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. 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're 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 that 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 in 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,

...