Preached · October 15, 2018
Our Lives Are Filled with Noise
Good morning, everybody. My name is Anthony. I'm one of the pastors here at Good News.
Our life is filled with noise. Maybe you noticed it as we came to the closing of our worship, our singing together, and we sang the note, "Jesus." And there was that one sweet moment of stillness and silence. And then we moved on, because that's the way our life goes. Our life is filled continually with noise and more noise and music and sounds.
Now, in the ancient church, the medieval church, they actually taught that there were different kinds of sounds — that certain kinds of sounds did certain kinds of things to your soul. You know some of this. There are major chords, and these are like happy sounds. And there are minor chords, and these are like sad or maybe evil sounds. But there was actually a sound that was outlawed. It was banned by the medieval church. You were not allowed to use it in church music, and it was called the devil in the music, the diabolus in musica. We know it as a tritone. Nobody likes that sound. It's a terrible, terrible sound. All you want it to do is resolve; all you want it to do is go anywhere else.
But here's the thing. We are surrounded by the devil in the music constantly, because our life is surrounded by noise. So say you go into your house after a long day at work and you flip on your kitchen lights, and say you've got some wonderful fluorescent lights like we have here. Well, your fluorescent lights put out a note. Say that note's an "F." And then, because you're in a rush, as you usually are, you grab some food, some leftovers, some must-go's out of the fridge, and you stick them in your microwave, and your microwave has a note as well. Now, all the while, your furnace is kicked on, because it's October in Iowa and you can't possibly leave your furnace off in October in Iowa, and your furnace has a note as well. And all these notes just start to collide with each other, because then your kid comes in and maybe they have some music going on — because that's the kind of music your kid would listen to. And these notes just begin to continually collide, and all the while there is the devil in the music. We are surrounded by noise constantly, and we need it to stop.
And that's the subject of today's sermon. Mother Teresa put it this way:
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature — trees and flowers and grass — grows in silence. See the stars and the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life. The essential thing is not what we say, but rather what God says to us and through us.
We're in the middle of a series called Abiding Time, and it's all about Sabbath and rest. Because there's this pesky little commandment that keeps showing up — not just in the Old Testament, not just in the Ten Commandments, but throughout the whole of our Scriptures — where God says, keep the Sabbath day holy. There are continual themes of rest, of resting in God, of finding moments of silence and stillness.
Mark 1: Jesus' Rhythm
If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to the book of Mark, chapter 1, verses 35 through 39. As Christians, followers of Jesus, we believe that the way Jesus lived is possible for all those who follow Jesus — that the way Jesus lived was not a mistake, it wasn't an accident, it wasn't just because he was God. The way that Jesus lived, we are all called to imitate. So we often look to the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and we say: how he lived, what he did, what he said — so that we can learn from him and try to emulate his way of life.
This is what Mark chapter 1 says:
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. And Simon and his companions went to look for Jesus, and when they found him, they exclaimed, "Everyone is looking for you." And Jesus replied, "Let us go somewhere else, to the nearby villages, so that I can preach there also. This is why I have come." So Jesus traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
Let's pray. Almighty God, we are thankful that you are in this place, that you are here. And we thank you for the life of Jesus. We thank you for his redemption on behalf of our sins, that by his life we may live; through his death, our death will not last. And God, we also thank you for the life of Jesus — his example, the way that he did things, the way that he said things. Father, we know that we are temples of your Holy Spirit, and that by your Holy Spirit you empower us to follow after Jesus, to follow his will and his way. So may we pay attention to what you are saying today through your word, and help us to not just be hearers, but doers also. We pray these things in Christ's name, and God's children said, amen.
In Mark chapter 1, we get a glimpse of the typical rhythm of Jesus' life. If you look up a couple of verses, you see that Jesus has gone to the house of Simon and Andrew. This is kind of Jesus' base camp. This is where he would keep coming back to, returning to; he would come to Simon and Andrew's house, and he would do ministry there. He would turn the house inside out. After sunset, it says in verse 32, the people brought to Jesus all who were ill and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases, and he drove out demons. He wouldn't let the demons speak, because they knew who he was.
