In this episode of the In Touch Podcast, we delve deep into the pervasive feeling of loneliness that surrounds many of us in today’s fast-paced world. Host Charles Stanley explores how societal changes have created a ‘nation of strangers’ and the emotional walls we build around ourselves, leading to isolation and emotional disconnect. Whether you’re a top executive, homemaker, or someone in between, loneliness does not discriminate. We unravel the complex layers of loneliness — what defines it, and more importantly, how we can overcome it. With references to the 25th chapter of Psalms, we discuss the cry of
Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, July 23rd. With so much loss around us, the shadow of loneliness can feel overwhelming. If that’s where you are today, this program offers real encouragement on how to handle your loneliness.
SPEAKER 01 :
We’ve been described as a nation of strangers. That is, part of our problem is that we have crowded loneliness. About 20% of the American people move every year, and so therefore we decide, why should I sink roots? Because I’m going to move anyway. And what we do, instead of reaching out to one another, we just sort of go our way and build our walls and our fences. But what’s happening to us is this. We are building walls and fences around our houses. but we’re building walls and fences around our hearts. And instead of building relationships with each other, we keep backing off, and what we’re creating around us is a lonely world, and lonely people are not very happy. Well, that’s what I want to talk about, loneliness. And how do we overcome it? And how do we handle this whole idea of loneliness? So I want you to turn, if you will, to a couple of verses here in the 25th chapter of the Psalms. 25th Psalm. And I want us to read the 16th, beginning of the 16th verse. And here is the cry of David that can be the cry of many people today. Psalm 25, beginning in verse 16. He says… Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Bring me out of my distresses. Look upon my affliction and my trouble and forgive all my sins. Now, there are a lot more people in the world who are lonely than we realize. And one of the problems is that loneliness is a little difficult to define. And so when you look around you trying to decide what is it within me that’s not exactly right or what is it that seems to be missing, you can’t quite put your finger on it. And it just might be that the problem is that you are a lonely person on the inside. Now, some of you know that that’s the problem. You say, oh yes, I know that’s my problem. And what I want to know is how to overcome it. How do I handle this loneliness? Well, that’s exactly what I want to talk about. You see, it hits every single strata of society. And sometimes people that we think… Why? There would be no way in the world that person could be lonely. Look how many friends they have and look who they are or what they have and all the rest. But do you realize that sometimes they’re the most lonely people in the world? Let’s take the top executive of some major corporation. Here he is, many people, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people working for him. And what happens? He has to have a little distance between him and the people who work with him. That’s sort of the rule as far as he’s concerned. And so he has to separate himself. He’s at the top, always in the process of commanding and making decisions. That’s a place of loneliness. On the other hand, here’s a homemaker, a mother, who’s at home all day long by herself. Going through the same old routine day after day. Sometimes she too feels very lonely at home alone. Depending upon the relationship she has with her husband or children. And then here’s an elderly person. The years have gone by and they have the pictures and the albums and the things that they look at and the things that they cherish about the past and… Kids have grown up and their grandchildren have grown up and everybody’s out doing their thing. And once in a while they may call or once in a while come by, but more often than not, not really. And so there’s an awesome sense of loneliness when time back here in the past is so long and time in the future seems to be so short and closing in daily. There’s something about that that’s a little difficult to deal with for some folks. And then there’s the single. Twenty-five, thirty, not married. Wondering why. Been talking to God about it. God doesn’t seem to be listening too well. And somehow, there’s no real genuine intimacy with anyone. No prospects on the horizon for marriage. And their career is just sort of take it or leave it. Go home to the same old apartment or condominium, a house every day. And not really too excited about it because… There’s no one there. And all the television in the world, see, that’s just one-way communication. What do you share with a television set? Not much of anything. It’s a one-way trip. You do all the listening. He is a salesman who spends night after night in a motel or a hotel. He doesn’t like empty hotel rooms and motel rooms, but he’s there. And so sometimes he watches television. That doesn’t work. Reads. That doesn’t work. He gets lonely week after week, month after month. And his occupation, his vocation demands that he travel five days a week. And sometimes he’s gone longer than that. We can understand those folks, but we say, well, what about a pastor? Well, a pastor, no point in him being lonely. Look at all these folks who love him. My friend, sometimes the pastor can be a very lonely man. And I can tell you that I’m talking to some of you fellows out there who are pastors, and you know that. Why? Because we have the responsibility of having all the answers. We don’t have them, but we’re expected to have them. Secondly, we can’t tell anybody else what we told anyone else. And so, whereas we have all the answers, keep everything confidential, can’t have any close friends because you have to be everything to everybody, and all of the false attitudes and ideas that go on in the