Episode 5: The Lonely Side of Jesus

Erika VanHaitsma: Erin Davis once made a very vulnerable, public admission. 

Erin Davis: Several years ago I stood on a stage a lot like the stage I’m standing on right now, and I was holding this same Bible that I’m holding right now. In a room full of women a lot like you I made a tearful confession. I stood on that stage and said, “I’m so lonely.” Then I looked into that audience and I asked this question, “Do any of you have a family, friends, and a church, and also this nagging ache of loneliness?” And they kind of looked at me stoically, and I took it one step further. I said, “If that’s you, if you’re lonely too, would you stand up.”

Erika: Welcome to The Deep Well with Erin Davis. I’m Erika VanHaitsma.

When you’re going through a difficult time, it helps when someone just understands. In our current season of The Deep Well, “The Other Side of Jesus,” Erin is helping us to recognize something amazing–Jesus always understands what you’re going through.

Today, Erin will help us see the lonely side of Jesus. When we left Erin, she had just admitted to being lonely, and she was standing there all alone on that stage in front of those women. Here’s what happened next.

Erin: One by one by one by one, teary women stood up across that whole auditorium until easily two-thirds of that audience was on their feet. I often will counsel women after I teach, but this was totally different. Women stood in line for hours. The line of women who wanted to talk to me after that message, which was really just me crying, snaked through that auditorium, out the auditorium door. I stood there for hours as woman after woman came up to me and essentially said, “I’m lonely too.” I would look those women in the eye and say, “I’m lonely.” And she’d say, “I’m lonely.” And we’d hug each other and smear our snot on each other’s shirts. 

We didn’t really have answers for each other, but all of a sudden I was aware of something that I had never seen before. That moment eventually became a message which eventually became a book, and here’s the title, Connected: Curing the Pandemic of Everyone Feeling Alone Together.

I don’t think I caused the COVID-19 pandemic, but we certainly have learned a few lessons in the years since my lonely confession. That was long before anyone had ever heard the word “COVID.” Specifically, we’ve learned how pervasive it is. Many, many people are struggling with loneliness. 

For the first time in human history, social scientists tell us that young people are now as lonely as the elderly. That’s never been true before. Typically, young people have been the most connected—lots of friends, lots of things to do, well connected. That’s not true anymore. So as we jump into the side of Jesus we’re going to talk about today, the lonely side of Jesus, it’s good to get our definitions right. 

Lonely isn’t necessarily synonymous with isolated. Lonely is more a description of your heart than your circumstances. Because when I made that lonely confession, I was married. I’d been married. I had children, and I had friends. But I was very lonely. 

After that, a friend of mine and I began to travel to different churches and try to understand loneliness among the women who called themselves Christians, because I didn’t know why that was happening. I just knew it was happening. I knew enough about my Bible to know that we should pay attention. 

We went to church after church—big churches, little churches, city churches, rural churches. One of the things we found at almost every church was that the loneliest woman in the room was the pastor’s wife. This is your sign to reach out to your pastor’s wife and invite her to coffee. But it’s also proof, if your pastor’s wife is lonely, it’s proof that you can have a family at home to take care of, you can have lots of people who will wave back to you at the grocery store, you can have a very full schedule, and you can still have this gnawing sense in your gut that nobody really knows you . . . and that’s lonely. 

We’re deep into this season of The Deep Well. We’ve been trying to open our Bibles and see Jesus with fresh eyes, because we don’t just want to see Jesus we think we know. We want to see Jesus as He reveals Himself in our whole Bibles. 

One of the beautiful things about Jesus is He has not played hide and seek with His character. It’s right there in your Bible, but you have to read your whole Bible to see the whole picture. And as I said, in this episode we’re going to look at the lonely side of Jesus.

We’re going to park during our time in Mark 14. Go ahead and turn there in your Bible. I’m going to take us through that chapter of the Bible. First, I want to take the fast lane, and then we’re going to go back for those scenic overviews, okay? 

An important, big idea of the gospels is that Jesus chose to spend His incarnation, when God became man, He chose to spend His incarnation with other people. Now I know you know that, but do you know that? 

Think of all the ground we’ve covered already in this series. This is Jesus who creates and sustains all things. This is Jesus who will one day lead the armies of heaven and bring all nations under His righteous rule. This is Jesus who doesn’t just wear one crown, He wears many crowns. And on His robe and on His thigh He has this name written, “King of kings and Lord of lords.” 

So, it’s that Jesus who condescended to develop inside a woman’s womb. It’s that Jesus who condescended to need milk from that woman’s body. God, who’s never needed everything. It’s that Jesus who chose to grow up under a very human dad and a very human mom. I mean, I know your kids probably think they know everything, but Jesus actually did know everything, and He still condescended to being under the authority of human parents. 

