Teaching | The Solitude Practice | Encounter With Our Self E2

0:00Hello and welcome. My name is Ynka Dawson and I'm the host of Practice in the Way with John Mark Hormour, a podcast featuring teachings and conversations with John Mark and other voices to help us journey into a deeper life with God. We're continuing our series on the ancient practice of solitude, shared by John Mark, Adventored Church in Los Angeles, California. In today's teaching, John Mark invites us to follow Jesus' path into solitude, where we can give our feelings, desires and trust to God and be shaped by his transforming love and return. If you'd like to continue exploring what it means to build a life of God in solitude, we have two invitations for you. First, John Mark's newest book Into the Quiet is now available for pre-order. Second, you can join John Mark in person for the Into the Quiet experience coming to a city near you between now and November 12th. Seguire your copy and purchase your ticket using the links in the episode description and we pray that you're able to discover how you can step out of

1:02the chronic noise of our world and into the presence of the God of Peace. Lastly, we're a crowd-funded nonprofit to everything we make, including this podcast. It's completely free because it's already been paid for by the circle and other givers. Thank you all for your generosity. If you'd like to join these friends in the circle, visit practiceintheway.org for slash generous. He has John Mark with today's teaching on encounter with us. Let me just offer you a moment of quiet. It should just come to quiet on the inside, not just the outside, before God. You may just want to whisper that ancient prayer, speak, Lord, your servant is listening. Come Holy Spirit. Would you pray that three-word prayer out loud with me?

2:06One, two, three. Come Holy Spirit. Matthew chapter 26 verse 36. Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane and he said to them, sit here while I go over there and pray. It took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, my father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will. Then he returned to his disciples and he found them sleeping. Couldn't you men keep watch with me for one hour? He asked Peter, watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away a second time and he prayed, my father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it,

3:11may your will be done. When he came back, he again found them sleeping because their eyes were heavy, so he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. Then he returned to the disciples and he said to them, are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners' rise. Let us go. Here comes my betrayer. Take a seat. It was 21 days long in an isolated cabin up in Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest and the dead of winter out in the middle of nowhere right on the coast. I was all alone, no phone, no computer, you literally hand over all of your devices when you check in, no books. The Bible was, quote, allowed, and yes, that was the word used, but with a stern warning not to use it as a distraction from God. No alcohol, no more than one cup of coffee a day, no exercise or at

4:19these cardiovascular exercise, nothing to quote discharge anxiety from my body. No contact with the outside world. You pack in all your own food and do all your own cooking. Your one point of human contact is five mornings a week at 5.50 a.m. when, quote, your mind is more open to its unconscious. I'm not sure what I think about that. You do an hour and a half of depth therapy with a clinical psychologist and spiritual director. Depth therapy is similar to regular therapy just without the part at the end where you feel better about your life. We started, you know, you, basically we started day one with family of origin. I will never forget. He said, let's bring dad into the room. I was like, no, dad's not here right now. Started there and then a few, and then just kind of worked my way for concentric circles up through my entire life story until today over

5:19the weeks. This program is over 50 years old. It has no name. It has no website. You can't sign up for it. You don't need to ask me about it. It's all word of mouth. I happen to know about it just because a few friends have done it over the years and it was transformative. I wanted to do it for a long time, but where was I going to get three weeks, my entire annual vacation? That, no thank you. But a few years ago, I had the gift of a sabbatical after stepping down from pasturing a church for just about 20 years. I had a break and I had time. So I said, man, this is my moment to seize the opportunity. So I said, yes. Honestly, I kind of thought I would crush it. I mean, you don't get a grade at the end, but if you did, I was pretty sure I would be like star student. First off, I'm very introverted and so I'm very comfortable being by myself. I have been practicing and teaching on solitude and silence and stillness for well over a deck.

