Transcript 

John Murphy 

This is the Rockhouse Center podcast, and I'm John Murphy. 

Beth Murphy 

I'm Beth Murphy and we're talking today about defeating loneliness. This has been an unusual year. As we all know, and lockdowns have created unusual levels of isolation in some cases. And that can bring on loneliness or or worse, and loneliness that was already there. Loneliness, of course, though was a common feeling that people experienced long before we had lockdowns. 

John Murphy 

Yeah, it's really interesting that it's easy for someone to associate isolation with loneliness. And I can see the connection. But the reality of it is that loneliness was already has always been there. And it's something like physical isolation simply makes it worse. I mean, there are those people who will say. That clients that we've talked to who tell us that they can be standing in a crowd of people and still feel. Lonely. So it's just really easy when we think about it this way to start blaming our focusing, the reason for our loneliness having to do with sort of our physical condition, our isolation, the situation that we are in and actually the loneliness we feel is something that happens inside of us. It's not really something from outside. There are people who can all experience the same level of isolation. That have different feelings of loneliness and the differential is what goes on inside of them. 

Beth Murphy 

Holidays. More commonly, a time when people can feel more lonely, and that feeling comes on even when they're with other people. They may be alone, feeling the loneliness, but they may not necessarily be alone. Like you said a minute ago, they can be in a crowd. They can be at a gathering, or they can be with people but feel lonely. And of course, the opposite of that is, if we're at a different place in our heart, we can be alone, but not feel isolated. It's a common and growing thing that we're seeing where we get calls from parents about children who are in a sometimes a desperate place when they've had their cell phone removed or they've had their video games removed they've had. Some kind of electronics removed so that they can't connect and and they feel isolation at a level where they describe it as despair all the way up to harming themselves or even committing suicide because of their sense of isolation. But that only happens if the child feels dependent on the people on the other end of their text, their call, their electronic communication, and of course, it's been made worse because they've been physically isolated at home or remote from people that they usually connect with. And so it's bringing to the surface. Those feelings of loneliness that were there before the actual isolation happened. 

John Murphy 

So thankfully God has made us in such a way that we are able to have. Peace and experience levels of connection, even though we might be in a circumstance that would indicate our and most people might experience as creating loneliness. So through God we have the opportunity to be able to have a level of connectedness, despite what's going on around us. It's just so important because this is how we can break free of the oppression of our circumstances. We are truly free when our sense of well-being is not controlled by our circumstances and of course that relates to a lot of things it could relate to provision and many other aspects of life. But today we just want to focus on the. Idea that as we are more and more engaging God's way of bringing us community and bringing us a sense of connectedness that we can have a level of community and level of peace despite the physical circumstances we are in. And if we are in a situation where we're feeling a lot of loneliness that's connected to isolation, we have an opportunity through connecting with God. To defeat this loneliness. 

Beth Murphy 

I want to go back to the phrase that you used and grab that for justice. A second to focus on. Breaking free of the oppression of circumstances. That's a huge concept, again emphasizing the truth that even if we're physically isolated, we can have peace and not feel lonely. A wonderful thing to observe is rock health clients coming in. Maybe they're coming here for grief or they're coming because I. Relation has triggered a number of things in their heart and lives, usually things that have been there since the very earliest years of their lives and that will start out with the feeling that they can't imagine. It's almost, maybe almost offensive to think that you would not be lonely when you're alone and then watching them come around to a place where they can be. Perfectly at peace while they're isolated or alone, and just seeing that freedom that comes from not being oppressed by our circumstances. It's such a big concept I want to refer you to later. Listen to. Anyone who's listening now to later listen to the podcast entitled Freedom from being controlled. It's a related concept. It's not specifically about loneliness, but it's breaking free of that oppression of circumstances and and it's a big life blessing to come to that place. 

