When You Feel Lonely

Living away from your home country is exciting—new places and experiences! However, as we get closer to the holidays, sometimes things around us seem more foreign than ever, even the language appears more difficult to comprehend. As we go through new trials and challenges, we long for the comfort of “home,” and we miss our friends and familiar places. The next door neighbor to whom we went when we needed someone to comfort or pray with us is not there, and we begin to feel a little lost and lonely.

But let us consider this encouraging truth.

Feeling lonely and being alone are not the same thing. It’s very common for believers to feel as though they are alone, facing the storms and disillusionments of life by themselves, only to find later that being outside the Father’s presence and care is, and always was, an utter impossibility.

The true, unwavering, lifelong personal friendships we can have, we derive from God’s grace pouring into our lives. Even when these friendships seem to fail us and we feel like we have not one single friend left, we can turn to the Source of all true friendship and be warmly welcomed and comforted.

It’s strange but true that when we are angry toward God and full of foolish accusations against him, we still at some point fall back on his mercy and say, “Relieve the troubles of my heart, and free me from my anguish.” Instinctively, we know that at the end of the day (a long and very bad day), there is one and only one real medicine for our heartsickness, the presence and comfort of God’s Spirit.

It’s our Maker who placed this instinct within us. It’s there as a type of homing device, to lead us back to the place of life and hope that, from all appearances, might have left us for a time.

Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart and free me from my anguish. Look on my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. -Psalm 25:16-18

In the case of the sorrowing psalmist, it was apparently a case not merely of his turning to God, but also of his feeling that God needed to turn back to him. And this is one of the most common feelings believers have: God is hidden from me. He turned from me and left me, when I needed him the most. I cry out to him, and he’s not there.

This is not an unusual false understanding by believers. You can find the most godly biblical hero, prophet, or saint expressing similar sentiments. When all seemed lost to them, God seemed to be absent, when they thought he should be most present and obvious, he wasn’t.

What you and I need to cling to is that when we feel most alone and abandoned by God, this is not true at all, for it is utterly out of the question for a chosen child of God to be left alone or left out of their Father’s thoughts. God’s character and his promise guarantee his faithfulness and presence. His whole reputation is at stake, and he has never been proven to be anything other than utterly and completely faithful.

So whatever you’re feeling, they are feelings. The truth is God knows what you are going through, he feels your pain and loneliness, and is working his best plan of healing, hope, and rescue for you.