Goodbye Loneliness | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life Teaching
Goodbye Loneliness | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life Teaching
Loneliness has become an epidemic in our post-pandemic society. Today on Enjoying Everyday Life, Love McPherson joins Joyce Meyer, Ginger and Erin as they discuss truths from Scripture to help fight loneliness.
Joyce Meyer, one of the world’s leading practical Bible teachers and New York Times best-selling author, shares encouragement and advice to help us enjoy our daily lives.
With a heart to share Christ and love people, Joyce’s messages help people in all walks of life to grow in their faith, learn to study the Bible, find healing from the wounds of life, get answers to life’s questions and encounter the love of God in a powerful way.
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’ve heard.
Hi, friends. Thanks for tuning into enjoying everyday life.
You know, loneliness is something that we can all relate to.
And today, Joyce, Erin Clearly, and I are saying goodbye loneliness with god’s help and relationship expert love McPherson, who we love 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 Stockey with Erin Cooley, Joyce Meyer. And today, we have our friend back with us.
Relationship expert, love McPherson. Love, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you all for having me. I loved it. When I’m here. We do too.
We absolutely do. Love, love, love, love. There’s so much love that
there’s love all over this room.
Um, if you wanna 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.
Go to joycemeyer.organdfind those 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 Yeah. That they trust us. Yeah.
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, J Mar7773 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. Yeah. Tormented 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. Yeah.
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.
Uh-huh. 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 you’re what you’re saying and you’ve, you know, done what it takes to make them feel accepted, wanted, and heard because one thing about, uh, loneliness, the opposite is this.
The the it the 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 with loneliness.
Wow. Yeah.
What you said is really valuable because it it does become like a vicious cycle. Mhmm.
I’m lonely and I’ve learned not to trust people. Yes.
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.
Oh, absolutely.
You can be in a whole room full of people. And feel lonely.
That’s right.
Yeah. Especially if you’re insecure. Mhmm. 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
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 competence of myself.
Thank you for confirming. That that 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 Yeah.
Or shut ins people that can get out. And, um, people who are grieving
people who agree with someone close to bed.
That are sick. Yeah. You know, there’s probably people watching right now from the hospital or Mhmm.
Their bed at home and Sure.
You know, that that can be a lonely place, and you can feel 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 wanna know that somebody understands, and so I love Hebrews four that says we have a high priest who understands.
So he always understands us. And Yes.
Such a comfort
That that’s such a comfort to know that Jesus gets me when
you are leading us right into the clip that we want to show of you teaching right now because we’re gonna start In fact, Joyce is talking about 2nd Timothy 4 16 and talking about some of her own experience with loneliness.
Let’s look at 2nd Timothy chapter 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 me Wow.
And, you know, the there’s good stuff going on in here today in 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 going But the lord strengthened me.
I love it.
Now the second thing I wanna 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, they’re still 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 Yeah. My husband is great.
My family’s great, and I’ve worked my way through a lot of that, but I believe that loneliness is something that the enemy at tax 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 me.
Hey, man.
Some of the loneliest people in the world are some of the movie stars.
Some of the music stars.
You could have a widow leave 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 than you?
So see, interesting. That’s 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? Alright.
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.
Joyce, I think it’s so important that you you bring this up because there’s a tendency to feel guilty when you’re lonely.
Mhmm. Yeah.
Mhmm. 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 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. It’s a couple hundred miles from St. Louis.
And I’m going totally by myself for 7 days, and I am so looking forward to it.
Not because I don’t like people, but I just want 7 days to just do what I wanna do when I wanna do it, get up when I wanna get up, not have to work out with my trainer for 3 to 3 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 gotta work out.
But, uh, nobody wants to be by themselves all the time.
By the time I’m there 6, 7 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.
Mhmm. Or if you have to always have noise going on around you all the time.
But one of the things I wanna see us do today, and I’m sure you have planned.
In addition to talking about people being lonely, we wanna talk about ways that you can overcome that are avoided.
Absolutely. I’ve I’ve found myself being exactly where you’re talking about is because I I am one of those people who loves the party.
