SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, Sacred Mission.
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Justin.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the pastors here, and it's my joy and privilege to be able to bring you God's word this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We are celebrating baptisms today at both gatherings.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're thankful that you're here to celebrate with us.
SPEAKER_00: And we are in a series that we're calling Holy Habits, Strength Through Discipline.
SPEAKER_00: And so we've been looking at different spiritual disciplines that we should be working to cultivate and foster in our life that we might be strengthened in our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Because we want to be a supplemented strength for others, right?
SPEAKER_00: We tend to have this consumeristic uh lens when we think about church, how can it best benefit me?
SPEAKER_00: How can the programs, the groups, the ministries, the teaching, the what music, all these things, how can they benefit me?
SPEAKER_00: But what we need to do is think the way the scriptures teach us to think, that we should actually be thinking about the glory of God and the good of others and how is our presence working to that end, right?
SPEAKER_00: To to bring glory to his name and to be this good, this supplemented strength in the life of others.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning we're gonna be looking at the spiritual discipline of solitude.
SPEAKER_00: Solitude.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what I want to put before us as we dive in.
SPEAKER_00: I I want to submit that pain, pain might be the most common experience that humanity is able to share.
SPEAKER_00: We've all experienced pain in our lives, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're all familiar with its suffering, its heartache, trial, and loss.
SPEAKER_00: Its presence of affliction is one we've all known.
SPEAKER_00: Often our afflictions can be very overwhelming, causing us to be so fixated on them that we lose all sense of hope that things could ever truly be better than they currently are.
SPEAKER_00: The presence of afflictions brings with them emotions like anger, fear, worry, anxiety, stress, self-preservation, all feelings and states of being that impair our relationship with God and with others, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you can relate to that, when you're experiencing affliction, when you have pain in your life, it tends to impair your relationship with the Lord and your relationship with those around you because these emotions are flooding in and we're typically responding to them in very unhealthy ways.
SPEAKER_00: Pain is this loud noise that demands our attention.
SPEAKER_00: And if not handled rightly, it has the ability to overwhelm us and to crush all sense of hope that you and I have.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the prophet Jeremiah, who wrote the book of Lamentations, was very familiar with pain.
SPEAKER_00: As he suffered the affliction of an entire nation under the judgment of God.
SPEAKER_00: His lament over these afflictions that they experienced.
SPEAKER_00: It was like a eulogy for a funeral.
SPEAKER_00: These laments, they're intended to mourn a loss.
SPEAKER_00: And in his case, it was the loss of an entire identity, a nation of people.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter three of the book of Lamentations, where we're parked at this morning, shows us that the purpose behind the book's graphic depictions of sorrow and suffering was to renew their hope in the steadfast love of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in the silence of solitude that Jeremiah is able to escape the noise of his affliction and have his hope renewed.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have a Bible or an app, open it to Lamentations chapter 3, Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not familiar with that, we're in the first half of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Lamentations chapter 3, verses 19 through 28.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna start with 19 through 20.
SPEAKER_00: It says this Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall.
SPEAKER_00: My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.
SPEAKER_00: Man, verse 20, I think, speaks to the reality of pain.
SPEAKER_00: When we're experiencing affliction in our life, right, it is continually remembered within us.
SPEAKER_00: Our mind, our heart, our soul is overwhelmed with its presence, the noise that it creates in our life.
SPEAKER_00: We can often get stuck in this cycle where all we can do is think about what we're suffering, right?
SPEAKER_00: We can only have this feeling, an overwhelming sense that nothing's going to get better, and you're just stuck right here in this painful moment.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah understood that.
SPEAKER_00: He even says his soul to be bowed down.
SPEAKER_00: This unbearable feeling that hope has been lost, that that something better is outside of his reach.
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes our faith gets muted by the noise of the affliction that we're facing.
SPEAKER_00: It seems to drown out, it seems to be placed in the background, and we begin to doubt things in our life.
SPEAKER_00: We begin to doubt our sonship with the Father, right?
SPEAKER_00: That you're a child of our Heavenly Father, that we have this unity with Him, and we've been reconciled to Him and been brought near to Him because of His love and affection.