6:20I'm kind of known for it, actually. And I thought, man, if anybody is going to be, quote, good at this, it would mean it was one of the most harrowing, painful, difficult things. I've ever, I barely took everything in me every day to not bolt from my car and run away. I realized that I had developed a way of being in solitude with props, where I would go into solitude, but I would bring with me literal bags of books, Christian books about the spiritual life. And I would bring my laptop and no Wi-Fi, but you know, to do calendar planning and some writing and get ahead and really, and my journal and I'd vision here and I'd think, and why not a bottle of red wine while we're at it. And I realized what I had been calling solitude, silence, and stillness was a little bit more like deep work for an introverted teacher to be alone and away from his kids.

7:20That's not the desert, the aramas. I asked the director of the program, Wino Books. I mean, in all seriousness, books, spiritual reading is like a vital part of my life with God. It has shaped my mind, my inner heart, who I am as a person. Why, why no books? And he said, really interesting. He said, this program was designed to recreate Jesus' experience in the desert, or Moses' experience in the desert, or Elijah's experience in the desert. He said, all the great ones went into the desert. And then he said something I will never forget. He said, the desert teaches by taking away. And I realized I have been socially conditioned, even by the church, and this isn't a blame thing, just how our world is, to learn by addition, by hearing a sermon, like the one you're hearing right now, and taking notes by reading scripture, by the study of scripture, by listening to podcasts, by doing biblical research, by getting a mentor, by asking questions, addition, addition, addition, poor more information into my head. And that is a vital

8:23aspect of learning. There's a whole other dimension to learning, that is learning by subtraction. When you go into the desert, all of your props are stripped away, and you are forced to see what actually is, is laid bare. Until you go into the desert, you don't truly know what's in you. Now, 21 days was a one-time event. I don't plan to do that ever again. But whether you're a time and solitude is 21 days in a cabin by yourself, or 21 minutes tomorrow morning with a cup of tea on your couch watching the sunrise, the point is the same. You will have to face yourself. And re now and in his book The Way of the Heart, which I highly recommend writes this, and just it's kind of a long quote. I just want you to meditate on this with me. Solitude is not a private therapeutic place. Rather, it is the place of conversion, the place where the old self dies,

9:29and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman occurs. In solitude, I get rid of my scaffolding. I have no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to me. This is back in the 80s, he wrote this. Nobody attacks, right? 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. A nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, my distractions. Solitude is the furnace of transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter, the struggle against the compulsions of the false self and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self. Thank you for your patience with that quote. There's just a lot there.

10:30Notice that for now, in solitude is not like in his frame a kind of daysbaw for the soul, where you go to just kind of pamper your heart with Jesus and put some cucumbers on your eyes. It is rather in his language the place of encounter. Now, this is key to get. We live in a therapeutic age and that's not a slam on therapy. I'm very for good therapy, but therapeutic culture is a whole other thing. Feel the brief in his seminal work, the triumph of the therapeutic faith after Freud writes about the shift in consciousness, at least in the west over the last one or two centuries from what he calls and forgive his male-centric language, religious man to psychological man. His famous quote is, religious man was born to be saved. Psychological man is born to be pleased. So when you're reading sermons from 200 years ago, they're preaching to people whose driving motivation is how can I be saved? That is not our driving mode. It's not even mine. Our just innate driving motivation is how can I be pleased? How can I be happy? How can I be comfortable?

11:38How can I get what I want? How can I minimize pain and maximize pleasure? This stuff is just in us. Los Angeles in particular is international hug for this and it is amplified by the industry here, wellness capitalism. City historians, and most of you know this, argue that one of the two or three reasons this city exists is because of health and wellness. It was marketed that way to the world and it makes perfect sense. If it's 1912 and you have to Berks Galosis, you do not want to live in Michigan. You want to get on a train and you want to come to LA and you want it to be 84 degrees in March. That is really helpful. And so this is just the culture we breathe in America in particular and in California especially. And this culture is just in us. It's like smoke on our clothing. It's just everywhere we go. So it's only natural that you and I would go into solitude thinking of it as kind of a form of spiritual self-care. Like I do my cold plunge and my sauna and I have my athletic greens and some elementary electrolytes and I do this great,

