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Summary:
Silence and solitude are the key to a deeper relationship with God. Learn more about these disciplines in my latest podcast episode.
Podcast Transcript:
Hi friend, I’m Brigette Henry. I’m a Spiritual Formation Coach and I help women develop a deeper relationship with God. Welcome to my podcast, Journey Together, where I explore topics related to spiritual growth and formation. (music fades in) Today, we’re talking about the disciplines of silence and solitude.
(music fades out)
Introduction
A quick announcement before we get started on this episode. Congratulations to Sarah V. for winning the Quiet Time Bundle giveaway! And for everyone else who entered, thank you so much for giving me the chance to encourage you. I’m just really grateful for the solid group of women who come here to learn and grow in their relationship with God. It has been my dream to help women experience a deeper relationship with God. And I’m just so blessed that I get to do that. So thank you to all of you who participated. And now that I’ve worked out the kinks, hopefully there will be more giveaways in the future.
As I was preparing for this podcast, my daughter had a massive toddler tantrum. It had something to do with not being allowed to drink mommy’s water. Even though she had the EXACT SAME water in her Bluey cup. So, at the moment, I’m really feeling the need for silence and solitude, you get me? Like, if you’re familiar with Bluey, I need 20 minutes. That’s what Chili says, “I need 20 minutes where no one comes near me.” And then she mocks her husband for getting a mullet. We watch a lot of Bluey in this house.
But my point is, life is crazy right? And just like Chili was overstimulated because her children were being loud and obn oxious, we get overstimulated by the world. This world is loud and obnoxious. Even good things like family and friends, personal goals, and work can be overstimulating. Sometimes we just need 20 minutes, right?
What are Silence and Solitude?
And that leads me to silence and solitude. Silence is, of course, the absence of noise. Quiet. Stillness. Something a lot of us don’t experience in our technology-saturated culture. Solitude is being alone, but it’s not being lonely. In his book Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster said, “Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.” We don’t get alone to be empty. We get alone to be filled with Christ and His Spirit.
You’ve probably noticed I keep mentioning silence and solitude together. That’s because you can practice them separately, but their true effectiveness comes when you practice them together. For example, you can put headphones on in a crowded room, but you’re still aware of the presence of others even if it’s silent. And you can sit in a room alone, but still have your thoughts drowned out by loud music.
Dallis Willard talks about this in his book The Spirit of the Disciplines. He says,
just as silence is vital to make solitude real, so is solitude needed to make the discipline of silence complete.
There is something special about silence and solitude that I’m not quite sure how to put into words. But we’ve all experienced those short, sweet moments of alone time before. Maybe you were walking along the beach in the evening listening to the waves crash against the shore. Or maybe you got up early before your family was awake and sat with a cup of coffee listening to the world wake up outside. There’s something about being alone without extra noise that feels calming to your soul.
But I don’t just want to argue here that silence and solitude feel good. I want to show you that we need them. Desperately.
Silence and Solitude are the Answer to Soul-Tiredness
In his book, Habits of the Household, Justin Whitmel Earley describes a moment when his child woke him at night. In his description, he says he wasn’t “just physically tired. (He) was soul-tired.”
That phrase “soul-tired” really made me think. Consider this: how often does someone ask us how we’re doing and we respond, “I’m tired”. And it’s true, we are tired. But I’m starting to wonder if maybe, more often than not, we’re not physically tired. We’re soul-tired.
You probably slept last night. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep, so today, you’re physically tired. But, did you spend time with God yesterday? Did you have a quiet time? Did you slow down and rest between big projects? Or did you push through your work without stopping? Did you give your soul a chance to recharge? Or have you mentally and spiritually exhausted yourself?
We make it a point to sleep at night, or during the day if we work the night shift. It’s part of our regular rhythm of life to sleep to recharge our physical body for the next day. Likewise, it should be part of our regular rhythm of life to rest and recharge our soul. But all too often we try to push through, ignoring our soul’s cry for rest. And sometimes, we blame God for our hurried reality. We say, “I wish I had time to read my Bible, but God has asked me to take care of my elderly neighbor instead.” Or, “I was going to rest today, but something came up that I had to do. It was clear God wanted me to do it.”