It’s that Jesus we talked about in previous episodes, the Warrior Jesus, the King Jesus, the Jesus who will ultimately pour out wrath on those who don’t follow Him. That Jesus chose to befriend a ragtag group of men who were rough around the edges, and that’s saying it nicely. He calls those men to live their lives together with Him as brothers with a shared mission. 

If you’ve ever lived with other people, if you’ve ever served with other people, if you’ve ever traveled with other people as Jesus did, you know a degree of humility is required. And Jesus condescended to live His life with those men during His time on earth. 

It’s tempting, I think, to let some of that get lost on us, because we all have a dad and a mom. Most of us have siblings, brothers and sisters. We all have friends. But here’s the difference: we are not God. 

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exists in perfect unified relationship with each other. None of us have a context for what that’s like. Even in the best of marriages, the best of circumstances, your very best friend, all you know is a sinner bound to a sinner. 

But the Godhead didn’t have that. They have always existed in unified relationship with each other, which means they have never had the need for the give and take, the repent and forgive rhythms of life that we sinful people have. So, when we say that Jesus became incarnate, we’re saying a lot! 

By the time we catch up to Jesus in Mark 14, He was thirty-three years old. He’d been traveling and ministering with these disciples already for three years. By Mark 14 His life was accelerating rapidly toward the reason that He came. He came to die for you and me, and He knew it. When we get to chapter 14, He knows what’s coming. So like I said, let’s take the fast lane through it, first through this whole chapter, then we’ll talk through the big events, and then we'll go back. 

At the beginning of the chapter, Judas agreed to betray Jesus. And then He [Jesus] observed the Passover with His disciples. This was the moment that every time you take communion in your church on a Sunday morning, it points back to this moment. Jesus held up the bread and He told them, “This is my body broken for you.” He held up the cup, and He told them it was His blood that was going to be poured out. He was explaining to them very real events that were about to happen. I’ve got to think they weren’t quite tracking. 

And from that Passover meal Jesus went out to the garden to pray. We’re going to spend the whole last episode of this series in the Garden of Gethsemane with Jesus. From there, Jesus was tried, and then the rooster crowed. Those are the events of Mark 14.

What I want you and I to look at, what we need God to give us eyes to see are the pain points, the moments when Jesus was surrounded, and yet He was alone. I want us to look at those because I want us to consider what the lonely side of Jesus stands to teach us about our Savior. I can open my Bible with you, but I cannot open your eyes to spiritual truths. The Holy Spirit has to do that. So before we jump back into this chapter, let me pray, and we’ll ask Him.

Jesus, we want to see You. We want to see You as You really are, and we want to understand fully what You experience for our sakes. So, as we open our Bibles here, as we look at the gospels, and as we wrestle with Your loneliness, help us to see it clearly. Help us to respond rightly. Help us to love You more. It’s in your name I pray, amen.

I’m going to read us Mark 14:3–9. I hope you’ll read along with me. I’m going to read out of the ESV.

And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.”

That’s how I know His death was heavy on His heart. He was thinking about it even as He was supposed to be having a meal with friends. 

“She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

I bet you’ve had this experience. You’re in a room full of people and people are doing what people do: they’re eating, they’re making small talk, they’re pulling out pictures of their grandbabies. And you, in that room full of people, have this sense that nobody there really knows you, that nobody really sees you. 

You know when that can happen sometimes? It can happen in a family gathering with the people whose faces you’ve seen over and over again. I know I’m not the only one that sometimes in those moments can think, These people don’t know me, and I don’t know them. Jesus knew that feeling too. 

Jesus knew that very soon He was going to be nailed to the cross for the people in that room. And other than the woman who was socially shunned in this moment, they didn’t get it. What a lonely feeling that must’ve been. 

I want to move on to verses 10–11. I think it’s another lonely snapshot. 

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.

If we know our Bibles, we say Judas with a snarl on our lips. “Judas.” We know he was the one who betrayed Jesus. But have you ever thought about this? Jesus chose Judas knowing he would betray Him. Judas thought that he had gone to the chief priests in secret, except with Jesus there are no secrets. Jesus knew what Judas would do, and He knew what Judas had done. Jesus had always known since before Judas was even born that Judas would not be a faithful friend.

That means that every time Jesus and Judas shared a meal together, every time that Judas and Jesus took a walk, every time that Judas and Jesus worked side by side to minister to the people who gathered around Jesus, Jesus knew that one day Judas was going to sell him out for a little bit of silver.

When you know that someone who claims to love you would stab you in the back the first chance they got, that’s lonely. When you know that someone is claiming to be your friend, claiming to stand beside you, but you also know some of the things they’ve said about you that they don’t know you know, that’s lonely. 

