The Power of Solitude and Meditation - Breakthrough Courage

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

So, ten years ago, I mean, let me stop for a second and just say, we're going to do a few reviews.

We're going to do a few habits of the nine habits over the next few weeks.

I'm only going to pick like four or five.

I'm not going to do all of them, just do four or five over the next few weeks.

And then we're going to go into the book of Joshua.

And we're going to start the book of Joshua in about five or six weeks.

But ten years ago, many of you know I went through this four sabbatical with the church I was at.

Because I'm an ADD leader.

I'm messed up.

I'm still pretty messed up, but I'm less messed up than I was back then.

And my whole life has been move, move, move.

Very busy-minded.

Always thinking, always planning things.

And I needed to be forced into a sabbatical.

I needed this.

God used it in a mighty way in my life.

And so suddenly I wasn't going to meetings.

I wasn't speaking.

I wasn't preparing messages.

And I started having long periods of time of solitude.

To think, to pray, and to spend time, long periods of time in God's Word.

And many of you know the story.

You read about it in Worshiper Warrior.

Some of it's covered again in the new book on Breakthrough Courage.

But I discovered a few things, but one of the things I discovered was that there was a strength within me through the Holy Spirit that I was not tapping into.

I knew it was there theologically, and I'd always done a quiet time.

Since as a freshman at Georgia, I knew about a quiet time, we call it a quiet time.

You guys know it as PB and J, Prayer, Bible, and Journal here.

And I was addicted to a quiet time.

I mean, I did it all the time.

But there was something different when my kind of the screws in my head were loosened, and I had to allow a different version of the Spirit of God to be experienced in my heart and in my mind.

And so, sort of like Forrest Gump putting on his Nike shoes and his Bubba shrimp hat, and I just started running.

And I ran down my driveway.

I just kept on going.

And then I ran down right through town, and then I went all the way to the state line.

I just kept on running.

And I just ran and ran for no particular reason until there was no more place to run.

And remember, it shows him on Santa Monica Pier.

And then I turned around, I ran back.

And then I turned around and I ran back.

So I just started walking and walking and walking and walking.

And for three years, every day I walked for five or ten miles and spent that time in solitude.

Well, there's a psalm, and it's the first psalm, where God is speaking to King David.

We believe it was King David who wrote Psalm 1 about the way of happiness, the way of fruitfulness, and the way of prosperity.

So today I'm a prosperity gospel preacher.

Because we're going to look at the great prosperity passage of the Bible.

So if you have your Bibles, turn to Psalm 1.

Turn to Psalm 1.

And Psalm 1 is one of the most interesting Psalms because, and you might want to jot this down, in my life, a ministry breakdown that led to a spiritual breakthrough.

A ministry breakdown that led to a spiritual breakthrough.

Because you're going to go through breakdowns in your life.

Every one of you in this room is going to have some kind of a breakdown.

Now, I'm not talking about everybody having an emotional breakdown.

Mine was pretty darn close.

Mine was kind of a panic attack that was accentuated by a set of circumstances that led to a ministry breakdown.

But there will be breakdowns.

There'll be breakdowns in your job, there'll be breakdowns in your marriage, there'll be breakdowns maybe through cancer.

I don't know what it's going to be for each of us.

But you can turn a breakdown into a breakthrough if you do what David's saying in Psalm 1.

So in Psalm 1, he's giving us an insight into what being happy is, what being fruitful is, and what prosperity really looks like.

What prosperity really looks like.

That kind of prosperity that the Spirit of God can bring into our lives that can navigate us through the many, not one, but the many breakdowns that we will go through from time to time.

So I don't know what your Bible says, but different Bibles have different headings.

Here are some of the titles that historically have been given to Psalm 1.

The two ways to live.

The two ways to live.

The way of the righteous and the way of the unrighteous.

The way of the prosperous is another title.

And the Latin Vulgate says beatus ver.

Beatus ver, which means blessed is the man.

Blessed is the man.

So in Psalm 1, which there's a reason why the rabbis made all these psalms, all these songs that David and the sons of Korah and others had written, made this one the first Psalm, was because it's like God's giving us a choice as we enter in to the Psalter, the song book of God, many have called it.

