Goodbye Loneliness | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life Teaching

I do what I do because I've seen God's power transform my own life and he will do it for you the key to everything is found in God's word I'm Joyce Meyer and I believe that God can heal you everywhere you [Music] hurt hi friends thanks for tuning into Enjoying Everyday Life you know loneliness is something that we can all relate to and today Joyce Aaron clly and I are saying goodbye loneliness with God's help and relationship expert love mcferson who he loves so much so whether you're feeling lonely in your marriage in your family

or in a crowd of people you're going to want to join this conversation some really practical help some encouragement from God's word today may be just what you need hi friends this is the talk it out podcast and we need you in here because we've got a lot to talk about today and one of the great things about being one of the girls here on talk it out is that you're never lonely that's one of the things that we're talking about today is how we all need community and we need relationship and one of the

best places in fact the only place that you can get it and not be let down is in Christ so I'm Ginger stocky with Aaron clly Joyce Meyer and today we have our friend back with us relationship expert love mcferson love thank you so much for being here thank you all for having me I love it when I'm here we do too we absolutely do love love love love so much love there is love all over this room um if you want to check out some of the other episodes because love has been with us

before and it's been so great she talked about anxiety she talked about relationships before so go to joy.org and find those other other shows and check them out but as I said today we're talking about loneliness and one of the reasons that we wanted to do this topic is it's one that we get a lot of people commenting on and often because they do appreciate the the feeling of being part of this group like we're doing a Bible study together and that means so much to us that they trust us you know to to come

in and and that we're all friends together and and we all need that so much I think there's something also to the fact that a lot of times as as Christian women you may feel like you can't talk about certain topics because it's not approved in the church or whatever but we're all dealing with it so to know that we're willing to have those hard conversations I think is really important I was looking actually on our social media and um jar 7773 said I have struggled been tormented by and haunted by loneliness my whole life

so if that's just one comment of the many of our friends this is a really important topic yeah torment Ed and haunted by it aren't those big words and the the thing about loneliness is I think sometimes we we can toss it off you know it's not the same as a trauma in your life but loneliness can be very detrimental and studies show that don't they they absolutely do as a matter of fact a lot of times loneliness can be the result of the trauma in your life because uh a loneliness has been associated with

low trusters people who don't trust and a lot of times low trust comes from the traumas childhood traumas things that we see as threats in our lives and so it actually can actually work against itself because the more you don't trust someone right the more you will isolate yourself and so when you say that the people feel connected here it's because they trust the ministry they trust your what you're saying and you've you know done what it takes to make them feel accepted wanted and heard because one of the things about uh loneliness the opposite

is this the it it's the result of not feeling seen heard understood enough so when people are vulnerable enough to let you in and you handle it correctly that's actually one of the cures for loneliness wow what you said is really valuable because it it does become like a vicious cycle mhm I'm lonely and I've learned not to trust people so I push them away but I need them so I try to draw them in and then I push them away because I'm afraid of being hurt so there are a lot of of habits that

we need to change in order to get out of some of our loneliness as well you know loneliness is not always about being alone that's right absolutely you can be in a whole room full of people and feel lonely that's right especially if you're insecure mhm seems like sometimes if you're insecure and you don't feel good about yourself yeah you're always imagining that other people are not liking you and pushing you away and so you can you can be alone totally alone and not be lonely or you can be with a dozen people yeah and

still feel lonely I'm glad you said that because when I was thinking about this topic I had that thought I wonder if this all goes back to like my own insecurity or my confidence in myself so thank you for confirming you're welcome that is part of it it's how I see myself and then you I can spiral and when I feel alone then I can yeah spiral into more of those thoughts I think there's people who feel lonely because they have some of these issues that we're talking about but then I thought this morning about

the elderly maybe people that uh don't have children or their children just don't really pay any attention to them anymore are Shu inss people that can't get out and um people who are grieving someone people that are sick you know there's probably people watching right now from the hospital or their bed at home and sure you know that that can be a lonely place and you can I think sometimes when you're sick or you're in great pain you can really feel like nobody understands yeah what you're going through and that does make you feel lonely

