Loneliness is a tough gig and it's way, way more common than you might think. But God is a God who speaks into our loneliness. God is a God who shows up in our loneliness. God is a God who takes away … our loneliness.

It never ceases to amaze me how we can be surrounded by people and yet, still feel lonely. That's probably because loneliness has nothing to do with how physically close we are to other people. It's more about how emotionally connected we feel. I remember in a restaurant, recently, having dinner with my wife and there was an older couple at the next table, hardly talking and completely bored looks on their faces. It's so sad, isn't it?

Loneliness can strike anyone, anytime, anywhere. We receive so many requests for prayer on our www.christianityworks.com website and one of the most common requests has to do with loneliness.

I'd like to share one of those requests with you today (quite anonymously of course), so we can look at the whole issue of loneliness – from A Different Perspective.

Just the other day, we received this prayer request from a University student who's away from home studying overseas.

I ask you to pray for me for comfort from the Lord as I'm feeling really lonely just at the moment. I'm away from my family and friends overseas. And I'd ask you to pray for renewed strength and confidence for me over this coming year to lean more on the Lord, to lift up my worries to Him. Thank you so much.

And he signs his name.

It's so natural, isn't it? So real and everyday, this problem of feeling lonely. Me, well, I actually enjoy my own company a lot. I don't like to have a lot of people around me. I'm happy to spend days on my own reading and praying and thinking and walking. But even so, I still (sometimes) feel lonely.

Now, we're not all like that. Some people depend a lot more on company. Some people, to tell you the truth, are over dependent on other people and that's not healthy. But whatever our balance is, whatever our fit is, we can all end up lonely. I know people who call themselves Christians who feel desperately lonely.

Now, in part you can understand that. We all need human company – women need female friends, guys need their mates, we all need people around us. But there's another part of me that is so profoundly sad when I hear that.

There are two promises of Jesus that I'd like to look at today, in this context of loneliness. The first one, He made to His disciples, He said, "It's good for you that I go away, because if I don't go, the promised Holy Spirit won't come." And the second one was, He said to them, "I will never leave you or forsake you."

You put those two together and really what He's saying is, just the way that He was physically present with those disciples, a couple of thousand years ago, by sending His Holy Spirit (and this took me a while to come to grips with. I have to tell you, the notion that when I believe in Jesus the Spirit of God comes to dwell in me), so He was saying … just as He was present physically with those disciples two thousand years ago, today, He is spiritually present with His disciples, with those of us who say, "Jesus I want to follow you", here and now. Just as real, just as amazing.

Sometimes I hear people talking about praying as though it were a chore. I just struggle to believe that. Jesus said:

It is good for you that I go away, I will never leave you or forsake you, I will send my Spirit. He said, "It's good for you, it's almost better for you that I've gone away physically so that you can experience me spiritually through the Holy Spirit.

On the one hand, people are desperately lonely. And yet on the other hand, they're hungering for some authentic spiritual experience – something that's more than pews, and choirs, and stain glass windows. You know, something that is real and alive. And so sadly, so many people never put the two together.

We can do that. We can, in faith, put the two together – our problem of loneliness and our hunger for an authentic spiritual experience. Because if Jesus said, it's good for you that I go away because I'm going to send my Holy Spirit to dwell in you, to make My home in you, through My Spirit … if that is true, if we can believe in that (just with the smallest bit of faith), Jesus wants to do something here. Jesus wants to show the lonely that they don't have to be lonely anymore.

I remember being desperately lonely when I was going through marriage breakdown, ten years ago. And Jesus did something in me and just gave me that little bit of faith that I needed to believe that He is here, right now. That the moment we say, "Jesus I believe in you," He sends His Holy Spirit to dwell inside of us – today, tomorrow, forever and ever because He will never leave us or forsake us.

I believe that I can come boldly before the throne of grace. And that I'll find God's help with exactly the thing that I need at the time that I need it.

When we have a desperate hunger after human company that just isn't being satisfied, maybe you're there now, maybe this is something that you've got to tuck away for the future, if only we would just hunger first after God's company, just as much. In fact, I don't think that until we've been drenched in God's company, in God's presence, we're going to be any good company to anyone else.

And in the same way, I don't think we can really enjoy other peoples' company (the full and rich thing that relationships with other people have to offer), until we've been so hungry for company that we've found in the company of Jesus Christ. That we've found the joy of that quite beautiful relationship with Jesus Christ, that can sustain us through every high and every low, and everything that this earth has to throw at us.

So often, Jesus allows us to wander in a lonely wilderness to give us the space to discover Him. And maybe, if today, you are desperately lonely, or you know someone who is desperately lonely, maybe today is the day that He is speaking to you and saying, "The reason I allow this loneliness is so in the midst of it all, you would hear my quite still voice. In the midst of it all, you'd notice I'm waiting for you. I'm here, I'm with you. I so want to have a relationship with you."

For me (for my part), as I look back on that time in the middle of loneliness, where I got to discover Jesus and have a relationship with Him, I know that I could not be the husband that I am for my wife, Jacqui, today, if I hadn't first discovered Him. I know that I wouldn't enjoy the fullness of our relationship, if I hadn't been lonely and bumped into Jesus in the middle of that. And I know, I couldn't love her and honour her and bless her with who I am unless first, I discovered who Jesus was. Unless first, I let Him change me, take out some of the rubbish that was swimming round inside me.

I'm not perfect, nor are you, none of us are. Some days, I'm just not your perfect husband. Some days, I'm grumpy and tired. But you know something, most days, I'm not. Most days, I get to enjoy the life that Jesus gave me and enjoy the relationships that He has brought me because of that lonely dark time in the wilderness when there was just One Light. And that light was called Jesus Christ!

God has a plan. That plan is to bless us. And when we are starving and hungering for company and there's just nobody around, there is – Jesus is! And He's waiting.