More people than we can imagine can hear the roots of loneliness creeping through them when the world is hushed at four o’clock in the morning. When it is just you and no one else is around, the room is quiet, and night has settled in until the morning, when it’s just you, how do you spend your time? Silence in itself isn’t good or bad…what we do with it and why is where our challenge is.
For me, silence wasn’t easy. When i was a teenager i used to take LSD and amphetamines just to slow down what was going on in my head. For years i just talked and talked, often not really saying anything, but gosh, there was just so much in my head, and often it was all sssooo loud. Oh, i was smart, plenty smart, i just couldn’t pay attention. Honestly though, it was easier to make my mouth move than it was waiting for God to speak to me. Of course, we all know though, if your mouth is moving, your ears aren’t listening. i had ideas about why the sky was blue, where do dreams go when they’ve been played out, where do we go when we sleep, and every pointless, endless thing you can imagine, even how God and i should resolve other people’s problems, worrying out loud to Him about this and that, and to tell you the truth, i was arrogant in that i was sure God would agree with me. Ha! Boy, now that’s arrogant isn’t it? i had to-do lists, and don’t-do lists running through my head, but rarely did i actually do anything on those lists … just lost in the swirl of constant chatter, instead of peace and quiet. It was easy for me to buy into the incessant noise in my head, after all, it’s all there was. But to sit and listen? Well, now, that felt just unnatural, and even when i tried to listen, the chatter and banter back and forth in my brain was like a massive river that rolled on and on.
One day, while walking in the woods, i shared my agony with God, knowing silence and stillness were things I needed to practice, but the volume of different voices in my head was truly over whelming, and the farther i walked in the silence of the deep woods the louder it all got. i remember saying, “Just turn it all off Lord! It’s just too much and i don’t know who is you and who is me!” At the crescendo of all that, I felt God’s gentle encouragement: “Shhh … be still. It’s okay to be silent. You don’t have to say a word.”
And then all went quiet in my head.
It was truly a miracle and God was teaching me something. His direction to be quiet was about more than resting my mouth. It was about resting my heart. The idea of resting, from God’s perspective, didn’t mean necessarily to relax and lay my body down, but more to cease from my own actions, motivations, and obsessions. I understood this when I read Psalm 131:2, “But I have stilled and quieted my soul.” God wanted me to understand true rest, His rest. And i’ll tell ya’, i don’t believe anyone can truly quiet their soul by themselves. It’s a God-thing.
As with anything, practice makes perfect. With great intention and God-strength, I slowed my 90-mile-an-hour thoughts and parked them during my alone time with the Lord. I fully believe He gave me the power to put the brakes on my racing mind, hard as i tried i couldn’t stop it by myself. Sometimes this required me writing out my to-do list prior to our time together. Or re-adjusting my priorities. Vacuuming was not as important as listening to God when it was time to listen to God, and i say that because, often, when it was time to pray i would suddenly be inundated with thoughts about other things i simply “needed” to do … right now! So that brings me to this evening’s topic: When it’s just you, how do you spend your time? Think about what you spend your time thinking about? What occupies the bulk of your days?
What a beautiful evening. i stayed a little longer this evening knowing you might stop in on your way home. Oh, i know, it’s late, but, well, you’re part of the late night crowd, some who simply can’t sleep, others, like yourself, just like staying up. There was quite a crowd here earlier but it looks like they’ve all found their way to another place and it’s just us out here on the deck overlooking the river. Either way, i’m glad to see you took the time to turn off the main highway, went all the way to the end of Old Field Road in order to join us here at Outposts, a semi-live broadcast from the late night cascading banks of the Okluhwahhah River, where the trees gently lean over the rivers edge and every evening is pleasant.
What is going on in your head when it’s just you and the room is so quiet you can almost hear the air molecules swishing in your ears? I realize this story is one i’ve told before, but i want to tell it again because it just hits on so many facets of where people really live.
The other day a friend of mine and i went to visit an elderly lady in a nursing home. We go sometimes to pray, and visit those who can’t get out. It’s a good work. But that day we went to see a lady we’ll call Gladys. She was very pale, skin as thin as parchment and you could see even the small blue veins in her arms, face and neck. When we walked in Gladys had her eyes closed, thinking she was just resting her eyes i spoke to her, fully not expecting her to respond. To my surprise, keeping her eyes shut, Gladys said she was awake. i asked her how she was and she said she was just laying there waiting to die. She said she fully expected to be going home with the Lord at any moment, but that she’d been waiting for a year and wasn’t dead yet; she didn’t understand why her heart just kept going, but she was willing to wait it out. We chuckled with her. it was humorous maybe, and even though we chuckled, it wasn’t funny. i asked her why she was laying there with her eyes shut, after all it was a beautiful day. She said she was tired of looking at the walls and there was nothing left to see and she was just done.
