Person of Solitude in Culture of Crowds 09

Becoming a Person of Solitude in a Culture of Crowds

Restoring the Savour of our Salt Series               Message # 9

We’re going to be looking today at a passage in Mark chapter 6. We’ve been in a series of messages about restoring the savour of our salt as we confront the culture in which we live. We’ve been talking about the fact that I am either being molded by the culture around me, or I am being molded by the Word of God. I have two options. Somebody is molding me. Somebody is changing me. We’ve been talking about the fact that I can project my life down the road twenty years, and if I keep making the choices I am making, keep thinking the way I’m thinking, keep doing the things that I’m doing, keep nursing the attitudes that I have in my heart—I can project where I will be in twenty years. And we are trying to think about the idea that we want to be people who are molded by the Word of God so that as we project our lives twenty years down the road, that we see a good and encouraging outcome.

Mark chapter 6. We’ll be reading from verse 6 down to verse 13, and then drop down and pick up the story again in verse 30. If you’d like to follow along with me, that would be great.

Mark chapter 6, middle of verse 6, speaking about the Lord Jesus. It says, “And he went round about the villages, teaching. 7 ¶  And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits; 8  And commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse: 9  But be shod with sandals; and not put on two coats. 10  And he said unto them, In what place soever ye enter into an house, there abide till ye depart from that place. 11  And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city. 12  And they went out, and preached that men should repent. 13  And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them.”

Then go down to verse 30 to pick up the thread. “And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught. 31  And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. 32  And they departed into a desert place by ship privately. 33  And the people saw them departing, and many knew him, and ran afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together unto him.”

I’d like to tell you two very short stories, and ask you to say to yourself, which life do I identify with. The first man is a man who is a carpenter and contractor. He is a man very deeply committed to God. He loves the Lord greatly. He lives throughout the week for the Lord. And he has one very interesting feature about his life. This man, on a regular basis, has quiet solitude alone, away from everybody else. He is a person who is very much at ease saying “no” to people. He is a person who has margin in his life. On Sunday afternoons he typically disappears into his study and is not seen or heard from for several hours. He spent those hours alone every Sunday afternoon, away from other people.

A second man is also a believer in Jesus Christ. He is a missionary and a pilot. This man habitually stays on the go. He was in and out. He comes in change clothes, eats, and leaves. Come in, drop something off and leave. He would come in and get a tool and leave. All the time—he has more energy than a squirrel with ADD. He is just gone everywhere.

Two different people, both of them who are believers in Jesus Christ, with drastically different lifestyles.

I’d like to ask you today to reflect on your own life and say to yourself, which life is my life like?

The difference, the contrast between these two lives is arresting.

I’d like us to think today as we look at the passage we read a few minutes ago, about becoming a person of solitude in a culture of crowds.

Let me define four terms. They are so obviously simple you may think it foolish for me to define them, but I want to just take a minute to talk about them.

Number one, the first term is the term loneliness. Loneliness is very simply the feeling and the belief that you are alone in the world, that no one cares about you. Loneliness can happen on a deserted island, it can happen in a crowded school. Loneliness can happen in an empty room or a jam-packed elevator. It is simply the belief and the feeling that you are alone and nobody cares for you.

Definition two. Crowds. They are very simply a large gathering of people and generally speaking they are not necessarily relating to each other. It’s just a large number of people packed in one place, congestion, noise, etc. It happens at sporting events, it happens at entertainment events. It happens at political events. It happens at the store, at the mall, it happens on the highways. And despite the incredible number of crowds in America, we are profoundly lonely people. We are a nation of lonely people even though we live in the midst of crowds.

One person had a song years ago that had this phrase: “I don’t need a crowded house with nobody home.” Whoever wrote that line understood the difference between crowds and relationship.

The third term I want to define is the term community. A community is a group of people who are gathered together in genuine relationship. A community is different than a crowd. A crowd is measured by the number of people who came there. A community is measured by quality of relationship among the people.

If you are living in a community, it means you are living with people who are deeply committed to you, with people who forgive you, people who cut you slack, people who care about what is happening to you, people who are willing to help you even at personal sacrifice. Community is far different than crowds.