John Murphy 

Yeah, the truth here is that when we affirm that Jesus is the risen son of the. Lord. God says that he and Jesus dwell in us through the Holy Spirit. So if that's going on, the question is what stands in the way of our being able to feel connected and feel the blessing that God wants us to have in a sense of being in community with him and with Jesus and with fellow believers so that we wouldn't find ourselves in a place of loneliness no matter what the circumstances. And this reminds me of the story of a gentleman. Who? I believe it was an Asian who had a very secluded job and he was apart from people all day long, but he really felt like he was connecting with God and his seclusion and the job that he had. And was almost regretting having to take the next job that was offered him, which meant engaging with more people and being out more in the world because there was a sense of that he didn't have this opportunity to connect with God the way he did. And that's where we want to go. We want to get into a situation where our sense of, relating to and connecting with God really overrides our circumstances and it's sort of the foundation. Of our sense of connection and community. And that loneliness is not something that we would commonly experience as long as we're in this sort of connection with God. So we want to dig into how it is that we can move into a place of experiencing a level of emotion, what we call emotional intimacy, which is being fully known and fully loved to the degree that we are really fully known. And that we are accepted completely, then that is a place of a sense of intimacy that we can have with any other person. Now. God does that perfectly. Nobody here on the planet can perfectly love us and perfectly know us at the same time. But there's this unique place that God has for us to seek him to. To fulfill this deepest needs of this perfect connection with God, perfect acceptance and divine emotional intimacy. 

Beth Murphy 

People sometimes express their loneliness by saying that the certain person, whoever it is, that is. You know someone they want to be close to, but they feel like that person doesn't really know me because we are so deeply wired to be fully known and fully loved. And to the extent that we've placed that burden on someone else to gratify, to satisfy that feeling. Uh. Then we'll ultimately be resoundingly disappointed because God's the only one who can do that at the level at which we have an aching longing. So what we want to do is realize that God's on board and that we have the opportunity to never live in isolation or loneliness and and again this is such a big concept, I'm going to refer you to yet another podcast that God is just one. Right away, because it when you finish this and you do the prayer at the end of this podcast, that that moving into that podcast will really. Bless you as well. 

John Murphy 

I really love this first Corinthians 316 scripture, so if there's any question about where God dwells on the Earth now, he makes it really clear in the scripture that he says that do you not discern and understand that you, the whole church in Corinth are God's temple, his sanctuary, and that God's spirit has his permanent dwelling place? And you to be at home and you collectively as a church and also individually. So even when we can't come together with our church, we are still to be in a place of connection and oneness with God and understand that he is living in us. We know he's living in us through the spirit. That's what he's promised. That's what we receive when we become believers. And I love this word, permanent dwelling place. So the message there. To me, is that no matter how it may feel, God is permanently residing within you and so it's not that God is not there, where we commonly might think, where did God go? The reality that God is there and we need to dig into? What is it that stands between our realizing the presence of God in our lives in every moment? 

Beth Murphy 

So an opportunity for all of us this year has been presented because of the isolation or whatever version of lockdowns we may have experienced and specifically in the Community with other believers and being in a place where if we've become dependent on things like routines and activities. And just the the the regular thing that I can count on, I'm going to see so and so we're going to have a cup of coffee before church service or all those interactions that we appreciate and enjoy. But when those things are removed, then we get the opportunity to go to the next level deeper. We get the opportunity to go deeper with the Lord in our. Emotional intimacy and connection with him and actually to go to a deeper place of connection with other people, with our community, with other believers and just. The different kinds of ways we can create that community and look for the opportunity for that community to perhaps be more meaningful and deeper and less dependent on routines because we're going after what really matters in emotional intimacy. 

John Murphy 

Yes, with all the other places we can go to try to fill that need. It's really. Important that we understand that God gives us that opportunity. He is not going to make us. He has given us the freedom to choose where we go to fill this need. So that's the way God is. God offers up the answers. God solves the problem. He doesn't make us. He didn't make us become believers. He doesn't make us seek him. He doesn't make us look to him to feel. Our sense of emotional intimacy either. Based on our level of understanding of God and our sense of relationship with him and also this how we feel connected to the world, it's just very tempting to be drawn to the things in the world to try to find this divine emotional intimacy kind of follow our own will and our own ways of solving this deep need that we had. But of course, nothing in the world is actually going to solve it. It is a divine need and therefore it requires a divine perfect solution. It's only God who can fully love you and fully know you without limit. It's really not available in people. There's a level of not being really open to being known by others that most people have, because just that the fear of rejection. So they have a tendency to. Pull back that creates this situation where we are focusing on things which are not God to solve a problem only God can deliver on. So the point here is that no one can know us as deeply and love us to the level God can love us except God himself. Even though we may have tried to solve this problem in other ways or fill this need in other ways. So no matter where we have gone to try to fill divine emotional intimacy in the past. We have to begin to understand that we will never get to the place we're trying to go. We will always find ourselves in situations of isolation from the things that we have depended on and therefore not being able to connect and feeling a deep loneliness when we're apart from those things in the world. So we want to move in a place where God, who is with us all the time, is the sense of connection and the sense of acceptance in the community. That we dwell in so that no matter what happens on the outside, we can still have that really deep abiding peace. 

