Finding God in Solitude and Silence

Introduction

A few weeks ago, we were about 35 seconds into a car ride, and Josie said, I’m bored. She’s just used to constant stimulation. Her hands usually have toys in them, or she’s watching a video or playing a game. That’s just kind of the nature of our culture and our society. And it’s one thing for kids to feel this way. But how many of us adults are the same way? We struggle to sit in silence or to be alone with nothing occupying our minds or our hands. And when we find ourselves in a moment like that, we’re almost desperately searching for something to distract us from whatever’s happening. This morning, I want to encourage us to take advantage of those moments of quiet, those moments of silence or solitude, moments when we don’t have something for our hands to be manipulating or moving, and for our minds to be engaged in.

Those can actually be really profitable times, and I want to work through some of that this morning and really just kind of hit a summary of passages along the way. I’m not going to read a long text to get us started this morning, but we’re going to look at a variety of them to see what’s happening within scripture and see if there’s some answers to this problem that we’ve already addressed in previous sermons about busyness, about hurry, constantly feeling like we have to get to the next thing.

The fear of silence. Of course, we’re always worried that we’re not sure what we’re going to say next, right? We lose our notes or we forget the next point or whatever it is, or that someone’s gonna think that’s what we’re doing. But actually, silence within a speech or a sermon can be extremely powerful. It gives time for people to actually think about what you’ve said. But I promise you, men who come up here and do this, if you actually make a point and you sit in silence for a few seconds, it feels to you like 30 or 40 seconds. It feels forever. I don’t know if that’s just a product of our culture or if that’s just kind of human nature in general, if that’s the way it’s always been.

I don’t know. But I just know that we are uncomfortable with silence. It’s it’s disconcerting. It’s it’s not easy for us to appreciate the good that comes from times of silence and solitude. A recent study discussed the very thing I was mentioning about Josie that boredom is a source of creativity and we’re stripping it away from our children. That was the idea of the study recently. And at times when we say, no, the devices have to go off, no watching TV. It’s amazing what children will do. They’ll go off and start playing games together and creating fantasy worlds that they imagine they’re living in, and all the creativity starts because that’s what happens when we allow our minds to wander.

Those of you who are young parents, I would encourage you to begin now to have times of silence and solitude, teaching your children the importance of not always having a screen in front of them, not allowing that to be what tames them and keeps them quiet at all times because of the nature of what that does and stripping away things like creativity and allowing the mind to wander. And we know deep in our soul that this is not good for us. But it’s just hard to stop, especially in our world in which productivity is pushed and speed is pushed, and everything has to be done quickly and fast. It’s just not the nature of how our world works. And then you add on top of that all the technology, the devices that do help us speed up, and we’re not going to get rid of them.

They are they’re beneficial in many ways, but learning how to control them is vitally important. A Microsoft survey recently of young people found that 77% of young people answered yes to this statement. When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone. Now, look, if you’ve ever tried, maybe some of you have read a book that talks about this and the benefits of silence or that sort of thing. And maybe you’ve tried this. I’ve done this before. I still experience this from time to time because it’s just such a part of our world. Have you ever done that? And you reach for your phone and you’ve purposely left it in another room. I mean, this is just how absorbed our brains are with the technologies and the devices that we have.

Or here’s another one. This is actually a medical thing. It has a name that I don’t remember, and I’m not going to tell you, but you feel your phone vibrate when it’s not even on you. That’s how immersed we are. And this culture of busy and hurry. So, what’s the solution? And all of this makes us feel overwhelmed and stressed, dishonnected, not only from God, but from each other, even though we’re supposed to be hyperconnected by all the things that we have in our world. How do we fix this problem? Well, I would suggest the Bible has some answers for us. Some things that we can think about and consider. And as I get into some of these things, I’m going to call spiritual disciplines. That’s what they’re called frequently.

You can call them habits. If that makes better sense to your mind, that’s fine. Let me just talk for a minute about that. It may be, maybe some of you are really good at this. That’s very possible. It may be that some of you are really good about isolating time in your day where you’re alone. And where you do valuable things like pray or study, or you’ve developed this already. And here’s the thing about disciplines. The idea of discipline is training. Right? And so if you’re already good with that, it may be other disciplines that you need to focus on more. That’s fair. And so while these are valuable, and I think the product of these should be a part of our life. And now we’re talking more about things we’re going to try to stay away from, like all the noise.

