Solitude | Luke 5:15-16

Hey, you may be seated. My name is Joel. I am one of the pastors here and it's so good to see you today.

Happy Father's Day, especially to all the fathers. Again. Now, I have a question for you before we get started here. And if you are, or consider yourself to be more of an extrovert than an introvert, I know it's mostly on like a little bit of a scale for all of us here, but if you would say, you know what, I think I'm at least 51% extroverted over introvert.

I want you to raise your hands if you consider yourself a little bit more extroverted. Okay? Hey, that's a good number. That's a good number. You can put your hands down. Now, I know better than to ask all the introverts to raise their hands because we'd have no hands up. But I just figured out who you were. I figured out I went out, and, you know, for all of us here, we we usually find ourselves somewhere on that scale of being a little bit more extroverted or a little bit more introverted.

And, and today we're continuing on with this series called Living Like Jesus. And it's really a look at the spiritual disciplines we're going to be in Luke chapter five today, Luke chapter five, and we're going to be in the book of Luke the entire summer. But we're going to be really taking a a little bit different of a look.

And what we're going to be doing is really looking at some of the spiritual disciplines that Jesus displayed in his life, and how that also should be displayed in our life as well. And so these spiritual disciplines are the things that Jared did a great job at, starting us off last week. And he talked about fasting and then his silence and solitude and Sabbath and worship and prayer and generosity and service and scripture and witness.

And we're going to have an opportunity to look at these things over this summer here and how Jesus displayed them. And so last week, we started with fasting. This week we're going to be talking about silence and solitude, silence and solitude. And now for most of the fathers here on Father's Day, they're like, can I get some of that, you know?

Right. It's like, if I could just go home and take a nap, that would be a great Father's Day, right? Like that's what we desire. For some of us in here, we're a little bit more introverted and we're going to look at that and we're going to say yes, like that. I do this automatically. This is my perfect I am I am basically like Jesus right now because I just love being all alone.

Leave me alone is how some of us feel, while on the other side, some of us are a little bit more extroverted and we're like, you know what? That's not me. And I don't think that sounds like torture to be alone with my own thoughts. Are you kidding me? Like, and yet this is what Jesus displayed. And what I want to show us here today is this is that whenever I'm talking about silence, whenever I'm talking about solitude, it's not just saying I like to be alone because that could be a good thing, or it could not be a good thing.

But rather, whenever we are talking about silence and solitude, here's what I'm talking about. It's that silence removes all the other voices so we can better hear God's. So it's not just about hiding away and being about being by yourself. No, it's an intentional, not hiding away, but it's an intentional drawing near to God so you can better hear his voice through all the other noises.

Because there's a lot of noise in this world, isn't there? There's a lot of voices that try to speak to us, and silence and solitude is going to be a spiritual practice that says, I am going to, yes, draw away from the world so that I can draw near towards God. And so one of the things that I actually want to do in this series as well, so summer series, I know we're going to have a lot of people that miss different, different weeks and all that.

So this is why we're doing a little bit something different. But but one of the other things that we're going to do now that maybe every week, but several of the weeks here is I want to actually invite one of our church members up and ask them how these habits, how these disciplines display themselves in their lives as well.

Because, yes, we're talking about Jesus and what did Jesus look like? But sometimes it's also very helpful to say, how do my neighbors also live this out? And so today I'm actually going to invite my very favorite church member up. And I know some of you are like, oh, you're not allowed to have favorites. Listen, y'all can compete for second favorite, but I got a favorite.

And I'm going to invite my sweet wife, Bethany Hastings, up. Would you please welcome Bethany up to the stage here?

See, she never actually got a chance. There's two reasons why I'm doing that. Number one is because whenever we came here, like ten months ago. Then she actually had recently broke her foot and could never come up on stage. And. And so to this day, I'm still getting questions of like, hey, who's your wife? And so this is her, right?

So if you see me holding hands or hugging her, mind your own business. I'm allowed to do that. All right. And but the second reason, and the more important reason is I have seen my wife display this spiritual discipline. So, so. Well, if you don't know, she has four. We have four children.

We have four children. But she's a stay at home mom. She homeschools those children as well from ages 1 to 10. Which? Which I say that all to say this. She has no time alone, right? Even while she's in the bathroom, there's somebody banging on the door being like, I want string like cheese, I want cheese, I want something, right?

