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[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Reform and be in project podcasts and bracing the beauty and brokenness in your journey with God.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Enjoy this episode!
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[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you guys for joining us for another episode.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Really, dive in into theology of emotion.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're just saying, hey, we were created by a relational God.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We've been given this interior life where we feel feelings, and those feelings are telling us what to do next in relationship.
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[SPEAKER_03]: They're important data, important information, relational information.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And this episode, we're going to look at loneliness.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so, start with you, Todd.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What are we experiencing when we feel lonely?
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[SPEAKER_02]: So loneliness is the feeling God gave us to know that we were meant for relationship.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's where really at the core of what our Mavade is.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Right, the Mavade is we're creating image.
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[SPEAKER_02]: God got to images three and one.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so God was always been in relationship with himself.
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[SPEAKER_02]: With God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so because he's made us in his sentence, image he's made us for relationship.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so this is the feeling that God's given us to let us know that we're made for relationship in four places.
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[SPEAKER_02]: The first place is our relationship with him, our relationship with others, our relationship with ourselves.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And finally, our relationship, our desire for, you know, home or for heaven is the writer of a
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[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think it's really interesting that a lot of people think the motions are wrong or maybe even that emotions evidence a lack of faith.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Like if I had more faith, I wouldn't feel, right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: I would be above all that, I would float above all of the hard things about life and just deal with it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But we see loneliness in the garden even before soon.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
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[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you see that it said, wasn't good for man to be alone.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Not because the garden was sinful, but because he was made for relationship, and there was no woman, there was no other human yet.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so Adam was made for relationship.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He needed someone else.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So that's really helpful.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And where we see Jesus, experience loneliness.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, Jesus is fully human.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He comes to earth.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He's tempted in every way that we are.
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[SPEAKER_03]: everything that we experience, what do we see Jesus lonely in the Gospels?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And the most poignant place about that is the Gardening of Simony.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In Jesus, you know, it's easy, at least for Christ's followers to know that man, he was within hours of going to the cross, the mock trials, and the cross, and
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[SPEAKER_01]: our redemption, our atonement, and right before then, he goes into a very lonely place, and he calls us three of his closest friends, with him and says, hey, keep watch, pray for me, please, literally stay awake, and he says to them, I'm so sad, it's about to overwhelm me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I need you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, there are several times that Jesus calls them to him, but
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[SPEAKER_01]: those three in particular, and he part of his weeping at the tomb of Lazarus certainly was sadness and his anger towards sin and the cost of it and all of that too, but there's a part of him of Jesus that is also in relationship, but Lazarus says a friend and like without Lazarus here, it's lonely.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so we see that all through Paul goes on missionary journeys and we tend to look at
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[SPEAKER_01]: I can forget that at his base, he didn't want to go on missionary journeys alone.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He wanted somebody with him, and so we see it throughout, and we meant in another podcast episode about all the one-on-nothers, those speak to loneliness, too.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Through this with one-on-nother, there's an assumption in the Gospel, in the Gospel.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's an assumption.
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[SPEAKER_01]: that we are going to do this with one another in part of that is we are the body another part of it is going back to Genesis 2 where God says hey this is not good that that Adam is alone so that's not just about marriage it's about human relationship period yeah that's great I love it so when I'm experiencing loneliness and I want to process it in truth I want to process the in relationship what do I need what do I what do I do and what do I need to process my loneliness
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think relationship, for sure, I mean, as we've been saying, all these feelings can only be played out through relationships with us, not just myself, not just with God, but for sure other people.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think so often we think, if I can just do these feelings with me and God, I'll be fine, and it goes back to what Phil said, we weren't meant just to do them alone with God.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We were meant to do this with other people, and doing it with other people, we were really
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[SPEAKER_02]: This is the gift of really the church.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think the church is the hope of the world and Not love AA in those places, but there's something very unique about the body of Christ being united together through Feelings that let's us know where mint as you said to be with one another So it's a loss.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think this this feeling in the church is a lost art for sure
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[SPEAKER_01]: Even in most folks, it'd be familiar with the movie Castaway.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And when you look at that movie, the Tom Hanks character had kind of been marooned on Eden.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect environment, no deadlines, no boss, no traffic, no hassle, perfect weather.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And this guy risk life and limb to get back to Memphis, Tennessee.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect place and like no one in the theater went.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that guy's crazy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Who want to go back to Memphis, Tennessee?
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you go in this amazing tropical paradise and we because we know intuitively.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh The people he loves are in Memphis.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The one another's in his life are in Memphis.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He must go back there And he'll risk life and learn to do it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then he gets there and she's married somebody else and he goes out to West Texas and delivers the package
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I see how this ends.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to give this woman and fall in love and he just hand over the package and you leave.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then she comes to the intersection and go, oh, great.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then she drives off and that all of us at the same time went, oh, no.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There he's by himself at a crossroads in West Texas and there's something about that writing
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[SPEAKER_01]: that speaks to our internal mate and the image of God that like I want him reconnected in relationship and it didn't happen.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's brilliant writing and frustrating.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In the frustrating part is we recognize that it makes perfect sense that he would do all that he did in that movie.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Any any other relationship with a volleyball named Wilson and when Wilson I even say when Wilson jumped off
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, Wilson, because we know like I would 1,000 percent get a no relationship with the volleyball falls all by myself because we're that intense the relational and no one left the theater going man.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I think that was a movie about psychosis because that volleyball's not even a person and that guy left a perfect place to go back to Memphis.
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[SPEAKER_01]: What the heck?
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[SPEAKER_01]: No one said that because we know we are that God has made us to be that intensely relational.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Gosh, that's so helpful.
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[SPEAKER_03]: As a metaphor, one thing that I think is interesting about loneliness is that it's nuanced based on the person that you're thinking about.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So, in other words, if I go away on a trip with my wife and we've just spent three nights together and we've had a great time.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I don't necessarily feel lonely for Caroline, but if my oldest daughter has been doing a lot with school and she's been gone, we've had very little time together when I go in and start to think about Lily, I start to identify loneliness.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But it's not general loneliness, it's actually precise, it's sad, but it's telling me really what to do next, it's like, I need to go pursue Lily.