Last term I want to think about is the term solitude. Solitude is very simply the practice of getting away from the crowds, getting away from community, getting away from other people for the express purpose of having a quiet place to relate to God Himself. The goal of solitude is to find a place to be in relationship with God alone. It usually requires silence, quiet, away from other people.

There is a very tricky relationship between community and solitude. We need community. We need to be with other people. We need grace and truth relationships. Several weeks back we talked about being a person of community in a culture of isolation. What I am going to say today does not contradict that, does not violate that. The two of them work together in balance and harmony. We need relationships with other people. We need time of solitude when we are out of relationships with other people.

I’d like to read a quote from Deitrich Bonheoffer. Bonheoffer was a pastor during World War II in Germany, who openly opposed Hitler and the Nazi forces. He was imprisoned in a prison camp. He was killed just weeks before the Allies liberated the prison camps in Nazi Germany. Bonheoffer wrote a book called Life Together. In that book, he said, “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. The person who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings. The person who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.”

We need community, and we need solitude.

I want to ask you to think with me today about this passage in Mark chapter 6, and a spiritual chain of events that happened here when the Lord Jesus taught His disciples about their tremendous need for solitude.

Link # 1 in this chain of events—the disciples are immersed in ministry, immersed in relationships, and in responsibilities and in the regular stuff of life.

Verses 12,13, 30, and 31b. The disciples were fully immersed in what Jesus told them to do. They were not disobeying anything. They were doing exactly what He said to do. There is no indication they had bad motives. There is no indication they were using bad methods. There is no indication from the text they were overcommitted. They were doing just what He told them to do. They were fully immersed in the life that God had set before them, and many, many times you probably have experienced yourself fully immersed either in the life that God set before you, or that you set before yourself. You find yourself almost drowning, almost going under with the amount of things pressing in on you during these times of life when we are fully immersed in whatever is set before us. They were just going about life.

And in the process of going about life, the second thing happened, the second link. Verse 31a where the Lord Jesus said to them, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while….” The second link is that Jesus calls them to come away by themselves. Climb off your treadmill, get away from the other people, come away and be alone and be by yourselves. Get out of this chaotic parade of life and be alone.

The second thing He said was, I want you to come away by yourselves and find a secluded place, a deserted place. Find a place where there is no one there. The application for us is, find a place where there is no one physical, and no one electronic. Where you are not talking to someone and where you are not being bombarded by someone electronic who has been recorded on something. And thirdly, He said to them, I want you to rest for a little while. The fact is, we are people who need rest. The question is, do I ever allow myself rest?

There is a book written some years ago entitled, When I Relax, I Feel Guilty, and I suspect there are a lot of people in America who struggle with that very thought—when I relax, I feel guilty.

I want to ask you to think about ten positive things that we can do and that happen to us when we are involved in solitude. When we take verse 31 seriously—get away from people, find a secluded place, and rest.  Ten different issues that can happen in our life.

Number one. The first one is the one Jesus talked about, and that is that we have a chance to rest. We are finite people. Our batteries run down. We are not Energy Bunnies who can keep going and going and going. We run out of steam. We are people who very powerfully need to rest. God built that into us by showing us that if you don’t get a certain amount of sleep every night, you get extremely tired. If you don’t believe that, go to a Prayer Advance where you’ve got several people bunking in tight quarters in beds about six inches shorter than most people, and whenever you turn or thought about turning the bed makes an awful groan. And you get up the next morning powerfully reminded you are finite people. The batteries are drained. You need to rest sometimes.

God built that, not only into our physical bodies, but in the Old Testament He built it into the rhythm of every week. He built in the concept of the Sabbath and He said to His people, from sundown Friday night until sundown Saturday night, you may not work. You must rest. If you are going to be a follower of Me, I forbid you to work. Work like a dog six days—wonderful. Take a break on the Sabbath day.

One writer called it the rhythm of the sacred. The idea that we are built to work and to work hard, but at least one day a week to take a significant, prolonged rest.

One thing that happens to us when we find solitude is that we have a chance to rest.

The second thing that happens is, I have a chance to pray. I have a chance to speak to God about the things that are weighing on my heart, and to deal with the pressures and anxieties that are bearing down on me.

The Bible says I have two choices. I can either pray, or I can be anxious—Philippians chapter 4. I can either pray, or I can worry. When I take time for solitude, it gives me time to pray and to speak to the Lord.