And then there’s the Passover. The disciples asked a really very benign question in verse 12. They said, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” That was no big deal, because of course, Jesus would observe the Passover. Jesus always observed the Passover. For thirty-three years Jesus had observed the Passover, because for thousands of years, Jesus’ people had observed the Passover. 

So, the disciples were really not saying anything profound when they went to their Savior and said, “Where should we have the Passover this year?” Only Jesus knew that He was the lamb who would be sacrificed for that year’s Passover. Only Jesus knew that he would never again gather with His friends on this side of the crucifixion. He said to them in that moment, “I have eagerly desired to share this meal with you,” because he knew this was it.

You’ve probably had some of those moments when you know it’s the last time you’ll go out with that group of friends before you move to a different town, or you know it’s the last lunch you’re going to have at your company before you move to a new job. This is that on steroids. And knowing something that no one else can know is really lonely. Like, maybe no one knows that your marriage is hanging by a thread and your husband sleeps in a different room, or maybe no one knows that your teenaged daughter is suicidal. 

I had a woman recently pull me aside in the hallway where I was teaching. I’d never met her before. I can’t even tell you her name. She pulled me into a hallway and tears filled her eyes. She said, “It’s cancer. Stage four.” And then she said, “Nobody in my church knows.” I haven’t had cancer, but I’ve been close enough to know that cancer is scary and cancer can be very lonely.

Maybe no one knows that you haven’t picked up your Bible in months and you don’t want to. Maybe no nobody knows that you stopped going to church six months ago, and no one has seemed to notice. Nobody’s called, nobody has checked up on you, and you wonder if those people ever even knew you were there?

Maybe nobody knows that your husband’s drinking is starting to scare you. Maybe nobody knows that your drinking is starting to scare you. Maybe nobody knows that you lost it so severely with your child this morning that you scared yourself, and you scared that toddler that you love so much. Maybe nobody knows that your credit card debt is out of control and you have no idea how you’re ever going to pay it off. 

Maybe none of those apply to you, but I bet you can think of something or some time when you knew something and nobody else could know it. 

I want you to picture Jesus in that upper room having that Passover meal with His disciples. I’m sure they were laughing and eating like they always did on Passover. This was a holiday. When He held up the bread, He knew that He was literally going to give up His life for them. His body was literally going to be broken not long after that meal. They didn’t get it. 

Human experience has taught me that sometimes we feel the most lonely in a room full of people . . . and Jesus knew that moment. 

Let’s pick it up at verse 26:

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’” 

Let’s sit in the weight a bit for a minute. Let’s have some empathy for our Savior. As Jesus stepped toward the most horrific hours of His short life, He knew in every human cell in His body that ultimately He was going to have to stand alone. That’s a really lonely feeling.

From there, Jesus and His friends walked to the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus’ soul became so heavy that, verse 33 tells us, He was distressed and troubled. Verse 34, Jesus himself said, “ “ “My soul is very sorrowful, even to the point of death. Remain here and watch.” In this moment of intense anguish, no faithful friend could be found. 

Look at verse 37:

And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour”

Maybe you’ve had this kind of moment. I have. A moment of tragedy or failure or heartbreak or illness comes, and the people who should stand with you scatter. They seem to fall asleep at the wheel. 

There have been many people who have loved me exceptionally well as I’ve walked through my mom’s journey with Alzheimer’s, but at first people acted very strangely about it. It’s a funny thing about a diagnosis like that. On some conscious level, people are worried that maybe it’s contagious. A lot of times people are worried they’re going to say the wrong thing so they say nothing at all. Can I tell you as somebody walking through a tragedy, it’s better to say something. It’s almost better to say anything than to give the sufferer silence. The best thing you can say is, “Can I pray with you?” or “I am praying for you.”

When hard comes and you look around and it seems like your people have scattered like sheep, you can know that Jesus knows that kind of loneliness. If you keep reading through this chapter, you’ll see that Judas did follow through on His commitment to betray Jesus. He betrayed Him in an incredibly intimate way. He betrayed Him with a kiss.

Verses 53–65 of this chapter describe Jesus standing trial with no defense attorney, no jury of his peers. It was Him against the system bent on His destruction. And the chapter ends like this, 

And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.” But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you mean.” And he went out into the gateway and the rooster crowed. And the servant girl saw him and began again to say to the bystanders, “This man is one of them.” But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, “Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean.” But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know this man of whom you speak.” And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept.

Jesus wasn’t the only lonely one. His disciples knew moments of loneliness in these dark hours. Peter had the lonely feeling of knowing “I just messed up so royally,” and there was nothing he could do about it. 

Every one of us who has ever been betrayed or denied or rejected by the ones we hold most dear, by the ones who maybe took a vow to love and cherish us until death do us part, or who are our parents or our siblings or our pastors or our friends; when we’ve experienced rejection from those people, we know that this sting of loneliness hurts and it doesn’t quickly go away. But Jesus knew it too.

