05 Disciplines of Quiet Time: Privacy
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So far we’ve discussed the disciplines of reading to behold glory, meditation and memorization, prayer, and then last week we talked about the discipline of worship.
And this week I want to introduce the fifth discipline of quiet time, which is privacy.
Now you may already implement the practice of privacy, in fact I think most people do, but I want to shed some light on the discipline of privacy in a way you may not have heard before. See I think this discipline of quiet time, the discipline of privacy, is the reason we end our quiet times sooner rather than later, and/or why we skip quiet time to begin with. And why do I say that? I say that because privacy implies being in a desolate place. It implies time spent alone. And guess what? We absolutely HATE being alone! Yeah buddy! I mean goodness gracious. I don't think there’s ever been a generation that hates time alone more than mine.
And why is that you might be wondering? Well that’s because from birth my generation has been groomed to always be connected to the people, the technology, and the culture of the world.
Think about it. Isn’t that true? We are groomed from birth to always be connected to the people, the technology, and the culture of the world.
So that means that detaching from it to be alone is a very difficult and often unbearable task for most people to do.
And hey, don’t hear me saying that being connected to the world, to people, to technology, to all that, don’t hear me saying it is a bad thing. It’s not. As believers we have to be connected to the world to share the good news of Jesus Christ with people. We certainly can’t live our lives completely in private, because that would make us monks, and we’re not called to live that way. Remember we’re called to be in the world, not of it, so we can’t do that.
But we also can’t ignore time alone in private with God.
Because, and here’s the thing, here’s what I want you to understand today:
It is your ability to separate from the world, to be alone in private with God, that will determine your effectiveness for His Kingdom with people in public.
And Jesus’s life reveals this. Time and again in Scripture you’ll read of Jesus withdrawing from the world and His public ministry to go and be in private with the Father, to then go back out into the world and conduct His public ministry.
Jesus did this in Mark 1, for example, when after being up late conducting His public ministry that included healing the sick and those oppressed by demons, He arose early in the morning to go to a private place, Scripture says a desolate place, to pray and commune with God.
And Jesus did this again in Matthew 14, where he withdrew to a desolate mountain to commune with God after he fed the 5000 and before He walked on water.
He also did it in Luke 5, where Luke writes in v15 and 16 that
‘...now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. 16 But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.’
Now there are even more examples of Jesus withdrawing to be in private, desolate places with God, but you get the point. Jesus did not conduct His public ministry without first conducting private communion with God. And it was His private communion with God that aided Him in His public ministry with people. Why would we think we’re any different? We can’t pour from an empty cup! Our ability to be alone with God significantly matters.
And that’s part of the purpose of quiet time. In order to be a light and reflection of Jesus in public, we need to spend time being, beholding, and becoming more like Him in private.
What we do in private truly impacts who we are in public.
Now, despite the importance of being alone with God, we so struggle to get and stay there. Like I said earlier, privacy and the thought of being alone is the reason we end quiet time so soon and in some cases the reason we avoid it altogether.
I mean I’m sure some of you hear me say the phrase ‘we need to spend time alone’ and you immediately shiver at the thought of it…that reminds me of a quote from an old religious philosopher named Blaise Pascal that connects to this point. In that quote he said
‘All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
I remember reading that quote a while back and thinking ‘O how true that is!’ Like if only we could discipline ourselves to consistently be alone with God, so many of our world’s problems, and so many of our own, would cease to exist. And that would not be because of our own doing; it would be because of God’s in our hearts.
And I know some of you are listening today and you’ve got plenty of problems on your plate…maybe school hasn’t gotten off to the start you desired, maybe there are some relational issues you are having with a friend or spouse, maybe you feel overwhelmed at the moment, maybe you're anxious. And might I suggest to you that it may be beneficial to go and be alone with God.
I truly believe, from the bottom of my heart, that:
When we get better spiritually everything gets better.
Now that doesn’t mean the cancer will go away or the grades or relationships will improve, but your perspective of them certainly will. Your countenance certainly will. Your ability to respond in a way that honors God certainly will.
Remember the first ‘B’ of quiet time is ‘to be’ with God. And yes, God is everywhere, and we can be with Him anywhere, but the place where He wants us to be when pursuing Him and the place where He will meet us is in private.
Because, as Jesus says in Matthew 6, ‘Our Father sees in secret’. In that chapter (Matthew 6), in the first few verses, Jesus encourages us to practice our righteousness privately, and not for all to see. This would include quiet time, and he directly comments on praying privately, in a room with the door shut (verse 6), which, as we’ve discussed, is a discipline of quiet time.
Our Father sees in secret. He sees what we do in private. And He rewards private pursuit of Him. Like I said earlier, what we do privately impacts who we are publicly.
We need time alone with God.
If it helps, sometimes I think of quiet time, and this discipline of privacy in particular, as an act of retreating and reentering.
Now what do I mean by that? Well, Scripture makes it clear we’re at war, fighting against the cosmic powers over this present darkness (Ephesians 6:12), fighting for the name of Jesus, dealing with the darkness that is in the world and also in ourselves.
We’re at war, and I think it can be helpful to view quiet time as a retreat from that. It’s a withdrawal. You retreat to be alone with God and then you re-enter to be effective in the fight for His name and His kingdom. Again that’s what Jesus did. He withdrew, or retreated, from the public to be alone in private with God, and then He reentered Himself back into the fold once He was done.
Author Stephen Covey has a quote that says
‘Private victory precedes public victory’.
And I really like that because it truly is the private victories we have with God that lead to the public victories for His kingdom.
I think that’s a great way of putting it, and a great example of that as seen in Scripture can be found in the story of David:
David, like we talked about a little on Friday, privately shepherded sheep…killing bears & killing lions for no one but God to see. He served faithfully in private, and those private victories David had preceded the public victories that he would have, most notably him killing Goliath.
David showed us that private victories we have with God lead to public victories for His kingdom.
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Now I want to close with some practicals. If you’re reading and you’ve never been alone in private for that long or you don’t feel like you can be alone in private for that long, I understand.
I get the struggle of being alone. I really do. I mean I'm a social butterfly. I love being out and about. I love spreading my wings. But I also recognize the need to cocoon myself as well. I recognize the importance of time alone with Jesus.
And if you struggle to be alone, my encouragement would be to gradually increase your time spent alone with God. Just like how it's unwise to go 0 - 60 MPH driving as fast as possible in your neighborhood, it's also unwise to go from 0 time in solitude with God to 60 minutes in it. That change is unsustainable. Or, to put it this way, you wouldn’t roll out of bed and run a marathon, you build up to that distance.
So I encourage anyone listening who wants to grow in their ability to be alone in private with God to work up to that. Work your way up to a sizable amount of time.
Like I said earlier, Jesus says our Father sees what is done in secret. He also says He will reward private pursuit of Him. And that reward, I’ve come to find, is normally more of Himself, which leads you to spend even more time in private pursuit of Him, in other words, more time alone with Him.
And like I’ve been saying, private victory precedes public victory, meaning the more private victory you have, the more public victory too.
I cannot emphasize enough that privacy is so important when it comes to our quiet times.
So embrace it. Learn to love it. Learn to love being alone with God.
Learn to seek Him and His presence in private. And He will reward you.
See you next week.
I love you.
God bless.