But I've seen her. I've seen her display this so well of just what does it look like to spend time to draw away and spend time with the Lord? And so, Bethany, nice to have you up here. And hey, what does it look like for you? If you could explain just to our church, what does it look like for you to have this time of silence, solitude, quiet time in your life?

So my typical day can be very untypical and different every single day. But I do try to wake up before the kids do to get a loan and spend time with the Lord. And so that includes reading the Bible, praying, memorizing scripture, and typically reading some type of book to help learn and understand the Bible better. But yes, some days that is alone and quiet.

Other days I am joined by children, and so I try to use the days that I have the kids with me as a way to disciple them and show them. This is what spending time with the Lord is about, and this is how you do it. And so that's kind of the general breakdown. And obviously, besides just thanking the Lord for your husband, what else?

What is that time like specifically look like? What do you do when you do have that time alone with the Lord? So I am trying to read through the Bible chronologically right now. And so I get some time in Scripture each day. And then a lot of times I have a prayer journal. I've had a prayer journal, I think since elementary school.

I just keep getting a new one. But a lot of times, obviously right now in this season, I don't have the full amount of time to write out every single prayer that I have. But when I do have longer moments, I do try to write them out to help stay focused. And then sometimes that is praying out loud, though that one's a little bit more fun when kids are around, but that helps me keep my focus.

But then I also like looking back at the prayer journals to see how the Lord has worked over the years, and it's so fun to go back and see his faithfulness in all of those seasons. How he's answered prayers in ways that I never would have expected, but just be reminded of how he has been working all through it all.

So that's one of my favorite things, is to have the program to look back and then also help me keep focused, because there's a lot of distractions pulling in different ways. Yeah. And what you might not know is that if you come to Grace point for any length of time, I guarantee you this, that at one point your name will be in that prayer journal.

And what's awesome is she prays for people and she spends that time. So every single morning, my kids, they know if they wake up early, they know mom is currently in the guest bedroom at a desk by the window that she spends every single day. And at our old house, it was literally in the prayer closet. We had a big enough closet.

She put a chair in there. Now. Now it's in our guest bedroom. They just know that they know it. She has made it a habit that everybody in my family knows exactly where she's going to be at 730 in the morning is she's in there and and what an awesome testimony that is for our family. And so the last question would be just if you had any advice for our church of like, how if somebody is saying, I want to do this, could you give them any advice or helpful tips?

So I would say start off small, even if that means getting a Bible verse and posting it that you can read throughout the day, putting it on the screensaver of your phone, something like that, where you can keep going to the Lord throughout the day for prayer. Whenever you start thinking about prayer, just start praying. Just talk to the Lord like he is your best friend.

He is right there with you every single step of the way. And so just kind of try to keep turning that back to him. If you have a worry, turn it into a prayer instead, because that's actually going to do something. And I noticed this, like making such a huge difference in my day because I am I have a better mindset.

I am focused on the Lord that the day it helps me keep my patience more with the children. Obviously I still make mistakes, but I then am reminded, okay, I need to go ask for forgiveness to the Lord and my children, but it just makes such a huge difference in your day. If you're continually going back to him and drawing on his strength instead of trying to rely on your own.

Awesome. Thank you, thank you. Hey, would you please give Bethany a thank you?

And I bring that up. I bring her up just to remind us that I've seen her do it. She has less free time than I do. She has less free time with four children in the house than probably a lot of us do. And yet she has made it a priority. You can't make this a priority as well.

And so let's go ahead and get into our passage here. Today. We're going to be in Luke chapter five, Luke chapter five. And let's actually go ahead and stand here. We're going to read this whole entire paragraph starting in verse 12. But we're really going to focus in on verse 15 and 16 here today. And so Luke chapter five verse 12 says, while he was in one of the city's, there came a man full of leprosy.

And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him. And he charged him to tell no one, but go and show yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded for a proof to them.

That's what they had to do to actually follow the law. Verse 15 it says, but now even more, the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and be healed of their infirmities. And he would withdraw to desolate places and pray. Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would enlighten our eyes, enlighten our hearts now as well as we open up your word.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. So silence removes all the other voices so we can better here as God. You know what's interesting about this is that Jesus was God. If you didn't know that newsflash, Jesus was God is God. And that means then whenever he was on earth, he did not need anything. God does not need anything.

He does not get tired. Yes, he was a human and he still had human tendencies with it in his flesh. But at the same time he was God. And so whenever he would practice, he spiritual practices, it wasn't like he was needing them, like we would need something. And so instead then we have to ask ourselves, why in the world did Jesus do all of this?