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[SPEAKER_03]: As I'm feeling lonely for Lily specifically, even though I've had some really beautiful relationship with God or some really meaningful relationship in my marriage, and so that's been helpful for me over time as I've worked with Tim and just to kind of start to think through each of the most important relationships that I have, and to say, is there someone that I've lonely for and then invites me to do pursuit?
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[SPEAKER_03]: and to actually reach out to that person and actually say, have made for it, and you're made for it, I want something with you, and I got an action step to go with pursue a relationship with you.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Let's talk a little bit about the impairment.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What happens when people are experiencing lonely, but they won't be honest about it?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Or they won't tell the truth about it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: They won't address it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What are some of the impairments that we experience?
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[SPEAKER_01]: You said it, you kind of tip the hand, Duke, when you were ending your thoughts around Lily, and you said the word pursuit, well, what happens if we don't identify and explore and express our loneliness, pursuit stops in a form called apathy, and the word apathy means without pathos, it means without feeling, without pain, and so apathy is that
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[SPEAKER_01]: that lack of feeling that says I just don't care and so pursuit leaves the vocabulary.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to pursue anything back to the movie.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The character could have just said, well, I'll just while away my days here on this island, that's just it's over anyway, so but this guy was pursuing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He was keeping the time on the cave wall.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He was paying attention to the tides.
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[SPEAKER_01]: all those things.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Just think about when we're actively in our own skin, in our own identities, how much time we spend thinking about the ones we're lonely for, specifically, and what I need to do, what can I do to pursue that, like, Todd and I are away from home with you and Nathan and Chuck this week.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We've had really great time, but in the off-times, we're texting with and calling Sheila and Jennifer and back home.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's like we're pursuing what we can with our wives, for instance, while we're here, love being here, loving and Dallas, loving with y'all, but we're not apathetic around the people we're not with.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And apathy says, oh, well, it's a, you know, it's it without any pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so being lonely enough to rest his feelings means I'm signing up for pain.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And apathy says, I'm just not going to feel that I'm going to be numb to it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's helpful.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What happens if we live in that apathetic season for a long, long time?
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[SPEAKER_03]: We just find that we don't pursue relationship, we isolate for extended period.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it leads to evil, like evil actions that think of, you know, just a Nashville, we had a shooting, right, elementary school and like, man, the loneliness that that girl must have felt.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That she had no place to express what was going on in her.
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[SPEAKER_02]: She had no relationships that go be her with anyone else that led her to a really dark, dark place that led her to some really, really evil actions.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I just wonder if she had had a safe place to talk about what was going on in her that someone would actually have seen her, would she have gone that far out?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's the place of when I start seeing evil things.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, man, there's some lonely, lonely people that have become apathetic to people.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Because apathy really is, I'm refusing to be in relationship.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I will not do relationship.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Again, these impairments are about power, not to do relationship with people.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And how they express themselves in different ways, but it is about the power of refusal through relationship that demolite to some real evil things.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's so insightful.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It feels like almost every school shooter or stereo killer period have been very impaired relationship with people.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'm a bit loner that you know, bomber.
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[SPEAKER_03]: These people are people that don't do relationship and eventually it's leading them down to a path of just dehumanized, you know, they lack any ability to actually love or really even relate with empathy and what it's like for other people.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, that's a helpful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's a, I'm going to change some of the details just for comfort, jallity or just to just sanctity at the story, but us worked with the guy one time who had serial abuses in his life and he, I worked with him for quite a while and he said, I need to tell you about the single most painful thing that's ever happened to me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I really, I thought, I've been doing this a long time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, wow, I literally can only imagine what in the world is he going to say?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because what he had already told, and what he told was he had been severely physically abused.
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[SPEAKER_01]: an incident, and the difference in this one was a parent of physically harmed him very, very deeply.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And he remembers lying at the foot of the stairs of his childhood home, and he said the most painful part of all of that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: is the other parent got up and he said, I remember lying there on the floor thinking, oh good, this parent's going to come to my aid.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So to speak, said, I laid there and I saw this parent's foot go over me, stepped over me and just went on up the stairs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: it's apathy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to feel the effects of seeing what just happened to my son right in front of me and he stepped over him in what upstairs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That when we say evil, we're not talking about demon possession and as Todd said, we're not talking about
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[SPEAKER_01]: necessarily shooters and those kinds of things, we're talking about a person being, as he said, so isolated that they're capable of seeing or perpetrating great evil and it has seems to have no effect.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so the man told me point blank of a litany of things that had happened to him, the single most painful one was when someone stepped over him and left, apathy.
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[SPEAKER_03]: This is gonna be the case, you don't matter enough to actually intervene.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I don't have anger for you.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you can basically do life on your own.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're not here to help devastated.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I want to experience the loneliness and I'm willing to tell the truth.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What's the gift that I experiencedville?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What's the payoff for really suppressing the end to it?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Loaness is one of the most poignant ways we know that we are, I'm gonna go back to what Todd said in the Ecclesiastes 3, that we are made to be deeply known.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We, that's a need, I need to be known.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's Kirk Thompson says I need to be seen, need to know that someone's seeing me, and that's called intimacy, and there's a play on words, it can be called it, into me see.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There are really three, actually Hebrew words that describe intimacy, one is to know,
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[SPEAKER_01]: and the other is a word of reciprocity.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It means to be known and the other connotation that word means to be taken into one's confidence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It means like go, intimacy is high-level trust or perhaps deep level of trust, deep level of truth-telling, deep level of knowing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like you can be in a room, Todna.
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[SPEAKER_01]: are often in rooms and we're just together or in a hotel room while we're here in Dallas and we do a lot of talking to one another but we're not talking all of the time but yet that man knows me and I know him and we have a history together of loving one another being friends and now colleagues and ministry together and
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[SPEAKER_01]: And we've all most people have experienced this idea.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, even if we're not saying anything to one another, I know I'm seeing and safe and known by him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He knows me and I know him and I know his life and he knows my life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He knows my son and my wife and I know his wife and his children.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's beyond a knowing about Him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I know what He feels about these people and what I feel about these people and so there's this intimacy is far deeper When Jesus says I and my father are one he's saying like in intimate relationships that in our humanness won't ever be like that one
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[SPEAKER_01]: but he often talks about that in the Gospel.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He says I'm a father or one.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I am so tied to him that when I am, I am never not with him, relationally.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So when we're intimate with people, when you and Caroline are gone, you're not absent from Lily other than physically.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You're not absent from her emotionally.