SPEAKER_00: No, He seems far off, He seems distant to us, and we feel abandoned, like we were orphaned rather than brought in and adopted as a son.
SPEAKER_00: We begin to doubt our redemption through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That He had paid the price for us to be reconciled, that we might be able to approach the throne of grace.
SPEAKER_00: No, we feel like it is too far of a chasm to come back to Him.
SPEAKER_00: And the promise of something eternally better seems wishful thinking.
SPEAKER_00: But solitude provides for us this necessary space to honestly face our pain.
SPEAKER_00: Rather than continually being cycled in the noise of our affliction, solitude allows us a space to honestly face our pain and suffering, our disappointment and spiritual despair.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's in solitude we're able to be fully ourselves, fully before God.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: When we surround ourselves with other people all the time, when we're always around others and we're in their company, there's this pressure for us to act as if everything's okay, or that you've got it all put together, or that you're not suffering as much as you really are.
SPEAKER_00: You try to put on this front in front of others.
SPEAKER_00: Solitude allows us the space to be able to be fully ourselves in the rawness of our pain, fully before God, and we give everything to him.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21, he says this, Jeremiah, what are we gonna do in the midst of this solitude?
SPEAKER_00: But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
SPEAKER_00: This is the turning point of the entire book of Lamentations.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Jeremiah is doing.
SPEAKER_00: In solitude, he's calling to mind the character of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because the character of God is more true and real than the circumstances that he's facing.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's doing this practice of willfully calling to mind everything that he knows to be true about God, even in the midst of his current experience.
SPEAKER_00: You see, away from all these external distractions.
SPEAKER_00: When we practice solitude, we can actively choose to call to mind God's steadfast love rather than remaining these trapped in these cycles of despair.
SPEAKER_00: But call to mind is actually a little weak for the translation.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually better translated that he called his heart to remember.
SPEAKER_00: He caused what he knew to be true about God, his steadfast love, his mercies that are new every morning.
SPEAKER_00: He caused them to return to his heart because the affliction that he had been facing caused his heart to faint and to be hopeless.
SPEAKER_00: And so he had to do something to remember who God was even in the midst of his suffering.
SPEAKER_00: He makes it come back into his conscious thinking so as to flood and strengthen his very heart.
SPEAKER_00: You see, hope is renewed when we allow our mind and our heart to be filled with the remembrance of God's eternal, unchanging character.
SPEAKER_00: Like, this isn't to dismiss what you're going through right now in this moment.
SPEAKER_00: This is to put something more real and true above it.
SPEAKER_00: Who is God?
SPEAKER_00: Is God faithful?
SPEAKER_00: Does God love us with a steadfast love?
SPEAKER_00: Is his mercy new every morning?
SPEAKER_00: Is he gracious to us?
SPEAKER_00: Has he purchased us with the blood of his son?
SPEAKER_00: Has he secured for us our redemption?
SPEAKER_00: Has he promised us an eternal kingdom that is better than anything that is before our eyes in this moment?
SPEAKER_00: Is he true and better?
SPEAKER_00: And the silence of solitude creates this sacred space where we're able to cause our hearts to return to that truth despite what we're facing.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on in verses 22 through 23.
SPEAKER_00: What does he call to mind?
SPEAKER_00: What does he fill his heart with?
SPEAKER_00: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.
SPEAKER_00: They are new every morning.
SPEAKER_00: Great is your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: You see, he says that what I'm going to call to mind in the midst of my affliction is the eternal, unchanging character of God.
SPEAKER_00: And he begins, the very first thing that he fills his heart with is the relentless, never failing, always and forever that love of God that he has for his children.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this steadfast love, we've talked about this a lot of times here at Sacred Mission because it's such a prominent theme throughout all of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: When God shows his relationship, his covenant relationship between himself and his people, it's described by this Hesed, this steadfast love that he has.
SPEAKER_00: And we we define this, right?
SPEAKER_00: We define this steadfast love by the steady intention of the will to another's highest good.
SPEAKER_00: The steady intention of the will to another's highest good.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Jeremiah wants to remind himself of in the midst of this severe affliction that he's facing.
