Around a week ago God started calling me back to the desert for solo time away with Him. I left Sunday afternoon and returned Tuesday morning.
As I made the hour and a half drive Tuesday afternoon, I began to pray and release everything to the Lord. During an extended time of prayer in silence I’m able to settle in and hear the Lord much quicker when my mind isn’t spinning with the cares and stress of the world. “God I release… this person, the news, these circumstances, situations out of my control… to You.” I named each person and situation. I wanted everything off my heart so I could be free to hear Him. As I started praying and releasing the burdens more bubbled up than I had expected. My heart and emotions were telling me I was weary from carrying these burdens. It’s not that I was overly anxious about anything in particular, but that I’d absorbed those burdens without realizing it. I don’t think we understand how living in a red-hot stress-pot affects us. After several minutes of releasing everything to the Throne of Grace, my heart felt light, clear.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
– Matthew 11:28-30
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”
1 Peter 5:6-7
I bet there are some of you who are so weighed down you can barely get out the door. We’re not called to carry the burdens of our life, nor are we able to. Walk too long with heavy weights tied to your shoulders and it won’t be long before you’re reaching for your false comfort of choice. Perhaps a binge in the pantry, hours of screen time (perhaps with porn), buying a thing you don’t need, or throwing yourself into work or ministry, none of which will provide more than a fleeting distraction followed by a letdown. Or a crash.
Monday morning I couldn’t wait to get to the desert; God has met me there many times over the years. When we strip ourselves of everything but God and prayer, the power of our connection with Him goes to another level. He blesses us when we seek Him with single-minded focus. This is the life Jesus modeled for us when He went away often to the wilderness to binge on prayer with His Father.
Once in the desert, I found a place to settle in with Him. I had no agenda. My time with Him included free-flowing prayer, praise, a little time in His word, listening, and resting with Him in silence. It was wonderful. That morning He brought me to the following from Psalm 86.
“I will give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with all my heart,
And will glorify Your name forever.
For Your lovingkindness toward me is great,
And You have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.”
Psalm 86:12-13
“For Your lovingkindness toward me is great” stood out. Lately the theme of God’s kindness has been coming up for me. Those of us who are Christ followers are showered with a treasure trove of blessings, grace, and peace. We can miss all those blessings if we’re too busy and choked with worry, fear or stress to stop, and listen with God in silence.
As I rested with God in the wilderness, a deep sense of peace settled into my heart and emotions; it was a peace so powerful I felt it physically. Such life, such love, such kindness. In the middle of a raw wasteland. The great majority of the church services I’ve attended don’t come close to this. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself why you go to church? Aren’t we thirsty, even starved for connection with God and the life and love that comes from deep intimacy with Him?
“It is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.”
– AW Tozer
Many Christians will never experience the delight of His Presence because they haven’t challenged the status quo, looked at the way Jesus and the early church lived, and followed in their footsteps. Hearing the Bible and living it are not the same. We’re invited to go away alone with God to experience the wonder of His presence and allow Him to minster to us.
When I tell people I go away alone with God to the desert for several days I get looked at like I’m an oddity. Which, I am. What was normal in the early church – a life built on prayer and consistent prayer meetings, is abnormal in the modern church where “normal” includes a highly structured, planned-to-the-minute-hour and 15 minutes on Sunday which often begins with a Christian rock concert followed by a 40 minute message, with no connection or prayer with other believers – which would be abnormal to the early church.
The Lord also brought me to Psalm 73.
“But as for me, the nearness of God is good for me;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
So that I may tell of all Your works.”
Psalm 73:28
“The nearness of God…” We are swimming in His presence. He is with us, always. We are never alone, no matter how lonely we feel or what we’re going through. “But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.”
Luke 5:16
Since the spotless Son of God made prayer-binging in desolate places His way of life, don’t we who struggle with broken flesh need it a hundred times more? I pray often at home, in the office and elsewhere so it’s not that I neglect prayer. What Jesus offers, and we desperately need, is a complete disconnect from the world and its distractions that only time away in an isolated setting can provide. It is in this place where we are free to encounter God one-on-one in a way like no other.
“And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.”
Mark 6:31
You won’t hear the challenge from many pulpits to go away to a desolate place with God for several days because so few will stop and go there, including pastors, many who are on the edge of burnout. I wouldn’t want to do this ministry without my desert times with God.
Besides, ministry isn’t the source of life.
God is.
AW Tozer notices two types of professed followers of God in the Bible. One, the scribe, tells others what he has read. The second type, the prophet, shares what he has seen and heard in the presence of God. Tozer write: “The distinction is not an imaginary one. Between the scribe who has read and the prophet who has seen there is a difference as wide as the sea. We are overrun today with orthodox scribes, but the prophets, where are they? …the church waits today for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the veil and gazed with inward eye upon the wonder that is God… to penetrate into the holy Presence is a privilege open to every child of God.”
Setting aside the descriptions of scribe and prophet, where are you? Where do you want to be? If your hunger is to be one of those who enjoy the wonder of God’s presence, no seminary degree is required, in fact, degrees can mess it all up because we can tend to rely on our knowledge instead of the One we say we want to know. I know because I’ve worked with pastors with degrees whose prayer lives and connection with God were choked.
We can have as much or as little of the Lord as we want. The invitation is there for all to “come away to a desolate place” and enjoy His presence.
PS –I experienced plenty of intense spiritual warfare beginning on Sunday and continuing into Wednesday. I’m talking the kind of warfare where you feel like you’re losing your sanity or even your faith. Prayer and rest with God in silence are opposed because they are so powerful.
