What follows is a lightly edited written account of a sermon recorded and broadcast on February 3, 2021.
We’ve talked about prayer. We’ve talked about fasting. We’ve talked about Bible study, and today, this morning, we’re going to talk about solitude.
Now, each of these we’re treating as fairly distinct spiritual disciplines. However, there’s not always a clear, cut-and-dry delineation between them. You can pray while you are fasting. You can have solitude while you study.
It’s okay that these are not mutually exclusive, that there’s overlap. We are not finite divisible beings in that way. You can’t divide us up… here’s me being happy, here’s me being sad, here’s me being alone, here’s me practicing solitude, here’s me practicing prayer.
Solitude
Solitude is a state or situation of being alone. When we’re talking about solitude, we can talk about it in terms of a person and what they’re practicing, but we can also talk about it in terms of a place. When we’re referring to a place, instead of solitude, we might think of wilderness, and so I want you to keep those two things… in mind. It’ll make sense here in a moment.
Solitude can be chosen either for us or by us. We don’t always get a say in when we are isolated, for example. It can be thrust upon us unwillingly by others. We can drive them away by our actions, our behavior. I know since the COVID pandemic there have been many who have unfortunately been isolated, been in intensive care units, who have a medical necessity and needed to be isolated and practice a form of forced solitude. Others may still be experiencing isolation either out of caution or by choice. But did you know that Jesus practiced solitude? Jesus sought to be alone at times. Why? Why do you think that is? After all, solitude is hard.
We are tribal beings. We are built to be with other people. God invites, and in fact, he commands us to be in community. He also directs his followers to be alone for a time. Even psychologists recognize that to be both emotionally and spiritually healthy, we need both community and solitude.
Why is solitude important? And there are a few things that I think we can discuss and we can think about, in terms of solitude, that serve to highlight its importance. The first I’ll offer is this: integrity. Integrity, as I like to define integrity, is the unity of both actions and words, right? Do they match up? Are they one? Solitude proves our integrity.
Now, if you will [bear] with me for a moment, imagine driving a vehicle. You’re alone in the car. It’s at night. There’s no one around, and you see a stop sign. Are you going to stop at that stop sign? Are you going to come to a complete stop? There are no cameras. There’s nothing else. There’s no app on your phone judging whether or not you’ve completed that stop. Are you going to stop? Now, most of us, if we’re really being honest with ourselves, we’re going to kind of roll through that stop sign. My mother used to call this genuflecting; you just kind of briefly kneel and then go and move on your way. But solitude gives us an opportunity to prove to ourselves, to God, what we really are like when we’re left alone — when there are no witnesses with their eyes on us. How do we behave? How do you behave when you are alone?
I know when I’m alone — and this brings me to my next point here about vulnerability and distraction — when I’m alone, I feel unsure of myself. After all, who’s there to build me up? Who’s there to comfort me? And that’s when I feel the most vulnerable, and I think many of us, I would hazard a guess, that when we’re alone, there’s some measure of vulnerability that we feel.
We’re often afraid of being alone. It’s a signal for us, I think, to reach out to God. We’re built to cry out to him. Worries, troubles, tribulations and all manner of negative thoughts and feelings can be invitations for us to reach out to God — to cry out to him. They can be invitations to seek solitude in spiritual communion with the Lord. When we are weak and when we are vulnerable, God has an opportunity then, in us, through us, to demonstrate his strength through my weakness, through your weakness. God can speak clearly to me when I have ears to hear and when there are no distractions. There is a vulnerable, singular focus on a relationship with God.
A modern response to solitude and silence is distraction, noise, and company. Solitude can be scary. Distractions will happen without us having to expend any energy or effort. Solitude, however, true solitude, the spiritual discipline of solitude requires our effort, requires our energy. Those who have an ear, let them hear: the noise of others competes with receiving from God. Such is the case when solitude is not a cultivated spiritual discipline, and I believe that this is one of the many lessons that God has for us through 2020 and into this year, 2021. There’s a shaking, a loosening, a highlighting of what may have served as distractions for us. Distractions to which we tightly clung.
We held on tightly to social events, maybe to going out to eat, going to the movies, going to concerts, big parties, in-person gatherings even for church, and none of these are bad in and of themselves. Some are good; they’re fitting, they’re proper, they’re things that we ought to do. But none of these, in and of themselves, is ever a purpose. Just as these things can be good, they can also be distractions.
