Psalm 94:14 For the Lord will not abandon His people, Nor will He forsake His inheritance. (NASB)

Is there anything worse than feeling abandoned? While we are infants we need others to feed and care for us. We would not survive if we did not have that level of care. Would it surprise you to discover that never changes in our lives? No one can survive on their own. No one should feel alone.

Genesis 2:18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

We have been dependent on one another since the beginning. I left off yesterday by telling you a little secret, that the world will abandon you. This is not in the sense that you will be left alone but rather that you will not have anyone care for you as God intended. This is the sin nature of abandonment.

Selfish people only care about themselves. The fact that they are in your life only means they are using you for their own selfish interests. If you do not have people in your life that have the love of God within them, they those who are with you serve themselves in some fashion.

People who serve the love of God will always stress the need for a loving relationship with God. It is their new nature, their new heart condition. Do you have people like that in your life? Do you feel the need for that kind of relationship, where others have your best interest at heart?

Remember what I said sin should do? Fearing God, feeling exposed, feeling vulnerable are all signs of abandonment. You can be standing in a crowd and feel that way. Are you alone? That can change.

Numbers 30:13 Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void.

While I take great pleasure in Jesus Christ being the bridegroom and rely upon Him and Him alone to deal with my sin based on our relationship, I want to examine the afflicted soul. Psychology has a term for the soul that is not afflicted at all. They are called psychopaths. These are people who are void of all feelings.

There was a television series once that dealt with psychopaths and when asked why this killer felt compelled to kill his answer was, “So I could feel something, anything but this emptiness.” This is the true nature of sin, to feel emotion, to pleasure self. If it feels good do it. Our sin nature causes us to fill our lives with feelings. Even sins expression of love is selfish. It is called Eros in the Greek. It means selfish love, to derive pleasure at the expense of others.

Psychopath is the extreme term followed closely behind by sociopath and narcissist. These three are extreme examples and nearly everyone recognizes these behaviors to be unacceptable. They all have the absence of the afflicted soul. We who have afflicted souls find ourselves in various stages of affliction. Some of us have given way to pleasure have either masked or at least dulled those feelings of affliction.

1 John 2:15-17 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

Here is a secret. The world will abandon you. The world passes away.