Wisdom in the Desert (Week 3): Loving Silence and Solitude

I want to begin by speaking about one of the best movies of

all time. It involves Tom Hanks, so you

know it's good. It's the movie Castaway, right?

Castaway. It came out and I think 2000,

and it was a phenomenon. It's such a good movie.

And the story is basically this. There's this overly busy FedEx

man named Chuck. He's like either an executive or

a manager, and he's all about the clock.

He's hustling throughout the entire beginning of this movie,

and he eventually gets onto an airplane that crashes into the

Pacific Ocean. He gets stranded on a desert

island, and on this island, it's full of challenges.

He has to give himself a root canal with an ice skate and a

rock. If you remember that scene from

the movie, it's the worst. It's terrible.

He has to learn how to build a fire by himself.

He has to learn how to fish and get food.

And we see this incredible transformation take place from

this character Chuck. He's there 1500 days.

There's this moment in the movie where he, I think, passes out.

And then the movie says four years later.

And the transformation from who he was to this sort of like

wilderness man at the end of four years is remarkable.

And what we see is that he's all by himself.

Well, almost by himself. He had a volleyball named

Wilson. If you remember Wilson, if

you've never cried over a volleyball, watch that movie and

you will. OK.

But we see this transformation taking place in in Chuck.

And there's this quote where Chuck, after he's rescued,

spoiler alert, he says this line after the island, he says, I had

power over nothing. And that's when this feeling

came over me like a warm blanket.

I knew somehow that I had to stay alive.

The transformation that took place in Chuck wasn't just

physical, it was actually internal.

Chuck said this line before the island.

He said time rules over us without mercy.

Chuck was constantly on the go. He was glued to his pager on his

belt. For the youngins, A pager was

like a beeper. It was kind of like a cell

phone. You had to like call it anyway.

It's the whole thing. But he was glued to his pager.

He didn't even have time to propose to his girlfriend

because work called him in and he had to leave his Christmas

dinner to get on the fateful plane.

The movie is genius because in the beginning it's all

fast-paced. It's go, go, go.

We see Chuck's lifestyle. There's quick edits, there's

quick motion, but then after he's rescued from the island,

the movie just slows way, way, way, way down and we see Chuck,

this transformed man. We see him just slowly going

through life. Everyone around him is laughing

and hurrying still, but he is just slowly going through

because he knows what it's like to have all the time in the

world. His fiance eventually got

married and moved on. And there's there's this key

indicator, I think to see this inward transformation of Chuck.

You see, before the plane crash, his friend's wife had cancer.

And we see this moment where he's clearly uncomfortable

dealing with the reality that that his friend's wife may be

going through something so tragic and he's uncomfortable

with it. And he he says, you know, I know

this doctor and he's the best doctor in the world and we're

going to get this thing fixed. We're going to beat it.

That's his response. But after the island, after the

transformation, his friend's wife passes away from cancer.

And instead of saying, we're going to fix this thing, we're

going to beat it. Instead, he simply says, I'm so

sorry I wasn't there for you. The mark of an inner

transformation, not having control over anything.

You see, the wilderness has a way of transforming us.

When we really are stripped away from everything, all power and

control that is real. The real, real work of

transformation can take place. My question that I want us to

think about is, what if Chuck, Tom Hanks's character, What if

he had instead intentionally gone into the wilderness, but

just under different circumstances?

What if instead, he had chose to go on a sort of sabbatical to

realize how fast his pace of life had become?

What if, instead, he'd realized the preciousness of life in

relationships? What if he had married his

girlfriend? What if he had willingly chose

to dip beneath the surface to lift up the hood, check the

engine, and see what was really going on inside?

How many of us know that life has a way of making us go

through the wilderness eventually, whether it's job

loss, an unexpected breakup, maybe it's a diagnosis or some

kind of sickness, or maybe it's just the economy flinging out of

control or an unfair grade on a test.

Whatever it is, life has a way of bringing us through the

furnace for refinement and for testing.