Choose your way.

David's selling the way of prosperity.

He's selling the way of fruitfulness.

I love Psalm 1.

So let's turn there and get your pen out because you're going to write a lot here.

Now, Psalm 1 sounds a lot like Joshua 1.

Same word, haggah for meditate.

We'll get to that.

But we're going to go into Joshua in a few weeks.

I'm not going to go there today.

I want to just focus in on Psalm 1 and what I've written in my Bible over on the left side wrote the Psalm 1 pathway.

The Psalm 1 pathway.

The way to happiness, fruitfulness, and prosperity.

God's way to happiness, fruitfulness, and prosperity.

There's two pathways He's going to put before our eyes and our heart to choose which one you're going to go.

Now I don't understand in many ways the sovereignty of God and the free will of man.

I don't get all that.

I'm not sure we're supposed to.

We walk by faith and not by sight.

I don't understand it all, but here's what I do know.

You do reap what you sow.

You will reap what you sow.

And sometimes, for those lucky souls, if we could call them that, it seems like they get away with everything.

Right?

If you got enough money and you got enough lawyers, it seems like you can get away with anything.

But what we what we find out historically is that's not true.

That eventually the results come in and the verdict is guilty.

Well, here we have these two pathways.

So here's how it here's how it starts.

Blessed is the man.

Blessed is the man.

And that that means supremely happy in the Hebrew.

The supremely happy man who walks, underline walks.

He walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands, underline stands, in the path of sinners, nor sits, underline sits, in the seat of the scornful.

So it's this picture that David wants us to see of someone who's walking with the ungodly.

And when you walk with the ungodly, you listen to the ungodly.

And there's a point where you have you ever been walking and suddenly you just stop because you're thinking about something?

That's what happens.

You're walking with the ungodly, and then you stand, you stop walking, you listen more intently, and then there's a point where you sit down and hang out with the scornful.

You want that?

Well, if you start walking with the ungodly, you're going to eventually stand and sit with the scornful.

By the way, you've all done it.

And I've done it, for sure.

Now he makes a contrast here.

And he says, but his delight.

Another way to say it, but he's excited about.

But it's awesome that.

He delights in the law of the Lord, the scriptures.

I circle delight here.

Delights in the Bible.

Delights in the law of the Lord.

And in his law he meditates.

Now write Hagah.

Right beside meditate, put Haggah.

H-A-G-A-H.

Haggah in Hebrew.

And then parenthetically, I want you to write Isaiah 31.4.

Write Isaiah 31.4.

Haggah.

In his law, he meditates day and night.

And by the way, whenever you see in scripture, day and night, it's this idea of all-encompassing your life.

In other words, it's not just a one-time thing or an occasional thing, but it's actually a part of your whole life, day and night, meditates, haga.

This kind of a man, this kind of a woman, shall be like a tree.

Now, circle tree.

Tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season.

Fruitfulness.

Fruitfulness.

Remember, happy?

Supremely happy.

Now he's fruitful, whose life shall not, whose leaf shall not wither.

Whatever he does shall prosper.

He's prosperous.

Now I don't know about you, but the idea of meditating kind of conjures up an image of someone who's sort of like got a long robe with a hood, looks like a monk in a lotus position humming.

And yet, David says the kind of person that I'm talking about who meditates in God's word is fruitful and prosperous.

So the idea seems to actually be someone who's working, someone who's got a job, someone who's actually trying to do something with their life.

It's not just sitting there in the lotus position humming instead of sort of some kind of a Hinduistic Buddhistic way.

This is Christian meditation.

This is biblical meditation.

This is King David, supreme worshiper and warrior over Israel.

Israel was never larger.

Israel was never more successful than under King David.

Now Solomon, the administrator, filled it in.

But the boundaries were never greater than under David.

And by the way, Israel never came close to the promises given in Joshua 1 of what they could have had.

Because they didn't have any more leaders quite like David.

So you can be busy, you can be working hard, you can be focused, you can have breakthrough courage, but the challenge is, will you delight yourself in and get meditative powers from God by being in his word?

And then he contrasts again.

