Solitude

Exodus 33:8-9 NIV

And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent.  As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses.

What Do You Think God Wants To Do With You?

A few weeks ago, it didn’t go well for me substitute teaching.  The class had acted pretty badly and I struggled to maintain control over the group.  They kept speaking when I told them to be quiet, I had trouble explaining the material I was assigned to cover and several of the kids were disrespectful.  I felt overmatched and inadequate.  Limping to my car, I asked God what was wrong with me.  Everything about my life felt out of sorts and in disarray.  I opened the door and plopped down in my seat, glad to have a few minutes of solitude.  I sat before God in the sanctuary of my little Honda and silently gave Him time to work in me.

Probably you too have needed time alone and it was a welcome relief to find a spot where you could regroup.  Perhaps you have felt psychologically drained and wanted to get away where no one could interrupt your thoughts or agitate you.  Sometimes you have to retreat to the bathroom to find solitude.  Maybe it is your car or your office or a park bench where you gather yourself. Many retreat to their bedrooms.  You might sit in front of your computer without noticing anything that’s there, lost in your thoughts.  Do you need time alone on a regular basis?  What does solitude do for you?  Have you found it helpful?

The Bible makes it clear that we are never alone, even when we are in the loneliest of places.  The book of Hebrews even insists that we are surrounded “by a great cloud of witnesses.”  Yet, due to our lack of awareness of everything supernatural happening all around us, we ignore both angels and demons.  When we are by ourselves with no physical beings nearby, we feel alone and quite honestly are often quite grateful for those moments.  However, our difficulty perceiving the presence of God does not mean He is absent.  The Lord promises He is with you at every moment and solitude is not what is commonly thought.  If you realize that solitude is always you with God and never you just by yourself, a great benefit to your life is possible.

The Gospel of Luke begins with an interesting story that is only told by Luke.  There was a couple that was old and childless and the husband was one of many Jewish priests.  Zechariah was chosen by lot to go into the temple and burn the incense in the sanctuary.  Once when Zechariah's division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense.  And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside. (Luke 1: 8-10 NIV)  Zechariah found himself alone in the inner sanctum of the Temple but what he soon discovered was that his solitude was not what it seemed.  An angel suddenly appeared in the room.  When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. (Luke 1:12 NIV)  After the angel reassured him that he was not in danger, the messenger from God gave him the joyous news that Zechariah and his wife were going to conceive and have a baby.  The angel made it clear that this was an answer to their prayers.  But this declaration was too stupendous for Zechariah to believe, even if it did come directly from an angel!  Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years." (Luke 1:18 NIV)

After all these years of praying, Zechariah had become hopeless.  He no longer believed it was possible that he and his wife could have a child. Yet here was the revelation, coming to him in the solitary place where Zechariah thought he was all alone.  We see this same formula again and again in Scripture.  God lets someone become alone and then He shifts that person’s life.  When the Lord wanted to adjust the prophet Ezekiel’s thinking, He pulled him aside.  Ezekiel describes this in the book he wrote.  The hand of the Lord was upon me there, and he said to me, "Get up and go out to the plain, and there I will speak to you." (Ezekiel 3:22 NIV)  How did God say this to Ezekiel?  Was it in an audible voice that anyone could have heard or did God speak directly into the prophet’s head?  We don’t know but what is clear is that the Lord sent Ezekiel off by himself to receive the revelation.  This is the normal process.  God waits until someone is alone…or thinks he or she is alone…and then He does something new with that person.

Consider the example of Isaiah.  The Lord got him alone in the Temple and there revealed Himself to the prophet.  In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. (Isaiah 6:1 NIV)  If God’s presence was not enough, there were flying seraphs and shaking door posts and thresholds and the whole building filled with smoke.  Clearly Isaiah was not alone and the Lord made that clear in a magnificent way.  Immediately, with all the pageantry, what struck Isaiah most was his sinfulness.  He let out a wail!  "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." (Isaiah 6:5 NIV)  When God meets you in the solitude, you must first face your Sin.  It becomes clear as day when you are alone with the Lord that you sin and sin badly.  You cannot go any further with the Lord unless you grasp the awful nature of your sin and solitude magnifies it so that you see your sin clearly when you become alone.  If you have not seen your sin and grown to hate it, you most likely have never been alone with God.  The Lord forces you to face your sin.  His very presence does that to you.

