Orphan Heart or Friend

I realized through a few people and my own heart that loneliness is a big deal in our culture.  As an only child raised in a single parent home, I often felt alone in my everyday life.  The Lord just recently touched a place in my heart where I believed that everyday I had to do life on my own and this was just the way it is.  I remember waking up before school as a child with a foreboding sense of the day because I just knew inside that I was going to have to navigate the day alone.  Early on in life I made the decision of the "orphan heart", which is that I am in this alone.  In Genesis 2:18 we read where "LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone;'".  I can only imagine the abyss of loneliness both Adam and Eve experienced after "The Fall", especially the loneliness that came from the disconnection between them because they had to "be like God".  In other words through "The Lie" they had to be in control, have it together, be self-sufficient, and be the source of their own supply.  If they let down this god-like mask then they would be naked, vulnerable, weak, human, and inadequate.  I like Adam and Eve learned to hide behind this god-like mask that I didn't need God and others as desperately as I really did.  This apparent strength was coming from an orphan heart which was afraid of trusting anyone but myself.  From this place it became more important to reinforce the walls of my self-protection, than to reach out in vulnerability.  I chose isolation over friendship, I chose safety over risking rejection, I chose a lie over the truth, I chose darkness over light, I chose my own strength over appearing weak, I agreed with hopelessness over hope, I chose death over life, and I chose being an orphan over being a son.  For many years I blamed my father who abandoned me through suicide and my mother through my distorted perspective emotionally abandoned me, both have responsibility for what was theirs but finally I made the decision to agree with an orphan heart.  The Gospel comes crashing in on this darkness through John 14:18  "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." and John 15:15 where Jesus says, "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you."  I have heard it said that there is a translation from the Hebrew that says orphan means comfortless.  This would tie into a passage that I have been meditating on 2 Corinthians 1:2-4 which says, God is "...the Father of mercies and God of all comfort...".  These verses go on to say that God "...comforts us in all our afflictions so that we will be able to comfort others..."  The Lord began to show me that I don't see Him as the God of all comfort that I expect to be disappointed, left on my own, or rejected by Him as I felt with others.  This deception sets me up to not receive from Him, when He is just waiting to bring comfort, compassion, and mercy.  I thank God that I am receiving a revelation of who He is as the Comforter (one of the names of the Holy Spirit).  May He be the source of comfort in your life.  Too many have viewed God as the afflictor rather than the one who brings comfort, where in Scripture does it say He afflicts us.  The Word does say he disciplines but discipline is done in love for building up not for tearing down.  I pray His comfort in your life.

In His Comfort,
Bret