And we're going to talk about that today as we continue our

sermon series called Wisdom in the Desert.

We're exploring the desert fathers and mothers during this

season of of Lent. Lent is traditionally the 40

days leading up to Easter, and traditionally it's a time of

fasting, of, of stripping away in a time of seeking God.

There are other characters in the Bible who went off to the

desert for various reasons. Moses went off in the wilderness

because of the rebellion of the Israelites.

Paul went into into the deserts of Arabia.

Jesus went into the wilderness. And today we're going to be

looking at the prophet Elijah. So if you have your Bibles with

you, we always encourage physical Bibles.

We're going to be turning to 1st Kings chapter 19.

First Kings 19, If you didn't bring your Bible, that's OK, you

can look up on your phone. Otherwise it'll be on the

screens as well. But we love getting our physical

Bibles in front of us as much as we can.

First Kings 19, it's in the Old Testament, maybe about 1/4 of

the way in on your Bible. What we're going to be reading

about is the story of Elijah, who was a prophet, and he was a

prophet during the time of the the evil king Ahab and his wife

Jezebel. Now, the prophet's role in the

Old Testament was basically to to speak on behalf of God in

order to hold the kings accountable to the covenant that

the people had made with God. OK, so it's kind of like a

wedding vows. The prophets would have been the

people who would have, you know, approached your marriage and

said, hey, you said for sickness and in health.

You said better or worse. The prophets were the one that

would actually hold you to those vows.

And so their role was to speak on behalf of God to the kings

and hold them to the covenant that God's people had made with

him. Does that make sense?

The laws and making sure they weren't, you know, neglecting

the oppressed and the poor and so on.

So Elijah was speaking to the evil king Ahab and his wife,

Jezebel. Abab and Jezebel, their dynamic

is basically it's, it's an exploration of what happens when

you have a weak man who is abdicating and neglecting his

responsibility. So a controlling woman sweeps in

and and calls the shots from behind the scenes.

That's a sermon for another time, by the way.

We're not going there today. OK?

So breathe. We're we're fine.

But the dynamic here is that they are turning the people's

hearts back to idol worship with Bale.

Now Elijah, his career, if you would call it that, his career

was enormously successful. He did things like predicted to

drought. There was a miraculous

multiplication of oil and flour for a widow.

He even brought someone back to life through God's mighty power.

Unbelievable. His story climaxes with a

showdown between the prophets of the false God Bale.

And basically there's this showdown and on the on the Mount

Carmel. And basically the the false

prophets are like screaming and crying and trying to get Baal to

answer their prayers, but he doesn't.

And then Elijah prays this prayer and God's fire rains

down. It's this incredible victory.

So if Elijah had like a theme song at this point, the theme

song would be all I do is win, win, win no matter what.

OK, that's basically Elijah's story here up until this point

until chapter 19 something happens.

Let's take a look. Verse one it says now Ahab told

Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all

the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel, remember she's she's

no good. She is not not a good person.

So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, may the gods deal

with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do

not make your life like that of one of them, meaning the

prophets that had just been killed.

Jezebel speaking a death threat over Elijah.

Here in this moment Elijah is being confronted.

After all the victory, after God's mighty power, he once

again is being confronted by evil and he begins to spiral.

Can anyone relate? Ever been confronted and had it

lead to a spiraling moment? I definitely have verse 3.

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.

When he came to Beersheba and Judah, he left his servant there

while he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness.

It's an important theme. He came to a broom Bush, sat

down under it, and prayed that night that he might die.

I have had enough, Lord, he said.

Take my life. I am no better than my

ancestors. Then he lay down under the Bush

and fell asleep. What a radical shift from where

Elijah once was. He had this incredible victory

over the false prophets of Baal, but then he's confronted by

evil, and this confrontation leads him to fear depression.

We see Elijah dealing with exhaustion.

Many scholars believe he's dealing with just severe burnout

in life. You ever been there?