Praising A Hurried Life
I think the church as a whole has praised a hurried, sacrificial lifestyle in ways that don’t reflect the scriptural narrative. So let me just say this.
Yes, God wants us to care for others. Yes, God sometimes calls us away from a quiet moment with Him to serve someone else. And yes, things happen we can’t plan for and we have to change our plans.
But, I know for me my issue hasn’t been that God asked me to do too much. Usually, it’s that I didn’t want to say “no.” Or maybe I felt special because I was asked to do something. And, I usually don’t plan enough margin in my day to be available in emergencies, so time to rest is usually the first thing to go. I am very much in control of how I spend my time. And more often than not, I choose to be too busy to rest.
I once heard someone say, “God won’t ask you to do more in a day than you can do.” And that makes sense. He knows your limitations and He’s not trying to challenge them. What He is trying to do is teach you how to prioritize the things that are important to His kingdom. And sometimes, that means He’s asking us to choose silence and solitude.
Jesus Chose The Right Priorities
Jesus is our great example of this. Let’s look at Mark 1:35-38. In the previous verses, Jesus went to Capernaum, a city near the Sea of Galilee. There, He taught in the synagogue, healed the sick and cast out demons. Verse 35 begins early the next morning. It says,
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, He got up, went out, and made His way to a deserted place; and there He was praying. Simon and his companions searched for Him, and when they found Him they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” And He said to them, “Let’s go on to the neighboring villages so that I may preach there too. This is why I have come.”
I’m sure after Jesus had healed so many sick people others wanted to be healed too. Maybe people who had been working the day before heard about Jesus’s healing and were determined to bring their sick relatives to see Him that next day. But Jesus told His disciples, “let’s go on to the neighboring villages.” Why? Because Jesus knew His priorities. He had taught and healed people in Capernaum, and now it was time to travel through the rest of Galilee.
It is not easy to say “no”. I’m certainly not any good at it. But when we know our priorities and stand our ground when our priorities are threatened, we will be able to make time for the most important things. Like finding a space of silence and solitude to spend with our Creator.
Jesus Chose Silence and Solitude
There are many instances in the gospels where Jesus chose silence and solitude over other things. In the passage I just read, Jesus chose time praying with the Father over sleeping in.
Another instance occurred before He had called the disciples. You can read about it in Matthew 4, but for now, I’ll just summarize. After He was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, He went into the wilderness alone. He didn’t eat for 40 days, and when those 40 days were over, Satan tempted Him.
As a little girl, I was taught that Satan tempted Jesus then because Jesus was weak from hunger and loneliness. But John Mark Comer provides a different perspective in his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
According to Comer, Jesus didn’t go to the wilderness to be tempted by the devil because it was a “place of weakness.” Jesus went to the wilderness because “it’s the place of strength.” This is how he puts it:
“Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness” because it was there, and only there, that Jesus was at the height of His spiritual powers. It was only after a month and a half of prayer and fasting in the quiet place that He had the capacity to take on the devil himself and walk away unscathed.
Jesus was Equipped By Silence and Solitude
In all honesty, silence and solitude are uncomfortable, and they feel unnatural to me. I think it feels that way for a lot of people. We aren’t used to the lack of noise and the space to be alone. It’s bizarre to think that being alone in a desert for 40 days gave Jesus any sort of strength. Yet, it makes sense.
In The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallis Willard says this about solitude,
We can only survive solitude if we cling to Christ there. And yet what we find of Him in that solitude enables us to return to society as free persons.
Jesus’s time in the desert equipped Him to not only fight the temptation of the devil, but also to begin His ministry. Silence and solitude equip us for the work God calls us to do.
How to Choose Silence and Solitude
So, how do we choose silence and solitude in our loud and busy world? I have two tips for you.