SPEAKER_00: God loves me out of his own good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: He has made a choice to set his affections upon me, and in doing so, he is working all things for my ultimate good.
SPEAKER_00: He has to remind his heart of that truth first and foremost because of the loudness of his afflictions, trying to cause his faith to be lost.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on, his mercies never come to an end.
SPEAKER_00: You see, solitude positions us.
SPEAKER_00: It positions us to both perceive and to receive these daily mercies that we might otherwise miss in the busyness of our life.
SPEAKER_00: When we're always surrounded by people, when we're always busy with tasks, when we've always got something else to do or some other place to be, we can miss the beauty of his mercy that is new to us every morning.
SPEAKER_00: It can be lost in the very noise of our circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: And what is mercy, right?
SPEAKER_00: We tend to confuse grace and mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Grace is receiving what we do not deserve.
SPEAKER_00: God's uh favor, his blessing, his love, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's grace.
SPEAKER_00: We we we receive from him that which we do not deserve because of our sin and rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: Mercy is that we do not get what we deserve.
SPEAKER_00: We deserve his justice, we deserve his wrath, we deserve his punishment, but Christ bore that in himself on the tree so that we might be removed from it.
SPEAKER_00: And so we receive in Christ his eternal mercy, that we do not get what we deserve.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is what we have to remember in that.
SPEAKER_00: The afflictions that we face as a child of God, it is not punishment.
SPEAKER_00: Rebels are punished, children are disciplined.
SPEAKER_00: What this is, when we experience suffering and trials and affliction in this life, we are experiencing refinement of our faith expressed in loving discipline from a Father.
SPEAKER_00: Church, we should be strengthened and renewed.
SPEAKER_00: We should have hope resparked with inside of our very being.
SPEAKER_00: When we contemplate how his mercy is new to us every morning.
SPEAKER_00: This morning I woke up and I did not get what I deserved.
SPEAKER_00: I got him instead.
SPEAKER_00: And then this resolve.
SPEAKER_00: He has nothing else to say but great is your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Great is your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: The resolve of a heart that has called to mind the eternal, unchanging character of God is he is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: He is faithful to his people, but more importantly than that, he is faithful to his own word.
SPEAKER_00: He is faithful to his namesake.
SPEAKER_00: You see, who who God is and the reputation of his name are inseparable realities of one another.
SPEAKER_00: God is what his name declares him to be.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we can have hope in, what we can have trust in, is that God, above being faithful to you, will be faithful unto himself because his namesake is on the line.
SPEAKER_00: Great is your faithfulness to your promises, greatest faithfulness to your covenant, greatest faithfulness to your own name, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And in that, great is your faithfulness to me.
SPEAKER_00: Because out of your own good pleasure, you have chosen to graft me into that pursuit of your own glory.
SPEAKER_00: And so, no matter what we're facing, in our current circumstances, we can resolve to both know and be in constant awe of his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this discipline, it creates this sense of receptivity, right?
SPEAKER_00: When I'm able to pull myself away from all the noise of my afflictions, and I'm able to be fully myself, fully before God, I'm able to receive and to recognize God's own ongoing faithfulness, even when the circumstances I'm facing tell me that I should just continue to be without hope, that I should continue to be in despair, that there's no way that this is ever going to get better.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just lost in this noise.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 24, Jeremiah says this the Lord is my portion, says my soul.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I will hope in him.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is my portion.
SPEAKER_00: This statement we see throughout the Old Testament, the Lord is my portion.
SPEAKER_00: But it's actually derived from the tribe of Levi.
SPEAKER_00: You see, when God had brought his people out of Egypt through the Exodus, he had promised them a land to be given to them.
SPEAKER_00: And he would give each tribe a portion of the land that was their inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: But he looked at the tribe of Levi, who was anointed and called to serve him in the priesthood.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Levi, your tribe is not going to get an inheritance of land.
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm going to be your inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be your portion.
SPEAKER_00: And so this phrase was something that was embraced by God's people, that it doesn't matter what stuff I have or don't have in this life.
SPEAKER_00: If I have him, I have all the portion that I need.