Verse 4 the ungodly are not so, but they're like the chaff which the wind drives away.

So I circled tree and I drew an arrow down to chaff and I circled chaff.

There's your difference.

Do you just want a life that just kind of blows away?

Or do we want a life that's firmly strong and in its fruitful season is bearing fruit?

What I love about verse 3 is he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season.

Church, do you know that there's seasons where you're not as fruitful as other times?

I mean, you have fruitful seasons, and there are times when it's not as fruitful.

There's seasons in our life.

And I was put, you know, kind of in the dugout during that four sabbatical.

It was a season of lack of fruitfulness on the outside, but there was fruitfulness.

My leaf was not withering on the inside.

Because God was preparing me to plant the road and to do the new things that he had.

So sometimes, church, God puts you aside for a while and he's going inner, even though you're not seeing anything outer.

Don't disparage those seasons of your life.

Those seasons where you need to go deeper.

And the reason you need to go deeper is because God's got challenges before you that you are not ready for.

So meditation, haga.

The ungodly are not so, but they're like the chaff which the wind drives away.

Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

The Hebrew word for meditate is haga, a rich and meaningful word.

Remember, I told you to write Isaiah 31.4.

Isaiah 31.4.

Here's Isaiah 31.

Don't turn there.

Let me just read it to you.

As a young lion growls.

As a young lion growls.

Growl is haga.

It's the same word for meditate in Psalm 1.

Same word for meditate in Joshua 1.

Haga.

It's this idea of a lion in the forest with a bone.

Gnawing on that bone.

The fangs of that lion being driven into that femur of a deer.

And sucking out the nutrients.

Sucking out the vitamins of the bone.

It's me sitting by my fire pit, and it's either sage or river.

My two labs getting a hold of an elk bone from another one of my butchering times where I left one behind.

Because a lot of times I butcher outside.

If the sun's out, I go out there and I cut up the meat and everything.

And I try my best to keep, you know, take care of all the bones.

But I will tell you, there's many times where the stakes are laid out on the thing that I'm working from.

I go inside and some of them are missing.

So it's sage or it's river with a bone, throwing it up in the air, driving it into the ground, digging a hole, working it, sucking it, and growling.

You just hear them growling.

That's the lion metaphor of Isaiah.

That's what meditate means.

So meditate, give me a definition, is to chew on, gnaw, and digest God's word into your life.

It's spending time on a biblical passage, a truth, with a hungry heart for God.

It's allowing the intimacy we experience with God to metabolize into our spiritual life.

See, that's what's happening with the lion.

That's what's happening with the dog.

They're metabolizing the nutrients, they're metabolizing the vitamins into their system.

God made a lion and a dog and a bobcat and a fox to gnaw on bones to get the nutrients out of the bone marrow.

And it's the same word here that God wants you to be strengthened by his word coming into your system so that it can metabolize into good works.

Another word, and actually the word, the phrase that I use in my book is eat the book.

Eat the book.

Ezekiel is told to eat the scroll, Ezekiel 2.

Jeremiah is told to eat God's words, Jeremiah 15.

John on the island of Patmos is commanded to eat the book, Revelation chapter 10.

Revelation 10 · chapter mention

Same idea.

So to eat the book.

Eat the words.

To eat God's word or meditate, Haggah, means that we assimilate it, we take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love and healing and service.

You're going to burn out if you don't meditate in God's word.

There's not enough of you to go around.

There's not enough of you to figure out the complexities of this life, but there's a lot in here that's waiting for you to discover, and you can be smarter than your teachers.

I remember many a time in graduate school hearing something, and I'm watching all these 23 year olds, I'm 33, because I'd already been 10 years in the mission field, listening and just writing stuff down that the professor said, and I'm thinking, that dog doesn't hunt.

I kept my mouth shut, I wasn't that dumb.

But I knew that that professor was long on knowledge and short on wisdom.

God gives us wisdom through meditating in God's Word.

There's a lot of smart people who study God's word.

And I love that.

And I'd much rather have you study God's Word than a lot of other things you could be doing.

So let me just, I'm not against that.

I'm for studying God's Word.

I love studying God's Word.

I'm studying Joshua right now to get ready to teach it.