Now we know why Isaiah 53:3 describes Jesus this way:

He was despised and rejected by men,
   a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
   he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Certainly Mark 14 describes wave after wave after wave of loneliness in the life of Jesus. But the loneliest moment that Jesus faced during His time on earth is in the next chapter. It came on the cross. 

Listen to Mark 15:33–34:

And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. [Verse 34 is a lonely verse] And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Remember, Jesus had always enjoyed perfect fellowship with the Father, and in this moment, Jesus felt the loneliness of sin. That’s what sin does. It separates. Sin separates us from God and sin separates us from each other. And Jesus, when He became sin, He who knows no sin became sin for us. Spiritually speaking, He took on the weight of the world. And for a moment—it must’ve felt like an eternity—He was forsaken by the Father and alone in His suffering. 

What are we to do with that? Jesus had a lonely side. 

One of the things that can do for us is it can comfort us. Because that makes Jesus suited to understand that you have a lonely side, too.

• When you are rejected, you can know your Savior was rejected, too.
• When it feels like nobody understands you, you can know that nobody understood Him either.
• When someone you love and trusted turns on you, you can know that Jesus experienced that, too.
• When you face a season of sorrow, when your friends seem to scatter, you can know that Jesus endured that, too.

He knows. He understands.And while I know you will face loneliness, and I will too, because of Jesus one thing that is beautiful and true is that we are never alone in our loneliness. 

But Jesus didn’t just face loneliness to give you someone to commiserate with. Just like the anger of Jesus and the wrath of Jesus, the loneliness of Jesus accomplished something significant. Because Jesus endured everything we just read, because Jesus endured friends who sold him out, because Jesus’ best friends, his inner circle, fell asleep when they should’ve stayed awake, because Jesus faced trials where He had to stand alone, and because Jesus endured that moment on the cross when His Father’s face was temporarily hidden from Him; Jesus endured true loneliness so that you don’t ever have to be alone. His death made a way for you and I to be permanently adopted into the family of God. 

There are no orphans in the kingdom of God. There are no widows in the kingdom of God. There’s no “lonely” in the kingdom of God, at least not when we’re fully united with Him, because we are a part of a family, a forever family. And because of what Jesus endured, you and I will endure unbroken fellowship with God forever and ever and ever and ever!

I hope you’ve thanked God for dying for you. That’s the gospel, right? We recognize, “I am a sinner. I have made a tremendous mess of my life. I tried to rule my own life, and I made it a huge mess. I caused distance, all kinds of distance—distance between me and God, distance between me and others. I’ve broken fellowship all over the place.” And I go to Jesus, and I tell him, “I’m so sorry! Forgive me, and rule!” That’s the gospel.

It’s hard, maybe impossible, to respond to the gospel without being grateful that Jesus died for us. As I’m recording this, we’re heading quickly toward holy week. Good Friday is the best/worst day in history. It is a dark and somber day and Christians should honor it as such because it’s the day that our Savior hung on the cross. And the thing that we should say the most often on Good Friday is, “Thank You, thank You, thank You. Thank You that You went to the cross for me.” It’s good to thank Him for dying for you. 

Have you thanked Him for being lonely for you? Because he didn’t have to do that. Jesus endured profound loneliness so that you can never be separated from Him again. 

I know there are lonely women now listening to the sound of my voice. I hope you take comfort in the lonely side of Jesus. He knows. He is near. If that’s you, you’re listening to this and thinking, Whoa, this was just for me! I’m so lonely! Maybe you're home with a baby or little kids and you haven’t showered in days and you’re just dying to have a conversation with another grown up. That can be a lonely season. 

Or maybe, as I said, your marriage is in trouble. It can be so lonely being in a hard marriage. 

Or maybe your church is going through one of those ugly splits that we hate to hear about, we hate that that happens, and you don’t know what side to pick. That’s lonely. 

Maybe like that woman who pulled me right close to her face in the hallway, you know you’re dying but no one else knows you’re dying, and that’s lonely. 

Maybe it’s something else. I don’t even know what to call it. If you’ve been listening to this episode, if you feel lonely, I want to pray the words of Romans 8:31–39 just for you. And I don’t want you to be comforted just by the fact that Jesus was lonely, though He was for your sake. I want you to be comforted because of what the loneliness of Jesus has made possible for you. Here we go, Romans 8:31–39 as a prayer:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us [and he is] who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

Lonely woman, did you hear that? Right now, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father praying for you! Verse 35:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation [the answer is no] or distress, [no] or persecution, [no] or famine, [no] or nakedness, [no] or danger, [no] or sword? [no] As it is written, 

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Erika: I have been in a church since I was a baby, and I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a message like that before—the loneliness of Jesus. Thank you! 