If you are alone with God, there are two revelations that will come to you and they will carry the force of a great hurricane.  You are sinful and only God can take away your sin.  Whatever was wrong with Isaiah, whatever evil he saw in himself, it had to do with his mouth!  Jesus said that it is not what goes into you that is bad, it is what comes out of you that matters and clearly something was coming out of Isaiah that was ugly and it had to do with his mouth.  Immediately when Isaiah realized just how wicked he was the Lord provided him with a live coal that took away the guilt of his sin.  Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.  With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."  (Isaiah 6:6-7 NIV)

If there is a single lesson to learn from this passage, perhaps what rises above all is that only God can take away our guilt.  God does the work.  Here He touches the lips with the purifying live coal.  This was just a temporary solution for only in the Cross is the guilt of our Sin removed altogether.  When Christ came and became a part of us, He did so to deal once and for all time with our Sin.  You cannot be alone with God and fail to realize your complete dependence upon Him.  In a crowd you can feel secure and confident that you make it on your own.  Alone with God though you know that is a fairy tale, it is like thinking your heart is unnecessary or your brain does not matter.  Dependence upon God and reliance upon Him to save you is the clearest sign you have been alone with Him.  What is so striking about the Psalms is that this is what you see in them at every turn.  You are dependent upon God to save you and there is no greater determination you can make than to rely upon Him in everything you do.

Nearly always when there is a break in your relationship with God, it is because there is a moral barrier that stands in your way.  God would not let Isaiah go any further with Him until his mouth issues were addressed.  Sometimes it is sexual immorality, other times a bad temper or the unwillingness to forgive.  It might be cruelty that you possess or selfishness and greed or the hard headed unwillingness to do what God has said to do.  This barrier, whatever it might be must be taken apart if you are to ever go any further with God.  It is when you are alone with Him that this is done.  God penetrates your heart and works out of you what sin has worked into you.  As you stay with Christ, alone just the two of you, a miracle occurs.  The love of God starts to become your love, the peace of God becomes your peace and the joy that God has becomes your joy.  You cannot generate this within yourself.  Only Christ can do it.  Alone with God, no conversation, no distracting phones or computers, just your mind and the Lord’s mind coming together and in the miracle of Christ, you become transformed.  God will want to make you alone with Him to cleanse your actions and He will want to work out of you your sinful habits. In solitude you will be made good, and clean and like God.  In God’s grip, alone with Him in a quiet place where He can get through to you, nothing will matter that mattered so much to you before; not your accomplishments, not your gifts, not what you want to make of your life.   What will rise above everything else as you stay with Him will be His love becoming yours as you remain alone with Him wherever and whenever the Lord calls you to come to Him.  Why not take a solitude break this week?  Be alone with God for whatever time you can give Him.

Faith and Comfort

Psalm 23:4 NIV

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

How Do You Find Comfort?

When I was in graduate school, I received a phone call from my father that my mom had died.  I sat down on my bed in stunned disbelief and stared off into space.  A friend of mine walked into my room and after I told him what had happened, he invited me to go to the gym and play basketball with him.  He didn’t put his arm around me and hug me, he didn’t tell me how sad he was for my loss, he just got me on the court and gave me a chance to express my feelings in a game of three on three.  The irony is that I blew out my knee playing that day and as I hobbled back to the dorm with him, I began to weep.  Mike sat there with me and helped me talk about the loss of my mom after he got me ice for my knee.  I never would have seen Mike as someone who could bring comfort to a grieving friend; he was far too cocky and flip to be of help for anyone needing to be helped through a crisis but when I needed a friend to stand by me as I wept, Mike was there for me.

