When We Are Lonely - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, January 13th. If you're a Christian, you know you will never walk alone. But maybe it just doesn't feel that way. Continue this series teaching how Jesus can be the source of your strength when you are lonely. Loneliness is one of those experiences many of us face.

We like to avoid it at all costs. And it is an emotion, an experience that comes our way. It can either be like a hell all our life or it can be something that is short lived and that depends upon our response to it. And that's what I want to talk about in this message. It is one of the most excruciating emotional pains anyone feels. And you and I live in a whole world of people out there who are extremely lonely. It is a plague that has no prejudice.

It doesn't make any difference how rich you are, how famous you are, how poor you are, how uneducated you are. It has no prejudices. Loneliness creeps in and sometimes it comes rushing in and sometimes so overpowering that it drives people to all kinds of situations and circumstances in their life. Well, I do know what I'm about to talk about. I do understand the ache, the hurt, the pain, the sense of hopelessness, helplessness. The sense of being in a fog and cannot see my way out, of looking long down that tube and not seeing any light at the other end of the tunnel. And knowing that it's on the inside of me and I can't pull it out.

It's on the outside of me and I can't get out of it. It's just there. I do understand what it means to feel loneliness. And yet I also understand that God has not left us in our loneliness because it's never been His will for us to be lonely, to be alone in solitude because we love Him and want to be with Him.

Yes, but not the kind of loneliness I'm talking about. And I want to say to you, my friend, if you're one of those persons who is exactly what I'm talking about, you're caught in that fog and that old black cloud just lays in there and no kind of breeze will blow it away. And everywhere you turn, it's there. It's on the inside gripping you, tormenting you, pressuring you.

It's on the outside all around you. And you can't escape. You've done everything you know to escape.

You can't escape. And you ask yourself the question, why do I want to keep living? Because I've been disconnected, torn apart, separated from, I'm out of touch.

There's no intimacy. So what's life worth if there isn't any connectedness, no intimacy, no real genuine fellowship with anyone? And I want to say to you, my friend, don't commit suicide because, you see, that's not going to settle any of your problems. And if you've never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you know what suicide will do? It will bring you to the ultimate, indescribable intensity of the very thing you are trying to escape. Because, you see, when a person dies without Christ, they are eternally separated from the very one who created them and the very one who created them for fellowship and intimacy and companionship with himself.

It is never the way out. And when loneliness settles in in a person's life, it can be horribly destructive. It will either drive you into those activities and those habits that are so destructive. You see, when you seek an escape from loneliness by sin, all you do is just broaden the gulf between you and the one thing that you want most of all, and that is to be reconnected.

And that is a sense of companionship and oneness and fellowship and friendship. Sin just keeps it making it worse and making it more difficult. That is never a way out. You say, well, is there a way to walk through these periods of loneliness in our life and walk through them victoriously?

And I want to tell you there is. There is a solution and I want to share it with you. The first thing that is necessary to overcome loneliness, whether it is in passing or whether it is one of those long valleys of circumstances that you get thrown into, that you cannot do anything about, you can't change it.

What is the solution? First of all, confess it. Confession of loneliness is not a sin. You remember Paul said in second Timothy, chapter four, verse 16, I believe he said when he was defending himself, he said, everyone left me.

He was all alone. Jesus knows how you and I feel when we feel lonely. And he knows it to the intensity that nobody has ever experienced loneliness to match his. That's why he says in Hebrews, chapter four, the wonderful words of promise when he says, we don't have a high priest who doesn't understand us. We have one who does understand us, who has tempted and been tried just like we. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. First of all, I have to confess that, Lord, yes, I am lonely.

The second step in overcoming that loneliness and being able to survive it is this, and that is to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Now, listen carefully. You may not be a Christian. You may say, well, look, don't give me this Christian bit. I'm lonely, but I want a solution. I'm giving you one.

And my friend, I know this one works. Listen to me carefully. God created you for himself. He doesn't need you and he doesn't need me. Then why did he create us? Here's why he created us.