Erin Unscripted

Part of me wants to say, as a woman, to know that my Savior understands, but I know men struggle with this, too. This is a human being issue. I was young but not super young when I got married, but I was very naïve. I thought I’d never have issues like this again. But you cry at night in your pillow while your husband’s snoring next to you. You get frustrated, you do. You can still feel incredibly alone. And just to know that Jesus understands is an amazing gift.

I have a couple of questions for you. Do you have specific passages when you’re struggling in those moments? A psalm that you pray through? Or a passage that you go to? Do you have practical steps, for a woman who’s in the midst of loneliness? What can she do just to help?

Erin: Well, there’s a couple of things she should do. One of the things she should do is she should tell someone. That can feel like nobody cares. Or if you’re somebody who wrestles with loneliness chronically it can feel like, “Oh man, I’m always that person.” But I can’t tell you how many times my insides were upset and sad and I was feeling lonely. Inside of myself it was much bigger than in reality. I’ll just send a text to a couple of friends like, “Hey, I’m really wrestling with loneliness today.” Inevitably, I get back, “Me, too! I’m so glad you texted that. I was feeling alone, too.” 

I think we tend to withdraw and maybe over-analyze or think, Ah people don’t want to hear from me. And your experience is probably going to be that that’s actually not true. Loneliness, like so many other things, I say this often on The Deep Well, is like that blinking light on the dashboard of your car. Pay attention! You are out of fellowship with God’s people. Do something about that. Be proactive.

We live in a fiercely independent culture. There are many cultures around the world that even now and certainly historically, where lives were much more enmeshed and entwined with each other. We value independence so much, and so we think we’ll wait until somebody comes to me, until somebody invites me to something. A pastor once said a lonely person in a church is an emergency. We should all see it as an emergency when we’re feeling that way. So, I would say be proactive. 

But I’d also send you right where we were, to the gospels. Look for it in the life of Jesus like we just did. Remind yourself—you’re knowing it now, you’re hearing it now—but loneliness can be such a distorter of your perception of reality. 

And you mentioned the psalms. That’s a beautiful place to go. David wrote most of those. David, the greatest king Israel ever has known, other than Jesus the King of kings, he certainly wrestled with loneliness. You’ll see it in those psalms. 

There’s not a one-size-fits-all formula, but I’m kind of a one-trick pony which is, get yourself in the Word! That's your first course of action, and get yourself to God's people. Don’t expect that stuff to fall in your lap. It probably won’t.

Erika: Thank you. I have one more question and then, ladies, I’m going to open it up to you if you have comments or a response. My final question is, as a mom I have daughters, and I have a daughter that is struggling right now actually with loneliness. So as a mom, how do I walk my kids through this?

Erin: Some of us might have kids who maybe prefer to be alone. Not everyone's an extrovert. Not everybody’s the life of the party. Not everybody likes to be the center of attention. And when you’re somebody who’s more comfortable, kind of gluing yourself to the wall, that can feel really lonely (not that extroverts don’t get lonely). 

I don’t think we should try to shield our children from every negative emotion. We want to. It’s a reflex. But it’s in those moments when they are unsatisfied in some way that they’re going to cry out to Jesus. I’m always on some level wanting to meet every need my kids have, and always on some level not ever wanting them to be sad or angry or feel rejected. But if they never experience those things, then the rejection that Jesus experienced and the loneliness that Jesus experienced will be meaningless. If they can always have their relational needs met by their set of friends, then they will never discover that Jesus is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. 

So, I think it’s the same answer for everything we do in parenting, which is, we parent the best we can. We use the wisdom that God’s given us and the tools God’s given us, and we trust that the Holy Spirit is going to do all the really heavy lifting. 

I guess I’d say your daughter probably needs to have seasons of loneliness—and so do my sons. We should probably resist the urge to fill their time with lots of social commitments and forced friendships, because Jesus is right there in their lonely moments. Pray that she cries out to Him. 

Woman: Erin, you taught us that Jesus’ loneliness accomplished something. But remembering that nothing in God’s kingdom is haphazard, we can know that our own loneliness is not only seen and known by Him but it’s also intentional. So, would you speak to some of the purposes that God might have in our own seasons of loneliness, some of which might be quite lengthy? What might God be desiring to accomplish in them that might encourage to trust Him in them, and even view these seasons through a different lens, kind of a kingdom perspective?

Erin: Great question! That reminds me of a great passage I love in the book of Acts 17. This is Paul addressing some of the thinkers of his day that had some kind of skewed beliefs about God. 

In Acts 17:24 Paul said,

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

And here we get to the point I want to drive us to, verse 26:

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.