church could make a pastor a very lonely man. Well, I want to tell you, I’m very grateful that I have friends, intimate friends with whom I can share my heart. Haven’t always had them. My own period of loneliness, just like many of you. But I have some friends with whom I can share the uttermost depths of my heart. And my pastor friend, if you don’t have one, get one quickly. Some man with whom you can share your heart, with whom you can let your hair down and just be what you are. Not worry about somebody blaring back and saying, oh my goodness, you’re the pastor and you think that way? Sure. Everybody needs to be loved. Loneliness is one of the most painful experiences of life. It is a pressure of life with which many of you have to deal. And all of us have had to deal with it at some point probably in our life. So my friend, don’t look at anyone and say, why? Why would they be lonely? You don’t know their heart. You can’t read their mind. You can’t read their emotions. And so you never know who may be sitting around you, working with you, living with you, who may have all the outward appearance of having it all together, but on the inside feel totally alienated from life. Well, let’s look at these feelings for just a moment. How would we define loneliness? Well, there are certain words that I’ve mentioned already because, you see, Loneliness is the absence of a relationship. It’s the absence of something. It’s the absence of intimacy. It is the feeling of being separated. Listen to this. Disconnected. Unattached. That is, there is a sense of separation. a sense of emptiness, the absence of a relationship that brings fulfillment and joy, and the absence of something to give you that feeling of being complete. And as long as it’s not there, There is something missing. It has nothing to do with geography. A person can be separated from someone whom they love and with whom they have intimacy 5,000 miles. And they’re filled on the inside and there’s a sense of fullness and completeness because they have an empathy and they have an intimacy that is real and lasting. And so as you think about loneliness… you think, well, just get yourself a friend. It’s not quite that easy for a lot of people. And so loneliness affects us in many, many ways in our life. Loneliness will affect your morals. Many people who come to an age in their life where they think they’re not going to get married say, well, you know, I’ve got to have some fellowship. I’ve got to have some companionship. And they begin to lower their moral standards in order to attempt to fulfill that emptiness, that lack of intimacy. And so oftentimes it affects our morals. Let me just remind you of something. That intimacy, intimacy and sexual relationships are not the same. All the physical contact in the world will not fulfill the emptiness of a heart. And you see, you and I are living in a society when our teenagers, and even beneath the teenagers… are trying to find some kind of fulfillment in some kind of sexual indulgence because they’ve heard and they’ve seen, they’ve watched on the television that surely all these folks who are happy who are going to bed with each other. And what they don’t realize is that God didn’t make man and woman that way. That God created man and woman with an emotional and mental and spiritual intimacy that makes everything else complete and fulfilling. And without it, It’s still empty. It’s a dead-end street. It doesn’t take you anywhere but to disappointment. But oftentimes, loneliness causes people to attempt to get that lonely need met in some relationship that they know is not right before God and not right in their own conscience and leaves them empty, feeling dirty. It damages their own self-esteem and their own self-image. And all they have to say at the end is, something is still hurting. It also affects a person’s dress. You see, these people who dress and look like they left something off, they didn’t quite put enough on, their problem isn’t that they are so self-secure. Their problem is they are so insecure and probably lonely that they have to do something to get attention because you see, a person who feels loneliness feels unattached and unworthy oftentimes and unneeded and unnoticed, and so therefore at least you start with getting noticed, and then you build a relationship. My friend, that’s no way to build intimacy within your heart. And so sometimes it affects where a person dresses. To get attention in order to at least get something going, that can lead also to disaster. It affects a person’s finances. You see, when you combine loneliness, deep-seated loneliness, with credit cards… You have a possible disaster for the simple reason that if a person attempts to fulfill this empty alienation, separation, this something in there that they cannot describe with things, they are more prone to spend more, buy more, shop more. decorate themselves, decorate their house, decorate this, anything to surround themselves with something in their genuine, honest, but futile attempt to fill this gap within their life. It affects a person’s social context. If a person feels lonely, oftentimes they build walls. And while they want to reach out with someone and build a relationship, they feel like they cannot. So it affects their social context. Likewise, it affects a person’s self-image. If a person feels lonely, if a person genuinely feels lonely, what happens? There is something with inside of them that makes them feel like, well, unworthy, unwanted, uncared for, unneeded, all the things that diminish the person that God says we are. Likewise, loneliness contributes and is a major part of depression. When a person feels depressed, you just combine depression and loneliness together. What is a major cause of suicide? What’s the use of living? No relationships, no intimacy, no friends, tried it all. And so there’s this awesome sense of emptiness that seems to be enlarged continuously. And a person says, well, what is there to live for? Nothing brings fulfillment. Nothing brings a sense of genuine fulfillment in