Facing Our Loneliness, Part 2A

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley, for Tuesday, November sixteenth. No matter how many people you know, you can still feel like you're all alone. Find out how to keep from feeling isolated, as the Bible guides us in, Facing Our Loneliness. Loneliness is a very painful emotion. And yet, a lot of people who live in that painful emotion and don't even understand really what it is that they're feeling. And it's the kind of feeling that everybody has at some point in their life or the other. And it's not something that you want to live with. It's many people have the idea that this is the way I am and this is the way life is and I don't know that I can ever do any better.

Well, you can. And that's what I want to talk about is how we can overcome this whole attitude of being lonely. Now, if you don't deal with loneliness, what happens is there's some other attitudes that develop. A person begins to feel like they're unwanted, unworthy, unfit, nobody cares. And so, these are dangerous kinds of attitudes because of what they lead to. And if you'll think about it, feeling unwanted and unattached and outside and unattractive and undesired and unworthy, all of these attitudes, these are not attitudes that belong to you and me who are believers.

We are followers of Jesus Christ, He's our Heavenly Father, Jesus is our Good Shepherd. And so, we shouldn't be having those kind of feelings. They'll come once in a while, but we ought to be able to overcome them for the simple reason that's not who we are. Those attitudes don't fit us.

And so, the issue is how do we overcome them? Well, the first point is this, you have to recognize that you're lonely. Many people are lonely and don't recognize it. They think it's something else, and oftentimes people will blame someone else or some other circumstance in life before they will admit to the fact, I am a very lonely person. Because to admit loneliness is a sign to many people of weakness. It's a sign of I'm inadequate. It's a sign something's missing in my life. I don't, I'm not the kind of person who's worth having friends.

Nobody really desires me. And so, what a person will usually do, they take all of those feelings and those feelings of being alienated and ostracized and separated and undesired and unwanted. And so, they think, well, if I feel that way, then if I were to say that, somebody would think, well, you know, maybe that's who He is, maybe that's who She is. And so, oftentimes we don't face it. Until you face loneliness and are willing to admit the fact, yes, I'm lonely, then you'll never overcome it. And the longer it lingers in your life, the more intense things become because, listen, denial does not rid you of loneliness.

Denial only allows you to drive deeper and deeper and deeper into your life. If you think possibly you're unliked and you don't deal with it, after a while, you get pretty sure you're unliked. Because, you see, if you feel, for example, that people don't like you, they don't want to be around you, there's something about you that's obnoxious to them, here's what happens. When you meet another person, you will send that message. Now, for example, and I'm not being accusative at this point, I want you to just think about this.

And I don't want you thinking, well, I want to see who does this. But for example, if you walk up to somebody and a person has a very poor self-image of themselves, unwanted, unliked, just not where they ought to be in life, you can tell when you greet them. They won't greet you with a sense of confidence, boldness, assurance, smile, joy. But there's going to be this little bit of hesitation and reservation on their part. Because the problem is they may fear that somebody else, that you may not like them.

Or they've heard that somebody didn't. And so it's amazing how Satan can just deceive us and camouflage the true genuine feeling is that we're feeling lonely. You say, well, but I feel this way because. It doesn't make any difference what the reason is.

We'll get to the reason. But the issue is you have to admit it. Now watch this, it's not a sin to be lonely. If you stay in that stage of thinking about yourself and you remain there and you begin to react and respond the way people will eventually and get yourself into trouble trying to find friends or trying to make friends at whatever price, then you can, it can become sin. But it's not a sin. But it's an issue we have to deal with. So the first thing you have to do is to recognize it. The second point is this, and that is reconciliation with God.

Now what does that mean? I want to give you a couple of Scriptures and you might want to turn first of all to Second Corinthians chapter five for a moment. Remember in the garden that God's wonderful, beautiful garden was disrupted by sin. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, what did they do? They disconnected from their very Maker. And what happened was that the intimacy they had with God the Father was no longer there. And so this feeling of being separated, that's why they hid themselves in the garden.

Why? Because all of a sudden, they didn't feel what they felt before. They felt disconnected, separated, isolated, alienated from Him.