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[SPEAKER_01]: but yet you feel lonely for her because you are not absent from her because you see into her and desire to she sees into her dad and that way so intimacy is this deep knowing and reciprocal knowing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, we've just walked through in the past three years, COVID, and people being moved into more isolation in many cases.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And then we're saying broadly, culturally, it's what's been called a loneliness epidemic that loneliness is on the rise, statistically.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're saying this phenomenon called a loan together that Sherry Turkle talks about, that it's just this idea that we might even be in the room, but so distracted by technology that we're not actually present.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're not actually exchanging the kind of intimate information that you just said that you guys have in your friendship and your fellowship.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so yeah, what does it mean that our culture is moving further and further away from people having those kinds of connections?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe having them with God or having them with a couple of other spiritual friends?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What's the fallout of that even collectively in a culture?
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[SPEAKER_02]: it's leading more and more to a place of self-sufficiency and a place that's moving away from being needy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: If we get a way from being needy, then we can't actually do relationship with people, which will move us further further away.
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[SPEAKER_02]: From again, I think this is the church.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this is the importance of the church.
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[SPEAKER_02]: We can be needy with one another.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm a pastor of small Baptist church in rural Tennessee.
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[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things we hear all the time is more and more people are coming from the big churches in town like man there's just something about this place of people actually know me and I think that is like you just said that there's such an epidemic but now there's such a place of moving back towards that and the need for that and just the beauty of that and so
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think we are in a great danger of being in front of a screen all day, not being needy, being self-sufficient, and I think that will be the downfall of our societies.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Just total isolation, but being told, I joke with people all the time, I love on an urban guy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm an introvert, but I love being around people and I'm like, I love this city because I can be around people and yet I don't have to be known by anybody and that's a very dangerous place for me I look back in my life that'd be like man, but Jenny used to tell me she was like you know a thousand you have a thousand friends and no friends at all
19:01.287 --> 19:29.455
[SPEAKER_02]: and she was right and it led me to a very, very dangerous dangerous place of um, that's what led me to my porn addiction and what was happening internally was I was tricking my brain through intensity with pornography and my brain was receiving as intimacy but it was really intensity and because because there was no intimate moment there was no attachment going on in the brain you just kept driving me further and further for true attachment to be known
19:29.435 --> 19:49.030
[SPEAKER_02]: The antidote of that has been known by Phil and some other friends like I mean when I feel lonely I know to make a call like so I can make that attachment in the brain So yeah, I think I think that we are in danger of becoming more and more isolated if we don't move our people the church in Deeper in deeper community
19:49.162 --> 20:19.168
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and people are hungry for it, I remember reading an article that was saying that there was like some kind of hobby group in New York or Brooklyn or somewhere and it was something like crocheting or something I mean it was it was a very obscure hobby and all the people that came had to introduce themselves and basically say hey where are you here when you come and they're all like I really don't care about crocheting but I needed some outlet to re-engage in communication relationship because I got isolated from my friends people moved everything changed my social reality was just totally upended and I just looking for another on-gram
20:19.148 --> 20:20.430
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm Tom Hanks.
20:20.490 --> 20:25.896
[SPEAKER_03]: I just got to get off the island and I got to go find people and I'll go find connection because I've made for it.
20:26.357 --> 20:33.866
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I do, I'm hopeful even as we see this loneliness epidemic that perhaps we're going to see some people start to identify that and go wait a minute.
20:34.407 --> 20:36.589
[SPEAKER_03]: I did listen into a sermon online.
20:36.609 --> 20:39.553
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not the same as showing up to be in in the community.
20:39.533 --> 20:49.746
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I've got to go and find that life, that attachment, those those environments so that they're living fully into the design of what we're experiencing and what we're made for.
20:50.647 --> 21:02.723
[SPEAKER_03]: Though, as you think about loneliness, one of the things you think are honest, we need to understand if they're going to continue to identify it as they're experiencing it and take meaningful steps towards the connections that we're made for.
21:02.703 --> 21:04.685
[SPEAKER_01]: taught, taught, touched on it.
21:05.366 --> 21:13.877
[SPEAKER_01]: We are in a increasingly densely populated world literally that more and more people were, you know, becoming cities.
21:14.057 --> 21:22.247
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no major metropolitan that I know of in the country where it's Dallas, Fort Worth, or Nashville, and Murphy'sboro, where we live, that they're becoming one city.
21:22.467 --> 21:25.110
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's very little difference between Dallas and Fort Worth.
21:25.231 --> 21:27.293
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just people.
21:27.273 --> 21:28.515
[SPEAKER_01]: between the two.
21:28.615 --> 21:41.575
[SPEAKER_01]: And so as we become more densely populated in some ways or more clustered together, what it does, it puts into sharp relief the difference between being around people and being lonely, right?
21:41.595 --> 21:47.104
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the number of people is not the measure of loneliness, the depth of relationship is the measure.
21:47.084 --> 21:51.709
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if I can pay attention to, who is it that really knows me?
21:52.029 --> 22:12.332
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is it that regards if I'm around a million people or one person or somewhere in between how deeply known Emma and how what happens inside of me when I feel something inside that says, I need relationship, I need someone to talk to, I need someone to be with, I
22:12.312 --> 22:39.383
[SPEAKER_01]: Run something by like those little seemingly mundane things or our God's way of speaking to us so often to say you need to reconnect Relationally you need to know and be known and take someone in your confidence and be taken into about them as well And so it's easy to go like well, no, I'm surrounded by all kinds of people like that that can be a great thing What is the depth of relationship with the people that truly know you and that you truly know?
22:39.430 --> 22:40.372
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's beautiful.
22:40.974 --> 22:55.853
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm thinking even if we do find ourselves in a human isolation where we don't have access to human relationship, some of the promises of the Holy Spirit and the promises of the gospel, even the great commission, Jesus says,
22:55.833 --> 23:02.701
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm reminded of First Samuel 30 when David and all his men, their wives and all their stuff.
23:02.721 --> 23:08.187
[SPEAKER_03]: This is Dolan and I believe by the Philistines, and they're completely alone and David's men turn on him.