Beth Murphy 

We have that yearning. To be fully known and fully loved and and we wouldn't feel alone if we had truly a best friend that we could tell anything to that we could confide anything and they would confide anything in us. No Fear of rejection. It's the ultimate expression of value, and we experienced that expression of value as being valuable. We interpreted our heart, interprets it to say that I have value, and that depth of value, the depth at which we're yearning for it, can only come from God and 1st John. 3/20. We're told that for he is above and greater than our consciences. Hearts and he knows and perceives, understands everything. Nothing is hidden from him. 

John Murphy 

Our deepest need to connect has to come from God for us to have the assurance that we will never be alone. People can't promise that people are part of our circumstance and our situations and our lot in life, so we have to go if we want to have peace about this sense of connecting and ever being left alone, that can only stand on accepting the reality of God's. Understanding of us, his knowing of us and his complete love for us. But the problem here is that we may be able to say, well, John, you know I know all that. I've been reading the book too. I I completely understand what it is that God knows. But you know, there's this difference between your head and the heart. So we can know in our head that all these things are true and rely on them intellectually. But now we've got to look at why is it that I'm not living in something I know to be true in my head? Well, that's because the. Heart is in the way the heart has got some other things going on that we need to resolve. A really common one that we run into a lot and talking to folks is just a wrong view of God. Some people feel like he's scary. Or he's responsible for their suffering, or he is distant or disappointed. He's disappointed in them. He's walking around with a clipboard that he's trying, that he brings their suffering. Just there's tremendous number of wrong beliefs about God, which make him feel from a heart level, untrustworthy, somewhat. You can't really open up to the fear that if I really expose everything. 

Beth Murphy 

Pointed in them. 

John Murphy 

That the righteousness of Christ may not be quite enough, and that God would condemn me or reject me. We can become afraid to expose ourselves if we're not willing to open. Going up and engage God in every aspect of our life and the things that we're thinking about and wrestling with. Then God can't be there and there's a sense of pushing him back and not allowing him into that aspect of your life. Even though he fully knows it all. There's a sort of a, a place within our heart where we convince ourselves that if we don't talk to God about he doesn't really know about it. And if I don't want to trust God. With it and I can just withhold this and deal with this in my own strength and my own way, and guys outside of it. And a lot of times that has to do with the fact that we have a dependency. Sometimes the dependency on something other than God to fill, a need that only God can fill. And we're not willing to let that go yet we're not willing to trust him to fill that need. And so we don't open up the conversation with God about this thing that I'm depending on instead of him. 

Beth Murphy 

We've all seen children do it. Young children do it and hiding something that they feel like they've got to have, they need they want and that they're dependent on and with the thought that if their parents were to know about it, it might get taken away from them. Well, as adults, we certainly do the same thing. Thing. It's just that it makes even less sense in the context of God, both from the perspective that hiding something from him, developing A dependency other than him is never going to bless us. It's always going to wreak havoc in our lives, ultimately. And of course it's a futile attempt to keep it from him. So resolving those wrong beliefs about God, of course, is at the core of what needs to happen. For all of us in order to be able to trust him and one be with him and look forward to spending time with him and rest in him and be able to stop our. Thriving truly rest in him in the way that he promises and intends for us to be able to do. 

