we live in a culture of constant motion, where even the five seconds between episodes is too long to wait. we are surrounded by accessibility, fast food, high-speed internet; we can barely stand waiting for the microwave to finish. even when we are put on hold for a phone call, there is never silence— just terrible music. there is a trend to see sunday morning as a habitual, spiritual gas station. we come because we know we are supposed to, and we need to get our fill to journey through the upcoming week. a consumeristic approach to sunday morning worship asks, “what can i gain from this?” but the discipline of silence asks, “what will god reveal to me?” silence is something that can be practiced outside of sunday morning. yet, it is also something that can benefit us corporately as we sit together—waiting and anticipating what the lord will reveal to us. silence is an act of faith, believing that god will make himself known in some way. we all benefit from times of solitude—going off on your own, perhaps in nature or putting in headphones and listening to music.
if we are listening to music or even reading, we aren’t truly waiting in silence. silence also is not a time of personal prayer, but rather a time to hear from god. our prayers are often filled with requests for god to fulfill, yet this is a way we can actively seek to just listen. silence corelates with a reverent adoration for god as we see in habakkuk 2:20, “but the lord is in his holy temple. we see this in 1 kings 19:9-13, as elijah is seeking the lord. scripture tells us, however, that god wasn’t in the strong wind, earthquake, or fire. the regular practice of waiting in silence can help shape us into worshipers who lean into god more, fully believing that he is the author and perfecter of our faith. in the midst of stress, anxiety, pain, suffering, joy, success, and even prosperity, we need to be reminded that god reigns over all. cameron serves as the director of worship & media at first baptist church in richmond, indiana.
you need the spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude. getting away from time to time has always been a human necessity, but itâs all the more pressing in modern life. in the middle of a busy week, itâs remarkable how strange, and wonderful, the silence can be. so we might get alone and be quiet to hear our own internal voice, the murmurs of our soul easily drowned out in noise and crowds.
but the goal is to create a context for enhancing our hearing from god in his word and responding back to him in prayer. in fact, it is for increased engagement with godâs word and prayer that is at the heart of good silence and solitude. when you do get such a thing on the calendar and find a place for it, here are some ideas for how to move through such a special season of silence and solitude. after thawing out, get the voices in your head down on paper (silence and solitude provide a context for the spiritual discipline of journaling).
but solitude does not equate silence. rather, the spiritual discipline of silence is a time to hear from god. solitude with silence is the most important spiritual discipline for people today, especially pastors. we learn to be ourselves with god. this is exactly what it sounds like; it’s the practice of getting alone and getting quiet. believers in our time and place are in desperate need, silence is a discipline that makes you stronger when you are healing alone, spiritual discipline of solitude, spiritual discipline of solitude, 7 spiritual disciplines, solitude and silence quotes.
silence is easier to define than solitude. in the spiritual realm, it is not the literal absence of all noise, but the absence of all human-created stimuli. u201chuman-createdu201d because most would consider a walk in the woods, in which the sounds of nature are present, to still be a time of u201csilence.u201d but the most important voice to hear in the silence is god’s. the point of practicing silence as a spiritual discipline is not so we can hear donald whitney reminds us why these two disciplines are spiritual disciplines: “the discipline of silence is the voluntary and temporary silence: closing off our souls from “sounds,” whether noise, music, or words, so that we may better still the inner chatter and clatter of our noisy hearts and, practicing silence christian, silence and solitude in the bible, spiritual solitude meaning, art of manliness spiritual disciplines, sermon on silence and solitude, silence, solitude and stillness, silence with god, silence and solitude pdf, religious solitude, importance of silence and solitude.
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