1. Be intentional
Make a point of finding time for silence and solitude. Add quiet time to your schedule, and stick to it. Tell other people in your family or household what you’re doing and why it is important. It is ultimately up to us whether we prioritize time with God in silence and solitude. Start by taking steps to be intentional about spending that time with Him.
2. Lean into God
Just like Christ leaned into His Father during those 40 days in the wilderness, we need to lean into Him too. Silence and solitude may feel uncomfortable and unnatural, but it is in those quiet moments alone that we hear God the most. A perfect illustration of this is in 1 Kings 19:11-13. It says,
Then he said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the Lord’s presence.”
At that moment, the Lord passed by. A great and mighty wind was tearing at the mountains and was shattering cliffs before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was a voice, a soft whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.
Suddenly, a voice came to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
In this story, Elijah was frustrated and depressed because the Israelites were looking for him to kill him. He had served God faithfully as a prophet and was maybe feeling a little abandoned by God. So God came and spoke to him in a whisper.
That word “whisper” is the Hebrew word demama (dem-ah-ma), and it’s better translated as “silence”. God spoke to Elijah through silence. And if you’re willing to find silence to hear your Creator, I bet He would speak to you too.
Recommended Resources
If you’d like to learn more about silence and solitude, I have a few books I would recommend. The first is “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” by John Mark Comer. It’s relatable, easy to read, and super practical. It would be a great book to listen to on a long trip or while you run. The second book is “The Spirit of the Disciplines” by Dallis Willard. This book is a little more intellectual. It’s the kind of thing you might be required to read in a Christian philosophy class. So if you’re looking for something a little more in-depth, I would recommend The Spirit of the Disciplines.
Future Content
I’m going to take a break for the next few weeks to help my family settle into our new home. But, I would really love to hear from you and find out what you would like to learn when I get back! There’s three ways you can do that. One, you can email me and tell me what you’re thinking. Two, join the Journey Together Facebook Group and post something there. Or, three, you can go take the Find Your Focus Quiz.
The Find Your Focus quiz asks questions about four main quiet time focuses: Prayer, Rest, Knowledge and Christian Living. These are priorities I’ve noticed in the quiet times of a lot of women I’ve spoken with. And the interesting thing is that God encourages different focuses in different seasons of our lives. So, if you’re wondering what God would like you to focus on during your quiet time, go take the quiz! It will help you figure out where God is directing you and it will also help me create content for you. So it’s a win-win! You can head to brigettehenry.com/find-your-focus-quiz to take the quiz. There’s a dash between each word. So it’s find, dash your, dash focus, dash quiz. I know that’s confusing but that’s how my site creates urls. You can also find that link in the show notes.
Conclusion
Thank you for joining me today! I’ll miss you for the next few weeks, but I’m excited to take a break to let new ideas flow and to hear from you what you would like to learn. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to join the Journey Together Facebook group to stay connected. Also, don’t forget to purchase a copy of The Quiet Time Guide to help you create an intentional and effective quiet time. You can find it on my website and I’ll leave that link in the show notes too. I’ll see you next time as we continue this spiritual formation journey together.
Links:
FIND YOUR FOCUS QUIZ LINK: https://brigettehenry.com/find-your-focus-quiz/
THE QUIET TIME GUIDE: https://brigettehenry.com/product/the-quiet-time-guide
JOURNEY TOGETHER FACEBOOK GROUP: https://www.facebook.com/groups/journeytogetherchristianwomen
THE RUTHLESS ELIMINATION OF HURRY by John Mark Comer: https://shorturl.at/oDLU7
THE SPIRIT OF THE DISCIPLINES by Dallis Willard: https://shorturl.at/zCGR3
Interested in 1:1 coaching: https://brigettehenry.com/coaching
Subscribe to my weekly email: https://brigettehenry.com/subscribe
My website: https://brigettehenry.com
Contact me at: brigette@brigettehenry.com
Music by: Morning Garden – Acoustic Chill by Olexy on Pixabay
All scripture is CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
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