How Can I Overcome Loneliness?

Published: Wed, 09/11/19

Loneliness is one of the most miserable feelings a person can experience. Sometimes you may feel that nobody loves you, that nobody even cares if you exist. You do not even have to be alone to feel lonely; you can feel lonely in a crowd. It is not the number of people around you that determines your loneliness; it is your relationship to them. In the urban world that we now live in, people have never lived closer together, and yet they have never felt farther apart.

Can you be wealthy and lonely? Ask the late aviation and movie tycoon Howard Hughes. Can you be beautiful and lonely? Ask the late actress Marilyn Monroe. Can you be married and lonely? Ask the people who marry because of loneliness and then get divorced a few years later for the same reason.

Everyone experiences loneliness at one time or another, but there are distinct causes and distinct cures for it. Sometimes we bring loneliness on ourselves, but other times we find ourselves in situations that are inevitable and uncontrollable. That is the condition in which the apostle Paul found himself as he wrote his second letter to Timothy. Paul was a dying old man as he wrote from a prison in Rome to his good friend Timothy and urged the younger man to visit him because he was lonely.

Rick Warren, God’s Answers to Life's Difficult Questions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008).

We have just released a new Bible Study based on Rick Warren's book, God's Answer to Life's Difficult Questions.

These lessons are available on Amazon, as well as a part of my Good Questions Have Groups Talking Subscription Service. Like Netflix for Bible Lessons, one low subscription gives you access to all our lessons--thousands of them. For a medium-sized church, lessons are as little as $10 per teacher per year.

Lessons include:

How to Cope with Stress

How Can I Rebound from Failure?

How Can I Defeat Depression?

How Can I Live Above Average?

How Can I Have Peace of Mind?

How Can I Handle Discouragement?