Practice Solitude

A) #10- Slow Down!!!!!

 1) Hurry sickness exposed: the unremitting attempt to accomplish more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time.

2) We must increasingly become like our model, Jesus, who, though he was being jammed on every side by others never lost sight of stopping to do the things that really mattered…. If we are actually following him, we dare not move faster than he did.

1) solitude is all about planning times into your life where you shut out all the distractions that crash into your mind every day, and you quiet yourself before God until his gentle voice is able to get through.

2) Solitude is all about… not doing something.

1) We live under the illusion that joy will come into our lives someday when conditions change.

2) Joy is something Jesus promised to all who would follow him. If you are a Christian and you are living a joyless life it is because, and only because, other things, “the cares of this world”, have been allowed to push the joy out.

3) True joy comes only to those who have devoted their liv es to something other than personal happiness

1) True Humility is when we, through the Holt Spirit within us become so absorbed with the needs of those around us that we cease to be preoccupied with ourselves.

2) When we are around other people, we become less and less concerned with how they can benefit us, and we start to ask ourselves how the characteristics God has morphed into us can benefit them.

When Jim and I were in Africa last month we were struck by the intense devotion of the people in their walk with God. Strangely, we disn’t speak to the people about overcoming hurry sickness, nobody was hurrying. We didn’t encourage them to practice solitude, a single trip to town on the back of a donkey cart provided hours of solitude. Oddly, without all the things around them that we have been told will bring us happiness they managed to be brimming over with joy.

I told you about the little church that thought we were coming at 8am so the whole village gathered and waited in the church until 12pm when we actually made it. Let me show you a clip, see if you see any joy here.

What made the most lasting impression on us was when we went to another church with 1500 people who set out to fast for two weeks and ask God to focus their minds on what really mattered for eternity. They met each evening for two hours to pray; They called this two week period, a Solemn Assembly. That’s a term the Bible (KJV) uses for a time when all the people would come together and focus all their attention on God.

It wasn’t solemn in that all the people walked around with long faces, some of the solemn assemblies had feasts attached to them. It was to be solemn in that the people were to set aside certain times when they became dead serious about calling on God for the needs around them.

When the Israelites had uncertainties all around them in the country like the possibility of war with another country, when the ways of their society had become so sinful that it was squeezing their faith, when the sin in the people themselves was out of control; their response was not to hold up a poster out on the street, or encourage everyone to attend an all day seminar on better living. There response as a nation was to humble themselves before God until he brought deliverance into their lives.

Let me point out a specific time when Israel was in national trouble and God was calling them to national repentance.

The Elders here at Grace Emmanuel believe this is the time to call our Body to a sacred assembly. We are in a brand new year, a defining year for our church, when our new facility will come out of the ground. Far more important than that, we are in a time, nationally, and in our local society where we desperately need a breakthrough of God power and presence. Individually, I need; you need, God to wrestle us from the squeeze the world’s mold has been exerting on us, and give us a perspective on life that is not just a slightly altered version of the world view around us. We need God to break into our lives in power until our lives begin to impact the world around us they way God intended them to.

How do we do that? God already set the pattern…. We don’t have to re-invent the wheel.

I am calling you today to participate in a one week focus that will reorient your life, I am calling you to a sacred assembly, I am calling you to a holy fast.

A) There is a shocking word… To fast or not to fast?

Pastor, it’s fine to call us to a week of focusing on God but don’t go getting all nutty on us. Just because you saw some Africans fasting doesn’t mean God expects us to do the same….

I think maybe it does…. Let me explain the principle behind the concept..

God , in his love and mercy has poured out gifts in our direction. He gives us so many good things to enjoy. Our country is more blessed with “things” than almost any other country in the world. Why are we so blessed? I happen to believe that it goes clear back to our roots as a nation and the foundation that was laid on God and his Word. I think we are still reaping the benefit of who we used to be. (That’s another subject)

Even as Christians its possible for us to receive God’s gifts into our lives, food, housing, relationships, health, etc; and slowly but surely we can come to depend more on God’s gifts than we do on the Giver himself.

As believers we can say, until the veins stand out on our neck, that God is number one in our lives, but unless there is some test, some way of determining what is really most important to us, we will never really know whether our statements are anything more than just words.

As Children of God our primary hunger in life is supposed to be a hunger to know God, a thirst to draw closer and closer to him, a gnawing inside our hearts to spend more time with him, than we are forced to spend with the daily temporal things.

When this life is over, all of eternity is going to be spent, worshipping our God and growing in relationship with him. John defined eternal life as Knowing Jesus and the Father who sent him. If this life is really about preparing for heaven, it just makes logical sense that we would all give the greatest amount of attention to our pursuit of God.

All of us have experienced that it is possible for our hunger for the gifts, the good gifts, that God has brought into our lives to become so great that our hunger for God recedes into the background. It is possible for the good things in our lives to become so large that they literally take first place and God is pushed to a distant second, or third, or ninth.

God sets up a pattern in Scripture that allows us, from time to time, to refocus our hearts around the giver rather than his gifts. We set the gifts aside for a time to express to God that he is more important to us than the gifts he has showered on us.

David- I humble my soul with fasting… I ask myself, do I really hunger for God, or has my hunger for other things become so great that my hunger for God has all but disappeared.

Let’s look at the example of Jack. Five years ago Jack didn’t own a computer, but finally he got one and discovered the internet. The fascination grew until he found himself consumed with surfing. He couldn’t wait to get up in the morning on his day off, he couldn’t wait to get home at night, He soon forgot what his wife looked like and as for his relationship with God………

I can repeat this theme using dozens of different examples; I chose the computer. Is there anything wrong with a computer? No, in fact, in fact rightly used it can reach the whole world with the Gospel as w see through SC4U. When that something in our lives becomes more important to us than our relationship with God we are in desperate need of a refocusing.

I’m talking about the good things, not the bad things. Don’t say, I think I’m going to give up lying this week; I’m purposing not to steal all week long in honor of our sacred assembly. I’m talking about the good things God has allowed us to enjoy.

Television is a proven God substitute! For most of us, I pray, the substitute is not the x-rated movie, it’s the constant diet of prime time nonsense that fills our minds when we are to tired to do anything else. A half-hour turns into an hour, then two, then five, and you finally get up and stumble to bed without any drawing to God. (Day after day…)

Irony is that most of us watch television because we want rest for the mind and body. How many go to work the next morning and say, I watched TV from the time I got home until the late night talk shows ended and I feel rejuvenated, revitalized, renewed, and refreshed. What a tremendous memorable evening it was. I’m so grateful for the gift of television in my life.

Food is an area in our lives that each of us spend a great deal of time, and attention, and money on. It’s an example, often used in scripture of something we can give up, that will help us to refocus our attention on God.

Why did God create us to need food. He didn’t need to make us with a digestive system, He chose to. I think he gave us food, first as a constant symbol of his provision; a sign that a giving God loves to provide for his children. Secondly, it is a perfect example of something we can do without to intensify our spiritual desire. Even those who are not overweight often use food as a medicator, an award for good behavior, a lifter of our spirits; to those of us who struggle with overeating or under-eating, food can very well take first place in our lives.

Fasting food allows us to refocus our minds and hearts on the eternal. Nobody is saying that any of this will be easy, If you don’t put food in, the bottom line desires that control our lives will quickly rise to the surface. We won’t be able to anesthetize them with a little shot of glucose.

Setting aside some of these things for a week will reveal to us what controls us and we will be able to allow God to climb back into the Captains chair.