Rooted Pt. 4 :: The Sound of Silence

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Hi, welcome to the Vine Life Church Podcast. We're in Boulder, Colorado, and we're following Jesus by staying rooted in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission so that hearts are awakened with his awe-inspiring love. In this time of social distancing, we're not currently gathering in person, but we invite you to stream the video from our weekend services online. And if we can help you in any way, reach out to us at VineLife.com. For now, here's a short sermon from last week in Vine Life. Again, thanks for joining us. We're talking about this concept of being rooted in Christ. It's where we've been the last few weeks, and we're going to continue that today. And the longer we're in this lockdown, the longer we're in this social distancing reality, the more critical this gets for us. And so if you have your Bibles, in fact, you can open up to 1 Kings chapter 19, and we'll get there in just a little bit. But let me pray as we're as we're opening the Word of God. Jesus, we thank you today that you are with us wherever we are. And I pray for my friends who are watching this morning. We pray that even now, God, that your scripture would uh would come to life, that your words to us would bring life and renewal and peace and strength. And I thank you that even now, God, as as as I'm speaking, that my words don't have power, but your words do. And that's why we can do this, because you are with us, God. And so I just pray for every person watching that this is a moment of transformation, even today. In Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to read to you this passage that we've been in the last few weeks. Jeremiah 17, 7 through 8. It says, Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes. For its leaves remain green, and it is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit. Come on. This is awesome. This is this is a picture of the one who trusts in God. How much do you want that, even today, to be the kind of tree that when everybody else is getting anxious, that you remain confident and steadfast? And that's where we've been. And uh the the difficulty is this. Probably like you, you might be like me, where this last several weeks has been a little bit of an emotional roller coaster. Um, in fact, every week I feel like I'm in a different state, and every day is an emotional roller coaster. Some days I feel like, man, I'm I'm I'm steady, I'm cruising, I'm loving God, I'm loving people, I'm you know, I'm a great dad and husband, this and that. Um other days I feel no more mature than my three-year-old daughter. And that might even be like that might even be gracious uh to even say that. Where I, you know, I find myself complaining and frustrated and a little whiny. I probably just need to go to bed, right? In fact, you know, to be quite honest with you, someone probably should just put me in time out on one of those days. Um, but that's just reality, right? If there's just a lot of ups and downs right now, maybe it's the same for you. In fact, I do know this. If you're an in uh an extrovert, you are freaking out right now because you still cannot leave your home. But if you're an introvert, you are freaking out right now because you cannot leave a house full of crazy people who are losing their minds, right? And so we're all in this together. But here's the here's the good news staying rooted doesn't mean we're not facing challenges or dealing with worries or anxieties or fears. Here's here's what I want to encourage you with today. Being rooted simply means we know where our home is, the place to which at any given point we can return. And I don't know about you, but for me, that's good news, no matter where I find myself, that saying rooted in God is a place to where I can return. And this is why Paul prays this in Ephesians chapter 3. He's praying for the church for this very thing. And he's using the same language. He, as he's praying, he's praying that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Somebody, you better be shouting in your home right now. Somebody better get up and do a few twirls, wave a hanky, wave a flag, whatever you need to do, that God is establishing us in his love, the home to which we can return at any given point. So, how does God establish us in his love? How does he grow our root system deep? You see, I one of the things that we find when we read scripture is he takes us to a place like no other. It's a really lovely place. I would even call it like the Disneyland of spiritual experiences. It's this amazing little place called the wilderness. Right? Did you expect me to say something different? See, that's what God uses, and it's all throughout scripture that oftentimes when God wants to get our attention, he wants to take us deep into him. He takes us into a different kind of place. And we see this even in the Old Testament. God was speaking through the prophet Hosea as he was calling his people, the people of Israel, back to himself. And Hosea chapter 2, he says, Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. We read about this with Moses, that God sent Moses out to the wilderness for forty years so he could prepare Moses for what was to come. We read about this in the New Testament. John the Baptist, his entire ministry was in the wilderness. He stood on the edge of everything that was happening so he could be set apart unto God and hear from God clearly. And we we we even read of this in the life of Jesus, and we've talked about this uh a lot recently. We just come out of a season of Lent which marks Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness. Even the Son of God was taken into the wilderness to deepen his intimacy with the