All By Myself: The Fear of Loneliness

Scriptures: 2 Timothy 4:9-21, Proverbs 18:1, 24, Matthew 28:20, Isaiah 59:2

Twenty-two percent of all North Americans ate dinner alone last night. A Gallup poll recently stated that 3 out of 10 Americans are lonely. The reason why loneliness is so horrible is because God made us for relationships. He made us to need each other. When God put Adam in the Garden of Eden, you would have thought he had every single thing he could possibly want. There was no stress, no deadlines, not a financial worry in his life, yet God said, "It is not good for man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18). In 2 Timothy 4 the greatest Christian who ever lived, the Apostle Paul, writing his last book, his last chapter, his last words, tells us how to overcome the problem of loneliness.

"One of the reasons why it is not good to be lonely is because it causes great psychological damage. It is estimated that 80% of the people who seek psychiatric help come primarily because of feelings associated with loneliness." --Dr. Merritt

Keywords: lonely, loneliness, isolation, New Testament, Paul, separation, fear, afraid