Posts Tagged ‘Community’

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:

  1. Meet regularly for mutual encouragement, accountability, and prayer
  2. Do community service with a team (missions projects, ministry teams at church, Habitat for Humanity)
  3. Join a small group or a ministry team at your church – get connected (Satan loves to isolate us in order to destroy us)
  4. Join a sports team together (if you are athletic)
  5. Take fun trips together – shopping, fishing, biking, road trips to other states and countries. 
  6. Do game night, karaoke or movie night (no “I’m so lonely” and “I need a woman/man” movies)
  7. Laugh a lot   
  8. 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

The Next Post: Key# 3 God Sits with You in the Middle of the Floor
 

 

 

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