So what does he do? He flees for his life and he

goes into the wilderness. Two weeks ago we talked about

how in Scripture, whenever you hear about the wilderness, it's

often times symbolic for a time of testing and a time of

temptation and a time of preparation.

The wilderness is a place of refinement.

It's a it's a way of of drawing out what's really inside of you.

What we see in the story of Elijah that many of us have

experienced as well is this. Some of the hardest battles come

after the greatest victories. You can be on cloud 9 with God.

You can be jiving with him. You can see his miracles take

place, right? But if you don't lose sight, or

if you lose sight, if you, if you misstep, you realize, man,

Satan comes after you hard. Life can come after you hard.

People can come after you hard. What we see is that God was

still willing to meet him in this place of despair and this

place of self pity. God provides him food, rest and

presence. Verse 7.

Verse 7. The Angel of the Lord came back

a second time and touched him and said, get up and eat for the

journey is too much for you. So he got up, he ate and he

drank. Strengthened by that food, he

travelled 40 days and 40 nights until he reached Horeb, the

mountain of God. There he went to a cave and

spent the night. So the Lord restores him, gives

him food, nourishment for the 40 day journey. 40 days is usually

significant in in the scripture for the same reason.

Jesus fasted for 40 days a night.

Moses on Sinai was there 40 days and nights as well.

So same mountain as Moses and what we see is he's about to

have an encounter with God, but not in the way that we might

think. Verse 9 says, and the word of

the Lord came to him and I love this question.

Don't miss this question, such a critical question.

The Lord asks Eliza, Elijah, what are you doing here?

Elijah, such a good question of God, what are you doing here?

It's a question when we're in moments of despair, when we're

in moments in places where we're not meant to be, when our

emotions have burned out and LED us to a place of desperation.

Sometimes God asks us the same question.

He says, how'd you get here? What led you here?

What's going on? Do you even know?

This is a question of of probing.

It's a question of revealing what's in Elijah's heart.

What are you doing here? We see what's going on with

Elijah with his response. It tells a lot about where his

his head is AT and where his heart is AT.

In verse 10, he replied, I have been very zealous for the Lord

God Almighty. The, the Israelites have have

rejected your covenant, torn down your altars and put your

prophets to death with the sword.

This next line, he says I am the only one left and now they're

trying to kill me too. Can you hear the desperation?

He those Israelites, the people who are supposed to be following

you God and obeying your your your covenant laws, they've

rejected you. I'm he says I'm the only one

left. I'm the only one who actually

cares about you God. I'm the only one who cares about

your mission. Here I am, and now they're

trying to kill me too. Can you hear the self pity?

Can you hear the hurt? You see, Elijah has lost sight

of God's plan for his people. He's lost sight of the bigger

picture in this moment. And what he's done is he's

fallen into the despair trap. You ever been there?

It's just this cycle of despair. There's this chart.

It's called the emotional cycle of change.

Whenever you go through or going through some sort of change in

life, whether it's starting up a business or making a move, and

the cycle is this, Basically, first you start off with what's

called uninformed optimism, right?

This is going to be great. This new venture, this thing

that we're kicking off, it's all dreams, it's all aspirations.

It's all rosy, right? This is kind of where Elijah

started off. He's like, all I'm doing is

winning, winning, winning. God is great.

He's on the move. Israel's going to be restored.

Here we go, right? But then Step 2 informed

pessimism. OK.

Oh, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Oh, my goodness. Not everyone's on my side.

Wow. We're reaching some obstacles

that I never thought I would encounter.

I'm not sure I have what it takes.

Ever been there? And where does that lead?

It leads to the valley of despair.

This is where we see Elijah finding himself.

He's in a valley of despair. He he was maybe hoping that God

would bring restoration to Israel.

He runs back to to town and expecting this and he's

immediately confronted with evil.

