When We Feel Alone, We Need A Friend
This message is for people who feel alone and isolated and it is also for the folks here this morning who don’t feel that way but these two groups of people need to know that the other group of folks is there.
I can hardly think of a worse feeling than feeling like I am all alone in this great big world even though the world is filled with over 7 billion people. All of us have felt lonely and alone at some point in our lives. Some of us here today may feel this way right now. Even if we have a husband or a wife and kids we can still get these debilitating feelings of loneliness.
I also understand that it is ok to be alone at times and trust me I know that there are times when being all alone can be a real blessing and being alone is necessary for our sanity, if for nothing else, just to clear our minds. I like to go trout fishing on my favorite trout river sometimes by myself just to get away and think and be a part of nature and just unplug for awhile and by the way if any of you would ever like to go with me sometime just let me know and I will be glad to be your river guide for the day.
Having said all of that about needing to be alone sometimes, I really want to focus on when we feel alone and isolated and it isn’t a positive feeling. God made us to be social creatures didn’t He? This is why we have families, friends, communities, and churches.
The pain that usually comes with feeling alone and isolated is very real and there are some people who just tell those who are lonely to just get over it and be more socially active but sometimes it isn’t that easy.
In Genesis chapter 2 verse 18 the Bible says this: 18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."
I want to tell you about some things that I did when I was feeling alone and isolated when I was younger. I used to live near Olympia in Washington State out in the country and I want yall to know that Tennessee doesn’t have the market cornered on country! I lived about 8-10 miles from where most of my friends lived and I was out of school at this time living with my Mom. When I would feel particularly alone I would get up very early get ready and dressed for the day and start to walk to where my friends lived. It was a LONG walk!
I didn’t really like to walk that much but I was just so lonely that walking all that way was better to me than being isolated at my house with no one around to talk to or do anything with. I was just lonely and sad. I just wanted to be around people and have friends. If this sounds like I was desperate, I was! I needed to be connected to people.
Like I just read, God knows that it isn’t good for us to be alone. It wasn’t good for Adam and it isn’t good for us either. God knew that Adam needed companionship and so He created Eve for him. Eve was called Adam’s helpmeet. God knew from the very beginning that mankind needs to be around other people.
And I want to say here that I know that today we have the internet and therein we have Facebook, MySpace, Skype, and e-mail and I know that this can help us to feel connected and I have no problem with this stuff, ok, maybe I have a little problem with it!
I believe that in a way these electronic mediums can actually help us to feel more disconnected from people. What I am talking about today is the need for in person, face to face connections with other people.
I believe that our very souls long for this kind of human connection. I truly hope that a virtual hug will never take the place of a real person to person hug like I get from some of yall here! I look forward to them every week.
When we lose the personal closeness of other people our minds can begin to really get messed up. We begin to think and then believe that there is something wrong with us and that we are just losers and no one can like us or want to be around us. These are just lies from Satan himself.
Satan takes great pleasure in getting into a lonely and isolated person’s mind and getting them to focus on nothing else but being lonely and isolated. Satan wants to keep you separated from anything and everything that can help you in your time of loneliness. Satan will poison your thinking and get you to be so upset and discouraged that a person can easily sink into deep depression and let feelings of uselessness and sadness take over and cause us to lose hope.
This can happen to married people or single people. I know some married people who feel that even though they are “married” they don’t feel like they really have a life partner. One spouse or the other is the main care giver to the children if they have kids and if they don’t then they feel like their spouse doesn’t care about them or even want to be in the same room with them. This just breaks my heart!
It is saddening and heartbreaking to me that people will treat the one that they married like they just don’t exist. A husband or a wife’s selfishness can cause the other spouse extreme pain and suffering and this from the one who is supposed to be in love with you! It is so sad to feel alone when you’re in a “relationship” isn’t it?
Single people can feel the same way. While they don’t have a spouse to be mean to them there is never a shortage of uncaring, selfish people in the world. Loneliness as it relates to a single person can be even more serious. When you’re single and lonely and isolated it is very easy to just withdraw from society and whatever relationships you might have and just keep to yourself and in so doing, perpetuate the cycle of loneliness.