Later on, we’ll get to some things that’ll be a part of what you do in solitude and silence, things like prayer and study. And we’ll deal with those a little bit later. But maybe you’re already really good at that. And that’s fine. As we work through these disciplines, they’re not laws. These are not laws that you have to keep as a Christian. That’s not the idea. The concept here is things and tools that we can use to grow to become more like Jesus. We’re figuring out things, we’re seeing things in scripture that are helping us become more like him. And so maybe you’ve already developed that. That’s great. Maybe you can help people around you who are struggling with that. A spouse or a friend, someone else in the congregation who says, Hey, I need help.

That’s great. You’re an amazing resource if you’ve developed this in your life, and probably some of you have. But the idea here is to train ourselves. That’s what discipline is. And so we have to understand some things about that. It’s not always going to be easy. You’re not going to implement this tomorrow and then think, great, this is so easy, I’m going to do this the rest of my life. It’s going to be a struggle. And the reality is the people who need it the most, it will be the hardest for. That’s the nature of how disciplines work. If you’re already worried about the sermon I’m going to preach later about fasting, that probably means you need it. I’m right there with you. That’s the idea.

1. Solitude and Silence Were Jesus' Regular Rhythm

Thanks. How about that? That’s the nature of how this works. This is not about rules and laws, and when we begin to turn it into that, we’re really missing the point. It’s about how we can grow to become more like Jesus. So the first thing we do is we look to scripture, we look to Jesus, and we think, why should we do this? Why should I practice silence, solitude? Why is this important? And the first place to start is clearly Jesus saw value in it. We look at Jesus’ life and he’s doing this regularly. Solitude and silence were a part of Jesus’ regular rhythm. Luke 5, 16, which is the verse I put on the title slide, says, but he would withdraw to desolate places. This is just the nature of what he did.

He would serve, he would minister, he would heal, he would be surrounded by crowds, and then he would get away by himself. This is his pattern. And when he had time alone and time with God, then he would return to continue working. As we’re going to see, he teaches his disciples to do the same sorts of things. And so I just asked you do you have any kind of pattern in your life? Any plan to recharge spiritually, to reset, to be ready for the next thing. Or is this something where you just constantly feel like you’re beating yourself into the ground as you do one thing after another and you can’t get above water. You’re overwhelmed. It’s a struggle. And then the next thing comes, we need this done, or we have this service that needs to happen.

Oh, just another thing I have to add to my list. The reality is the busier we are, the more desperately we need solitude and silence. And Jesus himself demonstrates this.

It won’t be the only place that we look, but you can make your way over to the early part of the Gospel of Luke. And I just want to reinforce this idea that the wilderness, the wilderness is kind of this place. It doesn’t mean like sometimes it maybe is called the desert in your Bible. It’s not like a sandy place with no water necessarily. The idea of the wilderness is that it’s just kind of away. It’s away from everything. And we see within scripture repeatedly that the wilderness, which is essentially the idea of solitude and silence, is a regular place of spiritual importance. It just continues to surface and pop up as something vital to the story. Beginning all the way back in Luke chapter 3 with John the Baptist.

This is actually where the word of God comes to him. He is in the wilderness. He’s separated from everybody else. And by the way, this even goes further back into the Old Testament to people like Elijah, right? Remember when Elijah is depressed, he’s he’s weary, he’s worn, he’s just defeated the prophets of Baal, had this great victory, and now he’s depressed and sad, and Jezebel’s chasing him, and he goes off. God sort of like pushes him off by himself, and while he’s alone in solitude and silence, he comes back to reality and regains his senses. Right? So it doesn’t just start with John the Baptist, but in the Gospel of Luke, we see here this is where he does. He goes into the wilderness. And this is where the word of God first comes to him.

