Loneliness

Scriptures: Genesis 1:27-28, Matthew 11:28

Introduction- WHY DO I FEEL SUCH PROFOUND LONELINESS?

The story of human loneliness has its roots in the character of God and God’s purpose in creating us. 

The roots of our present-day experience of loneliness are all found right here. We were made in the likeness of a relational, communicating, and triune God. His social nature is hardwired into our nature. We were designed for relational fulfillment vertically with God and horizontally with other humans. Like God, these relationships are fulfilling by design to the extent that they are harmonious. God’s threeness is the paradigm for our social needs, and His oneness is the paradigm for human relationships marked by love and peace. 

You know, like the old song says: “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Loneliness is first theological before it is existential. Loneliness isn’t the opposite of relational fulfillment. It is the absence of it. Loneliness is an experiential void and vacuum. Its pain is a backhanded compliment to the pleasure of what God originally designed. 

#1 Embrace God’s Purpose for Your Loneliness

(Matthew 11:28) 

Loneliness is part of the inner architecture of our image-bearing. It acts like sensors in our car to tell us when something is missing—oil in the engine or air in the tires. What do you do when the check engine oil light comes on? Ignore it? One of my college-aged sisters once called my dad and said, My car isn’t running anymore. I’m stuck on the highway. My dad’s whole career was as an engineer for John Deere. But his daughter never picked up that when the check engine oil light goes on, it’s telling you something needs to be done. 

For many people, that loneliness sensor has been flashing, and they keep driving. Loneliness isn’t a sin; it’s a sensor. In this way, it is a friend, like a check engine oil light is a friend if we don’t ignore it but use it to make healthy adjustments in our lives. 

Loneliness is like hunger, thirst, or even our sex drive. God placed these longings in us to move us toward the things He graciously provided for our flourishing. None of these are exclusively Christian. Loneliness is part of God’s common grace. When we are hungry, we work on getting food. When we are thirsty, we seek water. The discomfort spurs action and change. 

Loneliness pain acts like rumble strips along the road. I like to drive those occasionally to annoy my family, but when you hear that brrrr, what do you think? I’m off the road. I’d better course correct. When you feel lonely, think brrrr. I need a course correction in my life. 

Loneliness indicates some level of unfulfilled desires in life. Loneliness will bless our lives only if loneliness remains loneliness. Once loneliness weaponizes, it turns predatory and destructive. How do we de-escalate obsessive loneliness? Listen to our Savior’s tender invitation: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Since knowing Jesus is the one true ultimate satisfaction for our souls, His care for our laden and lonely hearts tempers our desperation. 

I am convinced this is a primary purpose for loneliness, to keep turning our souls toward God.

Scriptures: Job 19:19, Proverbs 14:10, Matthew 27:46

#2 Allow Loneliness Pain to Motivate You

“All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.” (Job 19:19) 

“The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.” (Proverbs 14:10) 

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) 

We are far from the first people group to detest loneliness. The Bible includes people experiencing profound loneliness. 

As these verses indicate, loneliness hurts. It hurts bad. Yet God embedded these prickly emotional reminders of how wonderful harmony with God and others can be. The pain is a measure of the loss. Not all pain is bad. Loneliness pain comes to us ethically neutral. What we do with it determines whether it is good or bad pain. When I work out, the muscle pain tells me I’m doing something good for me. It’s a good pain if I let it motivate me to further effort. That’s the goal of loneliness. Turn it into good pain. Our natural response is to make loneliness pain “bad” and then make the cause of the pain worse. Before you know it, you are building a cabin in the Upper Peninsula as a monument to your loneliness. When loneliness spirals downward, it dehumanizes and increases our pain. 

Loneliness is our relational conscience. It tells us when something isn’t healthy or as healthy as possible. Or, like nerves in the body that indicate we are touching something too hot or too cold, the nerves are fulfilling their intended purpose. God put in us a relational nervous system. Emotional discomfort is loneliness doing its job.

Scripture: Galatians 5:16-17

#3 Determine to View Loneliness as a Gift

It doesn’t feel like a gift, and most of us would prefer not to receive it. Yet, there it is daily, staring us in the face. Might this be a “daily bread” prayer to God? What if we asked Him for the grace to choose to view loneliness as a gift from Him? You may say, but I don’t like the feeling of loneliness! I agree. But do you like the feeling of hunger or thirst? We generally don’t want them, but we are thankful for them. While uncomfortable, they urge us toward what we need. If someone has no appetite or a sense of dehydration, that person is in a health crisis. Hunger and thirst cause us to seek the satisfaction of those desires. Loneliness is relational hunger. It sits in the pit of our souls uncomfortably. We can ignore it, distract it, satisfy it sinfully, resent it, or hate it. The key is to leverage it by seeing it as a gift and responding to it rightly. 

What does that look like? Loneliness creates internal energy. It is a strong emotion. I respond to it negatively, and even sinfully, by coping with the pain in sinful or destructive ways. Or I can leverage that energy as motivation toward a more profound engagement with God and others. This requires discipline and self-control as my flesh urges self-destructive responses. 

(Galations 5:16–17). The flesh is our remaining nature, our “indwelling sin.” It is a lingering spiritual enemy within that seizes upon any opportunity, temptation, or habit of life and weaponizes it against us and God’s good purpose in us. It is critical to understand how our internal enemy works. Our flesh is an active force seeking our spiritual pain and sorrow. It hates God and will apprehend the slightest prick of loneliness and seek to amplify it into bitterness, jealousy, and resentment. 

Once loneliness enters the lower side of our nature, viewing it as a gift is very difficult as it produces the worst of human emotions. Embedded in unhealthy loneliness is the fear that we will always feel this way. Just as hunger can devolve into gluttony and thirst weaponized into alcoholism, loneliness is easily weaponized within us. 

Augustine famously said, “Our heart is restless until it rests in you.” If this by yourself, cannot turn loneliness into a blessing. It is always a curse and a scourge. For some, they isolate themselves in the wilderness, literally or figuratively. The story of humanity is how much the hole in the heart hurts. How can we fill it? How can we find Augustine’s rest? The tale of loneliness is intertwined with the story of redemption. The gospel is God’s ultimate solution to our loneliness. Loneliness is what image bearers feel when something or someone we were made to live for is absent. The restoration of this Person means the mitigation of His absence. At the center of the gospel of Christianity is precisely this restoration via reconciliation with God. Sin created the breach. Repentance and faith in Christ restore us to God and, importantly for loneliness, God to us. 

Through Christ, we are eternally reconciled to God. The “hole in our heart” is filled when we trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. God is ours forevermore. 

Most people think about their loneliness in strictly horizontal terms. “If so-and-so didn’t reject me, I wouldn’t feel this way.” Or “If I had a best friend, spouse, child, grandma, or a decent bowling team in my life, I wouldn’t feel this way.” While all these relationships are valuable, if you have all of them but don’t reconcile with your Creator, the loneliness of the soul remains. We were made for much more than any horizontal relationship can provide. We were magnificently made for God, and we will never find lasting peace and diminished loneliness until we are spiritually restored to Him.