Silence & Solitude: Spiritual Practices
Hey guys! If you don’t know me, I’m Leah; I work at Christian Student Fellowship, a nondenominational campus ministry.
We just walked through the Gospel of John, stopping at each of Jesus’s 7 I AM statements, where He tells us who He is. He tell us that He is able to satisfy all our needs, that He reveals God and the way to salvation, that He’s the only way to enter God’s presence, that He is good and he has our best interests at heart, that He will protect us, that He is the key to life, and much more.
Before spring break, Nate talked about the last I AM statement, where Jesus says that He is the true vine.
John 15:5
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
It’s that word “abide” that leads us into our next series. To “abide” or to “remain” in Christ means to cultivate a close relationship with Him, to be with Him, become like Him, and to do as He did. And Jesus didn’t leave us alone to figure out how to do this. He gave us the Holy Spirit, who has come to guide and comfort and enact God’s Kingdom in the world through us. Jesus also gave us His example, which we can read about in the Gospels. And it is through the Holy Spirit and Jesus’s example that all the Christians who came before us have compiled a list of what are called “the spiritual disciplines.” John Mark Comer, a pastor in Portland, Oregon, who writes a lot of books and has a podcast, calls them the practices. He lists nine: Sabbath, prayer, fasting, solitude, generosity, Scripture, community, service, and witness.
Over the next six weeks, we’re going to talk about some of them. Unfortunately, this time is limited, and we would never be able to cover all of the practices, definitions, purposes, and applications of each in the 15 to 20 minutes we have here with you on a Tuesday night. So I encourage you to look into them for yourself, ask questions to someone you know and trust, and just try. But they are too important not to talk about because the disciplines are how we practice abiding in Jesus. Jesus said “abide in Me” and this is how we do it. Our obedience comes out of our love for God and our gratitude to Him for the work He did to save us. It’s already done. We’re not earning our salvation or higher favor with God. He already loves you fully and perfectly. The spiritual disciplines won’t save you, but they can help make you aware of how you are being sanctified by Jesus. They are a means to an end of what has already taken place on the cross and in the empty grave.
I think John Mark Comer says it better than I have in his book Practicing the Way: “The practices are disciplines based on the lifestyle of Jesus that create time and space for us to access the presence and power of the Holy Spirit and, in doing so, be transformed from the inside out” (177).
If we don’t make space for God, how will we hear Him speak? If we never hear Him speak, how will we do what He commands?
Tonight, I want to talk to you about solitude, the 4th one on John Mark’s list. But all wrapped up with solitude is the idea of silence.
I think a lot about a zombie apocalypse. Stick with me. Probably just because I really like the Walking Dead and I Am Legend and other shows and movies like them, but mostly because I read a book one time about some sort of apocalypse where most of life as we know it changed. And in this book, the biggest thing this person described was the silence there suddenly was in the world. Without electricity, it was suddenly much quieter. Think about it this way: even when it’s silent, what we would call silent, there are still sounds. If I stopped talking, it’d be quiet, sure, but there would still be a low hum of the sound equipment, the AC, the lights, and the refrigerator in the kitchen. Even if we turned all that off, there would still be the sounds of cars outside or an airplane that just happened to be flying overhead or maybe an AC unit or other sort of machine from the next building over that would leak into this space.
I think a lot of our brains are kind of like that. We don’t notice the low hum of anxiety turning in our thoughts when we have a show on in the background or we’re hanging out with our friends. We don’t hear our inner critic as loudly when we’re jamming to our favorite song while we run or walk. We don’t feel the overwhelm of just how much we have to do when we fill every moment, even when we’re just waiting in line, with a Tik Tok or or a “quick” scroll on Instagram or an audiobook or some other noise. John Mark Comer said in his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, “Could it be that we’re using external noise to drown out internal noise?” (132). My roommate Meygan calls the internal noise “the dread.”
I think, and I’ve read lots of books that also claim, that noise is the enemy of abiding.
