may be hollow with the pain of aborted dreams and one downfall after another, hold on to hope!
Fan the flame of love for your Savior.
Trust in Him and in His goodness when your circumstances are bleak and discouraging.
Rather than remaining in a place of penetrating disappointment, know that because of the power and love of God, nothing this side of Heaven has the capacity to “dis”-appoint you.
“Nothing this side of Heaven has the capacity to “dis”-appoint you.”
You have been eternally and unflinchingly appointed for His purposes and His plans. His appointment for your life trumps circumstantial “dis”-appointments.
Even if you were the cause of the disappointment ... you are not “dis”-appointed.
God has appointed you for favor, for blessing and for goodness in spite of you and because of Him.
“We exult in our tribulations ... knowing that ... hope does not disappoint.”
So when dealing with the frustrating pain of circumstances gone awry, what does one do?
“We exult ...”
That word “exult”, that the Holy Spirit and Paul strategically chose to use in this verse, means “to glory in whether with reason or without.”
Rather than weep and wrap yourself in the flimsy comforter of discouragement, glory in your disappointment whether you can find a reason to do so or not.
You can glory in disappointment because God is still on the throne of your life. He is still in control. You have not escaped His love. And ... you are not “dis”-appointed.
He’s got this. He’s got you.
I am praying that you will wrap yourself in the sure comforter of hope and then find a reason to glory in Him.
And if you can’t find a reason to glory in Him ... do it anyway.
I am praying that you will experience His goodness in refreshing and extravagant ways.
I am praying that never again will you give someone or something the power to disappoint you. Your appointment remains sure and certain.
And, if my human voice has any comforting power, may I just remind you of some of the most restorative words ever penned by humanity: