Loneliness

Series: Friendship

Title: Surviving Loneliness

Author: Brandt

Key: Scripture Slide Media Story Production

INTRODUCTION

Welcome. How many of you have heard the words “introvert” and “extrovert” before and know the difference? Alright, where are my extroverts at in the room? Right on, what about my introverts, where are y’all at? If you didn’t know the difference between an extrovert and an introvert, you just heard it haha. Extroverts tend to get energy from being around people, and introverts tend to get energy from being by themselves.

[Communicator Note: Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, tell a brief story of when you discovered that for yourself, and share how that played into your outlook on being alone.]

Introvert. Now, I used to think that I was an extrovert when I was in high school. I loved hanging out with my friends, I was pretty social, and I was connected to a lot of people.

At Liberty University, I lived in a dorm where I spent tons of time with guys on my hall—some of my best friends. My junior year I became an RA, basically the 'hall dad' for 74 students. It was rewarding—late nights, open-door conversations, and a lot of moments where I got to walk with guys through faith stuff.

But eventually I found myself hiding away to avoid people—locking my door, turning off lights, just to get space. I didn’t feel like myself anymore. Being with others constantly made me feel out of touch with who I really was.

In other words, I realized that sometimes I just wanted to be alone haha. That year I learned that, while I love people to death and love being with others, I actually get my energy and sense of self from spending time alone, just me and God. Deep down, I’m kind of an introvert haha.

Series. This month we’re talking about building great friendships, because the quality of your friendships in large part will determine the quality of your life. But before we talk about being with others and get practical about friendship, we have to talk about a component of life that we can tend to overlook, which is being by ourselves, being alone.

TENSION

Quote. There was a Christian thinker named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who I think captured this perfectly:

“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 78.

The person who is the life of the party but can’t be by themselves is just as relationally sick as the person who is isolated and doesn’t spend time in community. It doesn’t matter if we think we have a ton of friends or very few, we have to be able to be alone, and together.

Distracted. And while everybody spends time without other people, few students spend time with themselves. When we’re alone we need the TV on, we need to be scrolling, we fill our alone time with distractions instead of creating space to be alone.

Terrible. And it’s no wonder why, being lonely can feel terrible! One of the reasons I love Scripture is because it’s God’s word, but it speaks in our language. Psalm 88 was written by a lonely person, listen to their words:

“You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths… you have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief… I cry to you for help, Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before you. Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? … You have taken from me friend and neighbor— darkness is my closest friend.”

Psalm 88:6–18 [Excerpts]

Problem. I think most of us are terrified of being alone, because we know how terrible true loneliness feels. It feels like this. I think that this fear of loneliness is the number one thing that keeps us from great friendships. Here’s why: Most of us aren’t trying to have or be great friends, we’re just trying to not be alone.

If my goal is to be a great friend and have great friends, then I’m going to be looking for faithful, wise, caring, loving, and genuinely fun people. I’m not going to settle for less than that in my friendships, even if it means being alone or lonely sometimes.

But if my goal is to not be alone, then anyone will do. I don’t need good friends, I just need somebody to like me so that I can like myself. I’ll end up doing whatever the crowd wants or expects of me, no matter what God wants for me, or what I want for myself.

Transition. If you never learn to be alone with yourself, it will be impossible to build great friendships, because you won’t know yourself well enough to even be yourself with others. You’ll be what others want or expect you to be. So today, we’re going to answer two questions: How do I face my fear of loneliness? And how do I practice being alone with God?

TRUTH

Bottom Line. Starting with the first one, how do I face my fear of loneliness? I’m going to give you the answer right off the bat, then we’ll go into it. You face your fear of loneliness by answering the questions that loneliness raises.

Questions. Have you ever been put on the spot by a teacher to answer a question that you didn’t know the answer to? It’s super awkward. I felt like my teachers knew exactly what I had studied and what I hadn’t so they could ask me about the things I hadn’t reviewed. Anybody else?

Like our teacher’s eyes when she’s picking a volunteer, loneliness is something that we tend to avoid, because it asks two REALLY BIG questions of us that we don’t always have a good answer to, here they are:

Who am I?

Am I loved?

By default, here’s how we tend to answer these questions:

Question: Who am I?

I am what I do.

Question: Am I loved?

If other people love me.

These are natural ways to answer these questions, and they’re fine when they’re working, but what you discover when you live long enough, is that they don’t have a bottom.

[Communicator Note: Instead of sharing a story here, you can just talk about treading water in general. The point is I have to keep working to stay up, and there’s nothing solid for me to rest on. If there’s another story or analogy for you in that lane, feel free to go there!]

Treading Water. Here’s what I mean: who here has ever had to tread water before? Some of you are like, you won’t catch me dead swimming, this might be unrelatable haha.

For me, treading water is miserable. I was a lifeguard for a bit when I was in college, and part of the lifeguard test was we had to tread water without using our hands for two full minutes in the deep end of a 14-foot pool. It was brutal. I remembered straining and straining, and I could barely keep my head above water. By the time the two minutes were up, I was exhausted, I couldn’t go another minute. But if I had to keep going, if there was no end, I would have eventually run out of steam and dropped under the water, and the bottom was 14 feet down.

