\u201cYou can do this. You have a good reason to be here,\u201d I assured myself as I walked over to our new neighbor\u2019s house. My family was new in town and my brother Nick, who has the social anxiety of Spongebob, had already made friends with the kids next door. My mom sent me to get him for dinner. Nervous, I practiced looking cool and unimpressed. If they caught a whiff of my loneliness, there was no way I\u2019d become part of the crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You may have similar memories of feeling lonely as a kid. The crazy thing about loneliness is it doesn\u2019t go away as an adult. In fact, our world is currently in a loneliness epidemic, with Gen Z suffering especially. Psychology Today<\/em> reported that 73% of them say \u201cthey feel alone sometimes or always,\u201d making them the loneliest<\/em> generation.1<\/sup> They\u2019re anxious to be part of a crew but missing the connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scripture gives us a solution to loneliness, but it\u2019s not merely to look for friends. In John 15:15, Jesus said to His disciples, \u201cI have called you friends<\/em>.\u201d Why are they friends? \u201cFor everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you\u2026I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit\u201d (NIV). The disciples are friends because<\/em> they know Jesus\u2019 plans. His mission is their mission.<\/em> Their friendship comes, in a sense, from that shared mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scripture gives us a solution to loneliness, but it\u2019s not merely to look for friends.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n C.S. Lewis says that every friendship is built this way: on a common purpose outside the friendship itself, down to the simplest connections, like two people who both love spaghetti. Without it, friendship is impossible. This \u201cis why those pathetic people who simply \u2018want friends\u2019 can never make any. The very condition of having friends is that we should want something else besides friends\u2026friendship must be about something.\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n If purpose is a necessary ingredient of friendship, then pursuing your purpose will likely attract friendship. Perhaps that\u2019s why God gives humanity an active role in spreading the gospel: we not only share the gospel but we also find the most fulfilling connections through the most glorious purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re struggling with loneliness, try pursuing your gospel purpose: take a leadership position in your church, spearhead an outreach activity, preach a sermon, teach Sabbath School, or start your own small group. You might find, like I did when I talked with the girls next door about gymnastics, you have a whole new crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou can do this. You have a good reason to be here,\u201d I assured myself as I walked over to our new…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,477],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/blog-mu2308-devotional.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paAh8r-3DW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14008"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15451,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14008\/revisions\/15451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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