SPEAKER_00: If I have him, my soul is satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: If I have him, I have an inheritance that is an unfading glory, that I might have him and know him and be with him, the Lord is my portion.
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah says, this is what my soul declares.
SPEAKER_00: It's this beautiful truth that he is fully sufficient and satisfying for our souls, no matter what we hold or do not hold within our hands.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this is the fruit of solitude.
SPEAKER_00: A deep and effectual realization of God's complete and total satisfaction for our soul.
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever wonder why we continue to try and pursue stuff in this life?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's just us trying to quiet the noise of the affliction we're facing.
SPEAKER_00: Like I don't know about you, but when I'm struggling, I like to buy stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody relate?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: I only see women nodding their head.
SPEAKER_00: That concerns me somewhat.
SPEAKER_00: But I do like to buy food and I like to buy other stuff, right?
SPEAKER_00: But but here's here's what I constantly find.
SPEAKER_00: When I'm struggling, I'm trying to find something else to satisfy me.
SPEAKER_00: And it's often in those moments I haven't taken myself out of the noise of my circumstance to be alone with the Lord, to have some type of time and space to be reminded that he is fully satisfying to my soul.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the beauty of solitude is that when we're there fully ourselves, fully before God, we're stripped of everything else that we've sought to try and satisfy us, but we come up empty and shallow.
SPEAKER_00: No, what we do in that moment is we discover God Himself as our portion, our inheritance, our sufficiency.
SPEAKER_00: And so solitude leads us to this radical reorientation that our hearts so desperately need.
SPEAKER_00: Because we're often just whipped up in this storm of chaos.
SPEAKER_00: And we need this time to be still before Him and to be reminded of His love, of His mercy, of His faithfulness, that He alone is our portion.
SPEAKER_00: Because we all face the reality that in the midst of our affliction, our hope it fades.
SPEAKER_00: Our hope fades.
SPEAKER_00: And so hope is renewed in the silence of solitude.
SPEAKER_00: Hope is renewed in the silence of solitude.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he said in verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I will hope in him.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 25 through 28.
SPEAKER_00: We'll continue in the passage.
SPEAKER_00: He says this the Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
SPEAKER_00: It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
SPEAKER_00: Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I want us to see in verses 25 through 28 is both the habit and the purpose of solitude.
SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the purpose.
SPEAKER_00: The purpose of this is for renewed hope.
SPEAKER_00: It's for renewed hope.
SPEAKER_00: When we go before God, our hope is renewed as we call to mind and fill our hearts with the reality of his eternal, unchanging.
SPEAKER_00: Character.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And what is hope?
SPEAKER_00: Hope is the expectation of good.
SPEAKER_00: This confident expectation of the fulfillment of God's promises based on his character and his work.
SPEAKER_00: And we can be so removed from that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Our eyes can be turned to only be focusing on the circumstances in front of us.
SPEAKER_00: And when we do that, when we have this loud noise of our affliction, it mutes our faith, it diminishes our hope.
SPEAKER_00: We don't really believe that there's something better that we should be expecting.
SPEAKER_00: But when we're able to be there still before the Lord, we're able to meditate on his promises.
SPEAKER_00: We're able to meditate on his character.
SPEAKER_00: We're able to meditate on his work through his son.
SPEAKER_00: And this eager expectation of good begins to rise back up within us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what do we mean when we say about the habit of it?
SPEAKER_00: So if the purpose is to renew our hope, the habit of it, let's define solitude, right?
SPEAKER_00: Could be.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying if that's your normal habit, we should talk.
SPEAKER_00: But uh here's how I want to define solitude for us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Intentionally withdrawing from distractions to create sacred space alone with God for heart transformation and to renew hope.
SPEAKER_00: Intentionally withdrawing from distractions to create sacred space alone with God for heart transformation and renew hope.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this is what this discipline involves.
SPEAKER_00: Twofold.
SPEAKER_00: It involves withdrawing away from people, distractions, busyness, tasks, but it also involves withdrawing to, withdrawing to God, communion with the triune God in this intentional time of silence and solitude.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it's not retreating from our afflictions.