Our fear of that internal dread, the horror, drives us to noise and crowds. And this is a societal thing, not just us–there’s music playing in elevators and at grocery stores, at the gym, on the streets. It’s normal to walk around with an earbud in, listening to music or podcasts, talking to a friend, or even playing lofi beats or white noise to help you with concentration. There’s a whole genre of (music? sounds?) just called noise–white noise, brown noise, green noise, pink noise. The world has gotten so noisy that sometimes we even use other noise to drown out the noise. It’s a vicious cycle.
It’s hard to find silence in a world like ours. It’s hard to find solitude. But it’s necessary. We read all over the Gospels that Jesus frequently went away by himself to pray and spend time alone with His Father.
Luke 6:12
In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.
Matt 14:23
And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone
Mark 1:35
And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.
Matt 26:36
Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.”
Jesus needed time in the quiet place.
Sorry for quoting John Mark Comer so much, but it’s relevant; he says in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, “If you don’t set aside time to be alone with God, your relationship will wither on the vine” (135).
One more and I’ll be done:
“The noise of the modern world makes us deaf to the voice of God, drowning out the one input we most need. I mean, how do we have any kind of spiritual life at all if we can’t pay attention longer than a goldfish? How do you pray, read the Scriptures, sit under a teaching at church, or rest well on the Sabbath when every chance you get, you reach for the dopamine dispenser that is your phone? To [quote] Catholic father and social critic Ronald Rolheiser, ‘We … are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion.’” (John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry 122).
You’re not going to be able to practice any of the other disciplines if you don’t make space. And making space means cutting through all the noise, external AND internal, and practicing silence and solitude. “Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life.” Henry Nouwen said that (as quoted by John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way 183).
This is not silence and solitude for the sake of silence and solitude; this is for the sake of experiencing God. Richard Foster says in his book The Celebration of Discipline, “The purpose of silence and solitude is to be able to see and hear” (98). To see and hear the truth about who God is, who He says you are, and how He is moving in the world. To see how the vine is taking root and growing and pushing out sin and death and evil, right here, right now, and how you are invited to participate in it. To hear the voice of God and allow the Holy Spirit to transform you, to sanctify you and make you more like Jesus, make you into who you were made to be. To glorify God and enjoy Him forever, starting right now.
Have I convinced you yet?
Okay, Leah, that’s great and all, we should be taking time to be with God. How are we supposed to do that when we’ve got classes to go to and notifications on for Blackboard and CSF telling me to come to freshmen night or go backpacking and also mom called this morning and we haven’t called her back and a fifty page paper due next week and also our favorite artist released a new album and what if we miss something on Instagram and don’t get to see our cousin’s baby’s first steps and our friends want to go play pickleball and we haven’t even mentioned work yet and also — ??
[Deep breath. Hold. Release.]
I know there are tons of reasons not to practice the spiritual disciplines, especially this one. But can I just remind you: Jesus needed time in the quiet place.
Jesus needed time in the quiet place.
What makes us think we don’t?
So, how can we practice silence and solitude right here, right now? I have four categories of possible applications. But before I get into that, I want to say that not all of these practical applications are going to be perfectly silent. If that’s all you heard so far, I think you missed it. The idea here is to make space for God to speak. He’s already speaking, but sometimes we have so much “noise” around us—in, yes, the literal sounds around us, but also in our minds—that we miss it. We don’t hear him. Our minds and attentions are turned away from God and towards ourselves and the things of this world. So I want to share with you how to take back our minds and attention from the distraction, from the noise, and channel it into devotion to God.
So let’s begin:
“Little solitudes” – All the times you’d usually have headphones in, your phone out, or some other form of distraction and noise—you’re driving to the store or walking to class or waiting for your friend or standing in line for food or coffee—look at these as potential portals to prayer. Don’t seek to fill every available space with music or social media. You have these moments already in your day. There are naturally times of waiting, when you’re “alone in a crowded space,” and you can turn to God instead of to the world to fill it. You come to CSF in the middle of the day to eat lunch, and no one else is here—take your headphones out, don’t be on your phone. Take at least the time you’re eating to sit in silence before God, to try to pray and to listen to Him.