Jesus retreats to the wilderness for 40 days prior to his ministry in the next chapter. And I think sometimes, particularly if we don’t actually understand the nature of what happens with this kind of discipline, we might imagine, well, this is a time of weakness for Jesus. I think it’s actually totally the opposite. He is getting off by himself and he is gaining strength through being alone by spending time with the Father. And notice when Satan comes to tempt him, he rejects him up and down in every sort of way with scripture. There’s no way that the devil can penetrate the armor of Jesus as his mind is prepared and ready for defense. This is not a moment of weakness for Jesus. It’s a moment in which he’s prepared.

More on that later. Jesus goes into the wilderness after a night of healing and exorcisms later in the chapter.

Demons are coming out of people, and he’s doing this through the night.

Take the time you need to rest. Jesus goes out into the wilderness by himself and he recharges there. That’s what he most needed in that moment. That’s what he realized. As the crowds continued to increase, which Luke emphasizes that reality, even up to chapter 12, where it says, so many thousands are surrounding him. Jesus continues to withdraw more and more. Including him going off all night in prayer before he chooses his twelve apostles. Even up to the very end of the story, before he faces his arrest and crucifixion, it says he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and he knelt down and he prayed. Even in the last moments, he’s withdrawing, and he’s focusing on his purpose and why he was sent. And not only that, but Jesus taught the value of solitude and silence to his disciples.

2. Jesus Taught Solitude and Silence to His Disciples

So all of those we just looked at were in Luke, but I want to take you to Mark chapter 6. There’s an interesting account here. In Mark chapter 6, toward the end of this, well, it’s actually toward the middle of the chapter in verse 31, he has sent the disciples off on what we often call the limited commission. They’re going out two by two. And they come back and they’re ready to tell Jesus about all the things they’ve done and what they’ve taught. And here’s how Jesus responds to them. Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. I mean, they’re excited about all the work and the healings and everything. And Jesus says, How about we just slow down? You don’t even have leisure to even eat.

Right? This is how busy they had been. There’s crowds everywhere. People are coming and going. This is all right there in verse 31. And they couldn’t even eat. And Jesus says, hey, let’s get away. Let’s go rest and get some time alone. Similarly in Luke chapter 9, Jesus is modeling this for the disciples. He’s doing in his own ministry. And this is a part of his normal pattern, but he’s showing them as well. So in Luke chapter 9 and verse 10, on their return, the apostles told him all that they had done, and he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Beth Seda. It’s not always about doing the work. The work’s important. The service is important. Right? The preaching and teaching and the healing and all of that was really important for Jesus and for his disciples.

But Jesus is emphasizing in his own life and in the life of his disciples as he’s training them about how to go about this, the importance of rest. The importance of getting away, have some silence, some solitude, and we’re going to see some reasons for that here in just a moment. I just want to emphasize the reality of what he’s teaching. And even as he’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, he’s talking about prayer. And remember what he says about prayer? It’s not about going out and doing this publicly. You go into the secret place. You go into your closet and you shut the door where it’s quiet and you’re alone. And then you can really connect with the Father. The one who sees in secret will reward you openly.

There’s various other places we could go, but you get the point. I mean, Jesus, this is a part of what he does. It’s his pattern, it’s what he teaches, both to his disciples and to thousands who are listening to him when he speaks in the Sermon on the Mount. The importance of silence and getting away and having time to think and reflect and meditate.

3. An Opportunity for Spiritual Clarity

And so, how is this going to help? You know, Jesus does this. I see Jesus is doing it. He’s encouraging his disciples to do it. Why would he encourage such a thing? Well, I would suggest to you that it is because it provides an opportunity for spiritual clarity. That’s a very broad phrase that encompasses a lot of different things. But the idea is it opens a door, a pathway for me to have some clear thoughts about what actually matters most in life. That’s really hard to do amongst all the noise of the world around us. One author made this statement the noise of the modern world makes us deaf to the voice of God. And sometimes we don’t mind that. Because the voice of God can be convicting in our lives.

It can show our inadequacy. It can expose areas of weakness, things that we’re not doing well. And so it’s easier to continue the conversations and to do all the socializing and to be with our friends. It’s a lot harder to take some time and get away and be alone, have solitude, and actually have to face myself. That’s tough what we see in these moments when people are going into the wilderness is that the wilderness, when they get away into silence and solitude, when they withdraw and get away from people, this is a time of spiritual strengthening and preparation. It’s even a time where they enter sometimes the spiritual battlefield, like Jesus, when he’s in the wilderness for 40 days, and he’s now tempted by the devil during that whole time.

