Fuel for Life, Part 2

Like Jesus, we can cultivate transformative wilderness experiences in the course of our everyday lives. All you have to do is quiet the external noise of your life and environment, and quiet the internal noise of your heart and mind. Then you can finally be alone with the Father. Here, you are finally able to begin listening to your life in the presence of the Spirit.

Glorious Day
Passion

You Keep Your Promises
Charity Gayle

Jesus Over Everything
The Belonging Co

First Love
Kari Jobe

Silence
The practice of temporarily withdrawing in order to listen and hear from God.

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External Challenges
1. Pace
2. Distractions
3. Technology

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Johann Hari, Stolen Focus
“Most of us experience life as a kind of paradox. Many of the things we need to do are so obvious they are banal: slow down, do one thing at a time, sleep more. But even though at some level, we all know them to be true, we are in fact, moving in the opposite direction: towards more speed, more switching, less sleep. We live in a gap between what we know we should do and what we feel we can do.”

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Henry Nouwen
“Solitude is not a private therapeutic place…In solitude, I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me – naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken – Nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, and nothing is so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, my distractions, so that I can forget my nothingness, and make myself believe that I am worth something… The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door, and leave me alone… The struggle is real because the danger is real. It is the danger of living the whole of our life as one long defense against the reality of our condition.”

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Eremos
Desert, wilderness, or desolate place.

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Psalm 78:1-8
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth! I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might and the wonders that he has done. He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

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Psalm 78:12-29
In the sight of their fathers he performed wonders in the land of Egypt, in the fields of Zoan. He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap. In the daytime he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a fiery light. He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers. Yet they sinned still more against him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert. They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God, saying, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?” He struck the rock so that the water gushed out and streams overflowed. Can he also give bread or provide meat for his people? Therefore, when the LORD heard, he was full of wrath; a fire was kindled against Jacob; his anger rose against Israel, because they did not believe in God and did not trust his saving power. Yet he commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven, and he rained down on them manna to eat and gave them the grain of heaven. Man ate the bread of the angels; he sent them food in abundance. He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens and by his power he led out the south wind; he rained meat on them like dust, winged birds like the sand of the seas; he let them fall in the midst of their camp, all around their dwellings. And they ate and were well filled, for he gave them what they craved.

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Psalm 78:32
In spite of all this, they still sinned; despite his wonders, they did not believe…

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Psalm 78:38-43
Yet he, being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity and did not destroy them; he restrained his anger often and did not stir up all his wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again. How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert! They tested God again and again and provoked the Holy One of Israel. They did not remember his power or the day when he redeemed them from the foe, when he performed his signs in Egypt and his marvels in the fields of Zoan.

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The wilderness reveals you what you are made of, and it prepares you for what you were made for.

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Deuteronomy 8:1-10
The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you. So you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out into the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land he has given you.

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Dan Allender
“Our spiritual journey must lead through the desert, or else our healing will be the product of our own will, and wisdom. It is in the silence of the desert that we hear our dependence on noise. It is in the poverty of the desert that we see clearly our attachments to the trinkets and baubles we cling to for security and pleasure. The desert shatters the souls’ arrogance and leaves body and soul crying out in thirst and hunger. In the desert, we trust God or die.”

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Resist the urge to judge the experience by any kind of utilitarian metrics.

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Ruth Haley Barton
“The invitation to solitude and silence is an invitation to enter more deeply into the intimacy of relationship with the one who waits just outside the noise and busyness of our lives. It is an invitation to communication and communion, with the one who is always present, even when our awareness has been dulled by distraction. It is an invitation to the adventure of spiritual formation in the deepest places of our being, an adventure that will result in greater freedom and authenticity and surrender to God then we have yet experienced.”

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