You know, I don’t wanna miss out on anything. Follow Ginger. Exactly. Exactly.
So it easy for me to depend on other people. Mhmm. And and to need that for my energy.
Or Right.
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’ve 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. Right. And you’re like, god, what you know, why?
What why 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.
Yes.
But we learn how to adapt to situations.
You know, one of the things I loved is the 7 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.
Yeah. Because you are talking to yourself 247. You have 70,000 thoughts a day.
And if your thoughts are not right and you don’t like you don’t want trauma to show up and say, hey, guess what?
We’re over here. If if all of that is haunting you
Mhmm.
Then you will separate yourself and you will be the one who abandons you because there’s 2 proximities that the Bible talks about.
He says I would never leave you nor forsake you.
The the the forsake is I’m gonna 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 are lonely.
Yeah.
So we will forsake ourselves. We will be filled 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 actually feel and heal.
Could you have done 7 days by yourself years go?
Like, before you have walked through all this with god in your life
Oh, I I kinda do that on a semi regular basis.
But before before you had such healing with god and you’re 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 charge. Sure.
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.
Because I was, you know, I was married to my first husband.
He had left me and disappeared or, you know, I was going through some kind of trauma in my life.
Yeah. You know, when I was pregnant and I was alone and Mhmm.
You know, it 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.
Been alone.
Yeah. You
know? And I I did experience a lot of loneliness.
And interestingly enough, you know, I worked at a church for 5 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 Joyce Meyer Ministries.
My ministry’s been a lot on the road, and so I went from having that group of people to being by myself a lot.
Yeah.
And one of the things that really was a problem for me for a few years was this loneliness. Mhmm.
You know, because I was by myself.
I didn’t really have anybody to you know, you can’t go tell your problems to the people you’re ministering today.
And, 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. The easier Yeah.
It got.
Yeah.
And Can
I ask you some choice? Because by the but 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’s 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 in 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 wanna 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, trend that. You you don’t really have a lawn mower.
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 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 people that I was ministering to.
Yeah.
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 wanna 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 need to do, if you’re lonely, don’t sit and feel sorry for yourself.
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 other by themselves.
Well, go volunteer at a hospital 2 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.
Mhmm. Yeah. 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 are even worse, and they need you.
Yeah.
That is so important what you just said because in all relationships, we should go in with the mindset to give, not take.
As a matter of fact, statistics show that people who are lonely, they actually repell 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 it.
It’s the most meaningful relationships that you can connect with or those, or you just You didn’t want anything in return.
You just went in to be a blessing.
And when you feel blessing, you walk out and you’re like, that person blessed me.
Yeah.
And so I just think that 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 wanna live to make you happy.
I wanna see how happy I can make you. Instead of Yeah.
Well, you’re you’re gonna you’re supposed to make me be. Absolutely.
Yeah. What’s in it for me?
That’s codependent. Yes. And you’d I expect my joy to come from him.
Right. That’s right.
And if
he doesn’t do it, then And
you’ve heard me say this god told me, stop giving Dave the responsibility for your joy. It’s your own responsibility.
Oh, wow. Yeah. 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, Right.
There in fact, the surgeon general has declared it an epidemic It is.
That it that it’s such a dangerous place for people to be long term Yeah.
That it’s worse than smoking packs of cigarettes.
12 a day. 12 cigarettes a day. It’s Wow. Spilling in your body.
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 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, uh, 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. Right. Yeah.
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.
Yeah. 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 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 and worship, Now let me tell you, don’t don’t start music because I’m love.
So you could praise all you want, but I love that worship.
It’s it’s something about it because I say I I’m slow dancing with the Holy Spirit.
That’s what I’m literally the intimacy Yeah. Rather than just a checklist.
Yeah. I got off
the checklist a long time ago. I will not be in a 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.
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The mind actually is the battlefield.
That’s where we win or lose the war with Satan.
He said all he gets to say Thank you so much. This is the last day’s mine.
You start asking god to heal you, and he will restore.
It’s the god of all comfort, and I so grateful that I know how to call on god.