12:45moisturizer for my face and I do center in prayer and I go into solitude and I just and we would kind of categorize it that way. And that's not all wrong. At times that's what it feels like. But at times you are in for a rude awakening because it is a place of encounter. Now over the next three weeks the plan is to cover the three primary encounters that we face in solitude. The encounter with our self, the encounter with our enemy and most importantly the encounter with our God which is what makes it all worth it. But up for this morning is the encounter with our self. Now when you go into solitude often again there's no formula here but often the first thing you feel rather than feeling happy or at peace or union with God often that comes later. What you first feel is what Father Thomas Keating called the unloading of the unconscious which is a way of saying

13:49that like whatever was down there in you and you've been running away from or just not aware of it comes up from the substratide to the surface of your heart and you begin to feel. All stuff that's in you but that was down. You begin to really feel it. Let me name just a few of the most common feelings that come up in solitude. One is just exhaustion. Often the first thing this is very common for me. I go in now I expect it is when I go on retreats when I go up to Big Sur a few times a year to a monastery up there for a few nights. When I go I expect the first 24 hours I will barely be able to pray. I'll barely be able to string four thoughts together in coherent sequence because I've been running on adrenaline. My dad I have a job I live in. It's just busy busy busy the modern world is soul crushing and all of a sudden your quarters all levels just drop I call it the crash right and often all you can do is just sleep. I think of the story of Elijah and one

14:51king's 19 when he goes into the Aramaas he's so exhausted all he can do for three days is eat, sleep and drink. This is the prophet on par with Moses and Jesus in the biblical imagination. What did he do on his solitude retreat? Sleep, eat, drink, repeat. That's often all we can and should do at first is just rest. Rest is an essential component for discipleship to Jesus especially in an age of chronic exhaustion. You know you can imagine your tiredness on a spectrum at one end of the spectrum is like good tired. This is the feeling that hopefully what you're feeling today where you worked really hard all week long for six days you shall labor but the seventh is the Sabbath the Lord your God and you get to the end of your week and you get to rejoice in the work of your hands and you're tired but it's good tired. Then there's un you're like that sounds nice. Then there's unhealthy tired where you're okay but you're not really sleeping enough your low

15:53unmore margin high on stress your life is over busy your mind's kind of a bit frayed but it's manageable you're on edge but you're okay you're not falling apart you're okay. Then there's dangerous tired where you have lost touch with your soul and your God you are numb on the inside you're running on uppers and adrenaline and who knows what else just to get through and you are easy prey for temptation because the things that actually make your soul come alive take a bit of emotional capacity to do even prayer relational connection with the people that you love and are loved by that takes energy and if you run out of that all you have is just the swipe of your thumbs or the opening of the bottle or the you fill in the blank where would you plot your soul this morning on that spectrum of good tired to dangerous tired if you're good tired rest can keep you in the pocket keep you healthy if you're in unhealthy tired you're going to need a bit more

16:58but rest can get you back to healthy and if you're in danger is tired rest will not actually fix it but it will expose your need for systemic change another feeling that comes up in solitude is fear often I go in expecting the peace and the tranquility of God and God is that way but my mind is not what I first experience is just my mind can't stop racing it's less prayer and more kind of just worrying in God's general direction you know I find myself trying to focus on God and my mind is just an ADHD ping pong bottle from just anxiety to anxiety to anxiety and solitude all of our fears come up and what's underneath our fears comes up another feeling would be sadness what did Louis CK say right before his demise underneath everything in this life is a kind of sadness he was not wrong even in our happiest moments the birth of a child a graduation a wedding a reunion

18:05with a long lost friend a birthday all of them come tinge with at least a faint note of sorrow because none of them are perfect and all of them are temporary sorrow and joy intermix in this life while we wait for Jesus return and a new age where sorrow and sign will flee away and when you go into solitude often you begin to feel sadness kind of well up in you there's things that are gently knocking on your door saying this needs to be grieved you need to feel this you need to face this you need to let this work its way through your body the upside is at Louis CK said it's like the body has happiness antibodies you stay with this process you will follow the arc over to joy but you have to stay with the process another emotionally often feel that is surprising to me is anger all the contemplatives write about this all the way back to the desert fathers and mothers they argue