Regardless of the news of the hope of some great economic recovery, i think there are many people who just sit in the dark, don’t know what to do with themselves, and are just waiting for something, who knows what, just … something. How do you spend your evenings? Are you occupying your time with something good? Maybe you spend your time screaming in all caps at people on Facebook? Do you spend more time thinking about the evil of darkness than the goodness of God? i really don’t know what to say to people who say they are believers but seem to know more about darkness and everything the church is doing wrong than about God and what the church is doing right. The evening is for your rest, but for many, your time of rest has turned into a lostness, or purposelessness. Where are you? Where did the “you” go from a good while back when you had ideas, and plans…. visions, and dreams?
God is reminding us in the deep hours of our being by ourselves, “I’m here. I love you. I don’t mind if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I am stronger than depression, more powerful than the worst storm in your head, and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”
Where is God in your life? Maybe it’s time to include the Lord in your life again.
Oh, and on a side note, much later, after Gladys passed away many months later, i found out some well meaning person who felt they had a prophetic gift had prophesied over Gladys and told her the Lord said her time was short. My heart sank when i heard that. Well, at that cruel word in the name of the Lord, Gladys decided that if she was going to die, she need not even try to continue. She didn’t die from some disease or complication, it was just shear, simple failure to persist.
What do you do with yourself, when it’s just you? Do you zone out in front of the TV, tap the keyboard at your computer for hours till your even more bored than you were when you started, long worn out on being generally fatigued and disinterested, just marking time? Bored bored bored. Or maybe you make yourself numb somehow so you don’t have to think about tomorrow or yesterday? What else could you do besides pondering the conflict around you – or the emptiness many seemingly spend so much of their time thinking about? What or who takes up the bulk of your mental real estate? What can you do to help yourself? Again, think about what you spend your time thinking about.
After seeing Gladys i think the Lord called me into a time to consider what i do with my time. Feeling i didn’t have any good answers, i turned to God in prayer and asked Him what He thought i could do with my late night hours when the world around me seemed to be going to sleep, but yet there i was, awake, with smoky, formless thoughts swirling around in my head enough to keep me awake. The Lord had me open my Bible, (chuckle), there’s a novel idea for most of us, open your Bible….anyway, sometimes when i don’t have a clue where to read, i do something i call my “lucky dipping Bible verse” where i close my eyes, flip the pages, and put my finger down. It’s definitely not a good method, but i think most of us would be lying if we said we never tried that. It’s sort of a “grab bag” for something meaningful. i usually don’t, but this time, for funzies, i did. i thumbed around through the pages looking for some direction and i came to a pause on Philippians 4:8.
“Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. Don’t be anxious about anything, don’t fret or worry. In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
It’s wonderful what happens when the Lord displaces worry at the center of your life.
After reading that, God had my attention and some things clicked in my head. Continuing on with Philippians 4, “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”
i wouldn’t want any of us to get to a place where we’re closing our eyes to the world around us because our hearts are just too tired and sad to want to see it all anymore. God can, and does, open our eyes to His wonders and works. Have you asked Him to change your perception, to lift your thoughts from the failing world around you to live in a brighter place? God has an adventure for all of us. When is the last time you had an adventure with God?
He LOVES adventure, after all, adventure was His idea. We all love that God invented flowers, but i’d like to add that He invented stormy seas as well as beautiful sunsets too; billowy clouds were His idea, just like freezing temperatures and winter was His idea. He’s a very diversified creator you know. God wants you to take to the high seas with Him, just like He wants to sit with you and smell the fresh mowed grass in the evening too. God is able to occupy all the time you will give Him. He is the source of creativity and when mankind fell to sin in the garden, creativity did not leave us, we just ignore it a lot of times. Creation was His idea, which is why He is called the Creator. We all need to ponder the good things of Who He Is, not just What He’s Got. i fully believe “Who God Is” will fill all our senses, and we will not have minds that ponder into oblivion the dim, the ugly, the hopeless, the endlessly mundane boredom of this fast fading world. Look at Jesus, the Light. He will fill us with so many ideas and adventures, we’ll never be bored again. Would you be interested in that?
For many, life seems hollow and lonely, despite all the drugs, despite the bright dazzle of purposeless “parties”, despite the false grinning faces we’ve learned to wear. And when at last we find someone to whom we feel we can pour out our soul, we stop in shock at the words we utter. For some it’s been so long since our inner person spoke its own reflections and considerations out loud for our own ears to hear. The words just seem rusty and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark – inside place – for so long. For many living in isolation, their voices are unpracticed and sound like dusty dry newspaper from lack of expression. Don’t mistake me by thinking i’m just being negative here, because there is joy, fulfillment and companionship, of course – but the loneliness of the soul, for many, is persistent, horrible and overpowering.
When it’s just you, and you alone, where do your thoughts go? For me, i tend toward prayer. i’m amazed at what God has done in me. Prayer just seems to happen, always rolling around in my head. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 says to “thank God without ceasing”, and 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says to “pray without ceasing”. That’s great to say, but how do we do that? i’ve come to the conclusion neither of those are a thing we can do in and of ourselves, so it must be a God thing you know, a gift for which i am very grateful. How do we “pray without ceasing”? Well, i think, we don’t, God does. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit that we would do this. Song of Solomon 2:2, “… I slept, yet my heart was awake…”
i’m certain, the Lord of all Heaven and earth loves adventures with us. At different times along the course of our lives, and you’ll never know when, He opens doors of unique opportunities, experiences, and even brave appointments. Remember that show from years ago, Mission Impossible? Every week the episode opened with a secret agent listening to a tape and some anonymous recorded voice would say, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is…” And then the voice would describe some wild assignment that was so dangerous there was little chance of success or survival.
