It Starts Small

An interesting question came across my mind: Does God isolate His people?

I had just just helped my youngest move into her new home for the new college year. I was driving up the mountain when I said out loud, Father, I guess it is just you and me now. There was joy and peace in saying that. I knew God meant for this time of being alone for goodness, and good it was! I was able to really settle in and start to really dig into His word to discover truth and have truth revealed through the Holy Spirit. So lets explore isolation.

Ungodly Isolation

Is it possible to put ourselves in an ungodly isolation? I believe God’s Word shows us there are two different types of isolation.

18 Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom. ² A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself. Proverbs 18:1-2

Wisdom knows the shadows of isolation and the hazard it brings. King Solomon is telling his son, that those who want to be isolated, do not care about wisdom, but only want others to hear what he thinks. In verse one, we learn about a type of isolation, and he clarifies in verse 2 what sort of isolation.

We learn furthermore that pride and arrogance makes isolation dangerous.

⁷ Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil. Proverbs 3:7

¹² Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him. Proverbs 26:12

¹² There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Proverbs 14:12

Pride and arrogance says I don’t spend more time with other people because I don’t need other people — because I know better than other people. Pride distinguishes the virtue of solitude and isolation. Pride destroys families and communities by excluding relationships marked by consistent honesty, counsel, correction, and encouragement.

Isolation and Selfish Desires

Our own selfish desires draw us into physical and spiritual isolation. A person seeking isolation is driven by selfish desires (Proverbs 18:1). When a person wilfully leaves the community (this could be abandoning a family, or moving in isolation against church or the community around them), it is the lure to privacy, comfort and ease, vindication, or vengeance. At the root of it, James tell us it is the heart’s desire to divide and isolate:

4 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? ² Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. James 4:1-2

The desires that keep us from one another vary, but the root of it is pride and selfish discontent. That desire says the person wants but does not have, so they excuse themselves from love by attacking another or abandoning all together another.

¹⁸ How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.¹⁹ These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. Jude 18-19

Jude says it is the undoing of a person. Hebrews further tell us:

¹³ And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.¹⁴ Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Hebrews 12:13-14

Refusing the perspective and encouragement of others leaves us open to the deceitfulness of sin. It is compelling because Satan is no dummy. He knows what drives you and what lures you away. He studies us and preys on our sinful desires. He is the master at planting seeds of selfishness, discontentment, and bitterness. Those who are consistently discontent with life are those seeking isolation.

Whenever we isolate ourselves from the perspective, encouragement, and exhortations of others, we open ourselves wide to the deceitfulness of sin. And why is the deceitfulness of sin so compelling? Because Satan studies and preys on our desires. He’s a master gardener, carefully seeding selfishness, discontentment, and bitterness in just the right places. Those seeking isolation want to sin however they want, when they want, without being held to accountability or made responsible to anyone. A consistent, meaningful community, exposes and thwarts a person. It reveals a person.

There is a major difference between being in solitude with our Heavenly Father and running off to seek isolation for selfish sinful desires. No one leaves their community to go find God. God is not someone to be found. Those who leave community, do so for themselves.

God’s Solitutde

Oh how many times I have said, I’d rather fish and be with God than attend church. Let me just be real and rewrite that as I had no desire to go to church, to worship or be taught. God’s solitude is not being isolated from what he has blessed us with. Solitude, according to dictionary.com is a state or situation of being alone.

I believe that this type of being alone is the absence of human activity. That does not mean you can not go fishing and enjoy the presence of God, but to get alone with God, the sole purpose is the actually be with God in a quiet state of inactivity. Solitude is the lack of distraction to focus on God. To step away in quiet, to be alone, to focus purely on God.

Isolation is a selfish desire to live and do what you want without being told what you are doing is wrong. It is to live a secret life without interruption to peruse secret sin.

Solitude is seeking to be in the presence of God and does not require leaving your community.