19:08in the main challenges you'll face if you attempt quiet prayer or wordless prayer is anger all the setting your bitterness will come up your resentment will come up now and writes about how he'd be in prayer and all of a sudden he would find himself like in his mind giving long quote long hostile speeches to my enemies you'll find yourself just defending yourself and point point point and this is why my boss is wrong and this is what I'm going to say about my coworker and this is what I'm going to put in the email and this is what I'm going to tell the pastor and you're just like rehearsing it in your mind replaying the wrong done to you why you are the innocent victim and they are the evil perpetrator it's just your mind is there anger you're like wait oh yeah I'm in prayer right now doesn't make you bad at prayer it makes you a human being with a heart this comes up finally one other one would be shame when we are stripped down and naked and exposed emotionally who we really are comes through with other people at least people that we have a little distance from

20:12or not around too often we can perform we all do this I'm doing it to you right now how's my doughnut okay thank you we project in an image we attempt to control other people's perception of us so we often have to explain ourselves all the time because we want people we want to control we want to manage another person's perception we can even fool ourselves to an extent to believing our own brand promise we can hide but in solitude there's just nowhere to hide like just who you are it's just there what you did what you said what you feel what you want what you've done what you've not done it's just there laid bare before God similar to community it's want people avoid true solitude and true community people love having friends but in true community your psychological guards go down who you really are comes through and then people see you for who

21:17you are this happens this happened to me last night literally woke up this morning feeling embarrassed because of how I got annoyed with one of my kids at our Sabbath table last night in front of people in our community that I want to think I'm really godly I'm like shoot and that was my first feeling this morning in solitude was shame at how I spoke to my son at a table with 12 people that I want to think I'm perfect that's what I had that was my morning prayer what was your morning prayer like that was mine we often just feel this profound sense of how broken we are and how in need of salvation we are under the loving gaze of God now one word for all of these feelings and that's not an exhaustive list is pain in solitude we encounter our pain the existential philosopher historian kirk aguard said there are two types of people in the world those who are in despair and know it and those who are in despair and don't know it that's not a great outlook on life but we'll

22:24take kirk aguard at his word inside all of us is a deep well of pain no matter how sunny your disposition is or hashtag blessed your life is or any gram seven your personality is which we love we all have pain that we carry in our heart and in our body and in our autobiography and in the busyness of life and the distractions of the digital age we can push it down we can numb it or suppress it we can just get on about raising our family or getting to lax or doing our job or going for a morning run that's all fine but when we go into solitude what is down comes up and all of the numbing of our cultural narcotics of choice which is different for each of us begins to wear off and we have to feel whatever it is that we have been numbing now I know what you're thinking right now it doesn't take a PhD to figure out what you're thinking you're thinking this is the opposite of a sales pitch for this practice why in the world would I ever do what you are

23:30asking me to do why because all of this stuff is already in you all of it's there and even if you can numb the pain through work drugs mushrooms sex success but whatever exercise whatever even if you can numb the pain and good luck with that it is leaking out of you still like toxic pollution and it is sabotaging your capacity to receive love from God and other people to live in union with God and other people and it is sabotaging your ability to let the love of God flow through you to other people one way to think about spirituality Christian spirituality is as what you do with your

24:33pain you're like that's not how I want to think about Christian spirituality you don't have to but that's one way Hey everybody John Mark here I have a new book coming out on October 6th called Into the Quiet Following Jesus in a world of noise we live in a very noisy world and a growing number of people are just exhausted by the sheer volume of modern life both literally in the soundscapes of modern cities and suburbs but also culturally in the daily digital deluge of outrage and anxiety and drama and distraction how do we hear the still small voice of God amid the noise of the modern age this book really picks up where the ruthless elimination of hurry left off and my prayer is for readers to hear the gentle age old invitation of Jesus to come away