life. And there’s no genuine contentment. And everything they’ve tried has left something missing. And so what do they do? They decide to check out of life. Well, I want to remind you of something, that no matter where you are in loneliness, you can overcome it. You say, but you don’t know how lonely I am and how deeply I feel, how hurt I’ve been. These walls I’ve built up around me, how shut out the world seems to me, how uncared for and unimportant I feel. I understand what you’re saying, but I want to tell you something. You can overcome that loneliness. It’s not forever and it’s not hopeless and you’re not helplessly, hopelessly lost in that loneliness. So let’s think about this whole idea of loneliness and where it came from. Because you see, if you’re going to understand how to overcome it, you need to think about where it came from. But before we do that, we need to clarify something. What is the distinction between being alone and being lonely? There’s a difference between being lonely and solitude. You see, loneliness speaks of an anxiety separation, alienation that’s painful. Solitude is a purposeful separation. Time of being alone, where a person chooses to be by themselves and let their emotions cool off and their minds settle down and their body begin to rest. Solitude is a time of rediscovery. It’s a time of revitalization. Something goes on inside of a person in solitude that revitalizes their innermost being and so they come out of it a new person. It’s sort of like you reorient your whole inner landscape, that you look at things differently. And Jesus, in one of his most critical times in his ministry, in the midst of healing and preaching and teaching, in John chapter 6, verse 15, Jesus therefore perceiving that they were intending to come and take him by force, and here he was being persecuted, the Bible says, to make him king, withdrew again to the mountains by himself alone. You remember Jesus also said to his disciples, come apart for a while. Jesus, who was both God and man, in his humanity, Jesus had to get up in the mountains by himself. Jesus had to be alone. He had to walk away from hurting, troublesome people. He had to walk away from people who were lost. People who were sick, people who were diseased, he walked away in order to do what? That his own physical being could be revitalized. That is, Jesus, who was both God and man, felt the drain of the continuous pulling and demands upon his life. And so he walked away from it all. Solitude is absolutely essential. So when a person says, I’ve got to get by myself, don’t take that as rejection. Everyone needs solitude. You see, God didn’t make us to have our strings tight all the time. No matter how spiritual you are, God didn’t make the human body and the human emotional system to go on a tight wire all the time. And I want to say to many of you people who are church members out there who have placed on your pastor absolutely impossible expectations. He may be a super man to you, but he’s not a super man. He may be very godly, but he’s not God. He may have awesome sense of stamina and strength, but he’s not God. without weakness and he’s not without the need of time alone and so you who expect him to be more than he can possibly be lay responsibilities upon him that are absolutely impossible you need to back off and read the bible and ask yourself the question how should we treat a man of god who is opening the word of god to us week after week and sharing his heart pouring out his life He’s still just a man and only a man in whom God is living. You need to pray for him and you need to help him and you need to encourage him to take those breaks that are necessary lest he break down. So you see, solitude is extremely important. And Jesus took them away because He knew that they needed time to rethink and to get a sense of redirection. Nobody’s string can be tight all the time and last. And so we have an enormous number of people have nervous breakdowns, burnout. Burnout is a continually increasing major problem in this country in the ministry, on the mission field. Because men who desire to give all they have and to give it all that they have to give, trying to live up to expectations that are impossible, they burn out. And you see, I can remember when I first went to school and seminary, oh, the idea, let’s burn out for Jesus. And I’d already begun to suffer some of that. Because in my mind, all the biographies I’d read and all the things I’d read, give it all you got day and night, it’s for Jesus, win the world to Christ. Then I got to reading the Bible. But only after… God had to lay me down and remind me, I am not Superman. The kingdom can go on without me. And then when I’m dead and gone, God’s word will keep on being preached. Church will go on. Things will keep going on without me. Sometimes we get our perception of ourselves all mixed up and confused. And what happens? The devil tricks us into thinking can’t be done without us. I want to tell you, anything you and I can do, somebody can do better. When you and I are gone, they’re still going to be doing it. And so therefore, God didn’t make us to last forever on earth, but forever in heaven. He didn’t make us supernatural. but to be indwelt by supernatural power and we’re to live recognizing that there are times when aloneness with him are absolutely essential and that’s why a person’s own private devotions are so important in our daily life because you see when you get alone by yourself in your bedroom or in your den or wherever you pray what you’re doing is you’re having solitude it isn’t a week or two weeks a month or six months it’s those moments of solitude when you and the heavenly father When he revitalizes, replenishes your emotional drain. And it is a very important part in the person’s life. So let’s distinguish between loneliness and solitude. Loneliness we have to deal with. Solitude is a vital part of every person’s life.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to How to Handle Our Loneliness. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
