YET I AM NOT ALONE ...

YET I AM NOT ALONE, FOR THE FATHER IS WITH ME. John 16:32 (ESV)

Many of the redeemed find out often through difficult and lonely experiences that living out our beliefs often demands extreme sacrifice on many different levels and often multiple levels at the same time.
Living by the faith and growing in that faith may well mean that I lose the companionship of certain people or a time. Such losses often bring about a deep and painful sense of aloneness or loneliness. Even so, if I am to move forward in faith, or fly like the eagle flies, high and higher into the brighter light of the Lord, I have to be willing to potentially suffer an increasing amount of aloneness and loneliness.
No bird lives as solitary a life as does the eagle. It never flies in a flock, a most there might be two together in flight or perched, and this togetherness is but for a short time. While my faithfulness to the Word of God, and thus my growth in faith may cost me the companionship of others, I am never left alone. As the companionship of others decreases, the companionship of the Lord increases for me.
It is to such divine companionship, such heights of faith that the Lord calls all people. No one ever realizes how sweet the Lord really is, until they have had to walk or fly alone with Him. No person in the Scriptures, from Abraham to Paul, ever matured in their faith, or soared as high as they did without each of them having had to be alone with the Lord. The Lord had to isolate them, even as He isolated Jonah, so that they might learn the up look, learn to look to the Lord above in all things. Each instance of this isolation is a part, a glimpse of how the Lord is at work in all things for the good of those who love Him and have called according to His purpose (Rm 8:28-29).
Such isolations are much like a furnace that is used to purify gold (1 Pt 1:6-7). Through these isolations, the Lord seeks to purify our faith. Just as gold increases in its purity and value by the removal of what is not gold, so faith increases in its purity and richness by the removal of all that is not of saving faith.
Such isolations help to free us from our dependence upon others to sustain us. While such companions are valuable as they support and encourage us in our journey of faith, they can become obstacles to us in reaching the heights the Lord has called us to. They become obstacles as we place undo affection and faith in them for the comfort and safety they have provided to us. Our companions may well be all around us, but these isolations are of such an inner nature that they bring us to that place where we cannot share it with them. Moreover, even when we try, our companions and their comfort, no longer comfort. Then we are left alone, apart from human held, and it is in this aloneness, that we learn what true comfort really is and Who our true Comforter really is – the Lord and His Word.
When the Father has finished His work through some event or experience that has isolated us from others for a time, He often returns us to our companions. These companions are in no way loved less, but in fact are loved in a better way. For when my love for my companions is motivated by my dependence upon them, I love them for selfish and self-serving reasons. My isolations from them, serves to train me in the way of faith and dependency on the Lord alone, that I might love Him and my companions all the more selflessly, and thus rightly.
If I am to follow St. Paul, and press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:14), then I must be willing, and welcoming, of those times when I must be alone and isolated with the Lord.
In time, the Lord will make it clear whether my isolation is of the Father or of myself and my faithfulness to my personal preferences.
Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Lord You have made me to fly, bear me up as on eagles wings to Your upward calling. Amen