25:38from all the noise and busyness and overstimulation of our world and step into the quiet to experience the love of God pre-order today wherever books are sold Throughout Church history various Christian teachers have developed models for the relationship between our pain and its effect on our formation or lack thereof into people of agape love there's a paradigm that I find really helpful from the late Thomas Keating he was a monk and a pioneer in the centering prayer movement or the contemplative prayer movement in the kind of the resurgence of that in the west this is not capital T true this is not from Ephesians chapter 3 verse 14 but I think it's really helpful so just take it with a grain of salt he would say let me just offer you his paradigm I had a sense that we should chat about this this morning he would say that all human beings have three instinctual drives that you're born with one is just for safety

26:43insecurity you need to feel I'm safe I'm okay I can breathe I'm not in fight or flight I can let my guard down and just be at peace too we need love and attention right look many of us are familiar now with attachment theory Kurt Thompson is a Christian psychiatrist says that lovely line writing about attachment theory about how you know when babies come out of the womb their eyes just start scanning the room to make eye contact with mom or dad and he writes we come out of the womb looking for someone looking for us all we need eyes of love staring back at us we search for it in our parents and then eventually in the lover we need love attention affection relationship and finally power and control and he doesn't mean that in a negative like autocratic way he means like agency freedom you need to be able to like take charge of your life in a healthy sense and go do what God's putting your heart and not be oppressed or beat down by injustice or whatever it may be now these three drives are not really good or bad they're just in you they're in your body but

27:48like everything in our body they have been infected by sin and are now tainted by disease what happens is as we grow up first off no parent or caregiver can possibly meet all these needs perfectly but how good your parent was at some point they did not give you the love that you needed the safety that you needed and even if you had the mythical perfect parents or a cell in denial and think you did then you went to kindergarten and the playground that's straight up Lord of the flies right so at some point our instinctual drives are sabotaged early on before we can even really process it we don't get we're not safe we experienced trauma and pain and wounding or abuse or whatever or we're not we don't receive the love we look around for someone looking for us and we're all alone or we don't get the power and control that we need we're robbed of it something happens to us to strip us of our freedom and agency and healthy autonomy and so as a result we develop what Keating called emotional programs for happiness these are coping mechanisms ways

28:54of dealing with our pain ways to avoid pain and run on a healthy direction one way to think about personality theories in particular personality theories like the enneagram is as naming your emotional programs for happiness i've mixed feelings about the enneagram i think it's profoundly unhelpful as a personality test i have no desire to know what your enneagram number is i will do nothing but judge you and all it will tell me is like what's wrong with you but where it's really helpful is in identifying your emotional programs for happiness that's essentially what it is if you're familiar with enneagram theory if you're seven your emotional program is something like i'm going to stay in my head get out of my heart i'm going to avoid my pain through doing fun things and planning the next event and having this amazing personality and making everybody have fun around me woo that's awesome we love you your your coping mechanism by the way is the best of all of them

29:56um if you're an eight your coping mechanism is i'm not going to let anybody control me i'm going to do what i want i mean like it i'm going to go out and do what's right in the world and screw other people to have a problem with that if you're a nine you're going to keep peace with everybody and you're going to make sure at this person's happy and this person's happy you're going to change who you are to be happy with that person and then you can be a little different with this person you're just going to keep peace as long as you can keep peace then you're going to be at peace so you know all of these are emotional programs for happiness and there's a whole theory in psychology that personality is nothing more than a pain coping mechanism what we call personality is just how how you at an early age before you even were really volitional how you developed a way to deal with pain and whether that's true or not my point is all of these programs are for the most part unconscious so we have to bring them into conscious awareness that's a huge part of psychospiritual development is beginning to name what your emotional programs for happiness are

