It is good to be single, but there are challenges.  One challenge is self-control, which we considered yesterday.  Another challenge is loneliness.

Challenge #2 – Loneliness

This is a huge challenge for many singles.  I was single for eight years, and it was a challenge to me.  However, it would be good to begin with the realization that marriage is not the cure for loneliness.  There are many lonely married people.  Even in good marriages, your spouse will not meet all your relational needs.  Guys need guy comaraderie.  Ladies need girl friends.  Men and women are built differently, and we need friends of the same gender.  Put bluntly, a spouse is not God – a spouse simply cannot meet all your needs.  Now certainly a spouse can help with this challenge, but so can friends.  To address the challenge of loneliness, we need community – we need family.

As Barry Danylak points out in his book Redeeming Singleness, physical offspring was of high priority in the Old Testament.  And so the physical family was of central importance.  But starting with the prophets who forsaw the New Covenant, and especially in the New Testament, the focus shifts to spiritual offspring, to making disciples (Isaiah 53:10, 54:1, Galatians 4:19, Matthew 28:19-20, etc.).  And so in the New Testament a spiritual family becomes the focus; that is, the church.

Whether single or married, God has provided us with a new family.  God has adopted us as his children.  In Christ, we are brothers and sisters.  Jesus points us to this new family.  Consider for instance, Matthew 12:46-50:

While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus tells us that his disciples are his new family.  Those who believe in and follow Jesus have become a new family.  Or consider Jesus’ words in Mark 10:29-30:

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.

If we leave our physical family behind, how do we gain a family a hundredfold?  We gain a spiritual family – God’s church.  And how should we treat one another in the church?  Consider Pauls’ words in I Timothy 5:1-2:

Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.

The church is a family and we should treat one another as family. 

To address loneliness, we need community, we need family.  And God has provided us with a new family.  Singles don’t need to marry to find family, they already have a family in the church.  If the church is functioning right, singles can find the community they need in their church family.  “If” of course is the big word here.  How many of our churches are functioning as a family?

What singles need is not be split off into a singles group; they need their church family.  They need the church to be the family God designed it to be.  That means we care for each other and serve one another.  It means we get together during the week for meals and activities.  I’m not talking about church programs here, but people just getting together as family.  It means we invite people over to our homes, and visit in other people’s homes.  It means we call each other on the phone, e-mail each other, maybe use Facebook.  It means we make sure no one is alone on holidays.  It means we celebrate each other’s birthdays.  It means we break free from the individualism of our culture.  It means married folks realize that the church is a family, and that they have obligations to this family as well as their physical one.  It means we act like family. 

This is one of my dreams for the church I pastor – that we would act like the family we are.  That singles and married folks alike would be attracted to our church because they find in it a family.  By God’s grace, we are moving in this direction, though we have a long ways to go as well.  What about your church?  Don’t grumble that your church isn’t like that.  Be the catalyst to change things.  Start inviting people to your home.  Make sure no one is alone on holidays.  Celebrate birthdays.  Start to treat your church as family.

Loneliness is a real challenge for singles, and married people too.  God designed the church to be the family we need.  Let’s seek to be that family!