It must be that there is some spiritual fruit that comes out of this. And so in verse 15, let's keep looking at this here in verse 15, again it says, but now even more, the report went out about him. And so if you remember here from those verses that Jesus had just actually healed a man with leprosy, and back then there were no doctors, there were no, you know, places to get healing.

And so in the same way, though, for many of us, if like if we get really sick, well, most of us are going to go up to Kansas City or to Dallas or maybe to Cleveland or Houston, and we have to travel a little ways outside of Northwest Arkansas in order to get the help. And it's worth it, right?

Like if your life was on the line, of course you would actually travel to Texas. I know normally we want to want to do that, but like if your life was on the line, you would travel there. You would actually get the help that you would want to get if your life was on the line. Now imagine, though, 2000 years ago, when 2000 years ago, whenever there was no doctors, there was no way to help.

If you got leprosy, that just meant I am going to die as slow and agonizing death over the next decade or so, that there was no healing. It meant that you were going to be ostracized. It meant that you were. Now they would have leper colonies, that you would have to go and live outside the city. You weren't allowed to live with anybody else because they didn't know how it would spread.

And then you hear you hear of a man that comes along and starts to hear heal leopards, that starts to give sight back to the blind, that starts to let deaf people here again. And if you are one of these people, of course you would get up, you would run, you would travel wherever you would have to go in order to find Jesus.

And so now, as these gospels go on, Luke chapter five obviously is still very early on in his ministry. But in Luke chapter five it says the crowds are now gathering, and we know from later on in the book there's going to literally be thousands and thousands of people almost wherever Jesus went in his early part of his ministry, that are going to try to find him, going to try to say, hey, can you heal me?

Can you help me now? Most of us are not going to experience that. Most of us are not going to have crowds of people all around us, although it's some of us would like it. In reality, if you actually ask statistically, what is the most popular future profession of teenagers today, did you know that the profession that they want to be is not a doctor, or a lawyer, or a professional athlete?

The number one profession of a teenager is to be a social media influencer or YouTube personality. And so in all of us, I think there's still something that says, yes, I want. Maybe as we grow older, it's maybe not to be famous. We understand all the baggage that comes with that, but we still want to be a little bit popular, don't we?

We still want people to actually kind of want us to need us a little bit. I've never experienced this type of popularity. Probably, though, as a pastor, I get it a little bit, I do. I used to be a pastor in a small church or a small big church in a small town, actually, which all that meant was I could never go to Walmart because every time I went to Walmart, I saw 47 people.

I knew I'd be baptized in somebody in the frozen food aisle and doing all sorts. Like I just never. I would drive 30 minutes and it would be quicker to go to the one in the next town over and but Jesus, right now, there's so many people coming at him once again. He is God. He could he could say a word and make all the diseases disappear.

It wouldn't have been hard for him. And yet now when all of these people come near him, we start to see some habits start to come out of him. And for us, in the same way, we don't experience this. But but yet at the same time, we might not have thousands of people trying to get to us, but we have millions of people trying to speak into our lives through this phone every day, right?

Hey, if we're just being honest, if we could actually open this up, you know that like, iPhone actually keeps track of your screen time. If you want to feel depressed about your life. Go ahead and look at that later. All right. Did you know the average Americans spend seven hours a day on screen time? And let's be honest, even when we're not looking at the screen and whenever I'm working out, I'm listening to something which is usually something good.

But like, I'm going to listen to something. Whenever we're cleaning the house, we got something on in the background. There's literally it's it's almost every single moment of our day, from the moment that we wake up to the moment that we go asleep is going to be filled with all sorts of voices that are going to try to speak into us, that are going to try to influence us in some way.

And here's the fact of the matter. If every moment is full. Don't be surprised when your soul feels empty, when every moment is full, don't be surprised when your soul feels empty. Actually saw a video not too long ago of a social media influencer, if you want to put it that way. Speaking of men and his Father's Day, so let me just focus in on men here right now.

He was a young man, a young father, a young dad, and he said, here's the voices that I keep hearing. Be six foot. Have a six pack. Be under 200 pounds. Get Jack. Don't have chicken legs. Don't go bald. Low back pain and mobility. Hybrid athlete. Marathon. Ultra marathon. Make money. Lots of money. Provide. Have a mortgage. Tithing.

