How Community Helps When Battling Loneliness

Designed for Community

Church relationships, fellowship with other believers, and being involved in a local church are crucial. God designed us to be in community. We're not meant to be go-it-alone Christians—that's not how the Christian life works.

Sometimes our loneliness stems from the fact that we don't like the church we have, or we don't like the other believers around us. We choose loneliness and we don't have to. Sometimes there is an alone-ness—an isolation—that comes by choice. The remedy for that is to get involved with a community of believers.

I think it is so vitally important to look around at our lives, and if we say, "Well, I just don't have that in my life. It's just not possible where I live or my job took me away from that." Then maybe we need to quit our job, and move somewhere where we can have it.

Being involved in a church—a fellowship of believers—and that being our family, is God's will. It is worth changing our lives to get. Now, there are some people for whom that's not possible. Certain responsibilities and obligations, or even ministry callings, prevent that at times. But it is God's ordering and provision for his people overall to be in community.

Finding God in My Loneliness

Lydia Brownback

Lydia Brownback offers biblical encouragement for women to help them see how God can redeem seasons of loneliness and draw them to the only true and lasting remedy: union with Jesus.

In Psalm 68:8, the psalmist says that God sets the solitary in a home. He's talking about in the fellowship of God's people. We can know that if we pray for fellowship, that is a prayer request that God delights to answer. We know that that is his will for us.

So, if we lack Christian community in our lives and if that is the source of our alone-ness, and a big contributor to our loneliness, perhaps we need to change our lives or our thinking.

Lydia Brownback (MAR, Westminster Theological Seminary) is the author of several books in addition to the Flourish Bible Study series, including the On-the-Go Devotionals for women; Finding God in My Loneliness; and Sing a New Song. She is a regular speaker at conferences and events and is passionate about teaching God's word.