Have you ever tried to speak to two people at one time? Two conversations at once? You get a phone call and you are talking to the individual. Someone in your home figures out who it is and needs to get a message to that person, so that person is mouthing something to you to tell them, and you can’t figure it out! And before you know it, you have lost track of what the person on the line was saying. You can either talk to one person or to nobody. That’s a major metaphor about how Americans pray. We try to talk to God at the same time we’re talking to the chaos. We are listening to the chaos and we’re lip syncing something to God. Solitude is an excellent chance for us to say, I am going to talk to God alone, one on One and pull out of the chaos for a little while.

Issue # 3. When I take time for solitude I have the opportunity to reflect. Very simply, the chance to think carefully and critically about our lives. Someone has said there is hardly anything more tragic than the unexamined life. Hardly anything more tragic than taking up your place in this chaotic parade and just keep marching until the parade is over. Periodically, we need to get out of the parade, let the band go on without us, sit on the curb, and think about, is this the parade I really want to be in?

I read a study of eighty-year-olds. They asked them their regrets. The top regret, the number one regret of eighty year old people in this study was, I wish I had taken more time to reflect, to think about my life, to say to myself, is this really what I want to be doing? Is this really where I need to be going?

Issue # 4, which follows from reflection. When I take time for solitude, I have a time to confess to God the things I need to confess to Him. When I talk time for solitude and I reflect on my life, God has a quiet moment in which He can look at my life and say to me, Here is an issue you need to deal with.

If I stay in the chaotic parade, if the band is still blaring, and if I’m still trying to march along, I don’t have time to think about those issues. And I suspect one of the reasons that we avoid solitude so strongly is because we don’t want to think about the things God might convict us of.

Periodically, I need to be a person who shuts off my treadmill, gets away, reflects on my life, and says, Father, what do I need to confess to You?

Fifth issue, fifth thing that we can do in solitude is that we have an opportunity to praise God for His greatness. To think about what a great God He is, to have some connection with how great He is, and to respond to Him in praise.

We are natural praisers. Whether you know Christ or whether you don’t care who Christ is, you are a natural praiser. If you read a great book, you tell all your friends, this is a great book. You’ll love it. We’re natural praisers.

If you go to a restaurant that you just totally enjoy, you go tell all your friends. If you find a great fishing spot, you just praise that fishing spots—but you don’t tell everybody where that is!

We’re natural praisers. We naturally praise things that we think are great. I believe because of the lack of solitude, we have ended up praising our books and restaurants more than we have praised our God. When I get alone in solitude, it gives me a chance to connect with His greatness and to praise Him the way He needs to be praised. Solitude is a catalyst for praise.

Issue # 6. If I carve out solitude in my life I have time for reading the Word of God. We are people who desperately need to hear what God says to us. We don’t need to own more Bibles. We don’t need more translations. We need to read the ones that we have!

The reality is, Satan would rather that I read anything else. He doesn’t care if you read the cereal box in the morning. He doesn’t care if you read the newspaper, or even the religious column in the newspaper. He’s real happy if I want to read the instruction manual for my cell phone. That doesn’t bother him at all. I can read whatever I want to read, as long as I don’t starting reading THIS BOOK. That’s when he gets anxious.

God gives us an opportunity in solitude to read this Book. We are very used to people having Bibles galore. But are we used to having people read them! Bibles are for owning, for putting on coffee tables. They need to be read. Don’t be like the lady who one day the pastor came by to visit. And after awhile she said to her little boy, “Son, would you go get the old book that mother loves so well?” And the little boy came back with the Sears & Roebuck catalog! Better to have the situation with the two little boys who were whispering, as they watched the grandmother of one of the boys. The one little fellow whispered to his friend, “Why does your grandmother sit there and read the Bible all the time?” And the grandson responded, “I think she’s cramming for her finals!”

We are people who need to hear from God and one of the powerful ways to do that is to get alone, away from everybody, and simply read the Book.

Number seven. In addition to reading it, we are people who need to meditate on it. Part of my own temptation in life is to say OK, I am going to read John 4 today. It’s my devotions. I read John 4, I check it off my list. What’s next on my list? I don’t think about it, reflect on it, and say, Lord, what do I need to know from that?

