THE CHRISTIAN WALK IS MANY TIMES A LONELY ONE
“I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children.“
—Psalm 69:8
“Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, will he find faith on the earth?”
—Luke 18:8
“And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake.”
—Luke 21:17
THE NARROW ROAD IS OFTEN A SOLITARY ONE
ARE YOU WALKING IN CHRIST OR WALKING IN THE WORLD?
The road for the true believer is many times a lonely one. The hard road to the cross is one that is seldom congested or busy. The narrow road is most often a solitary way which the popular crowd is unwilling to tread.
Especially in the times in which we now live.
Particularly for those who warn of the danger of the broad way. The world and many who call themselves “Christian” want an easier message.
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.“
—Matthew 7:13-14
The true believer in Christ is a man or woman set apart. Friends, family and acquaintances will often pull away and return to the world. Some are seduced by the glitter of the world’s shininess; some hear the world’s siren song whispered in their ear; others are drawn by lying promises, whatever they may be.
Many will leave the Christian to continue his walk without human companionship.
But never alone.
“Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”
—Deuteronomy 31:6
An excerpt from The Loneliness of the Christian by A.W. Tozer
The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone.
The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.
The man [or woman] who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over-serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens.
He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.
It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else.”
“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”
—Isaiah 41:10
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
—Psalm 23:4
Only two percent of those who self-identify as “Christians” share their faith. Which means that an awful lot of people who sit in church on Sundays are pretenders. The true believer will often get little solace or companionship from these pretend Christians–nor from the world.
Why did God make salvation such a narrow path?
Jesus says that narrow gate leads to a “hard” road, one that will take us through hardships and difficult decisions. Following Jesus requires crucifying our flesh (Galatians 2:20; 5:24; Romans 6:2), living by faith (Romans 1:17; 2 Corinthians 5:7; Hebrews 10:38), enduring trials with Christlike patience (James 1:2–3, 12; 1 Peter 1:6), and living a lifestyle separate from the world (James 1:27; Romans 12:1–2). When faced with the choice between a narrow, bumpy road and a wide, paved highway, most of us choose the easier road. Human nature gravitates toward comfort and pleasure. When faced with the reality of denying themselves to follow Jesus, most people turn away (John 6:66). Jesus never sugar-coated the truth, and the truth is that not many people are willing to pay the price to follow Him.
Just how narrow is the narrow gate?
THE SAINT MUST WALK ALONE
by A. W. Tozer
“No one is a friend to the man with a cross.”
MOST OF THE WORLD’S GREAT SOULS have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness.
In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man’s creation) that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him; and while it is not stated in so many words, a fair inference is that Enoch walked a path quite apart from his contemporaries.
Another lonely man was Noah who, of all the antediluvians, found grace in the sight of God; and every shred of evidence points to the aloneness of his life even while surrounded by his people.
Again, Abraham had Sarah and Lot, as well as many servants and herdmen, but who can read his story and the apostolic comment upon it without sensing instantly that he was a man “whose soul was alike a star and dwelt apart”? As far as we know not one word did God ever speak to him in the company of men. Face down he communed with his God, and the innate dignity of the man forbade that he assume this posture in the presence of others. How sweet and solemn was the scene that night of the sacrifice when he saw the lamps of fire moving between the pieces of offering. There alone with a horror of great darkness upon him he heard the voice of God and knew that he was a man marked for divine favor.
Moses also was a man apart. While yet attached to the court of Pharaoh he took long walks alone, and during one of these walks while far removed from the crowds he saw an Egyptian and a Hebrew fighting and came to the rescue of his countryman. After the resultant break with Egypt he dwelt in almost complete seclusion in the desert. There while he watched his sheep alone the wonder of the burning bush appeared to him, and later on the peak of Sinai he crouched alone to gaze in fascinated awe at the Presence, partly hidden, partly disclosed, within the cloud and fire.
The prophets of pre-Christian times differed widely from each other, but one mark they bore in common was their enforced loneliness. They loved their people and gloried in the religion of the fathers, but their loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their zeal for the welfare of the nation of Israel drove them away from the crowd and into long periods of heaviness. “I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children,” cried one and unwittingly spoke for all the rest.
Most revealing of all is the sight of that One of whom Moses and all the prophets did write treading His lonely way to the cross, His deep loneliness unrelieved by the presence of the multitudes.
‘Tis midnight, and on Olive’s brow
The star is dimmed that lately shone;
‘Tis midnight; in the garden now,
The suffering Saviour prays alone.
‘Tis midnight, and from all removed
The Saviour wrestles lone with fears,
E’en the disciple whom He loved
Heeds not his Master’s grief and tears.
-WILLIAM B. TAPPAN
He died alone in the darkness hidden from the sight of mortal man and no one saw Him when He arose triumphant and walked out of the tomb, though many saw Him afterward and bore witness to what they saw.
There are some things too sacred for any eye but God’s to look upon. The curiosity, the clamor, the well-meant but blundering effort to help can only hinder the waiting soul and make unlikely if not impossible the communication of the secret message of God to the worshiping heart.
Sometimes we react by a kind of religious reflex and repeat dutifully the proper words and phrases even though they fail to express our real feelings and lack the authenticity of personal experience. Right now is such a time. A certain conventional loyalty may lead some who hear this unfamiliar truth expressed for the first time to say brightly, “Oh, I am never lonely. Christ said, `I will never leave you nor forsake you,’ and, `Lo, I am with you alway.’ How can I be lonely when Jesus is with me?”