like you said love when you feel that you're not understood I know even for me sometimes I have felt like you know nobody really understands my responsibility level nobody really understands what I'm doing and there's something about us we want to know that somebody understands and so I love Hebrews 4 that says we have a high priest who understands so he always understands us and yes you know such a comfort that that's such a comfort to know that Jesus gets me well you are leading us right into the clip that we want to show of

you teaching right now because we're going to start in fact Joyce is talking about 2 Timothy 4:16 and talking about some of her own experience with loneliness let's look at 2 Timothy CH 4 verse 16 at my first trial now this is the Apostle Paul at my first trial no one acted in my defense as my Advocate or took my part or even stood with me but all forsook me may it not be charged against them well that's another whole message right there everybody let me down God forgive them but the Lord stood by me

the one person who didn't leave him was the Lord and He strengthened [Music] me what wow now you know there's good stuff going on in here today in the spiritual realm you need to reach out with your faith and take some of this don't just sit there like a bump in the chair [Music] going but the Lord strengthened me I love it now the second thing I want to say to you this morning is when you feel lonely or if you have a problem with loneliness and I might just throw out to you for your

information that that's probably one of the things that I have had to confront and deal with a lot in my life so how can you be in front of as many people as I am and Ever Be Lonely well because it's it's just different you know all the people that most of the people I deal with they're coming to receive something and when it's all over there's still just just me you know and sometimes I want somebody not to be interested in Joyce Meyer but to just be interested in plain old Joyce amen and I

have lots of good friends and you know my husband is great my family is great and I've worked my way through a lot of that but I believe that loneliness is something that the enemy attacks us with he wants us to feel isolated and alone and like nobody cares and so what I'm sharing with you today are ways that I have developed myself to not let the devil do that to me and one of the things I practice on a regular basis is being consciously aware and even saying out loud God is with [Applause] me

amen some of the loneliest people on the world are some of the movie stars some of the music stars you could have a widow Liv living alone in an apartment that doesn't see hardly anybody very often and she could not be lonely and have somebody that's in front of a gazillion people and they feel lonely how many of you ever experienced loneliness in your life and you so see inter I don't see hardly any hands that aren't up now the next thing I'm getting ready to tell you is really big so are you ready all

right one of the other things and this is another thing that I've learned that really helps me you don't have to be lonely if you know how to be with yourself because you are there all the time you don't ever go away did you ever think of that you can't get away from yourself not for one second in your whole life everywhere you go there you are now if you don't like yourself then you're in for a tough ride so you know I started out full of self-hatred and guilt and I've come to the point

where I'm really fairly fond of myself matter of fact I really get along better with me than anybody I think it's so important that you you bring this up because there's a tendency to feel guilty when you're lonely like poor poor pitiful me like why why don't why do I push people away or what's wrong with me and there really should be no shame in this because as you said at the conference everybody put their hand up we've all been there and we will all be there probably again at some point in our life so

what you're saying about understanding that we really are never alone to be able to be okay with who we are is so vastly important I'm going uh to Branson next week a couple hundred miles from St Louis and uh I'm going totally by myself for seven days and I am so looking forward to it not because I don't like people but I just want seven days to just do what I want to do when I want to do it get up when I want to get up not have to work out with my trainer for

three three days that week nobody will tell your trainer where you're going I told him this morning his name is Rick and I said Rick you know how much we love and appreciate you but I said I have to admit some mornings when I wake up and I'm sleeping so good and I think Oh no I got to work out today but uh nobody wants to be by themselves all the time by the time I'm there six seven days I'll certainly be ready to come back home but we we need to be comfortable with ourselves

because there's a problem too if you have to be around somebody all the time or if you have to always have noise going on around you all the time but one of the things I want to see us do today and I'm sure you have it planned in addition to talking about people being lonely we want to talk about ways that you can overcome that our avoid absolutely i' I found myself being exactly where you're talking about because I I am one of those people who loves the party you know I don't want to miss

out on anything Ginger exactly exactly so it's easy for me to depend on other people and and to need that for my energy or and if I'm if I'm faced with not having people around or especially feeling like somebody doesn't want me around then that that can be really hard for me and i' I've really had to learn how God can use that in my life that time that I'm just with him and I've even seen him um set people away from me at times because he needed that time with me and I needed other