Some translations say he has determined the exact places you should live that you would seek God and find Him. I don’t think I would go so far as to say that God has caused the loneliness in your life so that you would pray more. We live in a fallen world; we live among sinners. A lot of the loneliness we experience is a byproduct of that. But God can certainly use the loneliness in your life, and it's been my experience that when my relational tank is full and when I feel well-esteemed by my family and friends and things seem to be going well, I don’t have much of an inclination to turn to Jesus. 

It’s in those moments where I feel like somebody’s maybe questioned my identity or caused me to question my identity that I have to go to Jesus and say, “Okay, who do you really say that I am? Because I feel like my feet have been knocked out from beneath me by somebody.” Or I’m thinking of a season of grief where I have people around me but nobody understood it. And I went to Jesus with a desperation during that season. A moment by moment . . . You’ve heard that song, “I Need Thee Every Hour,” that was a “I need thee every second” moment of life. 

People were trying to comfort me, people were trying to love me well, but it fell short, so God used all of that to draw me to his heart. He uses everything, that’s Romans 8:28. He works all things to the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes. So, I would never presume to know everything God is doing in my life or in your life, butI do know He is doing things that will ultimately land me in a good place and give Him glory. Yeah, that changes things, right? I can be lonely, I can suffer, I could be sad, I don’t want any of that to be wasted. And the promise we have in Scripture is, it’s not. 

Also, Scripture tells us we can comfort others with the comfort we have been given. If you’ve experienced loneliness, I hope you grow in your attentiveness to the loneliness of others, especially certain brands of loneliness. If you’ve experienced divorce, then I hope you’re attentive to other women who are walking that brand of loneliness. Or a prodigal child, or a sick child, or a diagnosis. Suddenly God will, in His mercy, give you eyes to see other women that are feeling that loneliness, or other men, other people. Then you get to respond and minster out of that.

Woman 2: Can I add to that list of lonely people? Probably the time when I was the most lonely was when we moved here. Moving just kind of rips up your identity. You almost don’t have it anymore.

Erin: I’ve been fortunate to live about in a 100-mile radius my whole life. I know not everybody gets to have that experience. For me, the reverse was true. Moving back to my hometown was lonely. I grew up there as a non-Christian with a certain reputation. Not that I had a wild reputation necessarily, but I was one person and I came back as a new creation. And when people want to remind you of the middle school you and the high school you, and you know you’re not her, that can be identity crushing. 

Yeah, we live in a transient world. Very few people anymore live on the land that their parents lived or in the town even. Our jobs can scatter us. I would bring that person right back to where I read in Acts 17. It’s not an accident. God determined the boundaries of your dwelling with one plan, that you would cry out to Him and find Him. 

The few times Jason and I have moved there’s been this tough but sweet season where all we had to depend on was each other and Jesus. We didn’t have people to spend our time with. God can really use that to accelerate some growth. It doesn’t mean it’s not going to be lonely. It sure can be. Inserting yourself into a church or friend group that is well established and you’re the new person can feel really hard, and it probably needs a longer on-ramp than any of us want to give it. But Christian fellowship is worth fighting for. And I see too many people not fighting for it anymore. 

We’ve grown as a society very comfortable with isolation. We make all kinds of jokes about our social awkwardness. We embrace it as if it's a good thing. It is not a good thing. We’ve got to push through the awkward, the lonely, the hard, the frustrating, and find our way into fellowship with God’s people at a minimum. And then, how can we win the lost if we don’t have relationships with people who aren’t God’s people? We don’t want that fishbowl effect either. Relationships are worth fighting for I think is my point. 

Woman 2: I am someone who grew up on family land for the last fifty-one years and moved five months ago to a different state. It has been very challenging on many levels. But I just wanted to say that the one thing that the Lord has shown me or helped me with in those moments where—and I’ve had many—of just feeling very alone. Every time I’ve gone through that He’s brought to my mind that Jesus left His heavenly home and came to earth for me. He has used that over and over again to minister to my heart because He knows exactly how I feel. He has comforted me over and over again. And now you’ve added an extra element to that today, so thank you.

Erin: Praise God.

Erika: I just want to encourage you, too. I have a little sister who’s single in her upper thirties, and there’s a lot of single people in the church these days that are just getting missed. Look for the single people in your church. Invite them over for dinner. Start a relationship with them. There’s a huge community there of young people, middle-aged people, that have nobody. 

Erin: Yeah, I missed them when I was even thinking about this episode and that’s evidence of exactly what you’re talking about. There are people in lonely marriages, but there are people who sleep in the bed alone.

Woman 3: I would just echo that the thing that crosses my mind as a single woman who has kind of grown up in the church and all her friends got married and I was the one left behind, that can be a very lonely place! But God has been so merciful in that to give me people close to me who have come alongside. I will say those were not people in my church. I would say, if you have single women in your sphere at church, reach out to them because they do need that. They need people to come alongside. It’s easy to feel isolated when the church is made up of a lot of married couples. It’s hard to identify. In whatever way you can reach out to them, I would encourage that. 