So this is Jesus' life. Jesus is filled with God's power, and he is constantly healing and casting out sickness and disease and demon possession. He gives bread to thousands. He teaches God's word in a way that's filled with authority. And he is surrounded constantly by people.
And then we see the next part of Jesus' rhythm: "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went to a solitary place." Jesus was constantly busy. If you could ever think of a person who had more to do, it would have been Jesus. And more ability to do it — it would have been Jesus. And a higher priority to get it done — it would have been Jesus. And yet Jesus went off to a solitary place and prayed.
Now, just to prove this wasn't a one-off thing, I want to show you a couple more verses. Matthew 14, verse 13 — after John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin, has been beheaded, murdered by the state:
When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.
Any boat owners in here? Jesus loved his boat as well. Jesus loved to get out onto the water and withdraw to a solitary place. It continues in verse 22:
Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. And later that night, he was there alone.
This is after feeding the 5,000. We see this again in the book of Luke, chapter 5, verse 15:
Yet the news about Jesus spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their illnesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Notice that in verse 16 — Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Luke 6, verse 12:
One of those days, Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.
The book of John, chapter 6, verse 14:
After the people saw the sign that Jesus had performed, they began to say, "Surely this is the prophet who is to come into the world." And Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
So we see this pattern in Jesus' life. There are people's demands. There's the crunch of time. There are all the things that Jesus needed to do and accomplish and fulfill. And yet continually, often, as a habit, Jesus would withdraw to a private, lonely place and pray — pray to God, pray to his Father.
To Grow Closer to God, Get Alone with God
Here's the truth I want to get across this morning: if you want to grow closer to God, then you must get alone with him.
Now, community, fellowship, gathering is a necessity. It's important. And again, you see that pattern in Jesus' life. He would do ministry. He would withdraw. He would spend the night praying to God. And then he would re-engage in community. But there's that middle step — getting alone with God — that can often be forsaken and forgotten. In terms of spiritual discipline language, we call this the discipline of solitude and silence. And it's one of those things that's not popular, not easy, not user-friendly — and yet it's absolutely crucial if we want to grow closer to God.
Henri Nouwen puts it this way:
Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and to listen to him.
Not just being alone, not just being lonely, but setting aside specific time to get alone with God.
We Struggle with This
Now, I know that we struggle with this. Back in the spring of 2017, the church took the REVEAL study. The REVEAL study is a survey of our spiritual health as well as the spiritual health of the larger church body. It gives you the results of how you're doing spiritually, and it also gives us an idea of how we're doing as a church in helping you grow.
And I know that we struggle with this whole alone-time-with-God thing, because it's what we discovered in REVEAL. We asked you to respond to a statement: "I seek to grow closer to God by listening to him in prayer." And 24% of you agreed with that statement. About a quarter of us were able to agree — which means that three-fourths of us struggle with this. We struggle to grow closer to God. We struggle to listen to him in prayer. We struggle with prayer.
We asked you another series of statements about reflection on Scripture and Bible reading and praying to confess sins and praying to seek guidance, and we never got above 36%. 29% of us reflect on Scripture regularly. 21% read our Bibles regularly. 21% pray to confess our sins regularly. 36% regularly pray to seek guidance. We never got above 40% on any of those questions. This is difficult, because life just keeps coming at you. There's always a reason not to pray, always a reason not to set aside time to read our Bibles, always a reason not to just sit in stillness alone with God. It's hard.
Speaking of the REVEAL survey — we're doing it again. Starting today, we're going to resurvey the entire church, because we want to track how we've done over time. Since the REVEAL survey in 2017, we've made some intentional efforts and steps to do better as a church in helping you grow closer to Jesus. And we know that you've made steps as well in your spiritual life. So we want to track over time how we're doing.
Starting today, you can go to gncconline.com/reveal and take about a 10-to-15-minute survey to let us know how your spiritual life is doing, as well as how we're doing as a church. The survey is confidential — we can't see individual results, only results in aggregate. You can see your own results once you take it, but we can't see individual results.