Today, for you and i, we can choose to accept God’s adventure, some name it “callings”, or we can walk away. Yes, the choice is real. We can walk on high seas, treading darkness under foot, doing exploits for the Kingdom in the Name of Jesus, or we can just close the door, living safe, making safe words, safe music, safe relationships with safe people, but what will you tell your grandchildren when you’re old and should be full of stories to delight their ears? Don’t close those doors of possibility with God. Step through into the place of more and let Him dazzle you with His imagination. If you don’t step through those doors with the Lord, all those memories which could have been yours will only be an option you didn’t take, and you’ll never know the beyond of beyond.
For years i was perplexed how i was supposed to “pray without ceasing”, but over time i find Jesus is first and foremost on my mind, day in, day out. When i wake in the night, as soon as i’m aware of being awake, walking to the bathroom, i notice Jesus is on my mind. When waking up in the morning, Jesus is first and foremost on my mind, first thing, first thought. Going to sleep, Jesus is on my mind, last thing, last thought. He is there, even when i’m occupied doing something that’s not gospel related, just living in my everyday-walk-around life, thoughts of Jesus are drifting through everything i think and dream. Even when in error, Jesus is first and foremost on my mind. Not my efforts, but by God’s persistence has He made my mind stayed on Him and established my heart by grace. By my rearview mirror i can see the evidence. What can you see in your rearview mirror? Years ago i asked the Lord to give me one magnificent obsession, something i could just throw myself at with all my heart. Well, He did just that. His name is Jesus.
i used to try and make myself think of no one else, and would worry that i was messed up because thoughts of Jesus didn’t consciously preoccupy my time the way i thought they should. But when i relaxed, breathed in and out and just let God-life happen in me and around me, i noticed He was there, first and last, foremost, all the time and i didn’t have to make something happen, it was already happening. He is truly the first and last, my best thought in the beginning and end of the day.
In order to be clear, let me say that Jesus is not an entertainment source. He is not going to tap dance for us, or create an endless array of circus performances just to keep us occupied. He wants our time and attention. The last words of Philippians 4:8 are “think on these things”. In other words, occupy your mind with what is true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious — the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. The world has a long, long list of things to occupy your mind with and we can all rest assured, that if we don’t focus on Christ and that He is seated at the Father’s right hand in heavenly places in governance of the entire universe, if we don’t rest our eyes on Him, the world will have an agenda for us. If we’re not resting our eyes on the Lord, then who or what are we resting our eyes on? If we are not practiced at Godly things, then we are becoming practiced at worldly things. What is your practice, in the late hours, when it’s just you and God? What is your habit in the evening? Let us all think carefully about how we invest our time when we are alone. My friends, don’t let your eyes get used to the dark. Think about it!
i’m Social Porter at Small Potatoes Audio Works for Living In His Name Ministries, broadcast semi-live from the late evening cascading banks of the Okluhwahhah River, where the trees gently lean over the rivers edge, and every evening is pleasant.
We extend our thanks of support from Living In His Name Ministries, Area 22 Guitars, McDowell Electric, Paul at International Tile, Allan, Kevin, and Tommy of the Mebane Freedom League, Paul at WK Studio’s, the Tip Top What Not thrift store on 4th street in Clineville. Do stop by and enjoy the glad tidings with Jeff and Karen and the wonderful baked goods at Trinity Bakers, where there’s always something good in the oven.
If you get time, go to Living In His Name.org, there are other things which could prove to be of interest for you to see and hear.
Enjoy the remainder of your evening, let Jesus give you the rest your heart needs. Take the time to cease from your own activities and let Him occupy your thoughts as you go your way. Read a book maybe. Hey, now there’s a novel idea! There are adventures beyond your imagination of which God is the inspiration to the writer. Some people say they only read Christian books, only listen to Christian music, or only buy Christian art. Well… how do they know who is a believer or not? There’s a lot of music written by bonafide believers which doesn’t even have any words. There are many many artists who are believers who do amazing art and carvings, illustrations and literature but you’d only know they were believers because of the excellence of their work and the testimony of their mouth. Sure, many books are self-evident, but others, not so much. If you don’t like that particular book, put it down and try another one. Trust that God will lead you out of seclusion and into better places if you’ll give Him the opportunity. Get out of your chair, move off the couch, get up and go out “there”, beyond your doorstep. Don’t allow yourself to just sit around, letting the blood pool in your body because you’ve been motionless for so long. Let’s not be Gladys. Come go with me, i’m going up to the high places where all the idols have been torn down, and the air is clean. Be strong and courageous, lift your hands, and thank God for His goodness towards us this week. i look forward to talking to you again …. soon and very soon we are going to meet the King. Amen.