Woman 4: I’m just going to add another facet to that. When you see that woman sitting in church alone, and you know she’s married, reach out to her. 

Woman 5: Erin, one of things you mentioned about a flashing light in the dashboard you notice when it first comes on, but when you leave it on long enough it becomes part of the normal. I think loneliness can become part of the normal. And you become, I don’t know if the word’s numb exactly, but loneliness might be the lesser of two evils if I’ve experienced a bad relationship. Loneliness is less bad than it is to have the hurt. But is it then wrong to remain in that loneliness because that’s the place that feels less bad?

Erin: Well, God’s given us all manner of trauma responses and self-protective measures, some of which are important. If you are in a bad relationship . . . Now, I’m going to paint this with a pretty broad brush, and it’s a nuanced conversation, so let’s have grace. But there are some relationships where the safe thing to do is to distance yourself from that relationship. But we then start to build walls around our heart. “I’m never going to get hurt like that again.” 

One of my internal dialogues is, I'm going to do whatever I have to do to stay safe. That means I’m going to strike first. I’m not going to let anybody hurt me. I’m not going to be vulnerable. We met women over and over while researching for Connected who described something like that. One woman said, “I started to build a wall around myself to avoid being hurt. One day I realized I was trapped inside the wall.” She was safe from the kind of relationship that caused her hurt, but she was incredibly lonely. 

Here’s the other thing that I learned through my own loneliness journey, and this is going to feel like a rabbit trail or a lion trail, but I'm going to get somewhere. The way that lions hunt is to isolate their prey. Most predators look for the sick or the weak. Lions hunt in a pack. The female lions are actually the ones who lead the pack. One female lion will give the signal. They’re stalking the herd. Once they think they can isolate one, they surround that one. They pull it out of the herd, and they slaughter it. That’s how our enemy, Scripture tells us, roams around like a roaring lion. That’s how he gets his claws into us. He isolates us from the pack.

The effects of bad relationships are real. The effects of trauma and abuse are real. But when we respond to those effects by saying, “No one is ever going to hurt me again, and I’m not going to let anybody else in,” then we set ourselves up to a whole slew of other issues. Sexual sin in particular grows in secret, as do a lot of other kinds of sin. So just know that your enemy is always, always trying to separate you from the pack . . . and the pack is the people of God. 

I do understand that tension. I’ve lived that tension. I’ve just decided that it's better for me to be vulnerable and risk being hurt again, which will happen, than to be isolated and then vulnerable to sin, my own sin. That’s my answer. 

Woman 6: Lots of things you said today, Erin, have really struck something inside of me. I worked in healthcare over forty years and the amount of people that are lonely . . . I look at our busy world and I look at the church and I say, “God, what is it you want us to do?” 

You know, there’s so many people who look like they have it all on the outside, and then we look at the people around us—again, being in healthcare—that have taken their own lives, and usually it’s due to loneliness. They feel all alone in the world. But in the world’s eyes they’re successful; they have it all, especially teenagers, it’s just a really scary thing. 

And again, I just pray that each of our prayers would be that God would increase our sensitivity to those around us because we live in such a selfish, self-centered world that we’re so busy doing our own things that the people around us, the person we’re sitting next to in church, the person in the grocery store . . . One of the things that I try to teach my girls who are adults now is that, even when you’re in the grocery store, smile at someone. Saying, “How is your day?” can make someone’s day. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, but sometimes just the little things—be sensitive. A smile, a gesture, something simple can make a difference.

Erin: Your waving at the grocery store comment reminded me that our society is choosing to move toward less and less human contact. You get gas at the pump without ever interacting with a human. You can check out at the grocery store without ever interacting with a human. You can go to college without ever interacting with a human! 

But I, as a result of that season of loneliness and what the Lord taught me as I worked through it, try to be incredibly intentional about interacting with people. You don’t have to go to the ATM; there’s actually still a teller at the bank. You don’t have to do the self-checkout; there’s actually a person who will bag your groceries or at least scan them for you. Some of those are little things, but let’s be aware that as a society we have decided human connection is not as important as convenience. But it doesn’t align with God’s Word. God’s Word calls us into deep fellowship with each other, so it’s a counter-cultural way to live for us. 

You mentioned suicide. I’m on high alert to that because it is the pandemic from the pandemic. If you want to study the rates of suicide right now, you can. It doesn’t take long to get to the numbers. They’re terrifying and really alarming among young men and young women and very young. Part of my sense is it’s that feeling of aloneness. “Nobody understands me. Nobody cares about me. If I die, no one will notice. They’d all be better off without me.” That’s loneliness language. 