23:08.607 --> 23:14.113
[SPEAKER_03]: And they say, we're mad at you because our wives and stuff has gone, you were leading us somewhere else and everything happened.
23:14.594 --> 23:18.178
[SPEAKER_03]: And it says that David went and strengthened himself in the Lord.
23:18.158 --> 23:21.163
[SPEAKER_03]: that you didn't have anybody else all his friends turned on him.
23:21.604 --> 23:22.425
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody was gone.
23:22.445 --> 23:23.267
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody's mad at him.
23:23.287 --> 23:24.689
[SPEAKER_03]: He had nowhere else but God.
23:25.210 --> 23:27.113
[SPEAKER_03]: And but he strengthened himself in the Lord.
23:27.133 --> 23:28.396
[SPEAKER_03]: He praised Psalm 22.
23:28.576 --> 23:31.140
[SPEAKER_03]: He starts with my God, my God, why don't you forsake me?
23:31.541 --> 23:32.643
[SPEAKER_03]: He talks about his loneliness.
23:32.663 --> 23:39.795
[SPEAKER_03]: But then by the end of the song, you can see the attachment has happened and that Lord has met him when there was no one else.
23:39.775 --> 23:45.463
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's an encouragement even to our audience that, yes, we're going to need to go and find human fellowship.
23:45.503 --> 23:52.232
[SPEAKER_03]: We need to go find spiritual friends, we need to go find the church, and if you find yourself completely abandoned by your community.
23:52.252 --> 24:01.124
[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever reason, you can put it left alone or even the people you love dive and you just grow old, the Lord is actually one who's ever present.
24:01.144 --> 24:04.348
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, and who's available relationally all the time.
24:04.430 --> 24:18.323
[SPEAKER_01]: And this same guy you're talking about, David, he had a friend that the word means chained at the heart, a guy named Jonathan, and that these guys were intimate friends, chained at the heart.
24:18.823 --> 24:31.855
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you read David's lament when Saul, which saw Aronic Saul's death, and Jonathan's death, David says, his love was greater than that the love of a woman.
24:31.835 --> 24:38.465
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I'm married, I love my wife, but my relationship with this man Jonathan was of such a depth.
24:38.485 --> 24:42.731
[SPEAKER_01]: There is no other human love on earth that touches the depth of this one.
24:42.751 --> 24:55.210
[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of the, that he is intimacy with his friend Jonathan, that's such a can be kind of hidden there in the pages of scripture, but what is an incredibly human moment where he's just lamenting.
24:55.190 --> 24:57.372
[SPEAKER_01]: about the loss of a friendship of a friend.
24:57.672 --> 24:58.673
[SPEAKER_03]: That's absolutely, it's beautiful.
24:58.713 --> 25:08.823
[SPEAKER_03]: And David's called a man after God's own heart and he becomes a model, really, if somebody who knows how to really do relationship, he knows how to do it with God and he knows how to do it, even with another adult male.
25:09.284 --> 25:12.026
[SPEAKER_03]: And some of us are really still learning how to do.
25:12.867 --> 25:14.929
[SPEAKER_03]: Just really encourage that you guys have that with one another.
25:15.450 --> 25:18.192
[SPEAKER_03]: Nathan and I actually have that with one another after 20 years.
25:19.093 --> 25:22.176
[SPEAKER_03]: And we really want to encourage people to say, hey, if you don't,
25:22.156 --> 25:41.718
[SPEAKER_03]: and take the risk to find some safe people and to really tell the truth to those folks because you can start to have a depth that does mean that that isn't met by a thousand friends and isn't met as superficially as we kind of move around in different communities and so that's really the gift of loneliness.
25:42.019 --> 25:48.106
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you guys for dreaming and thinking for your insights, man, I'm just so thankful that God gives us loneliness.
25:48.126 --> 25:51.910
[SPEAKER_03]: So we know what to do.
25:53.493 --> 25:56.702
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to the Reformed Podcast.
25:56.722 --> 26:06.268
[SPEAKER_00]: If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe button, share it with your friends, leave us a rating, and check out our other resources at theeatenproject.com.
26:07.211 --> 26:07.772
[SPEAKER_00]: Peace!
00:02.950 --> 00:18.135
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Reform and be in project podcasts and bracing the beauty and brokenness in your journey with God.
00:18.856 --> 00:20.098
[SPEAKER_00]: Enjoy this episode!
00:21.580 --> 00:23.362
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you guys for joining us for another episode.
00:24.324 --> 00:27.288
[SPEAKER_03]: Really, dive in into theology of emotion.
00:27.588 --> 00:31.594
[SPEAKER_03]: We're just saying, hey, we were created by a relational God.
00:31.614 --> 00:38.463
[SPEAKER_03]: We've been given this interior life where we feel feelings, and those feelings are telling us what to do next in relationship.
00:38.483 --> 00:42.388
[SPEAKER_03]: They're important data, important information, relational information.
00:42.889 --> 00:44.692
[SPEAKER_03]: And this episode, we're going to look at loneliness.
00:45.032 --> 00:46.514
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, start with you, Todd.
00:47.035 --> 00:50.119
[SPEAKER_03]: What are we experiencing when we feel lonely?
00:50.740 --> 00:54.510
[SPEAKER_02]: So loneliness is the feeling God gave us to know that we were meant for relationship.
00:54.530 --> 00:57.437
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's where really at the core of what our Mavade is.
00:57.698 --> 00:59.363
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, the Mavade is we're creating image.
00:59.543 --> 01:01.408
[SPEAKER_02]: God got to images three and one.
01:01.448 --> 01:04.175
[SPEAKER_02]: And so God was always been in relationship with himself.
01:04.195 --> 01:06.842
[SPEAKER_02]: With God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
01:06.822 --> 01:11.348
[SPEAKER_02]: And so because he's made us in his sentence, image he's made us for relationship.
01:11.388 --> 01:16.715
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this is the feeling that God's given us to let us know that we're made for relationship in four places.
01:17.356 --> 01:23.044
[SPEAKER_02]: The first place is our relationship with him, our relationship with others, our relationship with ourselves.
01:23.084 --> 01:31.075
[SPEAKER_02]: And finally, our relationship, our desire for, you know, home or for heaven is the writer of a
01:31.409 --> 01:32.110
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
01:32.130 --> 01:40.344
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think it's really interesting that a lot of people think the motions are wrong or maybe even that emotions evidence a lack of faith.
