The Gospel and Loneliness
From Lee
About a week ago, I committed to studying the book of Colossians verse by verse for the next 100 days during my devotional time each morning. My church is currently going through Colossians on Sunday mornings so I really wanted to dig in and supplement what I’m hearing from my pastor each week.
In Colossians 1:3-6, Paul writes: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.”
One of the questions the pastors of my church continually ask is: “How does the gospel apply to this situation?” The gospel isn’t something we hear at the beginning of our Christian experience and then we move on from there. Instead, as Paul said, the gospel bears fruit from the day we heard and understood it up until this very moment.
The gospel continually confronts the way we think and feel. With the confrontation comes conviction, comfort, and a compelling desire to press on with Christ.
With all of that in mind, I’ve been thinking about the way the gospel applies to aspects of the single life. Maybe I’ll do an entire series about that if you are interested in it. But the aspect that has been on my mind the most in the past week is loneliness. It’s a genuine feeling that, when left unchecked, can lead to self pity and self indulgences of all sorts in an attempt to fill the void.
As I asked myself how the gospel applies to my loneliness, I quickly came to the conclusion that when Christ willingly took on your sin and mine and therefore the full wrath of the Father, he felt the cumulative separation of God from mankind. My loneliness consists of spending small pockets of time by myself yearning for a wife, which makes my loneliness just a wimpy shadow by comparison.
As the Spirit corrected my way of thinking and kept my from having a pity party, I’ve been overwhelmed by God’s comfort and love. My walk has been more consistent as a result. It hasn’t been perfect by any means, but the gospel spurs me on in the sanctification process.
How about you? How does the gospel apply to your feelings of loneliness? How does it apply to other aspects of the single life?