We just get a little piece of it toward the end. But this is the spiritual battlefield he’s facing here. This is where it’s taking place. It’s where John prepares. It’s where Jesus prepares. It’s where the disciples are preparing. Repeatedly throughout the story. It’s going into the wilderness. In Greek, it’s the Eremos. Sometimes it’s translated different ways. And so if you can look those sorts of things up, you can find how often it is found within the gospels. And it’s there that people are preparing for the work that God has for them to do. The wilderness helped Jesus stay focused on his mission. There’s a couple interesting accounts that revolve around this idea. One of them is in Mark 1. In Mark chapter 1, it says, this is verse 35, and rising very early in the morning, this is what Jesus tended to do.

Sometimes he would go out all night, so it did vary. But here he’s rising early in the morning while it’s still dark. He departed and went out to a desolate place. That’s the wilderness. And there he preached. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him. And they found him and said to him, Everyone’s looking for you. And he said, Let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out. Now, why are they looking for Jesus? Jesus had been healing all of them. He’d been taking care of all their problems, and Jesus was happy to do that. He was compassionate. People were coming to him sometimes all night, and he’s healing them. But in the wilderness, as he’s taking time to connect with God, and his disciples are searching for him, and we’ll come back to that here in a little while as well.

Now he’s regaining clarity of focus. He’s not there just to go heal a bunch of people. That’s not his purpose. It’s kind of goes along with it, but what he’s actually there to do is preach the good news of the kingdom. He’s there to preach the gospel, and it’s not to be just in one place. Now it’s time to go to other towns and villages and make sure other people hear this news. You can imagine how difficult that would be in the moment. If you’re surrounded by the crowds, everyone’s coming to you, wanting to be healed, and telling Peter, okay, cut it off right here. You know, this is the last guy. Nobody else gets it, right? We got to go. Seems kind of harsh. Why won’t Jesus heal us?

You know, he’s healed all these other people. Why can’t he stay a little bit longer? People will always push and demand and want your time and will not let you have this if you allow it. And thus the pattern where Jesus gets away, he’s refocused on his mission, and now when the disciples find him, he says it’s time to go. Luke chapter 4 has a similar type of account. Another one of these stories where Jesus goes off into the desolate place. This is verse 42 toward the end of Luke. When it was dead, parted and went out into a desolate place. And the people sought him and came to him and would have kept him from leaving them, but he said to them, I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns as well, for I was sent for this purpose.

4. We Learn to Listen to the Voice of God

They would have kept him from leaving, it says. Right? They had other ideas, self-focused. I’m not saying that’s necessarily bad. I think they have good intentions, and that’s the thing. It’s not always bad intentions. Sometimes people have really good intentions, or there’s good works, or some kind of good service to be done. But if that’s not the purpose you have, and you’re allowing yourself because of the noise to get drawn away, it’s going to create problems. And Jesus understands this. And so the wilderness helped him stay focused. And so in silence and solitude, we learn to listen to the voice of God. It opens up a pathway, a door for Scripture to discern the thoughts and the intentions of our heart, and that can be unsettling.

That’s the nature of what Scripture does, as we’re told in Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12. And when we spend time with God and we get away and we meditate on scripture, that’s the sort of thing it does. It makes us think about who we are and what we’re doing and the nature of where our heart is and the inadequies that we have and how we need to change. That doesn’t happen when we’re just around a bunch of people talking about sports or life in general. Occasionally we may have some deep conversations with people, and that’s great, and that’s helpful. But often we enjoy the distraction. And there’s good reasons for that. Not necessarily a bad thing, as long as we are also realizing the importance of solitude, of silence, of facing myself for who I really am.

Dallas Willard said, solitude carries its risks. In solitude, we confront our own soul with its obscure forces and conflicts that escape our attention when we are interacting with others. What’s happening in this process is we’re allowing our minds to wrestle with what is true and what is false. We’re learning to meditate through the truths of scripture and question presuppositions and biases that we have. When we actually force ourselves to sit in silence and solitude, we will wrestle with that stuff. It will come to our minds and we’ll have to deal with it. And we won’t be able to get away from it. And hopefully we will be prompted to search for answers in scripture and through prayer, through further connecting with God. And in the process, we build our faith.