And so when He comes looking for them, they're hiding. Well, the truth is every single one of us came into this world and at some point in our life we recognized that we were alienated. We were separated. And that is, that's why you and I got saved. Because the answer to our separation from God is to be reconnected to Him. And so why did Jesus come? Jesus came to reconnect those who were disconnected. So because you and I sinned against God, we became alienated from Him. That's what the Scripture says.

And look, if you will, in second Corinthians chapter five, then I want us to go to Colossians. Listen to what he says in verse eighteen. He says, Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us, brought us back into right relationship to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Which means that those of us who are believers have the responsibility as ambassadors, representatives, followers of Jesus to do what? To help other people get connected to God through Christ. To get them from their separated condition, in their sinful condition, back into an intimate relationship with Him.

And so here's what he says. He says, namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Why did Jesus come? He came to reconcile sinful, lost, alienated, separated, disconnected mankind to Himself where man began.

When He created man, He created him what? For fellowship. For fellowship means connected. It means no longer separated, but connected and oneness of peace, of mind and joy and harmony and all the rest. Sin is what gets us disconnected. So if I'm going to deal with my loneliness, I have to start with the foundation. What's the foundation?

Watch this carefully. Most of the world will never believe this. You will never have true genuine peace and the absence of loneliness until first of all Jesus Christ gets you connected to the Father. Because God did not make man capable of living without loneliness apart from Himself. Because He made us for Himself and we're here in His behalf and we're here for Him and we're here because of Him and we're here because of His love and His desire to live His life in and through us. For example, when He saved us, when He reconciled us to Himself, what do you have in mind? That He would live His life in us and through us.

That's why He talks about abiding in Him. He saved us that He might live His life in us and through us to do what? To use us to connect other people to Himself. And so that's what the ministry of reconciliation is all about, helping other people get connected to Him. So that being true, if I'm going to live a life free of loneliness, one of the things that has to be true is I have to be connected to Him. Because that's who we are.

That's the way He made us. When a person is reconciled by the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ to God the Father and the person becomes one in their relationship, what happens? This sense of loneliness, that is step number two. First of all, you have to recognize it's there, but then you have to get right with God. Somebody says, Well how do I do that? When a person recognizes their sinfulness, recognizes that Jesus Christ is the only way to be forgiven, cleansed of our sin, that all of our transgressions are wiped out, all of our past sins are forgiven, past, present and future, and now we have a personal relationship to Him.

How does that happen? It happens through accepting Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. He is the great connector. He is the one who overcomes this disconnection. He's the one who, listen, who eliminates this alienated feeling that we have.

He brings us into oneness with Him. Because think about it for example, here's a person who's very rebellious toward God, living in sin, nothing's right, no peace, no joy, no happiness, no anything. They've had one woman or one man after the other, but they've been through the drugs, they've been through the alcohol, they've been through the promilence, prestige and prosperity, and they're still miserable. And finally they get saved and they say, whew, why didn't somebody tell me this before now? Because they were running from God. If there is no reconciliation to your Creator, to your Heavenly Father, to the God who made you and loves you unconditionally, you will never escape it.

It's a vital part. Somebody says, well, I don't have to be lonely and I can be without loneliness and without being a Christian. Be my guest. You can try. You'll just rename it, but it's still there. If there's no reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ, the great connector who is God, then you reject Him, you'll never be connected. And you know, if you and I could see and read and listen to people just about fifteen minutes before they die, wouldn't we be surprised at the different testimony they have right before death and all the pride and the arrogance and the absolutely total self-sufficiency that they've experienced all these years and then they come to death? Think about this. When you die, you face the Lord Jesus Christ. Would you not agree that it is a fool, if they've heard the truth, who would live their whole life disconnected from Him and come to die and realize in those last moments, I'm going to have to face the one that I disconnected myself from, alienated myself from, and refused to deal with all these years. Reconciliation is a second step.

Then there's a third. And that is to recall the promises of God. Now I could give you a lot of verses and let's think about it for a moment.

And I think in my own life, if I could go to one point that probably helped me overcome loneliness above everything else is this one. To recall the promises of God. And how many people have quoted this verse? Not even Christians. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for one reason.