Take intentional breaks (from music and/or social media and/or your phone and/or your friends and/or school work). Silence and solitude are a kind of fasting. They are not ideal states, but rhythms of life to steady us for a fruitful return to people and noise. Solitude is a kind of companion to fellowship, a fasting from other people, to make our return to them all the better. And silence is a fasting from noise and talk, to improve our listening and speaking. It’s not meant to be forever, so it’s okay to forgo good things in the hopes that you encounter God more fully. I’m not saying don’t ever listen to music again. I’m not saying don’t ever hang out with your friends again. Just take a break. Be alone. Be quiet. Be still before God. Allow Him to move you, change you, transform you, sanctify you, so when you come back to the world, you are a little more like Him.
empty/quiet places on campus – Jesus frequently withdrew to other places away from the crowds and his disciples: mountains, gardens, desolate places. Where are the quiet places on campus? The library is the first one that comes to mind for me. And I don’t mean the commons, I mean the other library. Did you know that floors 5 through 9 of Cravens are called the quiet floors? It’s very quiet up there. That’s a great place to go to pray. It’ll be tempting to put your headphones in, but don’t. Listen to nothing. Hear the Holy Spirit. I’m sure there are other spaces on campus that are pretty quiet, many I don’t know about. But there’s also CSF, right here. The basement is pretty quiet during the week, besides Tuesday night; you might encounter someone on staff praying or someone on worship team practicing, but that’s about it. We have a prayer room upstairs as well. It’s got a beautiful stained glass window to look at while you’re in there. Just find your place or type of place where you can retreat into the presence of God.
Less busy times of the day – Build time in your day to do things alone. Sometimes, that might mean getting up early or staying up late. Jesus frequently did this because He found no other time to be alone with His Father. Go for a walk by yourself early in the morning or between your 8AM class and your 11AM class. Don’t be on your phone. Have breakfast or lunch or dinner by yourself. Do your laundry alone. You might already do that; make it a more intentional time to be alone with God. I would be remiss not to bring up the idea of quiet time here; a set aside or scheduled part of your day that you spend reading the Scriptures and praying. This is definitely a part of the silence and solitude practice, so don’t miss it. But there’s much more to it than that. God is interested in your whole life, not just the 30 minutes to an hour that you set aside for Him.
These are not all the ways to practice silence and solitude. But I think it’s so easy to get wrapped up in the busy-ness and the noise that we forget to just be with God.
Remember the “dread”? I certainly do. If you’re anything like me, times of silence and solitude, when I’m alone with my thoughts, brings up the dread, the internal noise, the lies that I believe about myself and God and the world. I get really down, tending toward despair, especially when I realize how far I am from God’s design. I spiral in my fears and my doubts and my anxious thoughts and I still struggle to hear the voice of God.
It’s logical to think that if you start spending more time without the external noise that you will have to confront the internal noise. It’s a part of the process of being pruned. It’s part of abiding in the vine, being a branch. You’re going to encounter the parts of yourself that you don’t like. You’re going to encounter the things you haven’t given to God. You’re going to experience uncomfortable things. But the other option is to leave that noise inside you, cover it up with distraction, and fail to experience the fullness of life that God offers. Remember, Jesus says that apart from Him you can do nothing.
But the Lord doesn’t leave you alone in your solitude. He doesn’t leave you alone in your silence. You don’t have to figure it out all on your own. He promises the Holy Spirit will be there, walking alongside you, guiding you, and comforting you.
Jesus is not asking you to spend months on end in some sort of mountain monastery in the middle of Madagascar; He’s asking you to take time every day, in the middle of your daily grind, to reconnect with Him, to make space for Him to do His work in you. Just try. Maybe that looks like getting up earlier to spend time in prayer before class. Maybe that’s leaving your Airpods or whatever at home when you go to the gym. Maybe that means saying no to another pickleball hangout with your friends. Maybe that means not coming to another CSF event. God is more important than CSF, turns out. He wants to spend time with you. Make space for Him.
