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Loneliness

There’s a difference between alone and loneliness…

Being alone can sometimes feel lonely but loneliness that consumes our singleness is not healthy and it’s not caused by just being alone.  Yes, we all love companionship and yes we enjoy good company.  We’re human and, we were created to love someone who loves us intimately and uniquely.

But alone is who we’re with and lonely is being miserable with who we’re with. Lonely tells us that we have to be with somebody to be somebody. But people don’t cure our loneliness, loneliness is an inside job. 

No, we don’t have to be satisfied being alone but content, yes (Philippians 4:11-12).  Why?  Contentment or Joy is a fought-for, struggled-for, fruit of the spirit. When I say fought for, I mean that it’s intentional. No matter what type of fruit we’re growing, it takes intentional work. The fruit of the spirit covers our mindset and attitude towards anything (Galatians 5:22-23). 

Anybody who has ever hooked up with somebody while they were lonely will tell you: 1) Don’t go to the grocery store on an empty stomach 2) A spirit of loneliness will make you act desperate and cause you to see things that don’t exist. 

All of us have gone to the grocery store hungry. Loneliness that causes unhealthy emotional hunger is no different. When we shop with hunger, emotional starvation, we don’t make wise decisions, we make desperate decisions — something quick, something easy and something right now.  When we shop emotionally hungry, we almost always buy something that we don’t need.

Unhealthy emotional hunger tends to use temporary emotions to make long-term decisions — in the heat of the moment.  If you’ve gotten into a relationship because you were lonely, hungry, chances are the relationship didn’t last long; if you were only looking for an emotional snack, that might have worked for you.

But if you were looking for a lifetime relationship, you probably found out that as soon as the hunger was satisfied, emotions filled up, the attraction wore off.  After you emotionally sobered up, you might have even experienced Hunger-After-Shock…that feeling of, “Why did I choose that?”  A relationship initiated out of hunger is usually intense in the beginning — that’s why it can be confusing, but it’s always mild in the middle and it melts down after a short period of time.

Loving on purpose takes soul work.  When our soul is right, healed, healthy and content, we are ready for our soul match.  Remember a soul mate can be an unhealthy match but a soul match is that person who God planned for our best self.  Our soul match compliments our willingness to be by ourselves if being with someone else means being miserable. 

In other words, we tend to mate with someone who matches our soul condition.  Loneliness is not a condition that you want to attract or mate with.  A lifetime love is somebody who we choose to do life with, not somebody we have to put up with for the rest of our life. How we choose to be alone is up to the individual but however we choose to be alone, we should enjoy it to the fullest — date, learn, grow…repeat.

When you know what you bring to the table, you don’t mind eating alone.

We have to check our heart before we check into a relationship. Singleness is preparation for relationships. Singleness is a relationship with self that will continue into relationship. Shoot, your singleness should make relationship a serious and heavily weighed decision about what you’re giving up being by yourself to be with somebody else. We don’t trade happy singleness for unhappy relationship…the devil is liar! Your singleness is a celebration of life, not a mortuary.

We don’t and won’t always get relationship right but before you get emotionally caught up, pray this simple prayer: “Lord, create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10) — and listen with honest ears. One thing is for sure, we cannot recognize if we’re throwing our pearls down before swine when we’re out of our emotional mind (Matthew 7:6).

 

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