What is it? Thou art with me, connected. When you're going through trials and heartaches and difficulty and trouble and you think, or maybe somebody that you've lived with all these years, hates you, despises you, tries to destroy you, thou art with me.

The fact of that relationship. And in Isaiah forty-one, the verse we oftentimes quote, He says, I'm your God, I am with you. I'm with you. How do you think, for example, Jesus made such a point in the fifteenth chapter of John when He said, You abide in Me, I will abide in you. You abide in Me and I abide in you, you'll bring forth much fruit. Why? Because we're connected.

Now think about this for a moment. When you have, when you have a grapevine, what do you have? You have a vine and you have the branch. How much fruit can a disconnected branch make? Not one grape, not one.

What makes it possible for us to produce fruit? Because we're attached to the vine. Jesus said, I'm the vine, you're the branch.

And so when the branch is grafted into the vine, it becomes a part of the vine, the sap that runs in the vine, runs in the branch, in the stem, produces grapes. So what was Jesus saying? He was saying that our intimate relationship with Him is so very, very important. And when you and I can recall the fact that it doesn't make a difference who likes you, who doesn't like you, whether you feel ostracized, alienated and so forth, now that you've become a child of God, here's what He says, I'm in you. You can't ever get away from Me. I'm in you, you're in Me.

And so we have this relationship. Now the tragedy is that most people get saved and nobody ever explains that to them. It isn't that God's up yonder and the Holy Spirit is down here and Jesus is somewhere.

They don't know where He is. See the Father's right hand, we know that. But the fact that He's living on the inside of us. So that when you received Him as your personal Savior, you were hooked forever. He says, I will never leave you nor forsake you, never. So naturally, when you and I are feeling lonely, one of the most powerful things we can do is to recall His promises. And His promises are many, for example. He says in Romans chapter eight, and you know these verses, who shall separate us?

Who will alienate us? Who will separate us from the love of God? Then He names all these things, even death, and He says, no one. No one can separate us from Him. So that if I'm feeling lonely, the most powerful thing I can do immediately is to be reminded God is with me. Christ is living on the inside of me. The Holy Spirit is within me. And I cannot be separated from God.

I may feel lonely, but I am not alone. And that is a key. And I think about times when I have felt that and just had to recall these passages. Lord, here's what You said. And if You said it, I believe it, and that's what I'm going on. I'm going on the fact that no matter what I'm feeling, You are with me.

Now watch this carefully. And I've been through enough of it, I know this works. It doesn't work sometimes.

It works all the time. And I can remember a few times at night when I'd just get out of the bed, get down by the bed and cry out to God because I knew that I so desperately need Him. And never have I ever done that or been in any kind of situation. When I cried out to God, You said You would never leave me nor forsake me. I'm claiming Your promise.

I'm believing what You said. I feel lonely. I feel hurt. I feel alienated. I may feel this, but God, You said You're living on the inside of me and I want to thank You for it.

I'm here to tell you that'll get you out of the deepest doldrums there are. Because what You're affirming something. You're affirming what God said. You're saying to Him, I'm trusting You. I believe what You said about me. You said You'd never leave me nor forsake me no matter what. I'm claiming that, amen. And how many times have I been in that situation?

Get up, get in the bed, lie down, go fast asleep. Why? Because the promise of God is true. Listen, it isn't true for some people. It's true for everybody, anybody who is a child of God. If you're not a child of God, you can't claim that because He didn't, because listen, you're not a child of God, you're alienated. You say, well, I'll tell you right now, I do pray. Well, you can pray all you want to. But listen, without Jesus Christ and if you've not been connected to God the Father through the cross, that's the key, whereby your sins are forgiven, you're not connected.

There are a lot of people who are living in deception who think because they can pray to God, if you were to ask them to describe their God, they can't. They pray to God and they just believe that He hears them because they're in need. Well, he'll hear the cry of cleansing and forgiveness. He'll hear the cry of mercy. He'll hear the cry for salvation. But just because a person cries out to God doesn't mean that God says, Oh yes, yes, yes, I'll do that. It is a powerful thing in times of loneliness to cry out to Him and to recall what He said. Thank you for listening to part two of Facing Our Loneliness. 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.