Living with Loneliness – Key #2
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 Key #1 – Change your thought pattern
Key #2 - Recruit a spiritual strength team
Loneliness is a universal sickness that all of humanity experience. We are laden down with our secrets, our fears, our sufferings, our sorrows, our disappointments and our guilt. This is the case because we have undervalued the sacred nature of community. I believe one of the ways to deal with loneliness, in addition to changing our thought pattern, is to recruit a strength team – a community of people who will encourage us during our loneliness and help us live out the values and ethics of Jesus, despite our loneliness.
A beautiful thing can happen in our loneliness. Loneliness can make us aware of the significance of and need for other people. In the emptiness and ugliness of our most desolate hour, we suddenly realize that we need people and that we can gain strength from others in the body of Jesus. Paul realized this: “Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service. (v. 11) Paul may have never appreciated more, Mark and Luke, as he did when he was lonely in the dungeon. In recruiting your strength team . . .
Find godly and maturing individuals who will help you fulfill God’s plan and purpose for your life. In our loneliness, we are vulnerable and have a tendency to attach ourselves to anyone who is available. Many of these “available people” see our loneliness and vulnerability and exploit it. They thrive off of manipulating others by telling them what they want to hear – I love you, you are special, you are beautiful, you are smart, you are strong and handsome - in order to get what they want – sex, money, driving your new car, positions and promotions and even living in your house. I know women and men who desired companionship so desperately that they lowered their standards in order to get a man/woman, and they kept lowering them in order to keep him/her. And today, they have neither the man/woman nor their values. How sad! But, I certainly understand the aching of their hearts. These kinds of relationships are destructive, leave us with many soul scars (and sometimes physical scars), and more lonely than before we met them. This is the reason we need a strength team.
- Your strength team should be made up of people who will help you rediscover the sacred nature of community and gaining strength from it.
- Your strength team should be made up of a community of people who can edit your life, hold you accountable to the high and lofty values of following Jesus, and help you fulfill that calling.
- Your strength team should be the same gender. If you are woman, then your strength team should be made up of godly women, and if you are a man, your strength team should be made up of godly men. Now this is not to say we can’t gain strength from the opposite sex; I believe we can and do. However, in most cases godly women are able to speak more influentially in the lives of other women, and the same is true of men. Also, this wisdom helps to guard you from falling into temptation.
- Your strength team should make you better, not bitter. Do you have a team of people like this in your life? Who are they? Do these people make you better and more godly? Do they challenge your irrational thinking and behavior? Are they helping you be a godly husband/wife or a sanctified single? If you answered no to any of these questions, then you don’t have a strength team; you may have a “drain team,” a community of individuals who are draining strength from you instead of giving strength to you. If you have a strength team, here are some activity suggestions for your strength team:
- Meet regularly for mutual encouragement, accountability, and prayer
- Do community service with a team (missions projects, ministry teams at church, Habitat for Humanity)
- Join a small group or a ministry team at your church – get connected (Satan loves to isolate us in order to destroy us)
- Join a sports team together (if you are athletic)
- Take fun trips together – shopping, fishing, biking, road trips to other states and countries.
- Do game night, karaoke or movie night (no “I’m so lonely” and “I need a woman/man” movies)
- Laugh a lot
- Make a lot a memories together
“A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back to back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple braided cord is not easily broken.” Ecclesiastes 4:12
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Living with Loneliness – Key# 1
Friday, December 26th, 2008Each one of us has experienced, at some point in time, the cold chill and eery desolation of loneliness. We have walked that long, hard, and painful road for a number of reasons:
Sudden loss of companionship – death of a loved one, divorce, military, college
Rejection – your work, your love, your advice, your skill, etc
broken engagement
Not having family
Fear of being left out and alone
No direction or vision for life
Certain times of the season
Lack of companionship
Being a devoted Jesus follower
Standing up for truth and right
If not dealt with properly, loneliness can lead to other problems, such as depression, feelings of uselessness, a lack of self worth, hopelessness, and even thoughts of suicide. It is possible to ease our loneliness or get rid of it altogether and unlock the treasure chest of contentment by turning several keys found in 2 Timothy 4:9-18
Key# 1 Change your thought pattern (2 Timothy 4:14, 16).
