Bill Gothard on Loneliness

In one of his “birthday card” mailings some years back, Bill Gothard made three observations about loneliness: 1. Loneliness is the anguish I feel when I sense that I am being cut off from the spirit of others. (“I am full of heaviness: and I looked for someone to lament with me; but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none.” -Psalm 69:20) 2.

Loneliness is the evidence that I was expecting others to meet my needs as only God can. (“My soul wait thou only upon God. For my expectation is from Him.” -Psalm 62:5) 3. Loneliness means that at that very moment, God feels the same anguish toward me because my basic delight is not in Him. (“I will delight myself in the Lord and He shall give me the desires of my heart.”-Psalm 37:4) Then Gothard adds, “Read Psalms when lonely; quote 73:25,” which says: “Whom have I in heaven but You?

And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.” 1Timothy Ferris, Scierue 83, October 1983, 39. 2 Daniel Pawley, “Ernest Hemingway: Tragedy of an Evangelical,” Christianity Today. 3 A.

W. Criswell, Great Doctrines of the Bible, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1982), 174. 4 Mary Drewery, William Carey: A Biography (Chicago: Moody Press, 1978), 74.

5Gcrhard and LB Gschwandtner, “The Gallup Survey on Success,” Personal Selling Power, May/June 1987, 7. 6Warren W. Wiersbe, Listening to the Giants (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1980), 101.