Father. It is no different for you and I. But it does, I don't know if you're like me, it does feel a little bit frustrating. It's hard because it feels almost cruel, doesn't it? Like I'm gonna get your attention, so I'm gonna take you to a place that nobody likes. Right? It's like, God, can you just, if you want to do something in my life, if you want to transform me, if you want to speak to me, can't you just do that like without stripping away everything convenient and everything pleasurable in this life? Can't you just do it that way? See, the wilderness is a unique place because it's the one place where we are taken away from all of our options, we're taken away from all of the voices that surround us, from all of the distractions and the, you know, the, you know, the gosh, the sparkles and the and the squirrels and the birds and all everything that just gets our attention. It's a place of just us in Him. And I believe that we're in a collective wilderness season together. The whole church, the whole globe is in a collective wilderness season, and while we're here, it's important that we embrace it and not fight it. And so here's a little bit about what that means. Why, how does God use the wilderness to deepen our roots? And I'm I just think about even what I see in the natural. In fact, a lot of us right now, now that it's springtime, we're growing, planting gardens, we're trimming our trees, we're growing grass. I know some of you are crazy, the crazy grass guys in the neighborhood, and you're always tending to your grass and see if you know it's a big competition to see who has the greenest grass, and that's something you can still do right now, so I'm sure your grass is looking amazing. One of the things that I uh I learned about grass, you know, every year at this point in time I turn on my sprinklers and I set the settings. Do I water it three times a day, four times a day, every day, every other day, every 15 minutes? How often am I supposed to be watering? And and I had thought originally that just the more the better, right? The grass needs water. But I was told actually it's better to water deeper and longer, but less frequently. Because what happens with the grass is that the more water it has, the root systems stay on the surface. The roots never actually go deep. They only develop surface-level roots. But if you low, if you water longer and deeper, then on the dry days it forces the roots to go down. And I just really believe that this wilderness time that God has us in together is a time where He is taking us away from surface-level satisfactions, so that our roots learn to go deep in search of a new water supply. Because our roots will never go deep if we're used to drinking up the water on the surface of our lives, right? And some of us, that's just all we've ever known. It's because everything is so readily available to us in our lives that it's easy to be satisfied with everything we can purchase and everything we can busy ourselves with and every person we can surround ourselves with. But God is saying to us right now, we're in a unique opportunity where God is saying to us, Would you come be with me in the wilderness? Because I want to speak tenderly to you. This is a time of quiet deepening, if we will let it be. You see, though, many of us are so used to relating to God in powerful ways and supernatural ways. We read about the God who comes at Pentecost and tongues of fire, right? That sends out his people in his power. Um that Jesus is the word and and and he's speaking to us, and life is happening and exploding all over. And that's in there. We believe that, right? Um, but God also takes us through times where he has to teach us to be with him when it doesn't appear that a lot is happening. And this is one of those times, and one of the most beautiful passages in Scripture that I think highlights this is in 1 Kings chapter 19. And if you have your Bibles, you've already turned there, you can pull this up on your screen, though. Uh God is talking to Elijah, and in this passage, we had just learned about Elijah calling down fire from heaven against the prophets of Baal, right? And he and he showed that his God was stronger than them, and God actually came and consumed an offering, even though it was doused with water. And in the very next scene, we we see that God, because of what Elijah had been praying for, God actually came and supernaturally answered a prayer for rain, and rain came to the land. But then he left because he was scared and he went to a wilderness place, even Elijah did. And it says that while he was there, angels were ministering to him in the wilderness. And then he goes to a cave, and and he's he's he's we get this snapshot that he's jealous for God. He just wants the people of God to know the heart of God, but he's discouraged because they're after his life. And and here's how God speaks to him in 1 Kings chapter 19. God told tells him, Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore through the mountains and broke in pieces the the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind, and after a wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after earthquake, fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance to the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, What are you doing here, Elijah? And I want you to get this, that we can enter into this together. You see, Elijah, as God was passing before him, he was trained to look for God in explosive ways in all of the activity, right? But it says that God was not in the wind, he was not in the earthquake, he was not in the fire, he came as a low whisperer. And what I love about this, even this translation, doesn't quite get at it. In fact, the the interpreter's commentary Bible says