This post is being written to all of my single friends (both male and female) at DTS. It is Valentine’s night and I know many of you are probably hating the feeling of being alone. I do too. The only thing I hate more is the feeling of contentment without actually being in love. So I stay single. Its the burden of an idealist, a closet-romantic I suppose. Still, I want to encourage you, if you’ll allow it, to remember this feeling of loneliness and imprint it deep upon your heart and mind. I want to encourage you to do this for two reasons:
1) It’s remembering moments like this one that will allow you to understand and sympathize with many of the hurting people you may or may not come across later on in your future ministry. The essence of the ‘human condition’ I feel is the acknowledgment of being lost and alone in this world. Without the relationship that God meant for us to have with Him, we are empty souls looking for something to satisfy or fulfill us. We’ve all heard about the “God-shaped-hole” before, but I want to look at it for a moment from a different angle. Consider the men and women you read about in the news who do horrific things to others. Think about the men you’ll counsel one day that will sit in your office and confess the affairs they’ve recently had. Think about the women who will tell you about the abortions they’ve had and how they are pregnant again out of wedlock. Think of the most terrible thing that we humans can do and consider that maybe the people who commit those things are just people who spent one too many nights feeling the way we do tonight and finally just lost it, doing whatever they could to find some relief. Offering the witness of the Gospel and the love of Jesus Christ to the lonely and broken-hearted will be our business one day – we might as well get familiar with our target market.
2) Get used to the feeling of being alone. A good friend once reminded me that leadership is always lonely. And holding to an uncompromised version of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will increasingly become more and more difficult as our culture drifts further and further from God. I’m not going to spend this post laying out the reasons why I think that is the case, but I’ll just say again that much of what Jesus explained about following Him had to do with the difficulty of being committed to Him when it involves taking up our cross each day and sacrificing ourselves like He did. He also talked a little about being disowned and abandoned by even some of the closest friends and family we have. Just saying…
Leading others in ministry may be incredibly difficult because it may mean stepping out in front to lead, which means initially beginning the journey completely alone until someone starts following you. Your relationship with God and the intimacy you enjoy with your Savior may become the only thing you’ll be able to count on once it is no longer ‘cool’ to be a Christian around here. Being alone and learning to appreciate that truth now will only strengthen you for when things get tough down the road.
Anyway, those are my thoughts for tonight. Loneliness isn’t easy, but in many ways it makes you feel more alive than just about anything else. There are no security blankets or coping methods. Just you and God and a little awkward silence to help get a conversation going.
at the trailhead 