01:40.364 --> 01:42.948
[SPEAKER_03]: Like if I had more faith, I wouldn't feel, right?
01:43.008 --> 01:47.756
[SPEAKER_03]: I would be above all that, I would float above all of the hard things about life and just deal with it.
01:48.357 --> 01:51.662
[SPEAKER_03]: But we see loneliness in the garden even before soon.
01:51.642 --> 01:51.942
[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
01:51.962 --> 01:55.648
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you see that it said, wasn't good for man to be alone.
01:55.968 --> 01:56.168
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
01:56.669 --> 02:03.198
[SPEAKER_03]: Not because the garden was sinful, but because he was made for relationship, and there was no woman, there was no other human yet.
02:03.919 --> 02:06.743
[SPEAKER_03]: And so Adam was made for relationship.
02:06.763 --> 02:07.123
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
02:07.164 --> 02:08.465
[SPEAKER_03]: He needed someone else.
02:08.505 --> 02:09.487
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's really helpful.
02:10.148 --> 02:14.754
[SPEAKER_03]: And where we see Jesus, experience loneliness.
02:14.774 --> 02:15.876
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, Jesus is fully human.
02:16.496 --> 02:17.578
[SPEAKER_03]: He comes to earth.
02:17.758 --> 02:20.502
[SPEAKER_03]: He's tempted in every way that we are.
02:20.482 --> 02:24.727
[SPEAKER_03]: everything that we experience, what do we see Jesus lonely in the Gospels?
02:26.289 --> 02:30.434
[SPEAKER_01]: And the most poignant place about that is the Gardening of Simony.
02:30.935 --> 02:42.068
[SPEAKER_01]: In Jesus, you know, it's easy, at least for Christ's followers to know that man, he was within hours of going to the cross, the mock trials, and the cross, and
02:42.048 --> 03:02.612
[SPEAKER_01]: our redemption, our atonement, and right before then, he goes into a very lonely place, and he calls us three of his closest friends, with him and says, hey, keep watch, pray for me, please, literally stay awake, and he says to them, I'm so sad, it's about to overwhelm me.
03:02.892 --> 03:03.433
[SPEAKER_01]: I need you.
03:04.594 --> 03:08.899
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, there are several times that Jesus calls them to him, but
03:08.879 --> 03:28.198
[SPEAKER_01]: those three in particular, and he part of his weeping at the tomb of Lazarus certainly was sadness and his anger towards sin and the cost of it and all of that too, but there's a part of him of Jesus that is also in relationship, but Lazarus says a friend and like without Lazarus here, it's lonely.
03:28.658 --> 03:38.548
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we see that all through Paul goes on missionary journeys and we tend to look at
03:38.933 --> 03:42.819
[SPEAKER_01]: I can forget that at his base, he didn't want to go on missionary journeys alone.
03:43.460 --> 03:52.613
[SPEAKER_01]: He wanted somebody with him, and so we see it throughout, and we meant in another podcast episode about all the one-on-nothers, those speak to loneliness, too.
03:53.134 --> 03:57.881
[SPEAKER_01]: Through this with one-on-nother, there's an assumption in the Gospel, in the Gospel.
03:57.901 --> 03:59.423
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an assumption.
03:59.403 --> 04:26.980
[SPEAKER_01]: that we are going to do this with one another in part of that is we are the body another part of it is going back to Genesis 2 where God says hey this is not good that that Adam is alone so that's not just about marriage it's about human relationship period yeah that's great I love it so when I'm experiencing loneliness and I want to process it in truth I want to process the in relationship what do I need what do I what do I do and what do I need to process my loneliness
04:27.719 --> 04:39.009
[SPEAKER_02]: I think relationship, for sure, I mean, as we've been saying, all these feelings can only be played out through relationships with us, not just myself, not just with God, but for sure other people.
04:39.029 --> 04:49.018
[SPEAKER_02]: I think so often we think, if I can just do these feelings with me and God, I'll be fine, and it goes back to what Phil said, we weren't meant just to do them alone with God.
04:49.038 --> 04:57.726
[SPEAKER_02]: We were meant to do this with other people, and doing it with other people, we were really
04:57.706 --> 05:00.209
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the gift of really the church.
05:00.690 --> 05:18.253
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the church is the hope of the world and Not love AA in those places, but there's something very unique about the body of Christ being united together through Feelings that let's us know where mint as you said to be with one another So it's a loss.
05:18.314 --> 05:23.140
[SPEAKER_02]: I think this this feeling in the church is a lost art for sure
05:23.120 --> 05:28.547
[SPEAKER_01]: Even in most folks, it'd be familiar with the movie Castaway.
05:29.489 --> 05:35.296
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you look at that movie, the Tom Hanks character had kind of been marooned on Eden.
05:36.017 --> 05:41.465
[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect environment, no deadlines, no boss, no traffic, no hassle, perfect weather.
05:41.525 --> 05:47.052
[SPEAKER_01]: And this guy risk life and limb to get back to Memphis, Tennessee.
05:47.032 --> 05:51.316
[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect place and like no one in the theater went.
05:51.516 --> 05:52.738
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that guy's crazy.
05:52.798 --> 05:54.419
[SPEAKER_01]: Who want to go back to Memphis, Tennessee?
05:54.880 --> 06:00.025
[SPEAKER_01]: If you go in this amazing tropical paradise and we because we know intuitively.
06:00.365 --> 06:02.668
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh The people he loves are in Memphis.
06:03.028 --> 06:05.230
[SPEAKER_01]: The one another's in his life are in Memphis.
06:05.250 --> 06:07.432
[SPEAKER_01]: He must go back there And he'll risk life and learn to do it.
06:07.452 --> 06:13.258
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he gets there and she's married somebody else and he goes out to West Texas and delivers the package
06:13.238 --> 06:14.440
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I see how this ends.
06:15.222 --> 06:18.929
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to give this woman and fall in love and he just hand over the package and you leave.
06:19.170 --> 06:19.671
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no.
06:20.232 --> 06:22.537
[SPEAKER_01]: And then she comes to the intersection and go, oh, great.
06:22.677 --> 06:26.244
[SPEAKER_01]: And then she drives off and that all of us at the same time went, oh, no.