31:00or if you want to use more Christian language here idolatry is language that i grew up with what the things you are that i need this to be happy and at peace and all of these they are really helpful in our kind of teen years even in our college early 20s because they kind of get us out of childhood into adulthood particularly if you grew up in an unsafe environment they're profoundly helpful and then they turn on us and they become our prison your personality becomes your prison I'm an introvert yeah I'm an introvert with three kids and an extroverted wife that is a freaking prison so my if my coping mechanism is I will be alone and my house will be perfectly neat and then I will be happy wow that's not a healthy emotional program for happiness at this stage of my life right so I didn't know that hermit was an option when I was 19 somebody never told me

32:00that I should have been raised Catholic but um and so what happens is people that were closest to our spouse if you have one your children if you have them your teammates co-workers your parents your family's why a lot of young people reject their parents they blame it on their parents problem is not their parents as their parents are frustrating their emotional programs for happiness people sabotage our programs for happiness constantly the people closest to us and then one of two things happens either we move into unloving behavior where we attempt to control those people shame those people manipulate those people reject those people cut off those people in order to keep our emotional programs for happiness safe or we learn to face our pain and you'll see especially as people kind of hit their late 20s and 30s you almost begin to see this fork in the road of different

33:03types of people Christian or not those that get stuck and imprisoned in their program and those that begin to face their pain with God and get free but to get free of it we have to face it and that means feeling our pain the problem is our culture has become incredibly sophisticated at not feeling our pain all right when you I woke up a few mornings ago with a headache I don't get headaches very often I Lord have mercy on those of you that live with that um what do you do when you get a headache what's what's your first response fast and praying right no like you do what I did you walk right to the drawer in your kitchen and you take four aspirin even though it says too you're like I'm six two I can do this right and you just get rid of it we do the same thing with emotional pain I'm feeling pain right now what's on TV oh I'm feeling pain who can I hang out with

34:08oh I'm feeling pain right let's open a bottle oh and we can we can find so many subtle rational for it but all we're doing is numbing numbing numbing we have to feel even church even our Christian faith can become a form of numbing John woman was a psychologist who coined the term spiritual bypassing he wasn't a Christian he was actually critiquing he was a Buddhist and he was critiquing like california Buddhist kind of vibes and how people used that spirituality and the enlightenment motif to actually bypass facing pain trauma unresolved emotional development issues Christians do this all of the time we use God we use Christian language we co-op the biblical theology of hope and we manipulate it into the American I don't want to feel pain I want my life to go up into the right mantra we Christianize it and it's grotesque and it doesn't work we have to learn to

35:11face our pain how do we do this well the way we do anything here we apprentice under Jesus we follow him look again at this story in Matthew 26 hopefully is still opening your lap the story takes place just a few hours before Jesus betrayal his arrest his false accusations illegal sham trial his torture his humiliations stripped naked before the mob his brutal murder Jesus knows what's coming and we read this let's just work through part of it again verse 36 then Jesus went with his disciples to this place called gefsemini this is like a little park outside Jerusalem in Luke's version of the story he writes Jesus went out this is an interesting phrase as usual the Greek there can also be translated as was his custom meaning the implication is from Luke that Jesus had all sorts of like little hiding places around Israel where he would just slip away to be alone guess how many was one this kind of park not like a curated park but like more of a

36:14of a nature area just outside the city and he said to them sit here while I go over their pray and he began to be sorrowful and troubled notice he began to be sorrowful and troubled not he began to feel happy and at peace not he began to feel bliss in God not he began to have his heart rise with hope for the resurrection no he began to feel the implication is there that it's volitional that he went there on purpose in order to feel his feelings and he was overwhelmed next line my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death stay here keep watch with me do you ever feel that way just overwhelmed by the emotional dysregulation of your pain I can't handle this pain I can't handle this anxiety I can't handle the shame I can't handle this embarrassment I can't handle this exhaustion I'm just overwhelmed by it he calls for his three

37:16closest friends again here you see the both end of solitude and community going a little farther he fell with his face to the ground and listen to his prayer my father if it is possible may this cup be taken from me yet here's the famous prayer not as I will but what as you will notice Jesus goes to the place of pain he does not distract himself from his pain he does not numb his pain he does not bypass or spiritualize his pain he meets God in his pain how he follows three movements of the soul first he gives God his feelings prayer one my soul is overwhelmed the point of death was sorrow he just tells the father how he feels no filter no edit no I'm so sorry I know this is kind of a complaint just his raw uncut soul laid before God in lament then he