And I'll tell you, I've designed websites, I've done marketing — it's a bad website. I'm just going to be honest. It's not user-friendly, it's not easy, and I can't do anything about it, and it breaks my heart. But I still need you to make the effort to click around and take the survey. Taking it on a desktop or laptop computer is easier than on a phone or a tablet. On a phone or an iPad, you've got to download a separate app, and that's a whole thing. So desktop or laptop is easier. But if you're struggling, if you can't figure it out, next Sunday we'll have some computers open in the front office, and we'll have some helpful people guide you through the process. It's open for a limited time, and we need everybody to take it, because the more results we get, the more accurate they are. This survey helps our church make decisions for months to come about how we're going to help you grow closer to Jesus, as well as help you know how you're doing and what your next steps can be in growing closer to God.
Let's Practice
So — silence and solitude. What exactly am I talking about when we talk about this spiritual discipline? What is it that Jesus did? The number one way for me to teach you is by practicing together. So we're going to practice.
We're going to spend three whole minutes in silence. What I encourage you to do is put your feet flat on the ground. Get yourself as comfortable as possible. If you feel a little tension, maybe work that out in your back, your arms. Get yourself as comfortable as possible in these luxury La-Z-Boy church chairs. Take a few gathering breaths. And you're just going to close your eyes and enjoy some silence with your best friends and with God.
Now, inevitably, your mind is going to wander. So a simple practice is to have a phrase that you repeat in your mind, and that phrase is: "God is here now." (We're going to talk about that ringing phone in a few minutes; that's an important part of my sermon.) And if you're a tactile person, you can put your thumb to your index finger and just move across your fingers — "God is here now." Every time you feel your mind wander, just bring yourself back to that phrase. We're going to remind ourselves of God's presence and enjoy a few moments of silence together. I'm going to set a timer on my phone, and when you hear it ding, we'll be done — with that part, not with the sermon. Don't get too excited. All right. Close your eyes. Let's enjoy some silence with God.
Let's do a little responding and debriefing. Feel free to say it out loud: how was that for you? Peaceful. Restful. Powerful. Any negative comments — did anybody struggle with it? A little. Fragmented — the mind kept wandering. Yeah, you start hearing the devil in the music. Mary was saying she was hearing the furnace and the hum of the fans — the devil in the music — but she was using that as a kind of timepiece to mark time, turning it on its head to let it set a rhythm. That's good. White noise — yeah, here you've got very mechanical, white-noise kinds of sounds, as opposed to nature, air, birds.
For how many of us was that the longest we've spent in silence this week — other than sleeping? And for how many of you — will you admit that was difficult? It seemed awkward, a little weird, a little hard. It doesn't come naturally to us, because we are so ingrained in an attention-deficit culture — to always have our mind wander somewhere else, to always fill the space with something that's not awkward, something that's not quiet, something that's not dead air. Dead air will kill you if you're on radio or television. And sometimes it feels like dead air will kill you from the inside out.
What Prevents Us: It's Difficult and Weird
So let's talk about a few of the things that prevent us from making this a regular habit and routine. There are really two big categories.
Number one: it's difficult and weird. I don't know if you can see on the screen — not my dog, but a little doggie doing the kumbaya meditation pose. For many of us, when we think about silence and solitude, we can get tricked into thinking that it's just about Eastern religion — just about meditation and yoga, people with weird beads and crystals doing it somewhere out in the deserts of Utah. When in reality, meditation, silence, and solitude is older than Christianity; it goes back into Judaism. If you read the Psalms, you'll continually find the psalmist talking about meditating on God's word. Have any of you ever read the Psalms and come across the word selah? It's a Hebrew word that's difficult to translate, but the idea is like a cow chewing the cud — just stopping and resting and chewing. So meditation, silence, solitude — Buddha didn't invent it, Confucius didn't invent it. It goes back to Scripture itself: "I will meditate on God's word. Early in the morning I will rise to meet you, Yahweh."
But it's still difficult, because everything in our culture has taught us to be not like this. Ruth Haley Barton says that silence is the most challenging, the most needed, and the least experienced spiritual discipline among evangelical Christians today. It's the most challenging because we're out of practice — like trying to do a pull-up for the first time after 15 years of not trying. It's the most needed because if we're going to be a counter-cultural people who push against the values of our culture, then we need to be trained up in how to do this. And it's the least experienced because we don't talk about it, we don't see each other do it, we don't see our leaders do it — so we don't do it either. But that doesn't mean it's not necessary.