06:26.825 --> 06:31.635
[SPEAKER_01]: There he's by himself at a crossroads in West Texas and there's something about that writing
06:31.615 --> 06:39.206
[SPEAKER_01]: that speaks to our internal mate and the image of God that like I want him reconnected in relationship and it didn't happen.
06:39.266 --> 06:41.209
[SPEAKER_01]: It's brilliant writing and frustrating.
06:41.690 --> 06:47.939
[SPEAKER_01]: In the frustrating part is we recognize that it makes perfect sense that he would do all that he did in that movie.
06:47.959 --> 07:00.778
[SPEAKER_01]: Any any other relationship with a volleyball named Wilson and when Wilson I even say when Wilson jumped off
07:00.758 --> 07:13.117
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, Wilson, because we know like I would 1,000 percent get a no relationship with the volleyball falls all by myself because we're that intense the relational and no one left the theater going man.
07:13.157 --> 07:18.906
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that was a movie about psychosis because that volleyball's not even a person and that guy left a perfect place to go back to Memphis.
07:18.946 --> 07:19.487
[SPEAKER_01]: What the heck?
07:19.827 --> 07:25.416
[SPEAKER_01]: No one said that because we know we are that God has made us to be that intensely relational.
07:25.396 --> 07:26.478
[SPEAKER_03]: Gosh, that's so helpful.
07:26.899 --> 07:34.090
[SPEAKER_03]: As a metaphor, one thing that I think is interesting about loneliness is that it's nuanced based on the person that you're thinking about.
07:34.111 --> 07:41.042
[SPEAKER_03]: So, in other words, if I go away on a trip with my wife and we've just spent three nights together and we've had a great time.
07:41.022 --> 07:53.023
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't necessarily feel lonely for Caroline, but if my oldest daughter has been doing a lot with school and she's been gone, we've had very little time together when I go in and start to think about Lily, I start to identify loneliness.
07:53.164 --> 08:01.258
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's not general loneliness, it's actually precise, it's sad, but it's telling me really what to do next, it's like, I need to go pursue Lily.
08:01.238 --> 08:20.749
[SPEAKER_03]: As I'm feeling lonely for Lily specifically, even though I've had some really beautiful relationship with God or some really meaningful relationship in my marriage, and so that's been helpful for me over time as I've worked with Tim and just to kind of start to think through each of the most important relationships that I have, and to say, is there someone that I've lonely for and then invites me to do pursuit?
08:20.729 --> 08:29.865
[SPEAKER_03]: and to actually reach out to that person and actually say, have made for it, and you're made for it, I want something with you, and I got an action step to go with pursue a relationship with you.
08:29.885 --> 08:31.428
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's talk a little bit about the impairment.
08:31.448 --> 08:35.896
[SPEAKER_03]: What happens when people are experiencing lonely, but they won't be honest about it?
08:35.916 --> 08:37.118
[SPEAKER_03]: Or they won't tell the truth about it.
08:37.519 --> 08:38.480
[SPEAKER_03]: They won't address it.
08:38.500 --> 08:40.003
[SPEAKER_03]: What are some of the impairments that we experience?
08:41.435 --> 09:07.324
[SPEAKER_01]: You said it, you kind of tip the hand, Duke, when you were ending your thoughts around Lily, and you said the word pursuit, well, what happens if we don't identify and explore and express our loneliness, pursuit stops in a form called apathy, and the word apathy means without pathos, it means without feeling, without pain, and so apathy is that
09:07.304 --> 09:13.071
[SPEAKER_01]: that lack of feeling that says I just don't care and so pursuit leaves the vocabulary.
09:13.291 --> 09:16.495
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to pursue anything back to the movie.
09:16.515 --> 09:23.904
[SPEAKER_01]: The character could have just said, well, I'll just while away my days here on this island, that's just it's over anyway, so but this guy was pursuing.
09:23.924 --> 09:26.007
[SPEAKER_01]: He was keeping the time on the cave wall.
09:26.067 --> 09:28.570
[SPEAKER_01]: He was paying attention to the tides.
09:28.550 --> 09:29.231
[SPEAKER_01]: all those things.
09:29.331 --> 09:47.875
[SPEAKER_01]: Just think about when we're actively in our own skin, in our own identities, how much time we spend thinking about the ones we're lonely for, specifically, and what I need to do, what can I do to pursue that, like, Todd and I are away from home with you and Nathan and Chuck this week.
09:47.995 --> 09:55.044
[SPEAKER_01]: We've had really great time, but in the off-times, we're texting with and calling Sheila and Jennifer and back home.
09:55.464 --> 09:56.025
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh.
09:56.005 --> 10:07.881
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's like we're pursuing what we can with our wives, for instance, while we're here, love being here, loving and Dallas, loving with y'all, but we're not apathetic around the people we're not with.
10:08.642 --> 10:12.247
[SPEAKER_01]: And apathy says, oh, well, it's a, you know, it's it without any pain.
10:12.307 --> 10:16.553
[SPEAKER_01]: And so being lonely enough to rest his feelings means I'm signing up for pain.
10:16.653 --> 10:19.397
[SPEAKER_01]: And apathy says, I'm just not going to feel that I'm going to be numb to it.
10:20.069 --> 10:20.932
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's helpful.
10:21.434 --> 10:21.574
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
10:21.835 --> 10:24.966
[SPEAKER_03]: What happens if we live in that apathetic season for a long, long time?
10:25.207 --> 10:29.522
[SPEAKER_03]: We just find that we don't pursue relationship, we isolate for extended period.
10:30.481 --> 10:44.484
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it leads to evil, like evil actions that think of, you know, just a Nashville, we had a shooting, right, elementary school and like, man, the loneliness that that girl must have felt.
10:44.524 --> 10:47.029
[SPEAKER_02]: That she had no place to express what was going on in her.
10:47.049 --> 10:55.122
[SPEAKER_02]: She had no relationships that go be her with anyone else that led her to a really dark, dark place that led her to some really, really evil actions.
10:55.102 --> 11:04.504
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just wonder if she had had a safe place to talk about what was going on in her that someone would actually have seen her, would she have gone that far out?
11:04.906 --> 11:07.569
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's the place of when I start seeing evil things.