Not everything has changed. And so he's in this pit of

despair and most people find themselves in the loop between

1-2 and three, 1-2 and three, 1-2 and three on repeat over and

over and over in life. But but God's goal here is to to

bring him out of the valley. Verse 11 The Lord said, Go out

and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the

Lord is about to pass by. Then a great and powerful wind

tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the

Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.

After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not

in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a

fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

So here, in a similar way, just like God put Moses in the cleft

of a rock in order to to show him his presence as he passed by

and revealed his name, here we see a very similar almost

mirrored interaction happening. But unlike Moses's interaction

where there was a cloud and fire and earthquake, unlike that,

what we see is that God is showing up in a new way.

He's teaching Elijah a new way to interact with, not with, not

just with fanfare and victory and fire falling down in front

of the prophets of Baal. There is a new interaction here,

and this is what it says in verse 12.

After the fire came a gentle whisper.

A gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled

his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of

The Cave. God didn't display himself in

this mighty earthquake or fire or wind.

Instead, he knew Elijah needed a whisper.

The KJV calls this a still small voice.

And the Hebrew? It's the closest thing you can

get to silence without it quite being silence.

And that's where God speaks. It's in the quiet.

God still speaks in the quiet and the stillness and his

presence. Our culture has a really hard

time with silence, really hard time with silence.

We are a busy, busy, busy people.

Studies show that we touch our phones over 2000 times a day.

Power users, it's like 5000 or something like it's a ridiculous

amount, right? You and I, we are in a hurried

life cycle lifestyle, right? We, we feel every free moment we

can. I'm, I'm, I was literally

preparing a message on silence and solitude and the still small

voice of God. And as I was trying to, you

know, fast this week and I was like, oh, I'm going to take my

lunch breaks and instead of eating, I'm just going to like

have quiet and silence and solitude.

You know what I did? Filled them full of more work.

And I'm like, what am I doing? I'm about to preach on this and

I can't even live it out, right? We are hurried people.

We are prone to ignore the issues that are going on inside

to distract ourselves with entertainment around them.

And we are self medicating ourselves to avoid the pain

that's going on inside. We go, go, go all the time.

We don't have time to listen to a still small voice.

There's this book by Kasuke Kuyama called The Three Mile an

Hour God. And his basic premise is this,

that the pace at which God moves is just three miles an hour.

It's about the about the pace that we walk.

And he says the reason for this is that this is the pace of

relationships. And basically his premise is

that love moves at 3 miles an hour.

God is never rushed. God has never hurried.

God is never sprinting. God is never surprised.

He moves at 3 miles an hour. What we see here in this moment

with Elijah is that God is using the wilderness in The Cave to

help Elijah come face to face with the truth of his distorted

beliefs. He's checking Elijah's motives

on the inside. God is exposing what's really

going on. Elijah's over here and he's

saying I am the only one left. God, everyone else has abandoned

you. I'm the only one with zeal and

now they're probably going to kill me too.

And God's like you sure about that.

Verse 18 God says, yet I I reserve 7000 in Israel, all

whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have

not kissed him. God saying, Elijah, my boy,

you've done great work. I'm proud of you, but you're not

the only one. I've got 7007 thousand people

who still worship me 7000 who haven't bowed down to idle 7000,

who are standing firm for what's right and what's true and what's

good. Elijah, you're doing great, but

you're not alone. You're not alone.

You see, even though Elijah's failure led him to despair, God

still met him with care. James reminds us that Elijah was

just a human, like every single one of us.

And here's the point, guys. God is happy to use us, but He

does not rely on us. God is very happy to partner

with us and use us for His Kingdom advancement.

Advancement. But in no way does it all depend

on us, and no way is He relying on us to get it done right.

He's happy to use His children in partnership, but he's got so

many plans. His plans are always good, and

there's always a remnant of people who are still going to

worship him and see those plans through.

It does not all rely on us. So what God does here is He

begins to restore Elijah with the truth, revealing the

disordered, disordered desires and the disordered thoughts that

Elijah had, and he corrects them.

And then he begins to put a plan back in place.

