He Is Series Jehovah Shammah (The Lord is There)— When You Feel Alone, God Is Already There

Ezekiel 48:35 “The circumference of the city shall be eighteen thousand cubits. And the name of the city from that time on shall be, The Lord is There.”

When I read this name this morning, Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is There, I thought it was powerful. How many of us really needed to hear that this morning? How many of us needed to hear that the Lord is right there with us? So many of my friends that I have been talking to lately have really been struggling with believing this. Something I have really been struggling with over these last few weeks is when my head knows something, but my heart doesn’t seem to fully know it.

Let me give you an example, in case what I just said doesn’t make sense to you. I know so strongly in my head that I don’t have to do anything for the Lord to love me. I know He loves me completely and unconditionally, no matter what I do. I will tell you this all day long because I know with my whole being that it is true for you too! However, then I will catch myself striving for his love anyway. The way it feels to me is like my conscious mind knows it, but then my subconscious mind doesn’t quite have it yet. It is still replaying old thoughts.

This verse is nice because it reminds us that God is always there. I know many of you are struggling right now. So many of you are chronically ill and feel like you are never going to get better. Others are suffering from depression and anxiety, and it can feel overwhelming. Some of you are suffering because you are watching loved ones suffer, and you just want to make it better for them, and you can’t. I know you feel like God has left you. He has moved on to someone better. You feel He has decided you are not worth the effort and that He doesn’t want to waste His healing on you. That sounds harsh, yet it is how some of you talk to yourselves. Whether you know it or not, some of you feel God has left you because you aren’t worthy. I have some news for you, none of us is worthy. Not on our own, at least. However, Jesus took all of our sins and shame to the cross with Him so that we could be worthy.

Here are some truths that I think we all need to know. First, God is always there for us. This is a fact. Even if we can’t feel God, He is still there. He never leaves our side. This may be hard for us to wrap our heads around. Especially if the people in our lives have not been there for us. If they have left us in our times of need, then we might think to ourselves, “Of course God is not staying, no one ever stays.” Have you thought about this before?

What comes to mind is something from the devotional about the name Yahweh. It said that God is so other than us. He is not like us at all. For me, this was one of those things I obviously knew, yet I am not sure I ever really thought about it like that. You know how you can hear something, and although you know it is true, when you hear it said out loud, it just makes you think differently. I know that God is not like us, and yet we still assume He will do things like we do things. He will abandon us, He will reject us, stop loving us if we show Him who we really are. This is not true! God is not like us, and He will never leave you!

The second thing is that God is actually closest to us when we feel the farthest from Him. This doesn’t make sense because why would we feel so alone if God were so close to us? That I don’t have an answer to. However, Psalm 34:18 states that "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” God is with you. He knows what you are going through, and He is taking every step with you. And if you are allowing Him to, then He is leading you every step of the way. He will step in if He feels you are going to fall.

The image I just got is of a toddler learning to walk. As I wrote that last part, I could see a toddler trying to learn to walk, and it wasn’t easy, and they were struggling, but they were still doing it. I saw the Lord right next to the toddler as a loving father. Not rescuing them from this task, as they need to learn to walk, but right there, ready to reach out his hand if it looked like they were going to fall. The Lord is doing the same with you and me. He is walking beside us, ready to put out His hand when He thinks we may need it. He knows we need to learn whatever this hard time is teaching us, and so He is allowing it to happen. However, He is also right there to reach out his hand, or scoop us up into his arms to save us from danger we can’t handle.

I heard something in the Mel Robbins Podcast yesterday that I just felt a prompt to share with you. The episode was called, “Simple Steps for Getting Unstuck: Do THIS and Change Your Life.” The one thing that I want to share with you from this was about resistance. In the podcast, they were saying that resistance is a part of life. When I think of resistance, I think of anything that is getting in the way of you doing what you want to do. What the guest said, which I felt was so powerful, was that if you encounter resistance, you should be happy. The reason you should be happy is that that means you are doing something important that has a purpose.

I have said this before, and I will keep saying it until we all learn it. When you are trying to do something, and you keep encountering obstacles, sometimes we can start to think it wasn’t really a calling from the Lord, maybe I am not supposed to do this, what was I thinking, of course I am not the right person for this. Or, whatever it is you are thinking. I think this could be life-changing if we could start to reframe how we see all these obstacles. What if, instead of getting frustrated because all these obstacles are in our way, we got excited? What if we started looking at obstacles as if they were confirmation that we are on the right path and that the enemy is confirming for us that what we are about to do will be powerful?

Let me share a secret with you. If you are doing something that is not going to be powerful and is not going to change people’s lives, the enemy is not going to care about you. He is going to let you be and do your thing because it won’t affect him. However, if you are going to do something powerful, if people are going to be changed because of what you are trying to do, the enemy will stop at nothing to stop you. Do you see what a powerful shift this could be for us if we could stop letting the enemy convince us we can’t do it and instead, when we start to hear the negative voice in our mind we could take that as confirmation that we are on the right path and double down on our effort to let the enemy know He can’t stop us.

That might have been a bit of a side tangent, but I felt led to share it, so I know someone needed to hear that today. The last thing I really want to hammer home before I leave you today is that the Lord is there already. You don’t have to change for Him to be there. You don’t have to earn His love or His time. You don’t have to be perfect and do everything right for Him to be there. He is ALREADY THERE! He always has been, and He always will be, and there is nothing you can do about it! Like it or not, He is forever there!

Dear Jehovah Shammah, I ask you to bless each person listening today. Lord, we love you so much, and we ask you to help us feel you there more often. Help us to feel your presence. Lord, there are so many who feel so lost right now, and they need to know you are always there with them. Help us to know that you are there, not just in the good times but in the bad times as well. Please help us not just know this in our heads, but feel it in our hearts as well. We ask this according to your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you’ve ever felt like you’re trying to walk with God… but you’re doing it alone… I want you to know—you don’t have to. That’s actually why I created this mentoring group. It’s a place where you can be surrounded by others who are seeking God too—people who understand, who will pray with you, and walk alongside you. If your heart is craving that kind of connection, I’d love for you to join us. The link is in the show notes or at walkboldlywithjesus.com.

Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, my chosen ones, I ask you to clothe yourself in virtues of kindness, humility, mercy, forgiveness, and patience. These are things the world you live in do not value, but they look at you. They look at the clothing you are wearing, the virtues I have bestowed upon you, and they wonder, and you are my witnesses because they wonder, and they see the goodness of these virtues.”