11:07.609 --> 11:13.177
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, man, there's some lonely, lonely people that have become apathetic to people.
11:13.657 --> 11:18.023
[SPEAKER_02]: Because apathy really is, I'm refusing to be in relationship.
11:18.163 --> 11:19.685
[SPEAKER_02]: I will not do relationship.
11:19.745 --> 11:24.191
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, these impairments are about power, not to do relationship with people.
11:24.311 --> 11:32.061
[SPEAKER_02]: And how they express themselves in different ways, but it is about the power of refusal through relationship that demolite to some real evil things.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's so insightful.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It feels like almost every school shooter or stereo killer period have been very impaired relationship with people.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'm a bit loner that you know, bomber.
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[SPEAKER_03]: These people are people that don't do relationship and eventually it's leading them down to a path of just dehumanized, you know, they lack any ability to actually love or really even relate with empathy and what it's like for other people.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, that's a helpful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's a, I'm going to change some of the details just for comfort, jallity or just to just sanctity at the story, but us worked with the guy one time who had serial abuses in his life and he, I worked with him for quite a while and he said, I need to tell you about the single most painful thing that's ever happened to me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I really, I thought, I've been doing this a long time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought, wow, I literally can only imagine what in the world is he going to say?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Because what he had already told, and what he told was he had been severely physically abused.
12:40.739 --> 12:50.440
[SPEAKER_01]: an incident, and the difference in this one was a parent of physically harmed him very, very deeply.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And he remembers lying at the foot of the stairs of his childhood home, and he said the most painful part of all of that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: is the other parent got up and he said, I remember lying there on the floor thinking, oh good, this parent's going to come to my aid.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So to speak, said, I laid there and I saw this parent's foot go over me, stepped over me and just went on up the stairs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: it's apathy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to feel the effects of seeing what just happened to my son right in front of me and he stepped over him in what upstairs.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That when we say evil, we're not talking about demon possession and as Todd said, we're not talking about
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[SPEAKER_01]: necessarily shooters and those kinds of things, we're talking about a person being, as he said, so isolated that they're capable of seeing or perpetrating great evil and it has seems to have no effect.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so the man told me point blank of a litany of things that had happened to him, the single most painful one was when someone stepped over him and left, apathy.
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[SPEAKER_03]: This is gonna be the case, you don't matter enough to actually intervene.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I don't have anger for you.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you can basically do life on your own.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're not here to help devastated.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I want to experience the loneliness and I'm willing to tell the truth.
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[SPEAKER_03]: What's the gift that I experiencedville?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What's the payoff for really suppressing the end to it?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Loaness is one of the most poignant ways we know that we are, I'm gonna go back to what Todd said in the Ecclesiastes 3, that we are made to be deeply known.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We, that's a need, I need to be known.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's Kirk Thompson says I need to be seen, need to know that someone's seeing me, and that's called intimacy, and there's a play on words, it can be called it, into me see.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There are really three, actually Hebrew words that describe intimacy, one is to know,
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[SPEAKER_01]: and the other is a word of reciprocity.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It means to be known and the other connotation that word means to be taken into one's confidence.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It means like go, intimacy is high-level trust or perhaps deep level of trust, deep level of truth-telling, deep level of knowing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like you can be in a room, Todna.
15:09.965 --> 15:28.362
[SPEAKER_01]: are often in rooms and we're just together or in a hotel room while we're here in Dallas and we do a lot of talking to one another but we're not talking all of the time but yet that man knows me and I know him and we have a history together of loving one another being friends and now colleagues and ministry together and
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[SPEAKER_01]: And we've all most people have experienced this idea.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like, even if we're not saying anything to one another, I know I'm seeing and safe and known by him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He knows me and I know him and I know his life and he knows my life.
15:42.974 --> 15:46.722
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows my son and my wife and I know his wife and his children.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's beyond a knowing about Him.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I know what He feels about these people and what I feel about these people and so there's this intimacy is far deeper When Jesus says I and my father are one he's saying like in intimate relationships that in our humanness won't ever be like that one
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[SPEAKER_01]: but he often talks about that in the Gospel.
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[SPEAKER_01]: He says I'm a father or one.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I am so tied to him that when I am, I am never not with him, relationally.
16:19.125 --> 16:27.701
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we're intimate with people, when you and Caroline are gone, you're not absent from Lily other than physically.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You're not absent from her emotionally.
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[SPEAKER_01]: but yet you feel lonely for her because you are not absent from her because you see into her and desire to she sees into her dad and that way so intimacy is this deep knowing and reciprocal knowing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, we've just walked through in the past three years, COVID, and people being moved into more isolation in many cases.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And then we're saying broadly, culturally, it's what's been called a loneliness epidemic that loneliness is on the rise, statistically.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're saying this phenomenon called a loan together that Sherry Turkle talks about, that it's just this idea that we might even be in the room, but so distracted by technology that we're not actually present.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're not actually exchanging the kind of intimate information that you just said that you guys have in your friendship and your fellowship.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so yeah, what does it mean that our culture is moving further and further away from people having those kinds of connections?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe having them with God or having them with a couple of other spiritual friends?
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[SPEAKER_03]: What's the fallout of that even collectively in a culture?
17:34.094 --> 17:40.342
[SPEAKER_02]: it's leading more and more to a place of self-sufficiency and a place that's moving away from being needy.
17:40.422 --> 17:46.450
[SPEAKER_02]: If we get a way from being needy, then we can't actually do relationship with people, which will move us further further away.
17:46.470 --> 17:49.513
[SPEAKER_02]: From again, I think this is the church.
17:49.834 --> 17:51.756
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this is the importance of the church.
17:52.137 --> 17:54.400
[SPEAKER_02]: We can be needy with one another.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm a pastor of small Baptist church in rural Tennessee.
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[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things we hear all the time is more and more people are coming from the big churches in town like man there's just something about this place of people actually know me and I think that is like you just said that there's such an epidemic but now there's such a place of moving back towards that and the need for that and just the beauty of that and so
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think we are in a great danger of being in front of a screen all day, not being needy, being self-sufficient, and I think that will be the downfall of our societies.
