(061) The Pillars of Community VII: Alone with God
The Pillars of Community VII: Alone with God
Psalm 131
February 8, 2009
Prep:
· Pss 131, 46
· POC I, II, prayer sermons
· Bon. 76-89
· Skim: OPW, Sacred Pathways, Connection sermon
Intro
So far in this series on community, we have talked about how vital community is for growth and for living the Christian walk. Today we explore a seemingly paradoxical statement.
· If we cannot be alone with God, we will not be able to be with him in community. Solitude is vital for community.
This series has been in part a correcting to our culture has an overemphasis on “personal faith,” but even this was a corrective to a previous overemphasis on the faith of the community, via the Catholic Church.
· An important effect of the Reformation was to bring faith back to the lives of the individual.
It is also possible to have an unhealthy reliance on community, especially when you use the community to vicariously provide what you need to find by yourself.
In this sermon, we will first look at the importance of solitude and being alone with God, for both the individual and the community. After that, we will look at some practical habits and disciplines doing so.
Prayer
Help us examine ourselves and our busyness, even with good things, and see if we need to slow down and be with You.
codependent community?
One major source for this series has been Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, a classic work on true Christian community, written while he was leading an underground seminary in Nazi Germany.
· He devotes an entire chapter (out of five) to “The Day Alone.”
“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will only do harm to himself and to the community.”
There are many similarities between family and community. It is a vital part of our lives and if we grow up without one, our growth will be severely stunted.
· Also like a family, it’s possible to have a dysfunctional attachment and for a community to be enabling and codependent.
· In order for us to be a healthy part of a community, we must be healthy when we are alone.
More for some
This sermon is a balance and corrective, which means that it will speaks more to some than others. Some of you are plenty fine alone, and need to be encouraged into community.
· Even still, we all can improve our time alone with God.
Delight yourself in god
The main purpose of this sermon is to encourage each us to develop a closer personal relationship with God and a healthy inner life, for the sake of the community
· Obviously this is not the ultimate purpose of developing a closer relationship – it is the ends to itself:
Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.
· In other words, as you find that God is your highest delight, you will be rewarded with more of him.
· But this series is about community, so we’re looking at the role of the personal relationship to the entire community.
A rich inner life
Gordon MacDonald wrote a book Ordering Your Private World that talks about this very subject: The importance of being whole and healthy, connected with God, on the inside, where no one sees. He describes it as having a “rich inner life.”
Q Would you describe yourself as having a “rich inner life”?
Q When you go home and are by yourself, is there still life, depth, and vibrancy, or do you feel empty?
MacDonald describes this as a private garden, cultivated solely for your time with God, a thing too private and personal to be shared, a place of peace and calm, of being not doing.
King David spoke about this:
My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore. Psalm 131:1-3 NIV
· David is quite clear about a “weaned” child because they do not need anything, just content to be there.
Q Do you have as hard time with this as me?
For many of us, quieting our souls is no small task. It’s almost painful to stop and do nothing, and to calm our mind and wait. Why? Because we are doing anything, which means we have to trust God to do it all.
· We have to remember it’s okay to do nothing.
· Some need to remember it’s okay to do something!
This call to quietness is founded upon trust in God. For us to slow down requires that we trust that God is in control, hence we put our hope in God, not ourselves.
The challenge of being alone with God is to trust him and find our nourishment from him, not our own effort. That is not to say that effort is not involved, but it is about what God does, not what we do.
A barren inner life
But what if our inner life is barren? What if we afraid to slow down enough to feel the emptiness, the distance from God, the loneliness and pain?
We might be able to continue at that pace for some time, but sooner or later it will catch up with us. And it usually happens at a time of crisis, so we will find ourselves in the greatest need, but without the resources to thrive through it.
The danger of community for the person who cannot be alone and has a barren inner life is that it can become a drug to numb the pain or a band aid to cover the real problem.
· We also use busyness of all sorts to ignore the emptiness.
· That is why Bonhoeffer says community harms the person who cannot be alone.
“One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings.” As moving as worship might be, or as great as Community Group discussion may be, they could simply be a distraction.
· This is very like marriage: You cannot have a healthy marriage unless you are healthy alone.
Harms the community
So how does lack of a healthy inner life harm the community?
1. Robs us of what God would have you contribute to the community through you.
I have defined community as a place where you “belong, grow, and serve.” You have a part to play and a place to serve that no one else can.
1 Corinthians 12:18-21 18 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”
So we all need what the other has to offer, but it has to flow from an abundance of what is inside.