Meditation on the Word of God has a very bad name in America today, at least for Christians, because, number one we think people who meditate are fanatics. And number two, because the eastern religions use meditation and meditation has gotten a bad name. The reality is that the most powerful believers in the Bible both meditated and advocated meditation on the Word of God. And the further reality is that meditation on the Word of God is drastically different from any kind of eastern meditation.

Meditation in Eastern religions basically teaches that I am supposed to clear my mind of everything, get everything out of there, and I’ve got two choices. I can either think about nothing if I can accomplish that, and that’s a pretty rough assignment. Because, let’s face it, even if you’re thinking about nothing, you’re thinking about something. Or, I can get this mantra that I repeat over and over and over. And the point of that for Eastern religions is to say, if you can clear your mind of everything and think about nothing, you will attain some higher level of spiritual consciousness. That’s what meditation is in Eastern religions. It really only serves to open the mind to demonic infestation.

In the Christian faith, meditation is clearing your mind, not to try to think about nothing, but specifically to think God’s thoughts after Him, to think about the Word of God and make it a part of your heart and the way you think. To think about the greatness of God. Clearing our minds of all the things that clutter and press in and discouraging us, specifically so we can think about the Word of God and the Person of God as He has revealed Himself.

Solitude is a terrific catalyst for that kind of meditation.

Issue number eight, which follows right on the heels of meditation. And that is to be a person who is listening to God. Who is listening to see what thoughts God is bringing into my mind.

There is a story in 1 Kings chapter 19. The prophet Elijah has just killed the prophets of Baal. He has had a great spiritual victory. The king and queen are trying to kill him. He runs away into the mountains. He hides in a cave. 1 Kings 19. The first thing that happens while he is hiding in this cave is a terrific wind that comes over the mountain. The text literally says it was blowing the rocks apart. We have some bad winds at times, but I’ve never seen rocks blow apart!

And after the windstorm passed, the text says, God was not in the wind. The second thing that happened was a great earthquake that shook the mountain. The whole mountain rumbles and Elijah is hiding in this cave, feeling the shaking. And when it’s over, the text says, God wasn’t in the earthquake.

And then a great fire sweeps across the face of the mountain. Elijah in this cave watches this inferno go right across the face of the mountain. And the text says, God wasn’t in the fire.

It concludes the story by saying that then there was the sound of a gentle blowing, and then God spoke to him. I believe at least part of the point of that story is to say that God most often speaks to us in times of silence and solitude. God refuses to compete with the chaos and the chaotic parade.

Now, God could drown out the parade if He wants. But God prefers to speak to us in times of quiet and solitude.

I want to give you one caution here, and that is to say, always compare whatever you think God says to you with the Word of God. God will not violate His own Word by saying something to you personally. I cannot count the number of times in which people have tried to justify something absolutely gross and sinful, completely self-willed, by saying, God told me to do it. God does not tell us to do sinful things. And if I am ascribing sinful things to God, I am not only foolish, I am also blaspheming God. God wouldn’t tell me in this Book to live a holy life and then turn around in a quiet time and tell me to do something godless.

Issue number nine. If I take time for solitude, I have a chance to recalibrate my goals and rethink my plans. I have a chance to discern if I am on the right track or not. And ask myself this question, Do I really want to go in the direction I’ve been going? And ask myself this question, Are my plans honoring to God, or do I just want them very badly? Is this something God really wants, or do I just want it so badly I am asking God to baptize it? I am saying, God, I am going to go this way and please bless it, and if You’re not going to bless it, I’m going there anyway.

Solitude lets me reflect on that question.

Finally, number ten. Solitude give me a chance to rethink my values. To say to myself, am I chasing valuable things? Or is my whole life dedicated to pursuing trinkets?

One man tells the story of going to a rodeo out West. And after the rodeo there was going to be a big barbecue. A huge crowd to be served at this barbecue. They were lined up about eight people across moving slowly toward these tables where the BBQ was being served. There was a retired man next to him and he struck up a conversation with him. His wife was just on the other side of him. They are moving through the rodeo grounds, through the dirt in a fair-like situation. As they walked along, this woman two people over saw a ring lying on the ground. And when she saw the ring, she began looking around to see if anyone had seen it. When they got to it, she bent down very discretely and took that ring and put it over her little finger and then put her coat over her hand to hide this ring. This man is standing there, two and a half feet from her, watching all of this happen. Periodically, she would lift her coat and look at the ring and see how valuable it was. And then finally, she opened her purse and slipped her hand in and shook the ring off in the bottom of her purse and covered it and went on.