18:36.469 --> 18:43.960
[SPEAKER_02]: Just total isolation, but being told, I joke with people all the time, I love on an urban guy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm an introvert, but I love being around people and I'm like, I love this city because I can be around people and yet I don't have to be known by anybody and that's a very dangerous place for me I look back in my life that'd be like man, but Jenny used to tell me she was like you know a thousand you have a thousand friends and no friends at all
19:01.287 --> 19:29.455
[SPEAKER_02]: and she was right and it led me to a very, very dangerous dangerous place of um, that's what led me to my porn addiction and what was happening internally was I was tricking my brain through intensity with pornography and my brain was receiving as intimacy but it was really intensity and because because there was no intimate moment there was no attachment going on in the brain you just kept driving me further and further for true attachment to be known
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[SPEAKER_02]: The antidote of that has been known by Phil and some other friends like I mean when I feel lonely I know to make a call like so I can make that attachment in the brain So yeah, I think I think that we are in danger of becoming more and more isolated if we don't move our people the church in Deeper in deeper community
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and people are hungry for it, I remember reading an article that was saying that there was like some kind of hobby group in New York or Brooklyn or somewhere and it was something like crocheting or something I mean it was it was a very obscure hobby and all the people that came had to introduce themselves and basically say hey where are you here when you come and they're all like I really don't care about crocheting but I needed some outlet to re-engage in communication relationship because I got isolated from my friends people moved everything changed my social reality was just totally upended and I just looking for another on-gram
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[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm Tom Hanks.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I just got to get off the island and I got to go find people and I'll go find connection because I've made for it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so I do, I'm hopeful even as we see this loneliness epidemic that perhaps we're going to see some people start to identify that and go wait a minute.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I did listen into a sermon online.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's not the same as showing up to be in in the community.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I've got to go and find that life, that attachment, those those environments so that they're living fully into the design of what we're experiencing and what we're made for.
20:50.647 --> 21:02.723
[SPEAKER_03]: Though, as you think about loneliness, one of the things you think are honest, we need to understand if they're going to continue to identify it as they're experiencing it and take meaningful steps towards the connections that we're made for.
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[SPEAKER_01]: taught, taught, touched on it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We are in a increasingly densely populated world literally that more and more people were, you know, becoming cities.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's no major metropolitan that I know of in the country where it's Dallas, Fort Worth, or Nashville, and Murphy'sboro, where we live, that they're becoming one city.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's very little difference between Dallas and Fort Worth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's just people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: between the two.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so as we become more densely populated in some ways or more clustered together, what it does, it puts into sharp relief the difference between being around people and being lonely, right?
21:41.595 --> 21:47.104
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the number of people is not the measure of loneliness, the depth of relationship is the measure.
21:47.084 --> 21:51.709
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if I can pay attention to, who is it that really knows me?
21:52.029 --> 22:12.332
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is it that regards if I'm around a million people or one person or somewhere in between how deeply known Emma and how what happens inside of me when I feel something inside that says, I need relationship, I need someone to talk to, I need someone to be with, I
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[SPEAKER_01]: Run something by like those little seemingly mundane things or our God's way of speaking to us so often to say you need to reconnect Relationally you need to know and be known and take someone in your confidence and be taken into about them as well And so it's easy to go like well, no, I'm surrounded by all kinds of people like that that can be a great thing What is the depth of relationship with the people that truly know you and that you truly know?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's beautiful.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm thinking even if we do find ourselves in a human isolation where we don't have access to human relationship, some of the promises of the Holy Spirit and the promises of the gospel, even the great commission, Jesus says,
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm reminded of First Samuel 30 when David and all his men, their wives and all their stuff.
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[SPEAKER_03]: This is Dolan and I believe by the Philistines, and they're completely alone and David's men turn on him.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And they say, we're mad at you because our wives and stuff has gone, you were leading us somewhere else and everything happened.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And it says that David went and strengthened himself in the Lord.
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[SPEAKER_03]: that you didn't have anybody else all his friends turned on him.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody was gone.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody's mad at him.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He had nowhere else but God.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And but he strengthened himself in the Lord.
23:27.133 --> 23:28.396
[SPEAKER_03]: He praised Psalm 22.
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[SPEAKER_03]: He starts with my God, my God, why don't you forsake me?
23:31.541 --> 23:32.643
[SPEAKER_03]: He talks about his loneliness.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But then by the end of the song, you can see the attachment has happened and that Lord has met him when there was no one else.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And so that's an encouragement even to our audience that, yes, we're going to need to go and find human fellowship.
23:45.503 --> 23:52.232
[SPEAKER_03]: We need to go find spiritual friends, we need to go find the church, and if you find yourself completely abandoned by your community.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever reason, you can put it left alone or even the people you love dive and you just grow old, the Lord is actually one who's ever present.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, and who's available relationally all the time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And this same guy you're talking about, David, he had a friend that the word means chained at the heart, a guy named Jonathan, and that these guys were intimate friends, chained at the heart.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And when you read David's lament when Saul, which saw Aronic Saul's death, and Jonathan's death, David says, his love was greater than that the love of a woman.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I'm married, I love my wife, but my relationship with this man Jonathan was of such a depth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There is no other human love on earth that touches the depth of this one.
24:42.751 --> 24:55.210
[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of the, that he is intimacy with his friend Jonathan, that's such a can be kind of hidden there in the pages of scripture, but what is an incredibly human moment where he's just lamenting.
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[SPEAKER_01]: about the loss of a friendship of a friend.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That's absolutely, it's beautiful.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And David's called a man after God's own heart and he becomes a model, really, if somebody who knows how to really do relationship, he knows how to do it with God and he knows how to do it, even with another adult male.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And some of us are really still learning how to do.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Just really encourage that you guys have that with one another.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Nathan and I actually have that with one another after 20 years.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And we really want to encourage people to say, hey, if you don't,
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[SPEAKER_03]: and take the risk to find some safe people and to really tell the truth to those folks because you can start to have a depth that does mean that that isn't met by a thousand friends and isn't met as superficially as we kind of move around in different communities and so that's really the gift of loneliness.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you guys for dreaming and thinking for your insights, man, I'm just so thankful that God gives us loneliness.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So we know what to do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to the Reformed Podcast.
25:56.722 --> 26:06.268
[SPEAKER_00]: If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe button, share it with your friends, leave us a rating, and check out our other resources at theeatenproject.com.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Peace!