"I Don't Have the Time"
One of the subcategories of "it's difficult and weird" is: I don't have the time. I don't have the time to set aside long swaths of solitude and silence. I've got kids hanging off my legs; I've got to-do lists as long as my drive to work.
Now, "I don't have the time" is a really inaccurate way of talking about time, because everybody has the same time in the day. What we'd be better off saying is: that's not how I want to spend my time; that's not how I prioritize my time. "I don't have the time" — well, that's not really true. Everybody has the same time. "I don't prioritize it this way" — sure, fair enough.
Dallas Willard has this to say about the whole time thing:
It is a fallacy to think that one just needs more time. Unless a deeper solution is found, more time will just fill up in the same way as the time we already have.
Just like when we got the microwave oven, it didn't lead to the 20-hour work week. Just like when we put computers into our pockets, it didn't mean our boss sent us home early. It didn't mean parenting got any easier. It didn't mean there weren't more sports we could possibly sign up for. More time just fills up in the same way it already has. And so the way to liberation and rest lies through a decision and a practice: I will decide to do this, and I will make it a habit and a routine in my life.
Expect Resistance
Another subcategory is this whole litany of "it didn't work," or "I don't like it," "it's not for me," "there are just too many distractions." And that takes us back to the ringing cell phone.
In preparation for this sermon, I was reintegrating longer periods of silence and solitude into my own pattern of life. I'd done this for a few weeks, and then this week — on Tuesday — I went up to the place where I practice this, and I just felt my chest tighten. I felt this anxiety fall onto me. I've never had a proper, diagnosable panic attack, but it was something close to that, where I just felt: I can't do this, I can't do this right now, there's too much to do, I have too much on my plate, I don't want to do this, what if something goes wrong? What if, what if, what if? But I pushed that aside, I pushed through it, and I got to my place and sat down.
I'll tell you where I was: I was upstairs at the church, sitting on one of the luxurious youth group couches. So I've taken my position, I've set the timer, I hit the button — and then one of our lovely new janitorial crew comes with what I swear is the loudest metal trash can I've ever heard, and is dropping it repeatedly on the stairs. Okay — reset the timer; I'll find something else to do, read or write until she's done with that wonderful trash can. Because thank God she's using the trash can and not me — find some gratitude here. Okay, she's done. Reset the timer, hit it again — and it happens again. Reset, try again — the phone rings. Reset, try again. At last, there are some moments of silence and solitude.
Here's the thing. When you are engaging in a practice that is so far against the cultural values you live in, so far against what the devil wants for you, then you'd better expect that you're going to encounter resistance. Ruth Haley Barton again:
All the forces of evil band together to prevent our knowing God in this way, because it brings to an end the dominion of those powers in our lives.
Of course. If you're setting aside time to spend alone with God, the devil's not going to like that very much, and he will use every metal trash can and ringing cell phone possible to interrupt you. And that's normal. So when you get to the point where you're going to set the timer and give this a shot, expect resistance. It might be internal — that sense of anxiety or dread, dread about prayer. It might be external — a ringing cell phone, a metal trash can, a crying child. Expect resistance. But that doesn't mean it's not important. It shows how important it is.
The Demands and the Solitude
Let's go back to the book of Mark, chapter 1. Jesus has done all these miracles in the house of Simon and Andrew. He gets up while it's still dark, goes to a solitary place, and prays. And Simon and the rest of the disciples go to look for him, and when they find him they exclaim, "Everybody is looking for you, Jesus." And Jesus says, "Let's go somewhere else."
There is a directly proportional relationship between the demands on your life and the amount of silence and solitude you need. You cannot think of a person who could have been busier, who needed to be busier, than Jesus. You cannot think of a person who had more distractions than Jesus, with his 72 disciples following him around. But the relationship between the demands on your life and your need for silence and solitude is not inversely proportional. "Oh, my calendar is booked up, I don't need this" — that's the lie we tell ourselves. It's rather: "Oh, my calendar is so full, the needs of my life are so demanding, the things I've got to get done and the people I've got to take care of are piled so high, that I have to spend time with God all the more."