But even more powerful than the knowledge of God's word is the wisdom that comes through the metabolization within our system where the word becomes us.

And it's not head knowledge, it's heart power in our lives.

That brings breakthrough courage in our lives.

So we're busy, right?

Really busy.

I'm very busy.

Busy, busy, busy, busy.

I'm a busy bee.

So there's this lady that goes to this church.

She's here.

I don't know if she's in this service, but she'll remember this conversation.

Because it changed her life.

So one day she was out in the lobby and she was talking about her arthritis and arthritis and always having arthritis.

And I'd prayed for her up front, and other people had prayed for her, but I said, Well, how's it going?

She says, I still got you know arthritis.

I can barely walk.

And I was like, So I had a revelation.

And I said, Do you really want to be healed?

And she was offended by that.

I I I regularly offend people.

Um I said, No, really.

She said, Well, of course I do.

And I said, Well, okay, I believe you.

Have you seen Dr.

Isaiah yet?

She goes, Who's that?

And this was the verse that I gave her.

In returning and rest you shall be saved.

In quietness and confidence shall be your strength, but you would not.

I said, honey, you've got to slow down.

You've got to slow down and quit worrying about your grandchildren.

Quit worrying about your children.

You've got to give that over to the Lord.

You've got to surrender to that Lord.

And I want you to learn how to meditate in God's word.

And you know what?

She did, and she's the picture of health today.

Because she did that.

So to eat God's word or meditate, haga, means that we assimilate it, we take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, healing, and service.

I want you to put that up.

I want you to put that up.

I've got that on your notes.

Can you put that up?

There it is.

To eat God's word, meditate haga, means that we assimilate it.

Not just read it, not just study it, not just understand the dates about it, but take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, healing, and service.

Evelyn Underhill said, we mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs to want, to have, to do, craving, clutching, and fussing over life.

We are in perpetual unrest.

And we wonder why we're so sick.

So isn't it interesting that wouldn't you think that David, King David's writing Psalm 1, why wouldn't he have said something like this?

His delight is in getting a million views on Facebook.

His delight is in running for office and winning a big election.

His delight, you know, we could go on and on, right?

He says, no, his delight is that he's meditating in God's word.

It's counterintuitive, church.

I mean, some of you right now in this room are texting.

I I know you guys.

I hang out with you.

I attract busy people like me.

But some of you are texting right now, some of you are thinking about lunch, some of you are fretting over your job.

I don't know.

You can't even, you mean you drove here.

I mean, we're like half the people that are normally here today, and you guys drove here.

You navigated icy streets, cold temperatures, was it 16 degrees right now, whatever it is.

Did you guys notice how many trucks were driving along with the plow up?

I was like, government efficiency.

These guys need a job, man.

So I'm like, well, wait.

I just there's snow, road, shovel guys got a dudes probably got a Starbucks.

Great life.

Did you hear that Trump said that government workers should actually go into the office?

Man.

These are interesting days.

Listen to this.

Dr.

McLaughlin of Women's Medical College in Philadelphia says 65 to 85 percent of all sickness is rooted in the mental and spiritual.

99 percent of headaches, 75 percent of stomach disorders, 75 percent of asthma, 75 percent of skin disease.

That's why Dr.

David got it 3,000 years ago.

And he said, This is the way to prosperity, this is the way to think better, this is the way to be a visionary, this is the way to make a difference in the culture, slow down.

Church, everybody say this, slow down.

Let's say it again.

Slow down.

Our heads are too busy and our hearts are too frustrated.

David says, This is the way.

Slow down, give yourself time for God reflection.

We need God reflection.

We need to open his word, let it come in, think about it long enough, meditate enough over it that it metabolizes into faith, joy, perspective, and power.

Medical science gets it.

They get it.

Let me give you three health benefits of meditation.

Three health benefits of meditation.

There's more in my book, but we'll just do three.

Number one, meditation reduces stress.

Meditation reduces stress.

An immediate and long-proven benefit of meditation is reduced stress and a deep and decreased levels of cortisol in our brains and bodies.

In other words, when you stress out, when you're frustrated, when you're worried, you're releasing cortisol into your bloodstream.