Fellowship, companionship, intimacy. He wants to express his love, all of his love to you and me. He wants to walk with us and to live on the inside of us. And so what does he do when Jesus Christ came into this world?

Here's the reason he came. He came to forgive you and me of our sins and then to do what? The Bible says he reconciled us unto himself.

Second Corinthians Chapter five, verse 17, 18. But I want you to look before you look at the scripture redemption. That is, salvation is God forgiving us of our sins and reconciling means what is he doing? He is reconnecting us. Reconciliation is to bring back into fellowship, bring back into relationship. And so redemption, reconciliation, salvation, forgiveness is to bring us back into oneness, to reconnect us with our Heavenly Father from whom we had been separated because of our sin. My friend, you were created for God. You were created to love him, to fellowship with him, to grow in intimacy with him. Nothing in this world is going to bring you back into that relationship but Christ. And my friend, there is not anything in this world that's going to give you a sense of fullness and completeness and oneness.

You may be the richest person in your town. You may have the most preeminence and acceptance in their eyes. But I want to tell you, there's only one thing that can fulfill the human heart. Only one thing that can make you sense and experience that sense of being reconnected and oneness and joy and indescribable arene, peace, being bound together, which means to be made whole. And that is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that comes about when you confess your sins to him, acknowledge that you're separated from him by your sins and acknowledge that when he died at the cross, he paid your sin debt in full.

And when you receive him by faith and just say to him, Father, I have sinned against you. I know that I'm separated. I feel this separation. I feel this estrangement from you.

I want this reconnection. I want to be forgiven. I want to be what you want me to be. I'm asking you to forgive me of my sins. I'm asking you to save me, God, from myself, from my loneliness, from wrecking my life.

He always answers that prayer. Look, if you will, in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17, 18, for a moment. He says, writing to that Corinthian church, this wonderful word of encouragement, he says in verse 17, therefore, if any man or woman is in Christ, that is, they've been saved, he says, he is a new creature or new creation. Old things passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Now all these things are from God. What things?

All these new things. Who reconciled us, brought us back into fellowship, reconnected us through Christ and gave you and me the ministry of being servants of God, all of us, in helping what? In helping other people reconnect. The ministry of reconciliation is the ministry of the church. That's what the church is all about.

The message of the church, the purpose of the church is what? Reconciling, being the servants of God, helping other people recognize who it is that brings fulfillment to life. Step number one is confessing our loneliness because it is not a sin.

Secondly, entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And number three, listen carefully now, number three, developing godly friends. Now listen carefully, developing godly friends. I didn't just say getting a friend, godly friends. I mean the kind of friend who appoints you to God.

The wrong kind of friendships in time of loneliness can be absolutely destructive. And what they will do, they will lead you into deeper sense of loneliness because listen, I don't know how people sin against God and just go on and on and on. When I sin against God, I am so upset and feel this awesome sense of estrangement from Him, I cannot stand it overnight. I have to deal with it. I don't understand how people can sin against God and sin against God and just keep on sinning against Him and think, well, you know, it's going to all work out.

No, it's not. Listen, when you genuinely love somebody with all of your heart and that somebody loves you, you, listen, if you really love them, you can't stand that kind of estrangement. Developing godly friendships. Now listen carefully. What kind of friends are we to develop to bring and help us through loneliness? Here's the kind. First of all, somebody you can laugh with. If you can't laugh with them, they're not going to help you. Somebody you can laugh with. Somebody you can pray with and know that they know how to talk to God. Somebody that you feel understands you and what you're going through. Somebody you can share secrets with and you know that they'll never tell a soul. And somebody you can trust. Everybody needs that kind of friend.

Now listen carefully. To have that kind of friend, you have to be that kind. If I want somebody to laugh with me, then I've got to be willing to laugh with them. If I want somebody to pray with me, I must be willing to pray with them and understand them and be able to share their secrets and be able to be trustworthy also. You see, the wrong kind of friends are destructive.

The right kind of friends will point you to God. Now I want you to listen very, very carefully to what I'm saying. If you're listening, say, Amen.