It opens these doors to admitting our inadequacy before God, reading scripture, allowing it to read us, grasping the power of God’s grace and our need for trust. The psalmists have this down so well, many of them. You read through the Psalms and the various things they’re going through. And they have clear patterns within Jewish culture where they are having times of prayer, morning, afternoon, and evening, and so this is sort of built into the fabric of their society of having these times of silence and solitude. It’s just very natural for them. It’s something we’ve lost for the most part in our culture. And as they’re wrestling with difficulties and struggles, they’re writing things like this. For God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation.

He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. How long will all of you attack a man to batter him? Like a leaning wall or a totering fence. They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. Have you ever faced that? Maybe corruption in the workplace, someone saying things about you that aren’t true. I mean, the psalmist are facing the same things. He continues, For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence. For my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be shaken. On God rest my salvation and my glory, my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

Trust in him at all times, O people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. These are the thoughts we have in silence. Especially patterns of silence, where we begin to see the way God works and how God moves powerfully in our lives, and it’s not all reliant on me. And in silence, I have to realize that. I see the things I’ve done wrong. I realize the things I can’t do. I realize the things that have happened that couldn’t possibly have been done by me. And I begin to recognize the power and the glory of God. It’s sort of like when we go out and we witness creation. I mean, the scriptures talk about this too. Have you ever gone somewhere and you just you sit there in silence?

Blown away by the power of God and what he’s done. I remember when I was younger, I used to ski every weekend when I lived in Vermont. And there was this mountain. It’s called Madonna Mountain. It was like a straight up wall when you got on the lift. And there was this one week, it was just, we had all sorts of snow dumped, and then it was ice. And it looked like one of those things that you shake, you know, you turn upside down and shake, and it’s just glistening with eye. It was just amazing. I’m going up this lift, and you’re looking at a wall in front of you. And it’s just ice-covered pine trees everywhere. Just I mean, I can’t open the stores of snow.

5. We're Gonna Have to Make Some Specific Plans

This is what God tells Job. I can’t do any of this. And you begin to realize how small you are. And the nature of everything that’s happening in the world and how little power influence I actually have on anything that actually happens. And we might think that’s a bad thing because we like to have control. We like to think we influence so much. But the reality is when we sit in that moment and we see how big God is and how little I am, that’s a faith-building experience. So I could go on about how this helps, but I want to get to this before we’re done this morning, and that is what do we do? How do we incorporate this in our lives? Well, like anything else, if we actually care about it, we’re gonna have to make some specific plans.

We’re gonna have to establish some plans. We’re gonna have to say, and it’s gonna involve some sacrifice, which is a later discipline we’ll talk about. We’re gonna have to say, I’m gonna give up one thing for another. And that’s gonna involve some planning, and it’s gonna involve some boundaries, deciding how things are going to work. In this, I do think it’s important that we are considerate of our friends and family, but the reality is our need for connection to God is higher. It’s higher than that. I mean, Jesus says, if you do not hate father and mother, and if you don’t love me more, you’re not worthy of me. And I think ultimately what we have to understand is we are giving our best self to the people around us when we do this right.

When we actually make plans to separate, have solitude and silence to connect with God. We are then offering our friends and family our best self because we’re being shaped by the Messiah Himself. And so, yes, there needs to be some communication, and please don’t just go off by yourself without telling your spouse and letting them know what you’re doing. Let’s not do that. Tell them if you’re gonna have times where you’re gonna completely shut off your phone, or like if you have a certain time of day, they’ll learn that eventually.

So it’s not that we don’t communicate and that we’re we don’t respect people. That’s not the idea at all. But we do need to understand the importance of this. And we need to have some specific plans in place. This is gonna be tough. For someone who’s not done this before, it’s going to be very hard. And so we have to start small. Start with five or ten minutes, maybe once a day at first, or twice a day if you can make that happen. Usually early in the morning or late at night, just like we see in the life of Jesus is gonna be when this works the best because it affects less people that way. If I start at 11:30, right before lunch and say, okay, I’m gonna spend an hour of time by myself.