Comfort comes to us in a variety of ways and sometimes from surprising sources.  If I were to ask you what brings you comfort, how would you reply?  Would you say an encouraging word does it for you, the embrace of a friend, a compliment, or a warm smile?  Perhaps it would be a steak fresh off the grill, banana nut bread, ice cream or a backrub!  For some it would be a warm bath, a workout at the gym, your dog jumping into your lap or just holding hands with someone you love.  Comfort cannot be logically explained all the time but we know when we have experienced it.  You may not always need to be comforted but when you do, it is one of the greatest gifts you will ever receive.

The Bible says much about the comfort God gives us.  Isaiah 66: 13a promises, As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you… (NIV)  2 Corinthians 1: 3 insists, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort… (NIV)  My friend was laid up in a hospital bed for four days with a broken back waiting for his insurance company to approve the medical treatment he needed that would ease his pain and fix his back.  Where is the “God of all comfort” then?  Another friend recently was laid off from his job in Christian radio.  Can the “God of all comfort” really help him?  It is tough to believe God will provide you with comfort if you are struggling to believe God is not the one who brought you your troubles in the first place.

Our world has been wrecked by Sin.  It is broken and death touches every part of it.  Satan continues to bring pain and suffering and will persist in having the power to destroy lives while we live in this age before our resurrection.  Trouble and hardship will be with us until God brings an end to the world as it is and so we must accept life the way we find it.  Our Lord doesn’t promise us an end to our troubles; in fact He insists they will continue.  "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33 NIV)  There is however a most wonderful promise our Lord makes in this statement and that is what we shall give our focus today.  Christ has overcome the world.

There are two different ways of thinking about comfort.  The first has to do with what we might call “external comfort”.  The other is “internal comfort”.  External comfort is the taking away of whatever is causing distress.  You are unemployed and you get a job.  You are mad at someone who hurt your feelings and the person apologizes to you and makes up for what she did.  A medical examination indicates that you do not suffer from the terrible disease your doctor thought you might have.  Many times God brings us external comfort and this is often described in the Bible.  The blind man was given sight.  The ten lepers were healed.  The Assyrians didn’t attack Jerusalem because God sent a deadly plague that decimated the Assyrian army.  Saul was killed in battle and David is made king.  Perhaps you like Hezekiah have prayed for help with the cause of from your distress and God tells you He will take away your illness and it happens.  We all at one time or another have experienced external relief and we may or may not have given God credit for His help.

Yet we live in a wrecked world that continues to have disease, poverty, broken relationships and death.  Not all troubles will be taken away from us  .I was told that a pastor declared that the area where he lived was officially cancer free; that God had declared this to him.  But then when cancer killed one of his parents, he had to backtrack on his prophetic word.  Not every disease is healed, not every brother is raised from the dead and not every person gets a better job than the one he lost.  We must face facts as they are and discover for ourselves what our Lord means when He says that “as a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”

There are in the Bible two levels of internal comfort.  The first would more accurately be called “relief”.  This is the feeling you have when it looks like everything will turn out ok. The second level is when our relief is joined to faith and we experience comfort in its supernatural state.  Carefully examine Psalm 119:76 to see this expressed practically.   May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant. (NIV)  The comfort described in this Psalm is not due to any change in the circumstances of the Psalmist.  He hasn’t been healed.  He wasn’t offered a promotion.  He didn’t get a check in the mail.  He simply had a promise from God and that promise he believed could be trusted.  God had unfailing love for him and this he decided would be his comfort.  We see this again in the fiftieth verse of the same chapter.  My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life. (Psalm 119:50 NIV)  What we have is a strange sort of comfort, something decided before whatever God might do for the person.  It is the promise God provides that brings comfort, not the fulfillment of the promise.  Let us look at a couple of examples that illustrate this law of God’s comfort.