So, as I said at the beginning of this episode, loneliness impacts us at a cellular level. It can actually change our neurochemistry. It is an emergency. You all probably have young people in your lives. I have four of them under my roof whom I adore. We tackle that one head-on. We talk overtly about suicide. We tell our sons it’s never an option for them because God came to give them life and life to the full, and because we adore them and we don’t ever want to live without them. That might not be the tactic that you take, but we shouldn't put our heads to the sand on that one.

Woman 7: I’m a young mom, and I know the verse that “he who wants friends must show himself to be friendly.” I feel that I do try to reach out often. And what I find is that many people are too busy to get together. I tend to think, Well, if I was busy, I wouldn’t be lonely. I’m busy in a way because I’m home with a little one, but not busy in the way I used to be or in the sense of being around other people all day. What would you say to someone who thinks that the solution to loneliness is busyness?

Erin: Well, they’re probably right on some level. I think part of the reason we’re so obsessed with busyness is it keeps us from asking existential questions. One of the things I’m most worried about is the fact of social media. It is not actually all the junk that it brings into our lives, although we know that and we’re still going to use it, it’s that when we can constantly have distractions, so we don’t have to ask existential questions. We don’t have to ask, Why am I here? or Is there a God?

I was flying recently with this group of young people, and it seemed like they had been traveling together for a while. They kind of looked like people who had been backpacking through Europe. (I’m making assumptions.) I was looking at them and thinking, Okay, there’s always this moment for me, when we hit 10,000 feet, and I face the big questions. I am an ant in the big scheme of things! They never looked up from their phones the whole flight. And I thought, They didn’t have to ask the existential questions. 

I think you're probably right in that that busyness can keep us from having to ask the hard questions. But at some point the brakes will have to get pulled, so it’s an illusion. Whether that’s a sickness or a tragedy or moving or whatever, at some point there will be a break in the action, and then you’ll have to face the truth which is, oh that was just busyness.

That lonely season I described at the beginning of this episode happened after my husband resigned from the church where he was pastoring. He was a youth pastor. It was no big scandal. He resigned to come work here at Revive Our Hearts. We stayed in our same town, but left our church because Jason had been very successful there and we wanted to give the new guy a chance. It was like suddenly somebody pulled the emergency brake on my life—even though I was in the same house, same neighborhood, same people. The phone stopped ringing. People stopped wanting to connect with me. I didn’t connect with them. There will be that break in the action, and then you’ll have to wrestle with it: busyness was a patch job all along.

It’s not true that Jesus experienced every human experience. He never gave birth, for example. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be a middle school girl. But he experienced so much of the human experience, really, for most of those moments where we feel these things you’ve been describing that have been so beautiful, and I’m thankful you shared them with me. 

He did know what it was like to suffer physically. He did know what it was like to be single. I’ve often wondered why Jesus chose not to marry. He did know what it was like to move around, and He knew what it was like to go back to his hometown and have them not recognize Him for who He really was. 

These things that you’ve been describing he experienced, and He chose to experience them. I think that’s what gets me. He could’ve chosen to come to earth as a man and go to the cross the first week and it would all be over and done with. Instead, He chose to embody humanity for decades. I think that speaks to Him, who He is, and how He feels about us, and His desire that He lived out to experience what we experienced. 

Scripture tells us that we don’t have a high priest who doesn’t understand. He’s acquainted with our suffering and he wants us to know that about him (Isa. 53:3)..

Erika: The next time I’m tempted to feel lonely, I want to remember what we’ve just heard: Jesus understands. Erin Davis has been helping us to see Jesus more clearly in this season of The Deep Well: “The Other Side of Jesus.” 

Erin, I was fascinated by your story about discovering how lonely women in church were, because it’s so true. I always think I’m the only one.

Erin: Every woman thinks that.

Erika: I think I’m the only one that struggles with loneliness. So, I’d love to hear a little bit about how that became a book.

Erin: I came home and told my husband Jason that story. I talked on loneliness, I cried, women stood up. And he said, “That's a book.”

And I said, “I don’t think that’s a book.”

And he was right, because once I knew that God’s women were lonely, and that there were women probably in every church, I wanted to do something about it. So that became the book Connected: Curing the Pandemic of Everyone Feeling Alone Together.

Erika: Which you can get at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Erin: Yeah, I actually did a whole season of The Deep Well on it, so wherever you listen to podcasts, at ReviveOurHearts.com, on the Revive Our Hearts app, you can listen to that season.

Erika: You can listen or read or do both.

Erin: Both, baby. Or study it with a group of friends.It’s about not being alone, so get a group together.

Erika: The Deep Well is a production of Revive Our Hearts, calling women to greater freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. 

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