And he says, hey, Elijah, get up from this place.

You're going to go, you're going to meet Elijah.

He's going to apprentice under you, and my plan will continue

forward. God takes him from that valley

of despair and he brings him out of it, and Elijah's transformed

in that place. Here's a hypothetical question.

This is not not necessarily from the Bible, but my question that

I'm wondering as I'm reading this story is this.

What if Elijah had done something a little bit

different? Like what if after that

incredible victory on the top of the mountain where fire came

down and his enemies were destroyed?

What if instead of of running back to town, what if instead

Elijah had just paused? What if he had gone into the

wilderness intentionally to go meet with God first?

In other words, what if Jezebel couldn't even find him to

breathe death threats at him? What if he was nowhere to be

found because he was being found by God?

What could have happened? Would this story have turned out

differently? We don't exactly know.

It could have been God's plan for him to go back to Jezreel

right away. But I just got to wonder.

Like, what if he had taken time to process what was really going

on inside with the Lord and hear his voice?

Makes you wonder, what if he had taken a little bit of time for

solitude and silence? What if you and I had taken a

little bit of time? What if we choose to take time

for silence and solitude to hear God's still small voice as well?

Henry now and describes describes silence and solitude

this way now and writes Solitude is the furnace of transformation

when we're actually alone with God.

That's where God does some of his best work.

He speaks to us and reveal the intentions of our heart.

So one of the points is this, guys, we can either meet God in

the wilderness by invitation or by interruption.

But life has a way of bringing us in the wilderness one way or

the other by a show of hands. How many of you would say, yeah,

I've been through some wilderness seasons in life,

Yeah, put your hands down. And if you haven't yet, you're

very likely will someday. And how many of us know that,

that life has a way of bringing us there?

So we can either choose to go there by invitation, by

listening to the Spirit, by choosing to go in and have

solitude with God, or life will interrupt us.

In other words, if God, if we don't let God lead us into the

wilderness, life just might force you there.

If we don't slow down long enough to meet God in solitude,

burnout will slow us down for us.

We must choose to willingly and proactively like Jesus, go into

the wilderness by God's leading and allow the silence and

solitude to work out our hearts before the Lord.

Jesus willingly went off often times to go be alone with the

Father and pray. And you and I are called to to

become like Jesus and to do what Jesus did.

There was a moment where I was at Christian college and

preparing to become a pastor and private Christian college has a

way of of squeezing a lot of church into a very short amount

of time. So I would have multiple Chapel

services during the week that were mandatory.

I had a volunteer Chapel service on Sunday nights.

I would volunteer on the youth on Wednesdays.

Every single one of my classes involved the Bible.

I would have just like student LED Bible studies in the dorms,

on and on and on. That's just like a taste.

My life was full of godly stuff. It was full of the Bible, and by

and large, that was awesome. Very grateful for that.

But there became a point during my senior year where I started

to get a little burnt out of it all.

A lot of really good content, a lot of really good worship

services. But at some point my, my, my

soul began to disengage from what my head was learning.

And at just the right time, God had me in what was called the

spiritual formation class. And one of the assignments was

to basically not read as much Bible.

So there I was in Bible in Bible college, getting told to not

read my Bible so much. And the point was to to just not

read the Bible. The point was to read the Bible

and actually engage with it. The point was to read the Bible

slowly and allow the Holy Spirit to actually speak to me in it.

You see, I was reading the Bible, but I wasn't allowing the

Bible to read me. You can go through the Bible,

but the point is you need to let the Bible go through you.

And so in this moment, I remember it was, it was painful

at first, you know, because I'm used to just studying and

absorbing and getting through the content and doing all the

things right. And so instead it was like one

verse, one verse at a time, actually starting with just some

breathing, starting with some paying attention to God and just

allowing one verse at a time to speak over me, inviting God to

share what He has for me in that moment of silence and solitude.

And can I tell you something? It was transformational.

It was transformational. It changed the very fabric of

how I interacted with God. Suddenly faith became alive and

a new, fresh wind was breathed into me.

