The other day I set my timer for 15 minutes, with the intention to sit in a chair in silence.

I was challenged this summer while reading Dallas Willard’s The Great Omission, a collection of his essays and articles about becoming a disciple of Jesus. Most of us longtimers know what the Great CO-mission is (“go into all the world and preach the Gospel”), so what big thing are we leaving out? Ourselves, apparently.

Bible study, prayer, and church attendance, among the most commonly prescribed activities in Christian circles, generally have little effect for soul transformation, as it obvious to any observer. If all the people doing them were transformed to health and righteousness by them, the world would be vastly changed. (Willard, p. 153)

Doesn’t this make you want to clutch your pearls a little? All my LIFE I have been told that the “spiritual disciplines” of Scripture reading, prayer, and Sunday morning worship were important for soul health, and what Willard is saying here is that something is missing. And it’s me, I realize. I, myself, am the thing that is missing.

I admit I’m not where I want to be yet spiritually. I do not have the generosity of spirit, the quietness of mind, or the tenderheartedness I know could be mine, and I have been praying, reading Scripture, and attending church for 43 years. It never occurred to me that those practices might actually be a net neutral or even impede spiritual growth under certain circumstances. With a tight chest, I admit these comfortable routines can keep me pretty well insulated from God if I need them to on a given day. These are easy boxes to check, and therefore easy ways to pay God off so I can go about the rest of my random Wednesday with a self-satisfied mind.

How do I break out of this? Are there tools that could sharpen my Scripture study, deepen my prayer life, and kindle my Sunday morning church participation with joy so these things actually do become effective ways to grow in grace?

According to Willard: Yes!

And the two main antidotes are these: solitude. And its twin, silence.

These are pretty, scary siblings. Beautiful, because they’re freeing. Scary, because they set me down at the feet of something bigger than myself.

“Solitude and silence are primary means for correcting the distortions of our embodied social existence,” Willard writes. “Being alone and being quiet for lengthy periods of time are, for most people, the only way they can take the body and soul out of the circuits of sin and allow them to find a new habitual orientation in the Kingdom of the Heavens.” (153)

Lengthy periods of time — in my mind, this equals being a nun or a hermit. But my cute imagination is so limited and I acknowledge this, hence the day last week I set my iPhone timer for 15 minutes. This felt incredibly lengthy to me, thank you very much. The idea of disruption, to “take the body and soul out of the circuits of sin,” intrigued me. How much of my habitual posture in life predisposes me to self-focus? Does being around others tend to feed my natural selfishness if left unchecked? Does being surrounded by words — my own or those I hear on podcasts or in the constant social media feeds – allow me to hide myself from God in a thicket?

So, I set my iPhone timer, put the phone on Do Not Disturb, and sat in the red chair facing a window. And what happened? Nothing, is what. It was very…quiet. Thoughts came and went. The Holy Spirit didn’t come in a rush of revelation. The Eyeballs also looked out the window from her perch on the couch, and it occurs to me that she practices silence and solitude much more frequently than I do. She was better at it.

When the alarm sounded and I got up, the breath in my torso went deeper, I think. My feet felt a little more on the earth. My inner hamster wheel was drawn down to an easy rotation.

But overall, it felt like a net shrug. Solitude and silence feel costly in this world of mine. I don’t know “how much” of either “will work,” so it’s a humbling pursuit, and it felt a bit reckless to give myself to something so unpredictable. They don’t contribute to anything measurable; if anything, they fritter daylight away that I could be spending doing something else. At least with a Bible study, I can complete the weekly prompts. At least with prayer, I can feel I did something proactive to pursue God. At least with church, I can check it off a list and have others bear witness to my attendance. But solitude and silence are hard to quantify and measure. They suck the achievement out of my spiritual life, hold no promise of measurable results, and they call me into a way of being that does not owe ultimate allegiance to schedules or to-do lists. They call me to a plane of existence above night and day, seasons and years. They situate me Here. And Now.

The late-great preacher Tim Keller credits solitude and silence for helping him truly "put on the new self" back in his early twenties (Check out the podcast where he discusses this moment here). A Bible teacher told Tim’s class to go outside, observe the vast sky, and ponder the enormity of God in isolated silence. That one exercise brought something to bear in his life that all the diligent study of Scripture and wordy prayer sessions could not have achieved. This must have been a humbling thing to admit as a seminary-trained biblical scholar.

But back to my red chair. Maybe 15 minutes wasn’t enough time. Or maybe it was too much. You can’t game God and when he makes a move. You can’t say the magic words (or in this case, refrain from saying any magic words) in order to earn more understanding, more transformation, more insight. This is a passive gifting, and all we can do is sit and wait as recipients with our hands out and our mouths closed. The mere possibility that we will receive a greater sense of God’s presence is freeing, even if it doesn’t look the way we think it should, and even if it’s scary to spill time all over the floor like water. God isn’t all bright feathers and showtunes. He’s a gentle breeze mostly, I have found.

Let’s sit and turn our faces towards it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie K. Rhodes the author of the newest book, Chronic Grace, lives in Fort Worth, TX, with her husband Gordon and two teenage kids Drew and Maddie, plus pug Eloise ("The Eyeballs."). She performs regularly on stages all over Dallas-Fort Worth area and has multiple film and commercial credits.

You may also contact Julie at Leadership Speakers Bureau to schedule her for speaking or leadership engagements.