38:22gives God his desires prayer two father if it is possible may this cup be taken from me cup here is a metaphor for his coming suffering on the cross the gravity of that sink in I've had multiple conversations with New Testament professors over this it seems that I want to offer this humbleness I don't want to misinterpret Jesus but it seems that he is praying father can I not go to the cross is there any other way I don't want this now of course for any of our perspective of course you would pray that of course you'd ask God not to go through what Jesus was about to go through but it's easy for us to judge like you know Jesus that's kind of like the thing that you're here to do and here he is father can you take this cup away I don't this cup this cup give me a different cup I don't want to drink this one again no filter he's just offering his raw desires to

39:27God and then finally he gives God his trust prayer three yet not as I will but as you will not what I want what you want not my attempt to control the situation your providence he comes to this place surrender and with it freedom this is the pattern we see in the life of Jesus that is laid down for all the followers of Jesus like you and I very simple go into solitude find your Catholic somebody might be a park down the street from your house might be your living room early in the morning that's what mine is before my family is awake I go to bed earlier than my family I get up earlier than them it's my only hope go into solitude get away from the noise and distraction of ordinary life put your phone in another room don't bring any books nothing with wifi no glowing

40:27rectangles just you as you are let yourself feel let whatever is in you come up good bad ugly bliss joy gratitude blessed grief lament doubt rage whatever it is let yourself feel it don't run array to your distraction of choice not even the Bible and you know I have a high and holy view of scripture stay with the pain or the joy follow it all the way down to God because it's there at the base of your soul where your pain meets God's love that is where you find transformations a healing again I'm all for therapy I'm all for it but a healing that can honestly only come through the love and the healing presence of God doesn't cost any money

41:32you don't need a master's degree you don't need a nine week training but you do need to be willing to meet God in your pain just this simple act noticing naming your pain before God no idea what it can do for your soul and by far so I don't just mean for you to feel better sure that for your growth into a person who is increasingly pervaded by the love of God how do we do this by following the same three movements as Jesus first we give God our feelings we pray whatever is in us Pete Greg has been here before I think from 24-7 and I love his line pray what you got you got bitterness in your heart pray that you got rage pray that you got terror pray that you got boredom pray that you got distraction pray that whatever is in you with no filter just pray your soul two thirds of the Psalms are lament the Psalms if you're new to scripture

42:36the prayer book of the Bible it is my anchor point with God I read at least one normally three every morning throughout the day they are like a guide host into union with God two thirds of the Psalms are a category that scholars call lament there are Psalms that I feel guilty reading much less praying you'll get to the Psalms you're like whoa you don't pray that you're like what's so that's weird that's like really violent okay moving on like that's there for you to pray yeah why because everything you read on that page is in you even if you're in denial about it revenge hate the desire for an eye for an eye or worse all of that's in you pray it pray what you got give God your feelings then give God your desires our desires are what's

43:41underneath our feelings right we feel happy when we get what we want we feel sad when we don't get what we want we feel anxious when we're scared we might not get what we want we feel angry when someone or something is standing in the way of what we want everything comes back to desire the trick is that many of our desires are complex and are confused and contradictory like I really want to be holy and I want to lust I want to be generous and free and I want to buy that nice car over there I want to be honest and vulnerable and I want you to all think that I'm better than I really am I want you and you with God and I just kind of want to drink wine and watch TV like all of this is in me what do we do with this jumbled bag of desires we offer them to God same pattern no filter in the moment of temptation God I want to and you fill in the blank no matter how embarrassing it is to you God I want this right now board have mercy God I don't want this I don't want to drink