And Jesus got this. Jesus understood that even when the disciples, with the best of intentions, say, "Jesus, everyone's looking for you," Jesus understood: no, I need this time to be with my Father. And I tell you what — if God the Son needs to spend time with the Father, how much more do we, as redeemed sinners and living saints.
What Prevents Us: What If Nothing Happens?
The second big excuse and fear that we have is: what if nothing happens? What if we set aside this time, this rhythm, this practice, this discipline, and we get into it to spend time with God — and ka-plunk. Nothing happens. I love this little comic with a skeleton praying, waiting to hear God speak: "Hello? Is there anybody there? Knock, knock. Are you listening?" This can be a big fear in rededicating our lives to prayer, to spending time with God, to just shutting up for a moment and seeing if God is speaking — because what if we can't hear?
Silence and solitude is ultimately about trust in God. It's about ultimate trust in God — that my techniques, my flowery words, my theological education, my years in school, my years in church, my years reading Scripture, none of that matters when I come into the presence of God. I need to lay all of that aside. And even my agenda of "I have to hear God speak this way, at this time, right now" needs to die, and I'm going to let God do what God is going to do. It may not come in the storm, it may not come in the hurricane, it may not come in the big, flashy sign and miracle. God's voice may just be in the silence.
Jesus laid aside his own personal agenda and picked up the agenda that the Father gave to him:
Jesus replied, "Let's go somewhere else, to the nearby villages, so that I can preach there also. This is why I have come."
Jesus knew what the Father wanted from him. And so, when we get alone with God, we lay down our own agendas, we lay down everything we've tried before, we lay down the masks that we've put on to say, "I've got this figured out," and we're just spiritually naked, alone with God.
You Won't Get Instant Results
I'll tell you this: you won't get instant results. This is not three easy steps to hear God's voice. This is not five easy paths to hear God's audible voice every single day. Silence and stillness and solitude is like this: if you took a jar filled with water and put a bunch of sand and silt and dirt in it and shook it all up and said, "Why is the water dirty?" — and shook it up again, "Why is the water still dirty?" — and kept shaking it up, somebody would eventually come and slap you and say, "Just set the jar down, dummy." In the same way, our souls are filled with the junk of life that just keeps pouring in, and God — using much kinder language than "dummy" — says, "Just be still, my beloved child." And eventually it will all settle. It will take time, and it will be slow. It's like bread trying to rise: you don't just put the bread in the oven and hope for the best; you've got to let it rest.
You May Fall Asleep
Here's the other thing I'll let you know: you may fall asleep. If you set aside time for prayer, for stillness and silence and solitude, you just may fall asleep. And that is not an indictment on your spiritual life or on your ability to hear God's voice. What it means is: you're sleepy. That's what that means. Again, Ruth Haley Barton:
Perhaps the most spiritual thing we could do is get more rest, get more sleep, so that we're alert when we want to be alert.
Perhaps the first step in getting alone with God is being well-rested enough that when we enter into a time of prayer, our first bodily instinct isn't just conking out. Rest is not the opposite of being effective. In fact, it is the very fuel by which God will make you effective.
Notes and Rests
Back to the piano. In music, there are notes, and there are rests, where you don't play a note. And both are absolutely necessary in order for music to make sense. If you're singing, "What a beautiful name it is, what a beautiful name it is" — rest — "the name of Jesus Christ my King" — rest — "what a beautiful name it is." That makes sense. There's time to breathe, time to catch a breath. If you deleted the rest out of some misguided attempt to get more done, yeah, maybe the service would end five minutes sooner — but you would be exhausted.
And yet this is sometimes how we live our life: that rest is for suckers, that I'll rest when I'm dead, that we just have to get more done. But in fact you're actually killing, murdering, slaying your own effectiveness in God's economy, in God's kingdom. You need the rest in order to work. You need the break in order to bear fruit.
What Now?
So, what now? Let me give you a few ideas.