Taxes. Save up by the truck. By the mom. Car. Car breaks. Car insurance. Life insurance. Home insurance. Mortgage. Have a nice yard. Sprinklers. Peptides. Creatine. More creatine. Protein. More. Protein to steroids. Pre-workout. Less workout. No energy drinks. No sugar. No. No processed food AI Claude ChatGPT. All the jobs are going to be gone in five years. Thirst traps, porn everywhere.

Wandering eyes. Keep your podcast audiobooks Joe Rogan posts on social lock in. Start a business exit with 50 million. Never work again. Real estate S&P 500. Bitcoin. Don't be soft. Don't be a baby. Wake up early. Go to bed early. No doom scrolling. Track everything. Optimize. Grow up. No one's going to come and save you. Be a good husband.

Date night. Be a good father. Playing everything. Don't forget.

That's what goes through most of our heads every single day. And we wonder why we feel so exhausted when we have all of these voices that are saying, do more, be more, do more. What if? What if the thing that you are needing isn't another audio book is in another podcast is not more self-help? What if the thing that you are craving more than anything is to step away from all of it and just spend time with the Lord?

What if ten minutes with the Lord is going to do more help than all the good things that we could ever come up with? And so when Jesus now had all these people coming at him, when Jesus had literally crowds and crowds of people in the same way that you and I have literally millions and millions of people coming after us and trying to to trying to inundate us with things, what do we do?

We should do what Jesus did in verse 16 it says, but he would withdraw to desolate places and pray. You didn't need to. But he wanted to be close to his father when it says he would withdraw. The word withdraw was in the Greek is actually a military term. It literally means to retreat. But it doesn't mean just to retreat by throwing down your weapons and running away scared.

No, it was a strategic withdrawal that he would come back and you would strategically withdraw your forces so you could gather everything up and go make another attack. And then the same way, Jesus would strategically withdraw himself from all the other people in his life, not because he was tight, not because not because he needed to. But he knew he he knew he needed that strength to go out and do more ministry in in the same way for us, we don't withdrawal just because we need a little bit of me time.

We don't withdrawal just because we're tired of dealing with people. No, we withdraw so that we can get enough strength to go out and to do more ministry. See, we don't retreat from ministry. We retreat for ministry to come back and say, God, I need your strength. I need your strength. And I understand that my strength doesn't come from any good things that I try to do.

My strength comes from spending time with you, Lord. And so let me withdraw and spend time with God. Be filled up with him in order that I can go pour out to others as well. Do you have that time in your life? Are you actually spending time? Because if not, you are going to continue to feel exhausted. You're going to continue to feel worried.

You're going to continue to feel anxious. You know, for me, this last this last week, last week I was gone. Jared did a great job. But last week I was gone. We actually went up to the Rockies, and I spent an entire week just preparing for this sermon, just like I already had the vacation plan. But but I got to go up to the Rocky Mountains, and every single morning I would get up early before the kids got out, and I would go and I'd go walk, walk some of the trails up in the Rocky Mountains.

Of course, the very first day that I got out there, I got pulled up to the in my car to a trail that I was going to go on. And as I was getting out of my car, there was a mama bear and two baby cubs, like literally right beside the trail. And I'm like, not doing that. And, and so and then the rest of the week I was paranoid the entire time.

And so here's my advice. Avoid bears when you do this. All right. But but for for us it takes time to withdraw. And here's what happens just for me, this is my testimony now whenever I start to withdraw and I'm spending a time alone with God, I do not hear God's voice. At least not initially, for sure. You know what I hear?

I hear all of my anxieties and all of my worries and all of my struggles, and I got to call them back, and I got to do this, and I really need to be better at this. In the silence starts to make me confront all of my anxieties and all of my worries, because I couldn't drown it out anymore.

But what a beautiful opportunity when I'm alone with my thoughts to say, I gotta do better, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. To then remind myself in that silence I can't do it. God. It's yours, God it's yours. And when you do that, that's when you start to hear him and he say, how do I know if these thoughts are my thoughts?

Or if the God thought, if it's a thought that leads you to sacrifice, if it's a thought that leads you to love other people, if it's a thought that leads you not to get things for yourself, but to give it away, that's God's voice in your life to saying, I need to love more like Jesus. I need to care for people more like Jesus.

That's what he would do. You know, we're really, really bad at silence. If we're being honest, we are. I'll prove it to you. Most of us don't do well with silence. You ready?

How awkward was that? Right?

