I’m sure you can relate when I bring up the matter of feeling lonely in a crowded room. You just feel like you’re invisible. You feel like you don’t matter. It’s one of the worst human feelings to feel lonely around a bunch of people, especially when you’re in family or church relationship situations with those people.
We particularly feel this way when, in our innermost selves, we know we should be connected to this group, but we aren’t. It’s confounding. When we flip the story, it corresponds that those who rely on us for love ought to have our care.
What I want to discuss in this article is that moment when our soul is met by a person who seems to be seeing us as if God is seeing us. It is a wonderful experience. We feel like finally, God has brought to the reality of truth a burden we have carried for so long, possibly a lifetime, and this person has ‘seen’ us, and they bring this deep need to life by calling it.
It’s a bit like what we have carried we want to scream out into the public place, into that crowded room, as if anybody would care, but of course, we know that they wouldn’t, so we don’t.
I once had an interaction with a prophet, who came to my workplace as a videographer, and saw something in me that I had seen myself but nobody else previously had. I was astounded as to how she could possibly have seen this thing in me that so desperately needed to be affirmed. It is clear that God knew, and that God wanted to speak to me through this woman in ways that only God could communicate. What she prophesied forth was exactly what I needed to hear, and it inspired such confidence — yet she wasn’t there to be in THAT role. And what mattered most was the care and encouragement with which she delivered this word.
There is something incredibly divine about having someone identify something encouraging in us in a way that serves us, which is the complete opposite to being ‘read’ i.e. manipulated.
Yes, we’ve all had those experiences when someone has ‘read’ us, and they’ve got it so completely wrong and what they said felt as if they were psychoanalyzing us. I don’t know about you, but I hate those experiences, mainly because they unnerve me, but also because people can be so presumptuous. So many people who think they’re prophets speak out of turn. But a prophetic word is like a land flowing with milk and honey — it is from the very lips of God. And it can still be a challenge, not just encouragement.
What I’m talking about is that time when someone notices something that has always been a deep dream or a deep need unmet. It’s like no one has ever validated a part of us that we feel should be known to all. Suddenly in being noticed in this way, in the very best of ways, we feel at least SOMEONE has reached us in the name of God. We feel met by God!
There are certain truths we hold, truths that we feel deeply that we would like to express, but it can feel like nobody else is ever interested. We carry these burdens these dreams these potential connections for years and decades, just waiting for the opportunity that one human being would want to know about it, that one human interaction would allow us to share.
The point is, if it doesn’t happen for us, we have the opportunity to be that person for someone else. To be that person who cares for the inner struggle of people who have as yet never been able to share their deepest burden.
This is one of the most divine roles of humanity on earth, to step into the gap, to listen to what people aren’t saying, or to notice what they do say — the things that people ignore because they’re too full of hearing only themselves.
To see the depth of someone else’s soul, and to speak encouragement that THEY say could have only come from God.
A final warning: do not EVER do this kind of thing to manipulate a person or use this for your own ends (which is manipulation). And do not EVER betray the person in any way. It is reprehensible to share a God-moment with someone and then prove untrustworthy.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Tribework
Featured Image by emma valerio on Unsplash