Matthew 12:34-35 For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.
· And the empty man brings emptiness.
2. Causes you to be a drain up of the community.
Not only do we lose what that one person has to offer, but we have to work harder to carry to carry the dead weight.
· The entire body suffers when one part is weak, like trying to walk with a leg that has fallen asleep.
Have you ever talked to a person and prayed with them, thinking that you were really able to help them, only to see them 2 weeks later in the exact same situation? People like that can empty an entire home group.
If you look to the community to give what you are supposed to get from God, you will be a continuous drain, and you will not ever get healed, only getting a salve or band aid.
· And you may end up bitter at the community for what is really your own fault.
Community is kind of like AAA, or other roadside assistance programs. They are very clear that “It is not intended as a solution for a pre-existing condition or a substitute for proper maintenance.”
They don’t mind towing you once in a while, but if keep getting your car towed instead of fixing it, they will cut you off.
· Ask me how I know.
A community should be very willing to help you through a rough time, and as part of the community you will in turn have a chance to help another.
· But we can’t be towing someone everywhere.
\ It is vital that we each develop a rich inner life, a connection with God that does not rely on others. Now we look at how to develop a rich inner life.
Developing an inner life
Christianity, from its earliest days, incorporated various practices, also called spiritual disciplines, to aid us in growing closer to God and having a rich inner life.
This is a partial list and very brief. Perhaps I will do a series on these someday. But I choose these because they have been helpful to me in developing my walk and inner life.
Yet, I know that most of you know and practice these to varying extent and that they have varying effectiveness for each of us:
1. Silence and Solitude
2. Worship
3. Prayer
4. Bible study
5. Meditation
6. Journaling
Silence and solitude
Q How do you feel in the silence?
There is something about silence that is loud. I don’t mean the ringing, but our need to have something playing.
· Several times while I was writing this sermon I turned off Pandora, only to almost mindlessly turn it back on.
I cannot say with authority whether it is unhealthy to always have a radio, TV, or iPod playing, but I have a sense that these things may, at times, keep us from truly being alone with God.
For some reason, I find hard to just rest contently before God. But there is no quick fix for a quiet soul; it is a habit that must be practiced in this noisy world.
· As MacDonald noted, God is a friend of silence and solitude.
NIV Psalm 46:10-11 10 “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” 11 The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
· Silence is an act of trust – God is with us and that’s enough.
There is something about silence before God that is humble, recognizing our weakness before him and our need.
“‘God gives where he finds empty hands.’ A man whose hands are full cannot receive a gift.” CS Lewis
Silence and solitude helps empty our hands.
Worship
By worship I mean experiencing God and connecting him, recognizing his goodness and praising him.
We typically think of this as being done through music, but in fact it happens in many different ways, and music may or may not be the most meaningful for you (it isn’t for me). For instance:
a. Nature
b. Serving
c. Thinking
d. Ritual
e. Art and Beauty
f. Music
In his book Sacred Pathways, Gary Thomas explores these and their strengths and weaknesses. If you’ve only been worshiping in a way that doesn’t relate to you, this can be life changing.
Prayer
Prayer has two basic components: 1) conversation with God, and 2) asking for him to act.
These two are intertwined, so they cannot be completely separated; yet want to focus on the first, as we will devote a sermon to intercession as a vital component of community.
Our day should be filled with times of prayer, both formal and informal, but there is something to be said for setting time aside to spend alone with God, building a relationship:
Luke 5:16 NIV But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
One author said that prayer is self-surrender, that is quieting our soul, and placing our hope in God. If you do not have times set aside for prayer, you will not have a rich inner life.
Bible Study
To be with God alone, we must be with him, not our own idea of him. The Bible is our only authoritative source to know him.
· I preached an entire sermon on how to study the Bible well and understand it, available online, given on Sept, 7, 2008.
Meditation
Mediation simply means to dwell extendedly on God’s word. Not just reading to understand, but reading with the Holy Spirit to internalize and be changed.
Psalm 119:97-100
97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
98 Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me.
99 I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.
100 I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts.
Journaling
This has been one the most powerful things I have done – it is basically interactive listening. Writing down what is going on in my life, seeking to understand and be changed.
Q & A
closing
As we go into worship, evaluate the state of your inner life. Is it a cultivated garden where you spend time alone with God, or is it a barren place you avoid?
Q If it is the latter, are you looking to the community to fill what only God can?
Q What would God have you do to draw closer to him?