people out of the way you don't know that when it's happening and you're like God what you know why what wh why am I lonely why are these people who used to be here no longer here and that that has really helped me to understand that I'm starting to grow closer to Christ I I feel better exactly I still love people it doesn't change who I am but we learn how to adapt to situations you know one of the things I loved is the seven days away yes that's beautiful I love that because Solitude is

different from loneliness right Solitude is the being by yourself but in order to become to grow enough and heal enough to be by yourself and be okay with it you have to be okay with what's on the inside of you because you are talking to yourself 24/7 you have 70,000 thoughts a day and if your thoughts are not right and you don't like you don't want the trauma to show up and say hey guess what we're over here if if all of that is haunting you then you will separate yourself and you will be the

one who abandons you because there's two proximities that the Bible talks about he says I will never leave you nor forsake you the the the forsake is I won't allow Satan to speak into my ear and turn my heart against you so in marriage which 60% of marriages people who are married report that they're lonely so we will forsake ourselves we will be feel forsaken emotionally disconnected and also physically disconnected that's the you know people who are uh alone and maybe not with their with family members but what we have to do we have to

stay connected with ourselves where we can feel and heal could you have done seven days by yourself years ago like before you have walked through all this with God in your life oh I I kind of do that on a semi-regular basis but before before you had such healing with God and your over these 40 Years of ministry after you had experienced all that trauma as a kid well I was by myself a lot but I didn't care for it sure yeah yeah that makes sense cuz I was you know I was married to my

first husband he had left me and disappeared you know I was going through some kind of trauma in my life you know when I was pregnant and I was alone and you know didn't really have anybody to help me or to help take care of me and so most of those times were traumatic times in my life and certainly not ones where I enjoyed yeah being alone you know and I I did experience a lot of loneliness and interestingly enough you know I worked at a church for five years and I was with a group

of people all the time the leaders in the church and we did all kinds of things together had meetings prayed together went on Retreats together well then when God called me away from that and to start Joy my Ministries my ministry's been a lot on the road and so I went from having that group of people to be in by myself a lot yeah and one of the things that really was a problem for me for a few years was was loneliness you know because I was by myself didn't really have anybody to you know

you can't go tell your problems to the people you're ministering to right and uh um so I'm glad that God helped me get over that and the more I learned to like myself and the closer I became to him mhm the easier yeah it got yeah and U Can I ask you some choice because by the by I remember when you started out with your ministry and things like that I would imagine and I might be incorrect I would imagine that a part of a loneliness was your ministry was so different from the other Ministries

out there in that a lot of times when we're even teaching faith and things like that we go all the way to the end and this is what happened we show all of the the the the treasures and the the symbols of our faith but we don't talk about the process a lot of times and you know people don't want to eat the sausage when they hear they see how it's made but you showed how it was made you understand you you talked about yourself there weren't a lot of people especially women out there being

as transparent as you and it seems like when you you know tread that you you don't really have a lawnmower you have that Sickle you know what I'm saying and when you have that Sickle you can feel lonely and I'm just wondering in Ministry for people who are treading Waters that that were not traditional in the church is it is there loneliness in that I think anytime that you're different that you're doing something a little out of the box the devil can attack you with that loneliness because you are aware that not everybody approves mhm

of what you're doing but knowing that you're in the will of God you're doing what he wants you to do and that you're bearing good fruit and helping people that really helped me a lot to know I mean everybody else didn't accept me but the people that I was ministering to they did because their lives were being changed but I know there's a lot of people watching us today that are lonely and we want to help them get over that so we've talked about getting closer to God which that is so important we've talked about

learning how to like yourself that's important but another thing that people people need to do if you're lonely don't sit and feel sorry for yourself yeah and wait for somebody else to come and fix it be vulnerable enough to step out yes and make some friends or volunteer to do something you know maybe people that have retired and and they're lonely they're used to being with a group of people at work and now they're by themselves well go volunteer at a hospital to days a week you know we a lot of times we have problems

because we just wait for somebody else to come and fix them instead of being aggressive and thinking what can I do to make this better because no matter how lonely you are there's somebody that feels just like you do or even worse and they need you that is so important what you just said because in all relationships we should go in with the mindset to give take as a matter of fact statistics show that people who are lonely they actually repel friends uh people feel like oh you need me and sometimes that person feels like