Good luck. That’s a pattern that’s not gonna work well. Right? So let’s be smart about how we do this and how we plan our schedules. It’s gonna be work way better if I get up 30 minutes earlier than I normally do and take some time there. Or pausing in the evening, often when not a lot is going on, you know, 8:30, 9 o’clock at night. Here’s the thing. We like to talk a lot because we’re uncomfortable. But one author made this, I think, a cute realization that we can sit in silence with the people we love. And how often do we sit maybe in our living room or other places and we don’t even do a whole lot of talking? Pick up a book and read.

Do something of value. Take 20 minutes to do something that actually helps rather than this. You know what that is, right? Yeah, you all do. Scrolling on our phones, looking at devices, all of that, which is completely worthless for our brains and actually detrimental. Some of that we can do, but take some time to start small and then grow this bigger as you learn to love it more, which you probably will as you see the impact. The first thing I would suggest is to just sit in silence for five minutes and see how hard that is. Just do it. Don’t bring your Bible, don’t bring another book, don’t plan to pray. Just try to sit there in total silence and solitude for five minutes and see how you do.

Now it’s not because we don’t want to introduce those things, but I want us to get the point of how uncomfortable that is.

Not even minutes. This is training, remember? Discipleship is about training our mind, training our body. It’s gonna take work and it’s gonna be hard. And so then eventually we’ll we’ll do some short readings for reflection, meditation, prayer, journaling. There’s various things that you can do, and you can decide how that’s gonna work or what’s gonna best help you. There’s lots of different concepts, and you can get books that help with this. There’s lots of them out there. There’s probably some people who could suggest some who do these sorts of things. usually they’re just like daily journal devotional type things. That’s one way to do it. But then customize it for yourself. If you don’t want to do every section, don’t do every section. Do what works and what helps you.

That’s the point. The point here is to grow and to become like Jesus. And so you’re gonna have to make adjustments along the way. Right? Figure out the things that work and the things that don’t work. And here’s the most important thing. You have to plan to do this, or it will not work. And what I mean by that is you must be willing to put down things that matter to you to prioritize this, or you will never make it happen. If you can’t take one thing that’s good and put it down to do something else, all that is being caught up in the very problem we’ve already been discussing, which is the problem of hurry and busyness in our life. You will always be too busy, you will always be overwhelmed, you will always say, I don’t have time for this.

6. Obstacles We Have to Accept

And the reality is you are probably so busy you don’t have time not to do it. We desperately need to reinvest in ourselves in things like solitude and silence, which ultimately lead to things like study and prayer and deeper connection to God. And if we’re saying we don’t have time for it is that person who most desperately needs it in their life. So let’s talk about some obstacles. There’s some things we just have to accept. If we’re going to overcome the hindrances that are going to be in a way. The first of those is we have to accept that technology is a problem. If you plan to do this with your phone or your iPad, you will fail. You will fail because that device is built to distract you constantly.

Everything about it. Even if you schedule your notifications, which you should do, and even if you put it on silent, and even if you do all those things, I mean, why is it that’s even built into your phone to put it on silent? Because we realize it’s a problem. Right? And so you’re gonna have to find some way to get that thing away for a very small portion of time, five, ten, thirty minutes, maybe even longer as you get more used to this. But just accept that technology is the noise of the modern world that is keeping us from important things like this. And so the longer we try to hold on to that in this very small portion of time that we’re saying we’re dedicating to solitude and silence, the less likely we will be successful in doing it.

The second is we just have to accept this is gonna be hard. It’s gonna be uncomfortable, it’s gonna be painful to force myself to do this. I’m gonna fight the urge to say I have to do this and I have to do that, and I have to stay busy. I will be fighting that tooth and nail, especially when I first start this. But remember the purpose. Remember the goals to be like Jesus, to reset, to refresh, to rest, to be able to rest our soul and the things that matter to prioritize what’s most important. And some of this is gonna be very hard at first because there’s gonna be things revealed in my mind when I first begin this that I do not want to have revealed in my mind.

Now I’m gonna have to wrestle with things about myself that I’ve never wrestled with before when I begin this process. And that’s going to be hard at first.

