In our current lives, we are bombarded with noise. We wake up to a blaring alarm clock. We immediately grab our phones to see what is going on in the world. We play music while we are in the shower, and we turn on the TV to watch the news or other world events. We get into our car and listen to a podcast. We have the constant chatter of coworkers, and come home to a house full of noise from kids and family. In all of the noise of life, how often do we take time to be silent? This post explores the spiritual practices of silence and solitude.
I know that this idea seems foreign to many of us, because why would we choose silence? Many of the things that I mentioned earlier are direct choices because we seek to avoid silence. We seek out noise because we do not want to sit in silence, but often in that silence is where we can truly hear from God.
We see this in the scriptures: in 1 Kings 19:11-13, the prophet Elijah is on the run from Jezebel after his showdown on Mt. Carmel, where he killed many of her prophets. Jezebel worshipped a fertility god called Baal. Elijah, in an attempt to get the people back to God, killed the prophets of Baal, and because he took their lives, she wanted his life. So Elijah is on the run. He finds a tree and takes a nap when an angel awakens him with bread and water. He eats the bread, drinks the water, and goes back to sleep. Only for the angel to wake him a second time because he needed the strength to go on, he makes his way to the mountain God calls him to, Mt. Horeb. He is told he will experience God passing by. The winds tore down the mountains. God was not in the wind. He experiences an earthquake. God was not in the earthquake. He experienced a fire, and God was not in the fire, and then a still small voice came. He covered his face because he knew it was God. We see that Elijah ignored the world’s noise and waited for intentional quietness to hear from God. This text teaches us that silence and solitude are spiritual disciplines that bring us closer to God. Because God will not talk over the volume of the noise of your life. In the act of silence and solitude, we recenter our lives and move from the temporal things to the eternal.
To fully understand these disciplines, we must first look at the two words. What exactly is silence? Silence is defined as A state of being quiet or still, often used in biblical contexts to signify reverence, contemplation, or absence of speech.[1] When we think of silence, we often confuse it with the absence of sound, but it is a deliberate quieting of the spirit. How often do we deliberately take time to be silent in our day? To pause the temptation of chasing notifications. To remove ourselves from worldly ambitions and hear from God.
Looking at solitude, we often work to avoid feeling alone, but it is an essential spiritual discipline. Solitude is defined as the state of being alone, frequently chosen for reflection, prayer, or rest, distinct from loneliness. [2] It is a time of physically separating ourselves from the world and seeking to be fully present with God.
There are challenges to participating in these spiritual disciplines. For many of us, it is the feeling that we are too busy. For some of us, our day is so jam-packed that we can barely find time to do anything other than the task at hand. Because this is a spiritual discipline, we must shift our mindset from finding time to making time. So, finding time is just seeking a gap in our schedule, but making time is intentionally putting silence and solitude into our schedule. Making it part of our day, not something we throw in when we can.
Another challenge is that I tried it, but I did not hear anything. I sat in silence, and I did not hear anything from God. The problem, again, is this mindset. We are not scheduling time with God because we want something to happen, but we make time with God so he has the opportunity to make things happen. The goal is to be in God’s presence, nothing more. It is in that time in his presence that he can choose to speak. For many of us, we are constantly talking to God, but do we schedule time for him to speak back to us?
So, how do we seek silence and solitude with God properly?
- Find Your Sacred Space: It could be your closet, your bathroom, or your walk. The location matters less than the intentionality of setting it apart.
- Remove All Distractions: I know many of us have short attention spans, but you must remove anything that connects you to the world—especially your phone.
- Quiet Your Mind: Use controlled, deep, intentional breaths to calm your mind and spirit.
- Listen, Don’t Speak: This is the hardest step. Resist the urge to fill the quiet with your own words. We are making space for God to speak.
This is a necessary spiritual discipline because, in the New Testament, we see many verses, such as Mark 1:35, indicating that Jesus engaged in silence and solitude. This was how he stayed in tune with the father’s will for his life. As Christians striving to be Christ-like, we need to do the same thing. For those of you at West Valley, I challenge each of you to do this for at least 14 minutes this coming week. That’s only two minutes a day. I am sure you will begin to notice a difference when we stop talking and listen for the still, small voice that speaks today.
[1] Logos Bible software
[2] Logos Bible software
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