Seven ways to fight loneliness. Number one, start feeling. The only way to flee loneliness is to let yourself feel it.

Psalms 6.6 says, I am weary with moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with weeping. This is David speaking. You see, David didn't flee from feeling his loneliness.

He let himself feel it so he could flee it. There's over 73 Psalms written by David, and a lot of

them are so sad. He dealt with this depression by writing, by going and looking at it, not fleeing from it, but really feeling it, putting pen to paper.

Number two, stop faking. Stop faking the fact that you feel lonely. Loneliness has a purpose.

Isaiah 533 tells us that Jesus was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.

No one experienced more loneliness than Jesus. Yet he never faked like everything was okay. Why?

That would do nothing. Jesus is the most real person. And so he knows faking loneliness and acting

and putting it on a face would do nothing. If

Jesus didn't fake his loneliness, then neither should we. Number three, start facing. The only way

through your loneliness is to face it head on. In Mark 1441, this is when Jesus is in the

garden and he's praying three times, Abba Father,

if there's any other way, take this cup of suffering for me, yet not my will, your will be done.

And every time he asked his disciples to pray with him because he was going through a lonely, hard time.

He was so pressed by the wrath of God and the separation from God. He was even bleeding

out of his forehead. He was sweating blood. He was asking his friends to fight this loneliness with him,

to be there, to pray for him, to pray for strength. And every time they fell asleep. You see, Jesus

faced his loneliness. He walked straight into the darkness alone and looked at it.

He didn't ignore it.

He engaged it and he faced his loneliness so that we could have an answer for our loneliness.

Jesus didn't see his friends and say, you know what?

I give up, I'm not doing this.

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