Now I do not want to reflect on the sincerity of any Christian soul, but this stock testimony is too neat to be real. It is obviously what the speaker thinks should be true rather than what he has proved to be true by the test of experience. This cheerful denial of loneliness proves only that the speaker has never walked with God without the support and encouragement afforded him by society. The sense of companionship which he mistakenly attributes to the presence of Christ may and probably does arise from the presence of friendly people. Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross. “They all forsook him, and fled.”
The pain of loneliness arises from the constitution of our nature. God made us for each other. The desire for human companionship is completely natural and right. The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His Godgiven instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.
The man who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his as he mingles with religious persons in the regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find. But he should not expect things to be otherwise. After all, he is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he takes is not on his feet but in his heart. He walks with God in the garden of his own souland who but God can walk there with him? He is of another spirit from the multitudes that tread the courts of the Lord’s house. He has seen that of which they have only heard, and he walks among them somewhat as Zacharias walked after his return from the altar when the people whispered, “He has seen a vision.”
The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Saviour glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and overserious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.
It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.” His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd that Christ is All in All, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life’s summum bonum.
Two things remain to be said. One, that the lonely man of whom we speak is not a haughty man, nor is he the holier-than-thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his very loneliness. He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his griefs to God alone.
The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. Just the opposite is true. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the broken-hearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he is detached from the world he is all the more able to help it. Meister Eckhart taught his followers that if they should find themselves in prayer as it were caught up to the third heavens and happen to remember that a poor widow needed food, they should break off the prayer instantly and go care for the widow. “God will not suffer you to lose anything by it,” he told them. “You can take up again in prayer where you left off and the Lord will make it up to you.” This is typical of the great mystics and masters of the interior life from Paul to the present day.
The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful “adjustment” to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.
—From “Man – The Dwelling Place of God,” Chapter 39: “The Saint Must Walk Alone”
“So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.“
—Luke 14:33
“And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.”
—Matthew 19:29
RELATED ARTICLES
- Lonely, Never Alone
- Do You Know if You are Going to Heaven? Be Sure!
- The Church on the Narrow Path, part 1
- MAN OF SIN: The Man of Sin is Coming
- Wheat and Tares
- Whore of Babylon: Is your Church Preparing for Whoredom?
- Roman Road to Eternal Salvation through Jesus Christ
by Jeremiah J. Jameson
–with Mondo Frazier
images;
1- siraphat, dan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net/ETPR
2- Idea go, FreeDigitalPhotos.net
© Jeremiah J. Jameson and End Times Prophecy Report, 2012-13. © Mondo Frazier, DBKP and End Times Prophecy Report, 2007-13. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jeremiah J. Jameson and End Times Prophecy Report with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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Wow! How very true this is. Thank you for posting this – it ministered to me.
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Praise God!
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Reblogged this on Truth2Freedom's Blog.
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This loneliness has been my feeling so long (5 years) that I take it for granted now. No one, Christian or unbeliever, shares and cares for the burdens on my heart – mostly for sinners I want to see saved. It’s a lonely life. I’m never at home in a noisy, smoke bar. Nor am I at home in my church library.
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“This loneliness has been my feeling so long (5 years) that I take it for granted now.”
You know, I always had great “popularity.”
Then I became a Christian.
But the desire for the accolades of men pales beside the gratitude I feel for a Savior who, for whatever reason (I know not), decided to reach down and Save ME! That gratitude and the constant question of “Why me?” dwarf each person who falls away because of my “over-emphasis,” “unreasonableness” or “whacked-out” faith.
I wrote this piece because one of the people I felt certain would hold fast fell away. It was a sudden, momentary feeling of dismay.
“It’s a lonely life.”
Yes, and when one leaves a church which came to substitute for family and friends, there’s a time of questioning as well. Not questioning God’s goodness, but why this particular action? Am I reading everything accurately? Is this His will? What possible good can come of this?
The questions amplify the solitary nature because there is no other human to turn to.
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I found this article because this is my life as a lover and follower of my LORD but this morning, the loneliness and grieving was so overbearing that it first drove me to my knees to call on the one who loves me so and hides me under His wing; then drove me to search for answers as to why am I so alone on this journey? The LORD answered me through the message , why others can and I can’t written by W. D. Watson and Tozer’s message and through the sharing of others who are experiencing the same thing, such as yourself. Thank the LORD that He knows the way we feel and as He revealed to Elijah in 1 Kings 19; He has spoken and revealed to us the same….We have been called to a life set apart for the Master’s use and He is with us!
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Found your website a few months ago. This article ministered to me immensely!
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i am one of these set apart and alone experiencing much hurt from others, depression and illness . i have found no true believers like me where i live and have been drawn away from the local church and misunderstood. i found this work by tozer a few years ago and often go back to it. thank u for your blog
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This information was so comforting. It explains all I’ve endured the past five years, but I’ve also learned carrying a cross is part of the package. I don’t fear the process after learning God’s word is true; we can trust Him to bring us through every situation or obstacle. He is faithful and true! Try finding one human to rely on 24/7? I met Jesus Christ on a personal level simply by seeking Him with all my heart beginning by reading my Bible every single day. It comes alive, and as I’ve grown, I know His grace is all I need.
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