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Cultivating Solitude (ESD)

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Solitude is a necessity for anyone who wants to listen for the still, small voice of God. Just like any other discipline, it takes some effort and it takes some practice. The more you work at instilling opportunities for solitude in your life, the easier it becomes to shut out the noise and distractions of daily life and focus on listening to God.

But how do you do that? How do you cultivate solitude into your everyday life?

Cultivate Solitude

It’s not as difficult as you might imagine. In order to be effective at this, you need to remember that this is a twofold discipline. Every spiritual discipline is something that you do. But it is also a state of mind. Doing these things helps you to be who and what God has created you to be.

Understanding that, there are several things that yo can do to eliminate the distractions and instill solitude. There are many way to do this. Here are a few that I’ve found to be most effective in my own life.

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Coffee Break – 04.07.2014

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How Does Caffeine Work? – Have you ever wondered just how that cup of coffee gets you going in the morning? It doesn’t do exactly what most people think it does.

If The World Were Only 100 People – This is an interesting study of percentages that puts our world into perspective a bit more clearly, especially if large numbers are vague concepts to you, like they are for a lot of people.

People Powered Front Pages – What would the paper look like if the readers got to select the news instead of the editors? This is an interesting study. It seems what we want to hear and what we are being fed are not the same thing.

The Passion Week Infographic – With Easter right around the corner, a lot of people are focused on the final days of Jesus. This infographic cross references every event of the week throughout the four gospels and gives a timeline. Pretty fascinating.

God’s Not Dead – With several new movies taking the Christian Facebook world by storm, we are left to ask a few questions: Are they really all they are cracked up to be? Here’s a review that I find to be pretty detailed and comprehensive of one recent movie.

5 Things We Teach Our Kids When We Don’t Know They’re Watching – One thing I’ve noticed as a parent: My kids are continually watching me. Sometimes that is fine. Other times, I’d prefer that they hadn’t heard that or seen that. Here are five different things our kids pick up from us when we may not even be aware that they are paying attention.

Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach. – Ted Koppel

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Memorize Scripture: 2 Timothy 2:14-15

Paul moves into the fifth example in his series of illustrations in this second chapter. This illustration is familiar to a lot of people, and the latter half of this week’s passage has often been quoted to encourage believers to study the Word.

You can see this passage in 2 Timothy 2:14-15:

2 Timothy 2:14-15

Much like Paul’s first letter to Timothy, this second letter contains a series of instructions on how to deal with false teachers. In the previous passages, Paul has encouraged Timothy to stand strong in the faith, especially as one living and serving in a pagan world. As Paul begins this passage, he continues that encouragement, but in light of the false teachers that have apparently been a problem for Timothy since the first letter was written.

This passage can be broken into three parts, or three exhortations, from Paul to Timothy.

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The Need For Solitude (ESD)

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We live in a very busy culture. And it seems as if it gets busier and busier all the time. Have you ever wondered why this is true? I Suspect that it has to do with our fear of loneliness. You may not want to admit that you fear being alone, but I believe that the fear of loneliness is one of most deep seated fears that we face. And I believe that more of us face that fear than we know.

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Because we are afraid to be alone, we surround ourselves with noise and busyness. We succumb to the crowds, and keep the constant hum of humanity around us at all times.

My generation was bad, but my kids’ generation is even worse. One of my daughters wears earbuds at all times, one in her ear, the other hanging down. My sons keep a radio station on in their room almost all the time. We even play white noise in the baby’s room. This keeps him asleep when the rest of the house is noisy. It masks the other sounds. I get that. But are we instilling in him from day one the fear of silence and aloneness?

But loneliness and noise aren’t our only options. There is another path we can take. We can develop the discipline of solitude and silence into our lives, and learn to live in that place, without the need for noise. Richard Foster, in Celebration of Discipline, says this: Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.

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Top Posts For March 2014

It looks like spring has finally sprung around here. With the frequency of winter weather over the past few months, I think my family and I are about ready for some warmer weather for a change.