Now listen. That friend is to be an extension of God in your life, not a substitute for God. Not somebody who takes the place of God, but somebody who is an extension of God. Somebody who's walking with you through those moments of loneliness, who's doing what? He's reminding you God understands. Remember, He's with you.

Here's what He said. Someone who is pointing you to God. When you have a friend who points you to God, they're an extension of the life of God in your life. And you see, if you make that person a substitute, here's what happens. If that person becomes a substitute for God in your life, you begin to cling and you begin to lean and you begin to draw out of them and to sap out of them their strength until finally, you know what happens?

They can't handle that and so what do they do? They just back off the relationship and then you have two problems. You were already lonely. Now you have another reason for thinking that you're not worthy of having a friend. And so what happens is when you back a friend off, you intensify your own loneliness. My friend, I'm learning a lot of things in life and one of the things I'm learning is this, that that kind of true friend who sticks with you through thick and thin no matter what, the older I get, the more valuable every single one of those kind of friends becomes. There's nothing like that kind of friend. Now I can talk to God and sometimes people have the attitude about me. Well, you have faith and you can trust God. You don't need us. You don't think so?

Yes, I do. One of the things about a true friend is this. They see your faults, your failures. They see all the things about you that are not good. And you know what they say?

What one of my friends says about me sometimes. He was never meant to be understood, just loved. I love that.

I love that. Never meant to be understood, just loved. All of us have our weaknesses and our frailties. And if you have to be a friend to someone who is perfect, not only will you never be a friend to anyone, but you won't have any.

There's no such thing as a perfect person. But there's something about friendships. And you see, when God surrounds you with those kind of friends, you have God on the inside enabling you. He's the one we lean upon, depend upon.

But you also have that audible voice encouraging you to hug you, put their arm around you, shake your hand, whatever, to remind you that you're dearly loved. So first of all, there's confession. Entering into a personal relationship with Christ, developing godly friendships. And then there's something about anchoring your soul to a passage of Scripture. And there's something about having that verse or that passage that God anchors you to, because you see, all of us at different times are going to feel loneliness for some reason or the other.

So what do you do? If you take it God's way, you let loneliness drive you to Him. Listen, and loneliness when responded to probably drives you into the most intimate, rewarding, indescribable sense of relationship with God for which there is no explanation or no description.

And what happens? Our loneliness can make us richer in our understanding of the ways and the love of Almighty God. The last thing I would say is this, and that is when those things hit you, listen to me carefully, you have the privilege of crying out to God the Father. And you can simply say to Him, what I say to Him, put in your own words, Lord, I am lonely, I am hurting, and God, you know that I desperately need you at this moment. You promised you would never leave me nor forsake me.

You said when I had you, I had everything. I just need you to put your loving arms around me and hug me good, God. And I can remember some times in the past few months when I've been down praying and I felt that way. If some human being had walked up to me and put his arms around me, it could not have been more real. Because you see, that's the kind of God you and I serve. He's a loving Father who does not want any of His children to feel alone, to feel lonely when He loves us so much.

And there have been times when I've gotten up off my knees thinking, Lord, I don't know when I've ever been hugged so wonderfully and so intimately. Now, why do I say all of that, to say this? Because I know that a lot of you out there who are feeling the same thing and maybe a whole lot worse, and I want to tell you, you don't have to go to drugs and alcohol and affairs and illness and television and videos or schedules that'll break your health or suicide. If you will confess your loneliness, He will enable you to develop godly friends, and He'll give you an anchor for your soul in the Word of God. And my friend, He's always there for you to cry out to Him. And when you do, He will lift you and help you, strengthen you, and overwhelm you, not with a cloud, but with a most awesome sense of indescribable love, listen, and the awareness of His presence that will lift you out of your loneliness. It begins with confession and enter into a personal relationship with Him and then just trusting Him to do and to be what He promised. You can turn every moment of loneliness into a short-lived moment embraced in the arms of a loving Father who loves you unconditionally. Thank you for listening to Part 2 of When We Are Lonely. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.