Matthew 11:28-30 CSB – “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Q: How Can We Overcome the Burden of Loneliness?
Jeremiah 16:1-5, 8-9 CSB – The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Do not marry or have sons or daughters in this place. 3 For this is what the Lord says ….4 They will die from deadly diseases. They will not be mourned or buried but will be like manure on the soil’s surface. …
5 “For this is what the Lord says: Don’t enter a house where a mourning feast is taking place. Don’t go to lament or sympathize with them, for I have removed my peace from these people as well as my faithful love and compassion.” This is the Lord’s declaration.
Do not enter the house where feasting is taking place to sit with them to eat and drink. 9 … I am about to eliminate from this place, before your very eyes and in your time, the sound of joy and gladness, the voice of the groom and the bride.
Jeremiah 8:21-9:1 CSB –
I am broken by the brokenness
of my dear people.
I mourn; horror has taken hold of me.
22 Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
So why has the healing of my dear people
not come about?
If my head were a flowing spring,
my eyes a fountain of tears,
I would weep day and night
over the slain of my dear people.
Loneliness says, “I Crave Personal Connection”
Why do you feel lonely?
- Feeling Abandoned?
- Feeling Unattractive?
Psalm 38:11 CSB – My loved ones and friends stand back from my affliction,
and my relatives stand at a distance.
- Feeling Proud?
- Feeling Successful?
Ecclesiastes 4:8 CSB – There is a person without a companion, without even a son or brother…., his eyes are still not content with riches.
Feeling Lonely? Risk Reaching Out to Others– Today
- Risk reaching out to strangers
Hebrews 13:2 CSB – Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it.
- Risk: Commit to the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12)
Matthew 20:28 CSB – Jesus said, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
–John Donne
“All that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me, for that child is thereby connected to the head, which is my head, too, and engrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me.”
–John Donne
- Risk: Commit to Hospitality
Hebrews 13:2 CSB – Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it.
Acts 2:46-47 CSB – Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
Loneliness says, “I crave a meaningful life”
Jeremiah 15:10 CSB –
Woe is me, my mother,
that you gave birth to me,
a man who incites dispute and conflict
in all the land.
I did not lend or borrow,
yet everyone curses me.
Jeremiah 20:7b-8 CSB –
I am a laughingstock all the time;
everyone ridicules me.
8 For whenever I speak, I cry out,
I proclaim, “Violence and destruction!”
so the word of the Lord has become my
constant disgrace and derision.
Nehemiah 6:3-4 CSB – So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing important work and cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?” 4 Four times they sent me the same proposal, and I gave them the same reply.
Cure #2 for Loneliness: Commit to a Life that Matters!
Ecclesiastes 1:14 CSB – I have seen all the things that are done under the sun and have found everything to be futile, a pursuit of the wind.
Ephesians 2:10 CSB – For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.
Loneliness says, “My Soul Craves Closeness with God”
Loneliness says, “My Soul Craves Closeness with God”
Gods here?
Who can know?
Not I.
Yet I sigh
and tears flow
tear on tear.
–Saigyo Hoshi
- Be Honest. Admit Your Loneliness for God
“To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.”
–Henri J.M. Nouwen
- Experience God Through Worship
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
–G.K. Chesterton
“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.”
–G.K. Chesterton
Psalm 132:7 CSB – Let’s go to his dwelling place; let’s worship at his footstool.
- Experience God Through Obedience
John 14:21 CSB – The one who has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me….. I also will love him and will reveal myself to him.”