In those moments of silence and solitude, I didn't need more

content. I didn't need more voices.

I didn't need more information. I needed the very presence of

God speaking to me with this still small voice.

And I wonder if there's anyone in the room where God is

desperately trying to get your attention.

But he's not doing it with earthquakes and fire and with

wind. But he's speaking with silent

whispers, one of the desert fathers who were part of this

radical group of Christians who went off into the wilderness to

combat the devil and to deal with their sin.

His name was Saint Anthony, and Saint Anthony was radical.

He was, he was told to have spent 20 years in isolation.

When he left, he took his solitude with him, and he shared

it with all those who came to him.

People were going out into the desert to find this man, to

learn from him, and people say that he'd become so Christ like,

so radiant with God's love, that his entire being was his

ministry. His very presence was his

ministry because of the transformative work that had

happened in the wilderness. And so for us as a church,

especially during this season of Lent, as we're intentionally

slowing down and stripping back, we would love to just

reintroduce the practice of silence and solitude to you.

Solitude is not it's not loneliness.

Solitude is not just isolation, not just being by yourself.

And solitude is also not aloneness, right?

Aloneness is what introverts really like, just going off and

being alone, like with a book or by themselves.

But that's not solitude. Instead, our definition of of

solitude is this, that the practice of solitude, it's

intentional time and the quiet with ourselves and God.

Pastor Wayne Cordero writes it this way.

Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul.

Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.

So when you're in other words, when your body is craving a

little bit of separation, craving meeting with God,

isolation creeps in. Ruth Haley Barton puts it this

way. Solitude at its most basic and

profound level is simply an opportunity to be ourselves with

God, to be ourselves with God, not not our fake selves that we

try to show everyone else, right.

But when you're before the Lord, there's no hiding.

And we can try to hide. We can try to fool God in many

ways, but but solitude as most basic level is just saying God

here I am truly being ourselves before the Lord.

A couple weeks ago I was at a retreat in California.

It was for a bunch of pastors and a very, very famous pastor

who I have enormous amount of respect for.

He led a Church of about 13,000 people.

So imagine that someday we'll get there.

Just kidding. OK, that's not the goal, but he

very respected pastor, wrote many, many books and he was

talking about, he was talking about contemplation.

He was talking about silence and solitude.

And he was, he was speaking about how like not everyone's

wired for contemplation and for silence and solitude.

And as much as I respected like 95% of what he, what he said,

otherwise I kind of caught myself because I'm like, I'm not

quite sure I agree with him here when he was trying to make the

point that, you know, extroverted people don't like

going off into the silence and solitude.

And so therefore we shouldn't encourage it.

And the reality is, if we're actually practicing true silence

and solitude, none of us enjoy it at first, for the most part,

because it's a, it's a wilderness.

It's a place of testing and it's a place of refinement.

As a matter of fact, studies show studies show that once you

distinguish between silence and solitude and the lowness,

introverts have no higher desire or enjoyment of solitude than

extroverts. Meaning it doesn't matter what

your personality is. This is hard either way because

the deepest parts of you are being revealed.

You can't hide before God. So our invitation for you and

for me is to willingly go out into the wilderness.

Practically speaking, I'm going to throw this list on the screen

here. Practically speaking, for you,

this may mean choosing not to look at your phone with your

morning coffee. Maybe you just leave it on the

charger and you just instead have some moments of quiet.

Maybe for others, it's making an appointment with God this week.

Maybe literally putting it in your calendar, resisting the

urge to fill that time like I did and use that window to try

silence and solitude. Maybe for others you just go and

take a walk without listening to music or a podcast.

Maybe you start by just practicing breath prayers for a

few minutes every day. Simply maybe choosing a word or

a phrase such as ABBA and you just breathe in and you say

ABBA, I belong to you and you breathe out and you just repeat

that as a way of prayer. Maybe for others, you just try

maybe not putting music on during your morning commute, or

you just choose to simply learn more about the practice of

silence and solitude. One of our recommended resources

that we love is Practicing the way on this next slide.

