Dealing with Loneliness

 

Loneliness is one of those feelings that can be experienced in degrees or levels. Feelings of loneliness are defined as the sadness one feels because of not having friends. Intense feelings of loneliness can cause a person to be isolated and feel they are completely without a support system of individuals who genuinely care. But it can also be a temporary mood that passes fairly quickly. In whatever degree we experience feelings of loneliness, many people think there’s nothing they can do to resolve it. All kinds of questions come into their minds. “Why doesn’t anyone want to love me? How do I make friends? How can I make someone love me? Will I always be alone?” The answers to these questions seem very much out of our control, because they involve another person’s will, but the truth is that the human will is a spiritual reality. It was created to respond to the One that made it.

Loneliness has a voice. It should never speak louder than our identity and union with Christ, but for many people it does. When its volume is increased, the pain is more intense, and we tend to listen to what loneliness is speaking rather than what our spirit is speaking. Loneliness is birthed from a realm that doesn’t exist within the realm of God’s goodness. It comes from the darkness of fear and shame, and therefore, loneliness is a lie. It doesn’t tell the truth about the blessings that God has given us through Jesus Christ. We must never accept loneliness as truth, because there is no issue regarding the human condition that cannot be solved through Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth, and the life! Therefore, loneliness should be viewed as our soul’s desire to expand and express itself greater. It is the soul’s cry for greater knowledge of God’s truth. 

We are complete in Christ
Colossians 2:10(NLT) tells us, “So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.” This truth must sink deep in our hearts where its roots will deepen and cause us to blossom in ways we can’t imagine. To comprehend the enormous reality of our completeness and wholeness in Christ, it is important for us to recognize what happens when we don’t know, believe, or trust in what he’s done for us. Heavenly Father commands that we believe His Word because His Word is true. He desires that we have confidence in Him and the perfect work that He has completed in Jesus Christ because this is the truth.

God never has to do a do-over or a takeback. When He does something, we can trust that it’s been done to perfection. It has been completed in a fashion that nothing more can be added to make it better than what He has made it. This is how our Heavenly Father gets down. He’s God all by Himself, and He needs nothing from anyone to make Him more than what He is. He’s our Creator, and although it is taking us quite a bit of time to comprehend our perfection in Christ, there can be no doubt that we are indeed perfected in him. 1John 4:17(NLT) tells us, “And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.”

Through the union we share with Jesus Christ, God has made us complete. Your mind and heart may not yet fully grasp or digest the totality and perfection of this reality, but in Christ, it is your reality nonetheless. Our responsibility is to flip on the switch in our inner being so we can be flooded internally with the light of Christ. The love that Christ has for us is an all-consuming, unconditional, and never-ending love. Romans 8:39(NLT) says, “No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” As we begin to wear the truth of this, the love of Christ goes deep in our souls and we are transformed by it. This is the love that squeezes out loneliness from our existences.

God’s love cannot fail
Loneliness is lack, and the answer to lack isn’t more starvation. What we focus on grows, and what we believe attracts the thing that supports the belief. Believing in loneliness doesn’t draw the solution that fills the hole we perceive that loneliness points to. It draws the person that feeds on the food we are feasting on ourselves. This is why God tells us in 1John 4:18 that His love has no fear in it, because perfect love expels all fear. In simpler terms, a person can’t feast on fear and expect to become full from love. That doesn’t work. We must feast on the never-ending supply of God’s love and allow it to complete our lives through Jesus Christ.

In our limited thinking, most believe that having a relationship with a person will fix loneliness, but in reality, that person is responding to our mentality of lack, not in the wholeness we have yet to believe. Jesus Christ is the answer! When we are fully persuaded in our wholeness in Jesus Christ, we are fully persuaded in the truth.

1Corinthians 13:8 tells us that God’s love never fails, and we need to experience and gain confidence in this for ourselves. We need to spend time with God, study His Word, and pray often so that our relationship with Him deepens and our intimacy with Him will grow. When we are committed to get to know Him better, He reveals Himself to us in the most marvelous ways. We see sides of His love we’ve never seen before. It’s this commitment to learn about Him, to accept His love and give it room in our lives that helps us to grow in His love and to be confident in our ability to love through Him. This is the kind of love we should aspire to give from the depths of being, a love that encompasses the love of Christ. There is no other love like it, and our commitment to give it is what others will respond to, because it is what they deserve.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. 

"Dealing with Loneliness",  written for Christian Encouragement and Inspiration© 2020. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.