Answering the core questions of your soul in the way we talked about is like treading water in a pool with no bottom. If I stop working for it, I drown.

Identity. When I answer the question of “Who am I” with “I am what I do,” it works for a bit… until it doesn’t.

It’s fine defining yourself by the sport you play until you get injured, or you mess up, or you get benched, or all the work you put in at practice goes unnoticed.

It’s fine It’s fine defining yourself by your academic performance when you’re succeeding, but what happens when the pressure gets too high? What happens when you don’t get the grade?

Loved. When I answer the question of “Am I Loved” with “If other people love me,” it can work for a bit… until it doesn’t.

It works for a minute when your family’s doing well and you’re good with your parents, but what happens when your parents are disappointed? What happens when you feel like it’s never enough?

It works for a minute when you have a bunch of friends and everything’s good. But what happens when me and my friends are fighting? When I feel like I have to be somebody I’m not for them to like me? When I feel like I’m at the bottom of the friend group and have to earn my spot.

It works for a minute when you send pics or post on social media and get good feedback. Makes you feel loved. But what happens when people post mean things, or say mean things about you at school, or worse?

Answer. What being alone does, is it forces us to look down when we’re treading water. And if the only answer to, “Who am I?” and “How do I know I’m loved?” is what I do and what other people think, there’s not bottom to rest on, I’ve gotta keep swimming. Tonight I want to throw you a lifeline, here’s how to find the bottom to rest on: Get alone with God, and let Him answer the questions.

Psalm 139 is a Psalm by king David, and it’s a poem written by somebody who has invited God into his loneliness and let Him answer his questions. It’s where the lyrics from the song “In the Room” come from if you like that one 😊. Listen to this:

7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

Solitude. The person who seeks and walks with God might be alone, but they’re not lonely. Getting away from people gives you some space to be with God, and only with God, no distractions. There’s nowhere you could go that He isn’t right there with you. Awareness of God turns our loneliness into solitude. But there’s more, listen to another part of the Psalm with our questions in mind:

13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because [Who am I?] I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; [Who am I?] all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Identity. Who are you? You were created by God. All that you are was made by Him. He is the reason you exist, and He has created you with purpose. God fashioned you, the Psalm says He knit you together in your mother’s womb, and that all the days of your life are written in a book that he keeps before you’ve lived one of them. He knows your past, your present, your future, your successes, your failures, and none of those things define you in His sight. Here’s how God answers the “who am I?” question.

Question: “Who am I?”

Answer: You are His.

You might be a lot of other things, but that’s all treading water. The bottom you stand on is that you are God’s creation, and if you’re a follower of Jesus you’re His child, and you find out who you are by getting to know Him.

Loved. And not only that, but here’s what else you learn with God: that He LOVES you. 1 John 4 shows us how we know that:

9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

The person who has put their faith in Jesus has a sure answer to the

Question: Am I Loved?

Answer: God loves you so much, and showed it by sending Jesus.

You don’t have to tread water to earn God’s love, you simply need to look to the cross. God, who created you for relationship with Himself, loved you so much that He sent Jesus to die on a cross to rescue you from sin. Some of you have exhausted yourself trying to prove that you’re worthy of love to your parents, your peers, your friends, your crushes, and you’re worn out. When you receive the love of God in Christ, it puts a bottom underneath you, and even if you’re treading for a while, getting alone with Him refreshes your soul and lets you rest.

We answer our fear of loneliness when we Get alone with God, and letting Him answer the questions of our heart. And when we do that, we become secure enough to enter into friendship with others instead of using them to answer the questions that God is supposed to answer for us.

APPLICATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT

Practice. So, how do we get alone with God? What’s the next step you can take to build a healthy relationship with yourself before God? You practice, and practice well. Here’s how you do that:

You practice being alone with God by:

Shutting the door.

Turning off the noise.

Opening the Word.

Shutting the door. This might be a literal door that you need to shut to your room to get alone with God, but the principle is cutting off access from other people temporarily. I do this by putting my phone on do not disturb, and keeping it on its charger while I pray and spend time with God.

Turning off the noise. If we can’t turn the phone off, the music off, YouTube off, for a half hour to get alone with God, then we’re not really alone with Him, or with ourselves. We’re merely distracting ourselves from our loneliness until we can get back to the other ways we’ve been answering our heart’s questions. And lastly…

Opening the Word. We need to open God’s word alone, and together. God might speak to you in prayer, He can do whatever He wants, but I know for me and most Christians I know, the place where we’ve met with God is by prayerfully sitting in front of His word.

Encouragement. I want to close with one more encouragement from the Psalms for those in the room who are in a lonely season tonight and are struggling:

5 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. 6 God sets the lonely in families.

Psalm 68:5–6a NIV

Close. God is with us wherever we go, and not only that, God will give you a spiritual family that loves you. That’s what the church is, and that’s why we do small groups every week, because God has set you in this family, and we want this to be a place where you’re not alone. Either way, let’s trust our group and invite them into what we’re going through, and create a safe place for people to share tonight. Let’s pray.