They have an entire practice dedicated to this.

There's unbelievably well made videos along with the companion

guide. We are happy to point you in the

direction of those if you would like to do that as well.

But the goal in all of this, the goal in all of this silence and

solitude and learning to listen to God's voice is not to be, you

know, just like a a spiritually elite person who is better than

everyone else. Quite the opposite.

The goal instead is to become a person of deeper obedience and

compassion for others, loving God more deeply and loving

others. It's allowing ourselves space to

actually allow God to remind us of how much He loves every one

of us. Guys, we so desperately need to

be reminded every single day just how much God loves us.

If you're in the room and you've maybe don't believe that or

you've lost sight of that, let me just let me just encourage

you and remind you God deeply, deeply, deeply loves you,

deeply, longs to have relationship with you and longs

to communicate with you and speak to you.

This is slow work. This is not task oriented work.

Our world out there is driven by immediate results and solitude

and silence is rarely immediate and there's rarely results as we

think of them. The goal, instead, is to begin

to build healthy rhythms in our life.

Even if it feels like things aren't changing at first, even

if it feels like our feelings are betraying us.

The experience of it, over time will produce more and more

fruit, and it'll become easier. So my encouragement, practically

speaking Church, is to try engaging in silence and solitude

this week. Pick it up, try it on, see how

it goes. Try not to judge the experience

too harshly. Ah, that didn't work.

Or oh, I did that wrong, or ah, it wasn't quite what I expected.

Just let the experience be what it is.

As we conclude, I just want to speak to some of you who maybe

are in that wilderness season right now as the band comes

forward and begins to play. Maybe you're in that season,

you're on the verge of burnout yourself.

Maybe some of you are emotionally fried.

Maybe you've seen some incredible victories in your

life. Maybe you have that that sort of

optimism, maybe it's not quite realistic.

Maybe some of you are beginning to encounter some of that

realistic pessimism in your life.

Wherever you're at, if you're in that wilderness season, my

encouragement to you this morning is to let God nourish

you. Let him not only nourish you

physically and maybe you just need some restoration and you

need some food and an app like Elijah and that's great, but

allow him to nourish you spiritually as well.

And maybe you just need to allow yourself to to just be still to

the point where you can actually hear his voice.

Galatians 69 says let us not become weary in doing good for

at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

And if you're in that wilderness season or that place of

struggle, allow God to just ask you, what are you doing here?

What are you doing here? What led you to this place at

this time and this moment? I pray that as a church we would

find those moments of stillness and quiet because I've found

that it's better to let God whisper than to cause him to

have to shout. And so we willingly go into the

wilderness to let God prepare us for the moments where life

throws us into the wilderness. There's this beautiful picture

during Jesus time. He's up on the mountain.

It's called the Transfiguration. And there before the disciples

is Elijah and Moses and Jesus, and God's voice speaks over

them, and he says, this is my son, listen to him, listen to

him, hear his voice, heed his commands.

That's the instruction. Listen to Jesus.

And the encouragement to us today is to do the same, to

listen for that still small voice.

Because all of our efforts, all of our practices, all of our

accomplishments eventually will fizzle out, be forgotten, and

they will fail. But Jesus never will.

His Kingdom will prevail. The gates of hell will not

overcome the church. So wherever you're at, whether

you're in a wilderness season or you're on the top of the

mountain in victory, keep that godly perspective.

God's plans are not measured by our success or our ability to

accomplish or whatever it may be.

God loves to use this, but He's not relying on us.

It's not all on you. Surrender it to Him.

It's whether you found yourself in the wilderness because of

your own rebellion, your own weakness or failure.

God's not done shaping and refining you for greater

purpose. May we willingly follow His

prompting into the stillness and solitude so He can whisper to us

everything we need to hear to live a life of fullness in Him.

Fullness. In him.