Some of these are things that we have often substituted for solitude. We’ve used it to escape from those moments of vulnerability. To make myself as clear as I can, we ought to make our relationship with God the priority no matter what the external circumstances. We need to make it a priority, in part, by exercising solitude. When physical isolation is not possible, inward solitude can even be cultivated. And now there’s a difference between solitude and loneliness. And this kind of gets me to my next point here about being filled and recharging and refilling.
That difference between solitude and loneliness — perhaps you can tell the difference from some of the situations I’ve used as an example. Allow me to offer this: loneliness is felt when something is missing on the inside. Solitude, however, is achieved when inner completeness is found. Think about the word alone. We don’t always think about where it comes from, but that word alone came from the joining of two words, all and one — alone. That’s all oneness.
True solitude and quietude [bring] communion with God. So think: all one alone, all one in communion — it means, “with together,” right? All one with together, all oneness together.
And there are examples throughout the gospels. Mark 1:35 says:
35 And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed [he being, Jesus] and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed (ESV).
Desolate place — a wilderness, right?
In Luke 5, we read:
15 But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. 16 But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray (ESV).
In Luke 6, he spent the night alone in the desert hills before choosing those who would be his closest disciples. Speaking of the twelve, in Mark 6, we read:
7 And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts— 9 but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. 10 And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. 11 And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” 12 So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. 13 And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.
Now get this, when they came back:
30 The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves (ESV).
In Matthew 14, we read about Jesus feeding the 5,000 with only five loaves and two fish, and afterward, he dismissed the crowd and he went up by the mountain by himself to pray and when evening came, he was there alone. So he had sent the 12 in a boat and he went up the mountain to pray alone, and when he went to meet them, he met them walking on water. Between miracles, Jesus sought solitude. But even when Jesus was alone, he was never truly solitary. He enjoyed fellowship with the Father who sent him.
In John 8:29 and again, in John 16:32, we read:
29 “And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him” (ESV).
32 “Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me” (ESV).
He had communion with the Father in his solitude.
Now I found some ways to practice solitude. I do a lot of long driving for work, that’s why sometimes my analogies are about driving in a car, and I’ll often fill that time by listening to music or podcasts or audiobooks. But there are times when I can tell that is distracting me. There are times when I just need time with the Lord or time in silence, time in solitude when I can turn off those distractions and just be with the Lord and hear from him.
Or early morning in Haiti, there were times when I, for some reason, would wake up without an alarm clock before other people and, looking around not wanting to wake anyone else up, I found an opportunity for solitude, and those were some of my sweetest moments in prayer, in studying the scripture and in exercising some of those spiritual disciplines that we’ve already learned about together.
Or on a walk through nature, not with headphones in or talking with someone — and those can be great things, getting fresh air, getting exercise — but just looking and searching out solitude and having that experience in the wilderness.
Think back to all those times when Jesus withdrew or he instructed his disciples to withdraw to a lonely or desolate place. Oftentimes it was just after or just before a miracle. It was in the valley between peaks. Those low places where the water runs, collects the rainfall, where it forms rivers are the places where we can recharge for our next journey up the mountain.
In the book of Ecclesiastes 5, we read:
5 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. 2 Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. 3 For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words (ESV).
We need and we ought to cultivate stillness and quietude and give opportunity for a peace that surpasses all understanding. We ought to seek solitude and communion all one together with our Lord.
Practical Application After the Message:
As you contemplate solitude, as you are maybe together with other people right now taking this in and thinking and you will soon be discussing this, I’m going to give you just three quick questions to help facilitate that discussion. Or, if you are by yourself, you are practicing solitude, I’ll give three things for you to purposely consider.
- What resonated with you the most from this discussion, this discourse on solitude?
- How have you found success in seeking and practicing the discipline of solitude? Not just times when you were alone, because you had nothing better to do, but times where you successfully thought, I’m going to go and I’m going to spend time with my God.
- And lastly, I invite you, for full honesty and candidness, to answer: What has been a distraction to you this past year? I have been tempted with distractions. I have had to expend effort and energy to remove them, with better success sometimes than others. But for you, what has been your distraction?
David A. Larson 