SPEAKER_00: It's not what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: We're not running from something.
SPEAKER_00: We have to understand that.
SPEAKER_00: We're not running from our pain, we're not running from our circumstance, we're not trying to hide and retreat from the things that are happening in our life.
SPEAKER_00: No, what we're doing is we're retreating into God.
SPEAKER_00: That our hope might be renewed, that we might step out of that time of solitude and persevere in faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point of all of this.
SPEAKER_00: It's so that we can be a supplemented strength in the presence of others, that we can persevere in this life, that we don't go on hopeless.
SPEAKER_00: I love how the pastor and author Eugene Peterson talked about this discipline of solitude.
SPEAKER_00: He says this solitude is not withdrawal from life, it's a way of entering more deeply into life.
SPEAKER_00: Man, we live distracted.
SPEAKER_00: There is noise everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: We're constantly bombarded with people, things, tasks, trials, sufferings, all this work that still has to be done, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're constantly swimming in noise.
SPEAKER_00: When are we taking the time to withdraw from distraction and withdraw to God that we might find life, renewed hope, strength that seems missing?
SPEAKER_00: You see, this directly connects to solitude as an active spiritual posture.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't passive resignation.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't just taking a nap.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't just setting up your Bible perfectly in the window pane with your coffee and then taking an Instagram picture and then stepping back and making sure how many likes you got.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all ever do that?
SPEAKER_00: Just me.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_00: This is expectant waiting.
SPEAKER_00: You see, he says in the text that we should wait for him.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is good to those who wait for him.
SPEAKER_00: This Hebrew concept of waiting, kava, it involves tension and expectation.
SPEAKER_00: The best way that we can understand this word is a rope pulled tight.
SPEAKER_00: There's this tension that's in that waiting.
SPEAKER_00: We're not just sitting there, right, passively.
SPEAKER_00: No, there's an anticipation for God to meet us where we are in the midst of our affliction, in the midst of our circumstances, and we have this eagerness that hope is going to be renewed.
SPEAKER_00: Seasons of difficulty, when they're embraced with solitude in God, they become formative to us.
SPEAKER_00: They shape us.
SPEAKER_00: They help us mature in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They allow us to feel something more than the suffering we're currently going through.
SPEAKER_00: And so suffering can transform, or solitude can transform suffering from this meaningless hardship into spiritual discipline that shapes our character.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 28 gives us the physical posture of solitude.
SPEAKER_00: Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him.
SPEAKER_00: This imagery suggests complete surrender.
SPEAKER_00: It suggests this humility before God, a kind of radical submission that only solitude can cultivate when we're removed from the need to respond to the noise, when we're removed from the need to have to defend ourselves before others, when we're able to be fully ourselves, fully before God.
SPEAKER_00: So we have to get away from the noise.
SPEAKER_00: So that what we know to be true about God in his relationship and covenantal love with his people might be recalled and remembered in the silence.
SPEAKER_00: But almost all of us, I would say, in this room, we've experienced this to be true that the noise of our affliction causes hope to be lost.
SPEAKER_00: We often become hopeless people.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We look at the world around us, we look at what's happening within politics and the news, right?
SPEAKER_00: We see what's even happening to our own self and the relationships that we have.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this sense of hopelessness that continues to try and overwhelm our soul.
SPEAKER_00: And for some odd reason, we continue pushing into the noise rather than trying to escape it in this habit of solitude.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we have to intentionally withdraw from these distractions that God might meet us in this sacred space of silence, or else there's going to be consequences to us.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Some of us, we we drown in the noise.
SPEAKER_00: We drown in the noise.
SPEAKER_00: Man, if you're a person that when you lay your head down at night, you just can't stop thinking about all the hardship and trials and suffering that you're being afflicted by.
SPEAKER_00: If you wake up in the morning and your soul just feels overwhelmed and bent over within yourself, if you're just constantly meditating on the noise of your affliction, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is you.
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever feel yourself just drowning in it all?
SPEAKER_00: So overwhelmed, feeling crushed by it?
SPEAKER_00: You see, we become overwhelmed underneath all of this noise, and it causes us to lose hope.