John Murphy 

So let me just speak a little truth here. It's really important. God will never cause you any suffering. He will never by taking away from you something that you have grown dependent on. That's not what he does it. We release it up to him that he allows us to come to a place where we lose our dependency on it and our increasing dependency on him and the more and we trust him and we just. Open up the. Conversation that you will find overtime that your dependency will shift off to the thing that you really can't depend on, that you're in a situation where you're more serving it than it's serving you, that it's not solving your problem and you will move into a place. To where you have a greater and greater sense that God is going to fill the need completely and it's not based on some physical thing as I can think of my own situation when I've opened up my dependencies on things like I used to have a lot of food dependencies for comfort for instance, and I really resisted allowing him into those conversations about food. It's like, no, I can't. Talk to God about it, because then I would lose control of it. And I'm I'm dependent on this thing to manage the way life. Well, it wasn't until I began to to open that question up to God and allow him in the conversation about food, allow him in the conversation about what am I going to order, allow him in the conversation about what do I really need or what? What am I needing comfort from what's going on here? That was really the beginning of the moving more and more towards him and that relationship built and my dependency moved more on him. And then from that, the desire to medicate and to comfort and to go to other things in the world to try to manage the way I. Feel beginning to dissipate. I never, ever, ever had the sense that he took it away. And of course he is not about creating suffering. He's not going to RIP something out of your hand and cause you to suffer your way to him. That's not what he does. As we move into a place of trust, our heart begins to shift and the dependency for the other thing fades and our growth and our desire to. Bless God to be motivated by a love for him is the thing that becomes what makes us go forward. It becomes the thing that motivates and moves us in our lives, and it's the thing that we become to rely on because we can trust in it and it's a safe place to trust. 

Beth Murphy 

There is that really sweet place of depth with. The Lord, as we relinquish our grip on whatever it is we've been depending on. Maybe it's that we have depended on. Our own feudal attempts to be a good Christian or our Creator own righteousness. Or our performance, the things that we've hung our hat on for our value. So as we move away from those dependencies and get closer and closer to the Lord in that sweet communion that he's got, there is a very direct connection to defeating loneliness. And the loneliness fading because we have a true sense of communion with a loving heavenly Father. You begin to look forward to. Hey, wait a minute. I'm going to have this little window of time when nobody's expecting anything of me, and I can just go for a walk. I can sit in my room by myself. I can do something. Where I just connect with you, Lord. Hey, what a treat. What a great thing to look forward to. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

John Murphy 

It is an amazing thing to think about that at any instant in time we can connect with an entity, an individual, a loving heavenly Father who completely. Everything literally think about everything you know. You would never tell anyone else. We need to have that. We need to have that place, that Safe Harbor where we can completely expose and be known, fully known, including all the things about us that we don't like and know that the other person knows all of those things. They don't draw attention to it. They don't. Try to fix this. They don't try to. They don't criticize, they don't try to control this. All we feel is accept. That's in love, and we all need that. It's not available from another human being. If you are ready to trust God to feel your deepest needs, to be fully known, and to be fully loved, and if you want to grow in a sense of connection and community with God and defeat the loneliness, then join me in this prayer, because this is how you're gonna get there. It's gonna be opening up and beginning to trust God. To where you progressively come to a place where no longer. Under the oppression of your circumstances and you're not. Those those circumstances don't control you anymore. And you can have this peace that defies understanding and a sense of connection that defies understanding and meaning, that it makes no sense to the world that you feel this way. But it is available in your relationship with the Lord. So here's a prayer to try to. Get the heart to in line with what your head knows. Your head knows this is available. We gotta get your heart there. And so I think if you would be willing to engage in this prayer, to have a sense of being connected with God like you never have before. 

Beth Murphy 

So if this is stirring something within you with a desire to. Allow God to take you there. This place of close communion with him and dependence on him to defeat loneliness. Then go with us in this prayer here now and we'll leave you time to repeat. Heavenly Father, thank you for the depth of your love. And all that you have done to make yourself available to me. At any moment. Thank you, Lord, that I do not ever have to be alone. And that you are only one thought away at any moment. In any situation. So that I may have the peace that defies understanding at anytime. Father, I reject any lie I may have believed. That has left me afraid or unwilling to trust you. With every aspect of my life. Father, I reject any dependency I have on anything other than you. To fill my divine need for absolute emotional intimacy. Or any other divine need. I invite you to enter into my heart. And remove anything I've allowed to fill that place in my heart. That was meant for only you to dwell. Please heal me of any way I've suffered under that wrong dependency. And replace that idle with your permanent presence. Your complete love, acceptance, peace and assurance. I pray these things in the precious name of your son Jesus. Amen. 

John Murphy 

Amen. 

Beth Murphy 

If this prayer helps you, but you still find that you're struggling somewhat with loneliness, or really any other loss of peace, please don't hesitate to contact us, either through our website or give us a call. And we can talk with you about counseling services or free resources on the website and certainly we'll be glad to pray with you. So contact us or give us a call or and share this with anyone else that you know is particularly struggling with loneliness. God bless you. 

John Murphy 

Thank you for joining us today. Goodbye.