When you release cortisol, which is a flight, fright mechanism that God placed in us, but you're doing it because of stress, it's shredding your immune system.

It's shredding your immune system, and you're gonna get a cold, or you're gonna get COVID, or you're gonna get sick because you don't have your physical, mental, and emotional defense mechanisms in place.

So meditation has been shown medically to actually decrease levels of cortisol.

A 2013 study, also from the Center of Mind and Brain at UC Davis, found that participants experience better concentration and cortisol levels after weeks of meditation.

Number two, meditation boosts your memory.

Research conducted over the past decade and published by the American Psychological Association, the APA, found there's a direct link between practicing meditation and increased recall of facts.

Who would like to have a better memory?

All right.

Number three, meditation curves, this is really an important one, meditation curves overreaction to stressful situations.

How many of us have gotten angry, gotten frustrated in a situation where we regret it so much, but we weren't prepared.

We weren't ready for the stressful situation that we encountered.

Meditation helps that.

Meditation slows you down so that you spend time in God's word and it metabolizes with patience in your life.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.

Verse 2, but his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And in his law he meditates, haggah, day and night.

That man, that woman, shall be like a tree, planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, because fruitfulness is seasonal, whose leaf also shall not wither.

So even when you're not fruitful in that season, your leaf does not wither.

Because what's happening is sometimes when you're not outwardly fruitful, you're becoming inwardly fruitful to prepare you for the next season so you can be outwardly fruitful again.

Whatever he does shall prosper.

So, how do we practice it?

So that's the reason I put this chair and lamp up here, because it kind of looks like what I have at home.

So we're gonna practice it.

Everybody turn to Psalm 23.

Don't we all love Psalm 23?

So look at Psalm 23 with me.

And I think this is the best place.

If you haven't practiced mindfulness, if you haven't practiced meditation, haga, Psalm 23 is a good place to start.

And so what I do is I have a quiet place where I've got my Bible and maybe my journal.

I didn't bring my journal today, but journal and a pen.

It's well lighted, it's comfortable, and I go to that same place almost all the time.

Not perfectly, but and I like I have it in my I have a fireplace in front of me, so I like that.

But some of you don't have that, that's fine.

But whether it's an apartment, a condo, house, whatever, find a place, a comfortable spot where you can be alone with God.

And then you open the word, and this is what I do.

I say, God, I don't know what's going on.

I am not sure about this or that.

But you know, would you give me wisdom?

I need guidance from you.

So I always start with a prayer.

Lord, I need to know how to make Liz obey.

Right?

Right?

Every man and woman knows that feeling, right?

Like you're always right.

No, I don't know.

I I think God wants you us to be real with him, and he wants us to be honest with him.

And sometimes it's not easy in marriage, it's not easy in our job, it's not easy in our physical health.

So we talked to him about that and then open God's word.

And we talked about it being Psalm 23.

So look at Psalm 23 with me.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

Shepherds protect the sheep, shepherds guard the sheep, shepherds lead the sheep to still waters, right?

So I close my eyes and I just think about the Lord is my shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd.

And I can feel my heartbeat go down, I can feel joy that comes with slowing down.

And just stay there, church.

You just stay there.

Do it every day.

You start to look forward to it.

It gets exciting because you sit down, you're worried about everything in the world.

What's the next thing Trump's gonna say?

Gotta look it up.

Leave your phone, get away from your phone, get away from your computer.

The only reason you have a computer here is you might put on some background music.

That's great too.

But the Lord is my shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd.

And just slow down enough to let the Lord is my shepherd, the word metabolize, grow, get seated in your heart and in your mind, and you'll get smarter.

You'll have wisdom where you didn't have wisdom.

You'll have strength where you were weak.

You'll have patience where you were angry.

Not one day, not two days, not three days, but day after day after day, God's changing you.

His words change you.

It's living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.

And you get changed from the inside out.

And then you become the vessel of change in your outer life because you're getting changed in your inner life.

I think, I think that's what David's talking about.

And he promises, and I think it's true, we can be happy, we can be fruitful, and we can be prosperous.

Amen.

Thank you for listening to the Born for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.