Come to Me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy loads of grief and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you … and you will find rest for your souls. Matthew 11:28,29

Returning to the subject of victims of loneliness in a local church setting, we saw last time that ‘blaming the victim’ is a common ‘solution’ for loneliness. “Well, if they feel lonely they should just minister to others.” “They should volunteer for something” “They should just get over it.” Problem is, the lonely ones are often already doing those things—and it’s not working for them.

Blaming the victim is a familiar ‘solution’ to problems that are embarrassing to admit we have; after all, aren’t churches the place we tell people to come to get connected? A place where they can belong? A friendly place? As I studied the subject, it soon became apparent that if the lonely church-goer was going to be helped, it would be themselves, not others, doing the heavy lifting.

A couple of reasons for that: 1st, it’s the nature of any organization to appeal to the mainstream rather than beating the bushes to solve problems that don’t seem obvious or that are awkward to admit we have. But 2nd, study after study shows that Pastors and other church leaders are usually the loneliest people in the church. If our leaders knew how to help someone who was lonely in the congregation, they wouldn’t be lonely themselves.

So how do victims of loneliness help themselves? As usual, Jesus is the answer. Today’s verse tells us that it is Jesus who does the heavy-lifting, when we cast our cares upon Him (1 Pet 4:7). So how does a lonely person ‘cast’ their loneliness on Jesus?

First, we admit our loneliness. When we feel lonely, don’t get all depressed. Admit the problem… Then tell Jesus. Admitting our negative emotions (labeling them) can actually lessen the grip they have on us. We can approach them more objectively and less out of hurt.

Admitting our negative emotions to Jesus is what Peter called “Casting our anxieties upon Him.” It’s what Jesus is talking about in today’s verse. Come to Him, bring our burden, and find rest for our souls in Him.

Exploit our loneliness. When we admit our weaknesses to ourselves and to the Lord we open ourselves up to His ministry. You see, nearly all human ministry teaches us to focus on our strengths. There are all kinds of books and surveys about that and these are useful in their place.

But God actually has a purpose for our weaknesses. He could have birthed us with all strengths and no weaknesses, but He didn’t. He could have eliminated our weaknesses when we gave our lives to Jesus, but He didn’t.

Instead he calls us to give our weaknesses to Him. Exploit our weaknesses for Him. Maximize their God-given purpose. Paul said that he gloried in his weakness so that Jesus’ power would rest on Him. Loneliness is but one weakness that we can give to Jesus and glory in so that His power is revealed in us.

Finally, guard against fixating on our loneliness or grief. Our enemy can easily turn that into resentment, bitterness and self-pity, all of which are sins, all of which make us miserable, none of which solves a single thing and all of which will only make things much worse.

Someone might object that this changes nothing. True, but what gets changes is us, our attitude, and as a result, the power of Jesus moving in us may just change our situation.