Dealing with loneliness begins with changing the way we think. Changing our thought pattern includes admitting and accepting our circumstance of loneliness (it is what it is). When Paul wrote this letter, he was alone in a Roman jail. He did not deny it and he did not cultivate thoughts of self-pity, bitterness, blame and revenge, but he removed those thoughts and replaced them with the sovereignty of God. Now “sovereignty of God” is a seventy-five dollar phrase which means: God has unlimited power and he has control over the affairs of nature, history, and yes, our personal lives – especially our personal lives. Our feelings of perceived or actual loneliness from rejection, the move of a friend, death of a loved one, or the lack of companionship, does not catch God by surprise. He sees where we are, will repay those who have wounded us deeply, and cares about what happens to us. Let’s remind ourselves: “God has us where we are for His good purpose, although we don’t fully understand that purpose.” Does this mean that God sadistically gets pleasure out of seeing us writhing in the pain of our loneliness. Absolutely not! It means that God wants to be made bigger in and through lives and to make us look more like his Son. Sometimes the only way he can accomplish that is to allow us to go through suffering and pain. We all wish there was a different and less painful way, don’t we? Have you ever thought that God has you where you are so that his great power can be seen in your weakness? Let this thought wash over your heart the next time you are feeling the deep pain of loneliness: God never wastes a hurt and in your pain, his grace is enough!
Opening the treasure chest of contentment begins with turning the first key of changing the way we think about God and our loneliness. Send me comments or your own personal stories about this first key.
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Living with Loneliness
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
Several years ago a man put an ad in a Kansas newspaper. It contained only fifteen words, but it got amazing results. It said: “I will listen to you talk for 30 minutes without interruption for $5.” It sounded like a joke, but it was “legit.” In fact, some people needed to talk to someone so badly that they called long distance. After the ad ran for several days, the person was receiving 10-20 calls a day. The person who put the ad in the paper realized that this is a lonely world and saw a way not only to make money, but to provide a service to people who were lonely.
Loneliness has been described as the most desolate word in the human language. It can be defined as the feeling of and/or being unwanted and isolated. These feelings can be perceived or actual. Loneliness strikes people in every stage and circumstance of life: a single person trying to find Mr. or Ms. Right or following a broken romance with Mr. or Ms Almost Right; the inmate in prison who is doing life and have nothing to look forward to; the military service person thousands miles from home, the widow who buried her soul-mate and now takes walks, watches movies, and eats dinner alone; the teenager who stares disinterestedly at the TV or video game, trying to escape the pain of a home pressured by drugs or alcohol or divorce; the divorced man or woman who has little opportunity or no scriptural basis to remarry. It is no secret that all of our hearts have throbbed with loneliness at some point in time. What are some causes of loneliness? The following list is not meant to be exhaustive.
- Being separated from cherished relatives and friends may cause loneliness. Friends and/or family members deserting us or betraying us may cause loneliness. Moreover, friends or family members relocating to another city, or being called up for military duty, or leaving home for college or getting married or unfortunately dying, may cause feelings of loneliness.
- Being rejected by others may cause loneliness. When people reject our love, our work, our advice, our abilities, we feel the pain of loneliness.
- Being defamed, disgraced and discredited by others may cause loneliness. Being ridiculed because you are the only Jesus follower on your job may cause loneliness. When we are disgraced or discredited because of our gender or our race, loneliness can penetrate the toughest heart.
- Certain times of the year may cause loneliness. For Paul, winter was probably a difficult time for him. The coming of winter could not doubt be felt in the dark, stony, damp and cold dungeon of his prison cell. Paul seemed to be saying, “I can’t take winter alone.” Psychologists say we go through cyclical times in our lives. When a bad experience occurs, the next year on that date, we subconsciously slump; our minds and hearts simply won’t forget. The holiday seasons are tragically lonely and difficult times for many people.
We handle loneliness in different ways, and sometimes those ways are very destructive. Drinking, drugging, sexing, working, spending, sulking and “pity-partying” away our loneliness are not healthy answers. Many people die lonely, but that does not have to be true of us. Loneliness does not have to be a wasted experience. Some beautiful things can happen to and through us in our loneliness. I am convinced we can unlock the treasure chest of contentment, in the midst of loneliness, by turning five keys. Join me tomorrow as we turn these keys and not let loneliness stop us from living.
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