When loneliness and isolation reach critical mass bad things can and sometimes do happen. One of the leading causes of suicide is loneliness that leads to depression. People get so isolated from everyone that they know and feel like they are boxed in and there is no way out of the mess that they are in. This is another tactic of Satan. Satan would like for nothing more that to have as many people as possible be so isolated and lonely that they forget that they have any friends or family that really do care about them more than can ever know.
Christians are not immune from the feelings of loneliness and isolation either. Loneliness can lead to depression which is a very real mental health disorder and we disregard the hurt and pain that depression can cause at our own peril. Too many Christians feel lonely and isolated and withdraw from their families, their friends, and their church. But I want to encourage my fellow Christians that we as their church family will never abandon them or let them fall by the wayside.
We will be with them no matter what is happening in their minds, hearts or their lives. And Jesus will not ever leave them alone either. God loves the lonely, the isolated, and the outcast people of the world.
So what can we do to know that we are not alone and isolated? We have to begin and end with what the Bible tells us about the faithfulness of God when it comes to how much He loves us and how much He wants to be with us.
Here are but a few Scripture verses and passages that tell us how much God loves us and wants to be with us and encourage us!
Isaiah 41:10 'Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.'
John 14:1 "Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.
Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 13:1 For the director of music. A psalm of David. How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? Psalm 13:2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Psalm 13:3 Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; Psalm 13:4 my enemy will say, "I have overcome him," and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
Psalm 13:5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. Psalm13:6 I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.
1st Peter 5:7 …casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
We have to trust in the Lord first and foremost because the enemy desires for you to be ignorant or forgetful or both when it comes to all of the promises in the Word of God and especially about the promises that talk about His faithfulness to you when some people around you ignore you or mistreat you.
What else can we do when we feel like we are very lonely and isolated? We can look to our church family for help. Your church family is a group of believers who, like the Lord want nothing but the best for you always. Reaching out to your church family needs to be something we choose to do early and not as a choice of last resort.
I have always said that I want to know yall well enough to know when you’re hurting so that I can try to offer some help whether that would mean listening to you, putting an arm around you or giving you a hug or counseling with you. It is critically important that we as church family reach out to those that we know who are lonely, isolated and hurting.
Hebrews 10:25 says this about coming to church and encouraging one another: 25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
It is very important to not stop coming to church even when you feel lonely or depressed because that is exactly what Satan wants. If he can keep you separated from your church family then you will get weaker and weaker and he can really do some devastating things to you because you feel like you have no one to turn to and that no one cares about you. But these are lies and you do have friends who love you do have a church family that loves you.
In Africa lions choose their prey based on certain criteria. They seek out the weakest animal in a herd, the outcast ones, and then they isolate their prey and keep them away from the rest of the herd. Once they have accomplished this, they attack because they now have the prey at a disadvantage and they are easy to pick off and devour.
1st Peter chapter 5 verses 8-10 tell us this about Satan and what he wants to us and what God will do for us when we trust in Him: 8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
9 But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. 10 After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.
I want to be a part of the safety net for anyone here who feels like they are alone and isolated. Everyone here from the oldest to the youngest are greatly loved by the Lord and by me.
And please don’t think that feeling lonely, isolated, and depressed can’t happen to you because it can. In fact it is when we start to believe that these things can’t happen to us that we let our guard down and then like Peter told us the enemy will come and attack us and then we can find ourselves in a mess.
The bottom line for me is this, I want every person in this church to feel like they belong, that they are accepted, and most importantly that they are loved. When we know of people in our church family who are hurting like this I want us to physically and spiritually gather around them and protect them from the lies of the enemy and help them to feel like they matter as much to us as they do to God.
We need to do simple but effective things like just give someone a phone call. I talked to a young lady not too long ago on the phone about her son being in the hospital and she told me that this was the first time that anyone had ever called her to ask about her child’s health and that to me was stunning and not in a good way either.
Sometimes people just need a good listener, not necessarily someone to fix a problem but to simply listen to them as they get things off their chest. Sometimes people just need a great big hug, don’t be afraid to give hugs and don’t be afraid to get one because they are very therapeutic!
Too many people are struggling with loneliness, isolation and depression in the family of God and we need to help them fell better! Amen!?