She thought she may have found something of great value. About ten feet behind where this woman found the ring, there was a carnival stand that was selling rings to children. The rings were probably manufactured at a cost of about ten cents. They were sold to children for a dollar a piece. And some little girl bought this gorgeous little red ten-cent ring, paid a dollar for it. And made about ten feet before she lost it. And this woman picked it up and just spirited it away.

I am sure when she got home in solitude with no one watching, she took that ring out and put it on the table and examined that ring and found out, I’ve got a bubble-gum machine ring here!

One of the blessings of solitude is that we can take the rings out of our purses and lay them on the table, take all the things that we love and value and that we are pursuing, we can take them all out of the wallet and out of the purse and out of the backpack and we can lay them on the table and say, is this valuable or not? Should I be pursuing this thing or not?

It’s a huge blessing to us to have solitude to be able to say, Am I pursuing something that has value, or am I pursuing a ten-cent rodeo ring?

Solitude has incredible value to us. The application is to say to ourselves, am I a person who is committed to regular times of solitude to get out of the chaotic parade, to stand back, to be alone, and reflect on the Word of God, on the Person of God, and on the things that I call valuable?

Here’s the third link in this chain of events. Verse 32. Success in building solitude in your life and my life demands discipline and follow-through to actually do it. “And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.”

In verse 32 the Greek word used for ship is a very technical word which means fly-fishing drift boat. Do you believe that? The application is to say, every person ought to have a fly-fishing drift boat!

No, that’s not exactly what that verse teaches! That’s called stretching the Greek a bit.

The verse, I believe teaches this. Number one, good intentions never build solitude into my life. Good intentions don’t ever make me spend time alone with God. I believe there are two things we have to do. First of all, we have to say, I am going to find a place to be alone with God. A little physical sanctuary. It doesn’t have to be big. It can be as small as a closet. It needs to be some place where I go where no one else is, where I can be physically alone. And secondly, I need to carve out of my schedule some time, a sanctuary in time where I can go to my physical place and be alone with God.

It doesn’t need to be a big physical place. It doesn’t need to be a big amount of time. It needs to be regular. It needs to happen on a regular basis.

I believe God is calling us to be people who say, I am not only going to have good intentions. I am going to follow-through.

Final issue, link number 4. Verse 33. Success in building solitude into a life demands perseverance in the face of the constant cultural pressures. Verse 33. “And the people saw them departing, and many knew him, and ran afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together unto him.”

Here is a modern paraphrase of that: And all the children saw mom attempting to build a little solitude into her life, and yea and verily did the children run ahead of mom, and they all crowded into her little sanctuary, and they did proceed to fight and fuss and to sabotage mom’s solitude.

There is incredible pressure in our families, and in our world, not to do this. It is going to require some remarkable follow-through and perseverance on our parts if this is going to happen.

The fact is, Satan working through the American culture wants us to be harried, out of breath, over committed, absolutely running. He really likes the way the person is living who can never even slow down to even think about what God might be wanting to say. That’s the way this culture would love to see us live, because if we don’t live that way, if we carve out a place and step out of the parade, if we get away from the chaos, there is a high possibility we are going to pray, we are going to read the Word of God, we are going to reflect on our lives. We are going to confess and praise and recalibrate our thinking. We are going to lay those rings out on the table and say, is this really worth pursuing, or is it not?

As you think about your own life, I want to encourage you to say to yourself this week, Am I a person who would be willing to create a little physical place and a short period of time on a regular basis for solitude.

A writer named Henry Nowan wrote, “without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life.”

If I am never alone, it is nearly impossible to live a spiritual life.

G.K. Chesterton had a very powerful statement about this issue of getting alone to be with God. He said, “The whole Bible is about the loneliness of God.” The entire Bible is about the loneliness of God and God wanting me to carve out time to be with Him.

Jesus’ command to His disciples and to us in this passage is, come away by yourselves to a secluded place and just rest with Me.

—PRAYER—