44:46this cup I don't want this marriage I don't want this relationship I don't want this body I don't want this whatever it is no filter just offer it to God and then most importantly we give God our trust we do that work naming our feelings offering them to God naming our desires good bag and ugly and then then the linchpin moment we surrender we offer up the illusion of control we give up trying to engineer our life to the perfect outcome you know one way to think about your life all of us will have this if we were to write an autobiography is how long did you spend trying to control and engineer your life to be what you needed to be to be happy some people go to their death bed in that empty pursuit that is nothing more than a game of whack-a-mo other people wake up early and that doesn't mean that

45:55we don't try to organize our life in a way that is conducive it means in all the things that we can't control we stop fighting fight where you can fight fight the good fight and then surrender trying to control the outcomes of your life to be what you want is an exhausting way to live working hard to do what God's putting you and then letting God be God and accepting whatever comes joyfully knowing that nothing is wasted in this life is just temporary and everything we ultimately ache for is in God and the age to come that's a pretty lovely way to live but we have to stop pursuing our emotional programs for happiness and we have to come to God this is the pattern so simple go to the place of pain meet God there so to that end our exercise for this coming week is very simple it's in your guide and we have a it's kind of written out

46:57for you but basically it's just an exercise in noticing and naming your feelings we literally have like a kind of classical feeling list in there and then as you identify them I would do this with a journal but you don't need to um praying the Gethsemane prayer so just find a quiet place find a quiet time if you can do this every day this week wonderful but at least do it once at least on your day off or one morning where you don't have to be at work early go find a quiet place put your phone away and just breathe for a little bit welcome the Holy Spirit let yourself come to stillness before God let yourself feel and begin just to notice what comes up don't try to control it don't judge it don't fight it don't resist it don't deny it don't spiritualize it just whatever it is let it comes up notice it name it and then give God your feelings give God your desires and give God your trust just pray through that template following Jesus and closing many people fear going into solitude I don't

48:06actually think anybody's really that scared of solitude I think a lot of people actually desire it what we're scared of is what we fear we may feel in solitude we're scared of his pain we're scared to touch our loneliness our shame our regret our fear our insecurity our doubt we scared there might not be anything between us and God you know like with a friend that you kind of know but you've never really been alone together and then you're driving a car together and you're like how's this going to be as sometimes it's awesome and sometimes it's so awkward sometimes that's what we feel about God we've never really been that close to God we're like how's it going to be a church it's like oh awesome we're here and we're like yeah but what about when I'm like with God alone are we going to have anything to talk about or is it just going to be really awkward we're scared of that and you know I I have been and regularly visit the place that I'm inviting you to go so many people in this room many of you all of your

49:13leaders and I'm not going to like mess with you two things are very true one you will likely feel pain there and it will be hard you will have to face stuff and it's hard I do need to remind you that you know it's even harder is not going into solitude not feeling your pain and having it wreak havoc in your interpersonal relationships and destroy your life and the limit who you become that's much harder but I'm not going to lie solitude is hard and secondly let me tell you what you already intuit by the spirit on the other side of that hard the pain the feeling the mind stirring in is a joy that you absolutely cannot find by watch see touch experience anywhere in the city

50:18or the whole world there is a joy and a peace and a love a quality of which you will only ever experience through union with God to be sterile johnson's line to be alive at the intimacy at the center of the universe the christian mystics have called that ineffable bliss something of the language we use it kind of sounds like an air one smoothie but but that's kind of a good thing ineffable bliss that's what's waiting for you in the quiet so in closing you know what one of Jesus most repeated commands was some scholars argue it's the most repeated command of all scripture do not be afraid you don't need to be afraid because what you will find waiting for you in the quiet on the other side of your pain

51:22is the love of God thanks for listening this podcast is from practice in the way we develop resources to help churches and small groups apprentice in the way of Jesus we're crowdfunded nonprofits so everything we make is completely free because it's already been paid for by the circle and other givers special thanks today goes to jody from Hillsborough or again malorie from yorkham al-washington jordan from robenston texas loren from moorland hills or higher quinton from wilson north carolina thank you all very much to join these friends in the circle or learn more about our resources visit practiceintheway.org until next time with a grace of the lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with you all