That was 20s guys. Some of you felt like that was going to go on for eternity. And you're like, this is the most uncomfortable I've been all week. And we don't do well with silence. We don't do well without filling our mind with things. And yet Jesus had this habit. And we go back to verse 16. It says, but he would withdraw to desolate places.

That word desolate means alone. Out of the way. He would withdraw to places where nobody else was around. And then what would he do? He would pray. And this was his habit. Over and over and over and over again. Look at look at these few verses. He does it over, over 15 times in the Gospels. But here's just a few of them.

Mark one early on in his ministry and rising very early in the morning, while still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. Matthew 14. Whenever his cousin John the Baptist just got killed, it says, now when Jesus heard of John's death, he withdrew from them in a boat to a desolate place by himself.

Matthew 14 and after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, over and over and over again. Jesus now steps away, and he steps away. And he doesn't just step away. And it's not just I want to make sure that we're clear here, being silent and being alone.

You're not just trying to clear out your mind from any thoughts. That's an eastern thought. That's an eastern religion. Whenever we talk about silence and solitude, what it is, is saying, I'm going to spend my time alone with the Lord, and I'm going to fill my mind with his words. I'm going to fill my mind with speaking to him.

I'm going to listen to him. I'm going to fill my mind and my heart with the things from the Lord, so that whenever I leave this place, I can be changed. See, God wants to speak to you. But are you listening? Are you listening? It's not that he stopped speaking. It's that our lives have gotten so loud.

You know, silence is a weird thing, especially in a relationship. On one side, it's been said by a lot of people. And I think it's true that one of the marks of a of a truly great friendship is being able to sit in silence with somebody and not feel the need to fill it up. Silence can be a marker of a great friendship, of a good relationship.

At the same time. Silence can also mean a very bad relationship because as a pastor, I've been in the rooms when there's a husband and wife sitting across the deaths from me, and neither one of them wants to say anything because they know that the moment that they say something, then their spouse is going to blow up at them.

And so they'd rather be quiet than actually just work things out. And so on one hand, you have silence that could be in a marker of a good relationship. On the other hand, it could be a marker of a broken relationship in the same way. For us, some of us are silent with God because we just don't talk to him.

There's no communication there, and we have silence with God on the other side. Though some of us, when we start to grow and mature, we can come back in our quiet place and we can share everything that we need to share. And then we can just sit and let the Lord now do the work in our heart.

You know, on Father's Day, maybe some of that's the same relationship with our fathers. We're going to go home for some of us. Some of us are going to have great relationships with our fathers where we can just sit with our dad.

And not have to say a word, because we've already talked about everything we need to talk about. And now there's just love here.

Some of us don't have that relationship. Some of us is a different type of silence.

You know, I remember whenever I was a teenager.

My grandfather, my mom's dad, he he was a strong man, a doctor for 50 years, a World War II veteran in the Pacific campaign. But when he turned 87, he started to experience heart failure. And it seemed like overnight, he went from being a very strong man to dying. And we got that call. It was the week of Christmas, when I was 17 years old, and we rushed up to Iowa as quickly as we could in order to see him.

And as my we got there, thankfully, a couple days before he passed on Christmas Day.

We'd go in and we'd spend time with them, somebody to always sit with them. And I remember I'd go in with my mom and we'd sit down and and after I said the things that I needed to do of I love you. Thank you for being a good grandfather. And to me, you know what my urge was? I didn't really want to say anything else because I wanted to let him speak.

I wanted to hear what his words were to me in the hospital, the last words that he was going to say. So I'd sit in the corner in silence. If anything, I'd just ask him questions because I just wanted to hear his words.

And some of those words still.

Ringing my ears to this day.

In the same way.

Do we want to hear God's voice? Do we want to hear him and know him today? It'd be foolish to me too, then, just in the service right here. Because for some of us, we need to hear God's voice today. So here's what we're going to do. I'm finishing a few minutes early before we close out service. Let's just take some time.

I'm going to open up the altar. If you want to come down here and spend some time with the Lord. If you want to stay in your seat, you can. But. But I encourage you to. Jesus would get in the desert place. So even if you want to kind of spread out in the sanctuary here for just a few minutes, just 4 or 5 minutes, let's spend some time alone with the Lord.

Today I'm going to have scripture up on the screen that will be rotating a few verses just reminding us. But this might be the very first time in a long time that you're going to have some dedicated time to spend with the Lord today. So let's just take a few moments. The altar is open.