SPEAKER_00: Here's some emotions you probably fear a lot, you feel a lot.
SPEAKER_00: You probably feel fear all the time, worry, anxiety, right?
SPEAKER_00: These are the feelings of someone who is drowning in the noise.
SPEAKER_00: We hyperfixate on our afflictions and we allow their noise to take permanent residence in our minds and hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We're meditating on them more than we're stopping in this solitude of silence to meditate on Him.
SPEAKER_00: And then we're our own worst enemies too, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're constantly going through the news feed.
SPEAKER_00: Like if that's not the most hopeless thing you can do to yourself, like just read headlines, right?
SPEAKER_00: Our social media, where we're constantly comparing ourselves to others, we're constantly not measuring up, we're constantly seeing all of the pain.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're if you're an empathetic person, not only are you dealing with your own suffering, but then you're taking on the pain and suffering of others unnecessarily at times, you don't even know this person.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even remember how you became friends with them on social media.
SPEAKER_00: But you're like, oh man, they're going through a really hard time.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take that on myself.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, geez, this is horrible.
SPEAKER_00: It happens a lot.
SPEAKER_00: You aren't getting out of the noise, you're going deeper into it, and you're wondering why you can't keep treading water.
SPEAKER_00: You see, without solitude's stabilizing influence, we become increasingly reactive to external circumstances, the moods and emotions that we're feeling.
SPEAKER_00: We lose the ability to process our experiences in healthy ways that are spiritually driven, that remind us of who He is and what He has accomplished for us.
SPEAKER_00: And what we do instead is we allow all of these circumstances to accumulate as unexamined burdens.
SPEAKER_00: We haven't taken the time to process them before the throne of grace.
SPEAKER_00: We haven't taken the time to allow the Spirit to speak to them.
SPEAKER_00: We haven't allowed the time to be still before Him and allow our own self and our circumstances to be rightly examined before His holiness.
SPEAKER_00: So, what does that do?
SPEAKER_00: When they go unexamined, it distorts our perspective.
SPEAKER_00: Everything's bad, everything's horrible.
SPEAKER_00: It's a hopeless reality.
SPEAKER_00: And it drains us of our spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: But some of us, we're not those type of people.
SPEAKER_00: The people I'm gonna talk to next, you think those people are weak.
SPEAKER_00: Because what you do is you try to fight through the noise.
SPEAKER_00: It's never gonna get me, it's not gonna take me down, I'm gonna fight through it all.
SPEAKER_00: I can endure, I can persevere.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We try to push through and we try to persevere in our own strength.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the emotions you're dealing with all the time.
SPEAKER_00: You're always angry, you're always stressed, and you're always trying to fight for self-preservation, your own good rather than the good of others.
SPEAKER_00: Can you relate to that?
SPEAKER_00: And what happens?
SPEAKER_00: You and I, we inevitably we grow weary.
SPEAKER_00: We grow weary and tired, and so inevitably we succumb under the relentless noise of our affliction.
SPEAKER_00: Because that noise is never going to stop.
SPEAKER_00: Until we reach glory, that noise is never going to stop.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what you will experience: you'll experience changes in the volume.
SPEAKER_00: There'll be times when it's a little bit quieter than it was last week, and there's going to be times where it just feels like it's going through the biggest speaker you can possibly imagine.
SPEAKER_00: It feels so overwhelming and so crushing, but that noise is not going to stop.
SPEAKER_00: And so you cannot fight your entire life against it.
SPEAKER_00: You're not that strong, you're not that courageous, you're not that full of faith.
SPEAKER_00: You can't just keep fighting.
SPEAKER_00: And so your hope suffers.
SPEAKER_00: Because there becomes a point and time of our life where we even question our own ability to endure.
SPEAKER_00: Can I keep fighting this?
SPEAKER_00: Can I keep going?
SPEAKER_00: And what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: We retreat, but we don't retreat in this spiritual solitude, this beautiful practice of uh of uh spiritual discipline.
SPEAKER_00: No, we retreat in isolation.
SPEAKER_00: We retreat to a video game, we retreat to porn, we retreat to alcohol, we retreat to what name it.