March 2014 Word Picture from Wordle.net

With spring comes a few major events in the life of my family and my church. This weekend, we have a major event at our church. We are hosting Creation Truth Foundation. Dr. Sharp and his ministry will present a series of evening presentations on the truth of Scripture, and especially Genesis. With an impressive traveling museum, this will be an incredible experience.

Two weeks after that, we celebrate our first Easter with Cabool Christian Church! It was almost one year ago at this point that we were traveling to Missouri to interview and connect with this incredible church family for the first time. And now, we will celebrate the Resurrection together.

Our family is experiencing some busy times as well. With a family of eight, there is always something going on. Between my work and class, and my wife’s efforts at homeschooling our younger kids, we stay mobile most of the time. With my oldest daughter’s sports seasons at an end, we now have a bit of margin in our busy schedules.

In case you missed them, here are my top seven posts for the month of March:

  1. 6 Characteristics Of A Good Communicator
  2. The Difference Between Purpose, Vision, and Mission
  3. Why You Need To Develop A Philosophy Of Ministry
  4. How To Take Notes While Reading The Bible
  5. My Current Philosophy Of Ministry
  6. 11 Things I Love About Field Notes Brand Journals
  7. Book Review – A Work Of Heart by Reggie McNeal

As usual, several posts from the Foundations Of Youth Ministry series made the list. The top slot is filled with a post I wrote more recently from a series on being a good communicator. There are a couple of new items on this list, too. One is a book review, and the other is a post about my favorite pocket sized journals, by Field Notes. I find it both intriguing and exciting to see these make the list for a change.

The month’s writing was a bit sparse, and I only managed to keep my regular series up to date, with a few extras here and there. My series on studying and memorizing 2 Timothy appears each Sunday. And I have several book reviews that I posted throughout March, as well.

My favorite post from March is from the series Establishing Spiritual Disciplines, and is called Rejuvenating Your Prayer Life. I’m really excited about this series, and I plan to write more articles for it in April, so keep an eye out.

With all that’s on the horizon, in my family, at my church, and here on my blog, I’m excited to see what God has in store!

Have a great month!

If you are a blogger, leave a comment with your top post for the month. If you don’t blog, leave a comment with a favorite post or blog that you read this month.

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Coffee Break – 03.31.2014

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How To Spot A Quality Coffee Shop – There are few things worse than a coffee shop that doesn’t know how to make good coffee. A new shop opened recently in a nearby town. I was not too impressed. They can’t tell me where their beans are from, or when they were roasted, and they talk about a French roast like it’s a blend. Maybe they need to read this article…

10 Most Expensive Coins And Banknotes In The World – As a coin collection (numismatist), I found this post very interesting. I would love to have a few of these in my collection, but probably will never have that chance. And if I did, I would have no safe place to keep such an item. I can dream, though.

Moving Large Stones – When I teach Bible history, especially early Genesis, one of the topics that comes up is the way the Great Pyramids were built. You could add Stonehenge, or some of the ruins in South America and elsewhere to that list, too. This guy has figured out a way to move extremely heavy blocks of stone. Is this how the ancients did it? Who knows, but it’s intriguing nonetheless.

How To Memorize Entire Books Of The Bible – Bible memorization is one of those disciplines that we’ve seriously neglected over the past couple of decades, maybe more. I never seem to hear anyone teach on it or share about it. It’s a spiritual discipline that I think we need to cultivate more, and this article gives some practical input on how to do so.

What Is Conscience? – “Conscience is making a comeback among Christians. Over the past few years, the term conscience has been increasingly referenced in debates occurring both in our churches (e.g., appeals to conscience on moral issues) and the public square (e.g., defending the right of conscience). We hear a lot about conscience, but what exactly does it mean?”

15 Points For Preachers – As one who brings a message from the Word of God weekly, I found this to be encouraging, stimulating, and challenging.

17 Things Every Christian Parent Must Do – J.C. Ryle wrote an essay in 1887 called The Duties Of Parents. This list of seventeen duties comes straight from that essay. And it sounds like it was written for our own time.

Until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment. – James Allen