I'm inadequate I don't have all that you need sometimes they just feel like I just don't have as much to give you as you want and so what happens when you give when you go in to give you you reap the most meaningful relationships that you can connect with or those that you just you didn't want anything in return you just went in to be a blessing and when you be a blessing you walk out and you're like that person blessed me yeah and so I just think the the volunteering statistics show it the the

the cure to loneliness is absolutely empathy uh giving back and the Bible is true it is more blessed to give than to receive can you imagine how many marriages would be different if a person went into a marriage with this thought in mind I want to live to make you happy I want to see how happy I can make you instead of yeah well you're you're going You're supposed to make me happy absolutely yeah what's in it for me codependent yes and you I expect my joy to come from him right that's right and when

he doesn't do it then I'm and you've heard me say this God told me stop giving Dave the responsibility for your joy at your own responsibility wow it's not his job to keep you happy you have to decide to be happy and it's so important that we we take these practical steps that we're talking about because loneliness when it festers there in fact the Surgeon General is declared it an epidemic it is that that it's such a dangerous place for people to be long term that it's worse than smoking packs of cigarettes 12 a day

12 cigarettes a day it's pulling in your body wow that's crazy so it's it's really dangerous to us but but God has laid out a plan which is so beautiful that that he not only sent his own son and his holy spirit to fill us one one of those things that that I've found so helpful as well during during lonely times is worship if I turn on worship music and because one of the questions I've had is I know God's with me I I know he is but sometimes I want arms to wrap around me

you know we need that that physical as well we we need someone that we can talk to and we'll talk back that we audibly hear but when I worship I've really learned that the holy spirit is so real and so tangible and it reminds me that I'm truly never alone because I enter the presence of God and just just try that I just would encourage anybody to try that it's it's hard to feel sorry for yourself it's hard to feel lonely when you're really worshiping God and much of it is what what you were saying

is getting your mind off yourself the core like I said earlier is that you're seen and you're known and you're accepted yes and so when you are in the presence of God In Worship now let me tell you don't don't start me because I'm love so you could praise all you want but I love that worship it's it's something about it be I say I'm slow dancing with the Holy Spirit that's what I'm doing literally the intimacy yeah rather than just a checklist I got off the checklist a long time ago I will not be

in performance-based relationship with God I'm going to be in a love relationship with him because he's in a love relationship with me and so when we are accepted and we're seen we're known we're heard just like the core of loneliness is and you allow him and you allow that intimacy and then receive the love I'm telling you it's nothing like it have you been looking for a 365-day devotional well look no further than the promises for your everyday life devotional from Joyce Meyer there's a focus verse for all 365 days of the year along with

a prayer starter get your copy of promises for your everyday life devotional at Joyce me.org 365 devvo the biggest thing that we need to do is learn how to think like God thinks and the only way you can do that is by knowing the word of God in words to live by Joyce Meyer shares how studying the word of God transformed her life experience a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God through the captivating collection of verses in this beautiful hard cover book by Joyce Meer discover the transformative power of His word words to live

by from Joyce Meyer get your YouTube exclusive offer today go to joyce.org wordss and the number two have you ever been trapped in a never-ending frenzy where every passing moment feels like a blur leaving you gasping for a chance to pause and catch your breath in her insightful book pursuing peace Joyce Meyer explores the importance of seeking peace at all costs this beautiful hard cover Edition is filled with meaningful scriptures and uplifting quotes from Joyce providing valuable guidance for living a peaceful lifestyle so grab a cup of coffee find a comfortable spot and embark on

your journey to find peace remember this limited time YouTube offer won't last long go to Joy me.org pursuit to get your Cy today and start your Pursuit Of [Music] Peace the Mind actually is the battlefield that's where we win or lose the war with Satan he said all he gets to say the rest of the day is M you start asking God to heal you and he will restore it's the God of all comfort and I am so grateful that I know how to call on God [Music]