SPEAKER_00: You know what that is?
SPEAKER_00: That's tired men who've tried to persevere through the noise in their own strength and they realize they can't keep going.
SPEAKER_00: That's what that is.
SPEAKER_00: All of us we face this reality of affliction in our life in different ways, but we all face it.
SPEAKER_00: And what the Lord calls us to as his people is this sacred space where we are able to be holy ourselves, fully before him, and allow our circumstances, allow our heart, allow this life to be examined before his holiness and to be renewed in the hope of his promises.
SPEAKER_00: And we're not doing that.
SPEAKER_00: And we're and we're wondering why we have all these unhealthy emotions all the time.
SPEAKER_00: But as always, we need to look to Jesus for our actual hope.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not in this guru.
SPEAKER_00: Is this spiritual discipline good and healthy and beautiful?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: Should we pursue it?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, but our hope is not alone in how well we do these spiritual disciplines.
SPEAKER_00: Our hope is in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ Jesus, who was crushed under the shouts of affliction.
SPEAKER_00: You see, what we see throughout the life of Jesus is this regular rhythm and practice of solitude that allowed, I believe, Jesus to persevere in all hope.
SPEAKER_00: He was always going to desolate places to be with the Father by Himself in this discipline of solitude.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus persevered all temptation, he persevered all affliction, he persevered all perceived hopelessness because his hope was continually renewed as he was before the father.
SPEAKER_00: We saw him do this early in the morning, going to be with his father in this desolate place.
SPEAKER_00: We saw when he was experiencing intense ministry, he would retreat and go to be renewed and restored in him.
SPEAKER_00: And even times of extended periods where he would go away for days and weeks just to be with the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And he persevered in all hope.
SPEAKER_00: And in the solitude of the Garden of Gethsemane, we see Jesus' hope strengthened to be persevering even under the loudness of his upcoming affliction.
SPEAKER_00: He went away by himself in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: And the Father met him there.
SPEAKER_00: And what did he experience immediately after?
SPEAKER_00: But the shouts of affliction, the cried, the crowd crying out, crucify him, mocking him, jeering at him.
SPEAKER_00: And they killed him, crushed under all the noise, crushed under the wrath of the Father, crushed in our place.
SPEAKER_00: And I think what is so beautiful is that on the third day, in the silence and solitude of a different garden, Christ triumphed over death in the grave, and he rose again to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: This is the beauty of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: That our hope was fully secured in the silence and solitude of a garden.
SPEAKER_00: That we would be children of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so my prayer for us, Sacred Mission, is that in renewed hope we would wait for Him.
SPEAKER_00: In renewed hope, we would wait for Him.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what we need to see.
SPEAKER_00: When we're practicing the holy habit of solitude, man, here's some things that we can do in that sacred space.
SPEAKER_00: We can pray.
SPEAKER_00: We can petition God.
SPEAKER_00: We can commune with Him there.
SPEAKER_00: We can be fully ourselves fully before Him.
SPEAKER_00: And even in that, we can have this time of self-reflection.
SPEAKER_00: Who am I?
SPEAKER_00: What am I doing?
SPEAKER_00: What is my heart like?
SPEAKER_00: What is my mind believing?
SPEAKER_00: We can read and meditate on scripture and God's character and promises.
SPEAKER_00: But, church, it's also okay just to be silent.
SPEAKER_00: Just to be present, just to be there.
SPEAKER_00: Because we're going to continue to experience affliction in our life.
SPEAKER_00: The noise is going to continue to persist.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're going to persevere and we're going to persevere in hope, it's going to be because we've taken the time to be still before Him and call to mind, call our hearts to remember the beauty of his eternal, unchanging character.
SPEAKER_00: He loves you.
SPEAKER_00: His mercy is new for you.
SPEAKER_00: Great is his faithfulness to you.
SPEAKER_00: Let's close with this scripture from 2 Corinthians 4.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul writing says this, so we do not lose heart.
SPEAKER_00: Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
SPEAKER_00: For this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
SPEAKER_00: As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.
SPEAKER_00: For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.