that this phrase low whisper is actually uh better translated as silence, that God came in the sound of silence. And see, translators didn't know what to do with it because what does the sound of silence even mean? That doesn't sound like it's something. But what if the most powerful way God wants to come to us in this time is through just the quiet deepening of our spirits and souls with him? That when he comes to us, it is in the sound of silence. Thomas Keating wrote this, an invitation to love. He says, silence is God's first language. Everything else is a poor translation. I want you to think about this for a second. Even before creation was made, before God spoke a word and spoke all of creation, all that existed was God in relationship with Himself, the Father, Son, and Spirit, delighting and being with one another. And we get this sense that there's something even louder, there's something more present, there's something we need even more than activity and noise and better sermons and more input. For many of us, the most powerful thing we will experience in this season, if we will let it, is time alone in the wilderness of God given to silence and solitude and stillness. And so for a lot of us, though, those words are very uncomfortable because we equate silence with God withdrawing from us, right? Or maybe we equate being alone with being lonely. We equate stillness with laziness. And some of us have been so programmed to derive value from everything else that what's happened is roots have only grown on the surface of our life. And rather than fighting the opportunities of this season, I just want to invite you. I believe this is so true for us, because we're not going to be in this forever. This is unique to this time. And our kids will ask us, what did God do in your life during COVID-19? And our answer can't just be, I survived at home. Or I watched all of the Netflix shows, right? Or I didn't kill anybody in my home. We have to have a better answer for that. And I'm telling you guys, this is our moment to enter into this invitation from God where He wants to deepen something that is so core to us that it might even be uncomfortable at first, but I believe that God wants to meet us in a wilderness place so he can speak tenderly to us. You see, for me, this has even been a challenge. I have kids at home, uh, we're we're a dual-income family, we have things to get done, and I like to be productive. I like to have things to do, I like to accomplish things. But one of the things that God has had to teach me and to take me into was how to be loved without getting things done all the time. And so for me, the practice of stillness, being with God, and actually my body being still, where I'm not actually moving my body, I'm not saying anything, I'm not doing anything, but I'm before God, allowing his love to establish, be established in me. That has been a critical practice this last season. And I'm guessing for you, one of these practices is gonna be more than another. So we have silence and solitude and stillness. Some of us, we need silence. We need to be away from the opinions on Facebook, we need to be away from the shows on Netflix, we need to be away off the phone, checking in on people and actually letting God check in on us, right? Some of us need the stillness I just talked about, where we're not deriving value from how active we are, but we are allowing God to establish his love in us. And some of us, it's just the practice of silence, just like he came to Elijah and spoke with his being and spoke even with silence. God wants us uh to step away from the noise and step away from the activity so that we can be close to him again. And I want to encourage you today, even you mothers, um, get some time with God today. Let that be your Mother's Day gift, that you actually step away from everything else. If you're watching this, make sure mom gets away and gets time by herself. But for the rest of us, let's find time this week to deepen our relationship with God. Because here's the deal: this isn't just for us. This the being rooted is not just a self-serving exercise about me developing my thing with God while everybody else does their thing. This is your greatest gift to the world. Your neighbors need you to live out of a rooted place with God so that you can change the atmosphere with a non-anxious spirit. Your family needs this from you as well. Your kids, your, your, your, um, uh, your spouse, your significant other, whatever, um, they need this from you. The best thing we think can do for each other is to stay rooted in Christ ourselves. This is part of staying on a mission. And so I want to bless you today as we go from this place, that this is not just an intellectual idea, but God is able to draw us into a solitary place to hear his voice, to be with him in a new way. So, Father, I pray for my friends on the other side of this screen, and I thank you, God, wherever they're at, that they would not waste this time getting back to things or trying to rush through things or busying themselves with new things. But God, I pray for moments, Lord God, for moments and even extended periods where we can be before you in the quiet hours of the morning or in the in the late hours of the night. I thank you, God, for for moments even during the day where we can hide away with you, Lord God, and that you would teach us to be content with you in wilderness places. I thank you, Lord God, um, to open up new ways for us to experience your love and your goodness and your greatness. And so I bless my friends, bless us as a church, Lord God, and just pray that you would infuse us with your life so that we can bless and extend hope and peace and life to everyone around us. And it's in your name we pray together. Amen.