Here’s What I Want You To Know…

…About solitude

One of the best and most fundamental things I learned as a new believer was to have a quiet time first thing in the morning. I gave God the “first fruits” before the busyness of the day hijacked my mind. This is where I became familiar with the Word of God. This is when I took the concerns of my life to God in prayer and left them there. This is where I began to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit within. Half a century later this is still my practice.

It was not until many years later that I discovered the spiritual disciplines that were exercised by saints of long ago. One of those disciplines is solitude. Along with solitude comes its twin whose name is silence. For me this was taking my daily quiet times to a new level. It was an extension of what I had already been engaged with, but was deeper and richer.

Why solitude? Someone said that love was spelled t-i-m-e. In solitude we turn from the things of this world to spend time with Jesus. We shut out the noise and demands in order to call upon the Lord and share together our time, our hearts, our thoughts, our needs, our dreams. We have a deeper conversation about who we are and what our purpose may be. Jesus spent nights alone with the Father on the mountaintop. He shut out the crowd. He went alone into the desert.

This is a time apart. You may need to go to a physical place separate from your home to truly get away. Once I rented a railroad car in Dunsmuir and spent a day and night there talking to no one but God.

What does solitude look like? There are many ways to practice this discipline. I do not want to lay out a lot of “rules” for we are all individuals with different personalities, gifts, strengths, and peculiarities. Here are some general guidelines however. This time should include worship, soul-searching repentance, prayer and the Word of God.

Give yourself time to settle. Sit quietly with the Lord. Our brains are wired to leap from one thing to another. It will take some time to calm things down and enter in. Don’t get in a hurry. If you are an extroverted, talkative, always-in-motion kind of woman, you might want to write out your thoughts as they come. You could spend your time with God while walking. If it helps to speak to Him out loud, do that. But give Him this time apart and alone.

This is what I want you to know about the rewards of solitude. After you burn through the surface issues of your heart, God and you will get down to more profound issues. There will be a clarity in your own life and in your relationships. Your need to control and manage will diminish and you will find a willingness to surrender to God’s sovereignty. You will learn through the silence that you have no need to defend yourself or worry about your own reputation. You will know that you are in God’s hands and that is all that matters. There will be direction and divine counsel. There will be a deep and abiding peace that all is well and all will be well. And you will know that you are forever loved. Many other things may take place, but that is for you to discover!

“Truly my soul waits silently for God; from Him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and salvation. He is my defense. I shall not be greatly moved” (Psalm 62:1-2).

“My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him” (Psalm 62:5).

“And when He had sent the multitude away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. Now when evening came, He was alone there” (Matthew 14:23).