A few weeks ago we mentioned a Roman centurion who came to Jesus wanting help for his servant who was suffering paralysis.  When Jesus told the centurion that He would in fact heal the servant, the centurion believed Jesus, had faith in God’s promise.  He went away comforted; an internal change for him.  Later, when he got home, he discovered the servant was indeed well and he was relieved.  (See Matthew 8: 8ff)  A different outcome is described in Matthew 14.   There we have the famous account of Peter walking briefly on the water.  Jesus came to the disciples who were in their boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee during a horrific storm.  He was walking on the water and in faith Peter asked if he could join Jesus out on the waves.  For a moment Peter also walked on the water but then his faith faltered.  But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"  Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:30-31 NIV)  Jesus’ encouragement to come and join Him on the water brought Peter comfort.  The wind was still raging, the waves continued to threaten everyone.  But when Peter lost his faith, he also lost his comfort.  Peter was relieved when Christ calmed the sea but he missed out on the supernatural comfort that would have been there for him if he just kept believing Jesus would fully take care of him.

One more example of comfort vs. relief as seen in the miraculous healing of Naaman the leper is found in 2 Kings 5.  Naaman, an Aramean came to Israel looking for the prophet Elisha, hoping Elisha could heal his leprosy.  We cannot say how much faith he had in the prophet but we do know Naaman was not at all pleased with Elisha’s instructions.  The prophet told Naaman to go dip in the Jordan River seven times and he would be healed.  The Jordan was a muddy, cloudy river and Naaman could not see any good in going to it for healing and so he left Elisha in a great huff.  He was not at all comforted by God.  Some friends though convinced Naaman to just try it and so Naaman did and to his great joy, he was indeed healed by the Lord.  This was of course a tremendous relief to Naaman and he returned to Elisha to express his gratitude.  Now here we must look at the supernatural comfort that could have been experienced.  God wanted to comfort Naaman with his promise but Naaman wouldn’t believe the promise and so he remained in turmoil.  What a great thing it would have been for Naaman to ride to the Jordan River in supernatural comfort rather than turmoil.  He was healed and found relief but he did not experience comfort.  Comfort is when God’s peace is combined with our faith in God.

All too often we are like Naaman.  Rather than believe that God will provide for us, help us and carry us through whatever trial or hardship we face, we do not trust God and our minds are thrown into chaos by our difficulty.  We get mad at one another, lose sleep and scramble around looking frantically for a solution rather than believing that God will show us what to do and take care of us.   I want to provide a picture of God’s comfort working in a practical way.  Abraham was told to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah and offer him there as a sacrifice to God.  The next morning Abraham got up, gathered the wood, a knife and a donkey along with the boy and together they started going up the hill.  There is no mention in the description of Abraham stewing with rage at God for making such a demand, no indication that he went up the mountain in great despair or abject fear of what was going to happen.  In a supernatural peace he climbed with his son and even when Isaac asked his father where was the lamb for the sacrifice, Abraham calmly replied, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together. (Genesis 22:8 NIV)

Imagine having enough comfort to take your son and walk with him up a great hill knowing that at the top of it you would be killing him.  Abraham was not the sort of person who naturally could do such a thing, only God could give him that sort of peaceful calmness.  When Abraham and Isaac got to the top of Mount Moriah, placed Isaac on top of the wood and pulled out his knife to kill the boy, the Lord showed Abraham a ram caught in the thicket and told him that it was the ram that was to be killed as a sacrifice and not his son.  Now let’s go to the secret of Abraham’s comfort.  Hebrews 11 tells us, By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned."  Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. (Hebrews 11:17-19 NIV)

We have supernatural comfort the same way Abraham did. Abraham took his son up the mountain with a certain amount of calmness because he believed that after he killed the boy, God would raise him from the dead.  The Lord, he knew, would take care of both of them.  You gain comfort the same way.  When you decide that God will take care of you, the comfort of God begins to come over you like a warm wave of peace.  His comfort relaxes you, lifts your spirits, calms you, and takes away your worry and your anger as you trust in Him.   You begin to discover that the Lord is quieting your desperation and in the storm you are at peace.  Memorize this short statement and repeat it again and again for it is the promise of God to you.  “My God will meet all my needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”   If we make this our prayer of faith, God will comfort us in any and every situation.