And then it can become a very enjoyable process in the end. Any of you who’ve done some of this before, you understand the nature of how that works. And then here’s what I want us to understand is probably the biggest obstacle, and that is that people will constantly try to disrupt you. It’s just how it is. Right? I mean, we’ve seen this already. Right? Jesus is going up early in the morning. I mean, they try to interrupt Jesus, and he’s Jesus. Right? He’s going off purposely into the wilderness. And Peter, being Peter’s like, hey, we couldn’t find you. Where are you, Jesus? There’s more people who want to be healed. You got to get back here. And he’s like, no, Peter, you don’t understand. You’re missing it, right?

And we have those people and we have those things in our life that are going to constantly try to disrupt whatever plans that we make. The people are following Jesus around. He tries to get away by himself in multiple stories. The people even run around on land to get to him on the other side of the lake. This is just how life is. Moms, you get this, don’t you? I mean, you literally can’t even go to the bathroom without little people following you and trying to get your attention. And let me tell you, tell them you need time and make them go away. You have to do it. If they have to sit and watch Blue E or some other TV show, so you have 10 minutes to sit in silence and pray, do it.

Decide you’re going to prioritize your spiritual growth. And everything is not about your children. And husbands, to the extent that we can help with this, we need to help, while also we need to do this ourselves. But our wives carry a very heavy burden, a very important burden that manages a lot of their time and a lot of their day that it’s very hard for them to get away from it. So this is a very particular need and something that’s difficult for them in a very special way because they care and have so much compassion and love their children so much, it’s very hard for them to tell them to go away. But there’s a time for everything in life, as the wise man says in Ecclesiastes, and there is a time for silence and solitude, and mothers, you need it.

This is important. Your kids need to see you needing that. They need to come in and have you tell them, go away. I’m having silent time, I’m reading my Bible, and I’m praying right now. They desperately need that. They need that model and that pattern. They need to say, Oh, mom’s reading her Bible right now, I need to go find something else to do. This is the sort of thing that we need. And fathers, we have our own things that we need to be doing as well. We’ll probably talk some more about that a little bit later on, but they need to see us planning and scheduling and making this a priority in our family. And that’s hard. It can be hard because we’re so busy and we have so many things to do and we’re running all over the place constantly, but we have to settle with God and get our family settled with God in a way they see that as a central part of our life.

And that doesn’t just mean coming here. It means in our home. And then maybe a little bit of a backing off of some of this is appropriate as well. Just accepting the reality that it’s not always going to work out just the way we want. Silence is extremely hard. Solitude’s way easier. You can go shut yourself in a room and you may hear the kids playing and do that. You can’t get rid of the silence. You can put headphones in and you can choose a different kind of noise. And sometimes that’s just what you have to do. It’s not always going to work out just right. We’re seeking things like solitude and silence. And sometimes we need to get away. Sometimes we need true rest for like a lengthier period of time, like a Sabbath.

Conclusion

We’ll talk about that some other time. But sometimes we just have to take what we can get, and we take the solitude, even though we have to sacrifice some of the silence because we know what’s most important and we need to have this time to pray in our closet, to get away to a quiet room as best we can, realizing that we can’t always drown out all the noise around us. But if we’re going to overcome this feeling of constantly being overwhelmed and constantly being hurried and busy and feeling like we can’t ever get above water, we’re going to have to start following the things that Jesus does. And realize that he has the answers. He was busier than any person in this building this morning.

He had crowds of people following him everywhere he went, and yet he got away. And he spent time with his father, and he prayed and he meditated from beginning to the very end of his ministry. And I can do the same thing. You can do the same thing. If we want to be like him, we can prioritize this. And we can begin to make it happen in our life. Maybe the thing you need to consider this morning is your need for Jesus Christ in your life at the moment. Sacrificing self, giving up who you are, becoming something different, beginning this process of discipleship. And if you’re ready for that, we’re ready to help you. You can begin that by giving your life to Jesus Christ, dying with him in the waters of baptism, and be resurrected to newness of life, beginning to walk this new life, following Jesus, being like him.

We would love to help you with that this morning. Can we? Why don’t you come as we stand and we sing?