First, your schedule. If you feel inspired by a sermon like this to try this out, let me tell you right now: don't go overboard. This is the way we are with diets and exercise routines — you jump in, you try to go from couch potato to marathon in one day, and you'll conk over, you'll quit. So you need achievable goals. Create an achievable goal for yourself — something like three, four, five minutes, a couple of times a week. Something that won't discourage you the very first time. Don't say, "Oh man, I couldn't sit for half an hour in silence, I am the worst, I quit." Don't do that. Create an achievable goal. And maybe five minutes, three times a week, is not achievable for you — that's okay, be honest with yourself. But start somewhere small, and then work your way up.
Distractions. You're going to have distractions come up — mental distractions, probably first and foremost. I know my own mind; it's very difficult for it to just be quiet for a moment. So don't waste your energy judging yourself: "Oh, I couldn't focus at all, I wasn't quiet, I wasn't still." Don't waste your energy doing that. Just gently bring yourself back to your original desire: I want to spend time with God. And then your mind will wander again, and then gently bring yourself back: I want to spend time with God.
Time. The amount of time — five, ten, fifteen minutes, half an hour, whatever — is not nearly as important as the regularity of practice. So if it's five minutes a day for a few times a week, that's good, because now you're integrating it into your life.
In terms of where to find the time — I don't want you to raise your hands, but the surveys say that about 90% of us are watching videos silently in the bathroom. We find the time to do the things we want, and we squeeze it out of even places like the bathroom. I know somebody's watching the sports games; I know somebody's watching television. And I'm not saying those things need to disappear from your life. But we find the time to do the things we want to do, even if it's in slightly silly places. So I don't want to do the work for you. I want you to do the work of asking: where is a place where I can say, "I'd rather spend time with God right now" — or, "I'd rather want to spend time with God right now" — and start there.
Let's talk about your phones for a moment. Your phone is one of the largest attention-grabbing things in your life, at least for many of us. If it's not your phone, try to think of the thing that is attention-grabbing for you — maybe a television, a certain kind of book or magazine, a sports game, whatever it is. On Android devices, they're coming out with an update that includes something called Digital Wellness, which allows you to set limits and timers on yourself, so that at a certain point you can't get back into your phone unless you hit a few extra buttons. It's a simple cognitive buffer between you and jumping back on your phone. For iPhone, same idea — it's called Screen Time. You set timers for yourself, and there's also something called Downtime, where you can say, "After such-and-such a time, I don't want to get back on my phone." You can get past it if you really try, but it's just a little bit of a buffer.
On Android, there's an app called Daily Habit. It's basically a nagging app — it nags you to do something. This is the way I had to get spiritual disciplines kick-started in my life: I want to read my Bible every day; I want to spend some time in prayer every day; I want to drink a glass of water at breakfast and lunch and dinner, because otherwise I'm going to drink something not good for me. And it just nags me every time. Then I get to swipe or scroll, and I get a pleasant little "bloop" sound, which fills my brain with dopamine and makes me want to do it again tomorrow. For iPhone, there's a similar app called Productive — same idea.
A couple of praying apps for your phone: Sacred Space and Pray As You Go. Sacred Space is a little more open — it just has a couple of prayer prompts and a timer, so you can sit with the prayer prompt and use it as the thing you repeat to bring your attention back. Pray As You Go is a little more guided — there's a voice that reads some Scripture, asks you some questions, and then allows some space for silence.
Final step: your friends. This behavior of sitting quietly in silence with God isn't normal, because we don't talk about it, and we don't see each other do it — kind of by definition. Getting alone means you're not seeing people get alone. That means we need to start talking about this in terms of our spiritual life. So not just, "Hey, how's your week going? How's your day going?" but, "Hey, how's your walk with God? Did you get alone with God this week?" These should be normal questions for us, but they're getting harder and harder to talk about.
Finally, if you want to learn more, this is part of what we're talking about at the Being Present spiritual formation retreat on October 27th, where I'll give you some more practices of prayer and silence and solitude, and you can learn and practice some more.
Closing Practice
To conclude, I want to practice one more time. Let's practice some silence and some solitude once more, and then the worship team will lead us for the conclusion of our service. Again, find a way to sit that's comfortable for you, take a few gathering breaths, and just bring your attention back to the very real truth that God is right here.
