Silence & Solitude: How Prayer & Meditation Strengthens Your Relationship with God

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Silence & Solitude: How Prayer & Meditation Strengthens Your Relationship with God

We live in a chaotic culture obsessed with noise, clutter, and activity. We live very busy lives immersed in this cacophony all day, every day. The ability to think clearly without our minds and thoughts being constantly bombarded is highly impacted by it all. In several Psalms, we find exhortations to be still, to meditate, to rest, and even to wait on the Lord. Psalms 1, 4, 37, 46, and 119 represent just a few examples. In the New Testament, in Matthew 6, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about prayer. As He does this, He exhorts His disciples and followers to go into their room, shut the door, and pray to their Father in secret, and not be like the Pharisees who pray out in the open places, where they will be seen and heard. These texts seem to encourage a kind of silence and solitude in the Christian life. Does that require us to run off to an unpopulated area, live off the grid, and forsake televisions and telephones? Or could just small amounts of time, short periods of silence, and moments of being still help us in our spiritual life? Might they enhance it in one way or another? Join us this week on the Straight Truth Podcast as Dr. Richard Caldwell and Dr. Josh Philpot discuss what these exhortations mean, how to implement them, and how they will help us in our fellowship with our God.

Dr. Caldwell tells us that activity can be an avoidance of other things. It’s not always the case, but it does play into the busyness of our lives. We tend to think if we stay busy, we won’t have to deal with this or that, and we won’t have to think about them. But, one of the reasons that God has designed, as part of our lives of worship, moments dedicated to quietness, reflection, meditation on truth, prayer, and private times of worship is that we would come face to face with things that we would otherwise avoid. These times are times that God has ordained for our lives so that we would not miss something we would otherwise miss and times for receiving things we won’t receive any other way. These times of meditation and quietness are necessary for the kind of fellowship we need with the Lord every day. They’re part of our growth and maturity in our Christian walk. But these things take time. Where do we find the time to do them? Do we have to go away to secluded, unpopulated places to do these things? Is it possible to implement them throughout our regular busy days? How would we do that?

Dr. Caldwell says we have to choose it, schedule it, and be dedicated to devote time to doing it. He recommends several ways we can do that, which can be helpful. We can keep our Bibles on our nightstands, take them with us in the car, wherever we go, and take advantage of all the natural moments we have in a day to read the Scriptures. We can set aside time in the evenings to go to a quiet place in our homes. Anytime or anyplace that it’s quiet, without a lot of things happening around us, we can do this. But we have to be intentional, we have to choose it, and we have to be focused.

It’s all about focus. Dr. Caldwell tells us that multitasking is a myth. Some people will say they are a good multitasker, but he says no one is a good multitasker. Yes, some are better than others. But anytime you’re multitasking, you’re not giving your full attention to any of the things you’re trying to do all at once. When you multitask, you’re robbing your effectiveness in all those areas you’re attempting to do at the same time because effectiveness ramps up with focus. To help understand this, Dr. Caldwell talks about how we often pray while we’re on the move. People and things come to mind when we’re doing other things. We don’t typically stop and kneel down to pray. We just pray in the moment as we sort of move about and go about our day. So, one of the reasons why we have private times of prayer is because we need to focus in prayer. The Scriptures provide examples of both kinds for us. We see in the book of Acts where Paul utters prayer in the middle of a conversation and in other places in the gospels where Jesus, the Son of God, retires from His day, finds a place of solitude, and devotes Himself to prayer. If Jesus needed that in His relationship with His Father, do we think we don’t?

If we can embrace what the Scriptures teach, we will see our need for all these things. When we don’t do them, we are actually neglecting things that the Scriptures explicitly set before us as a part of the Christian life. The Word of God provides the answers for all these questions. We have to get back to what the Scriptures set forth and do them. So then, how do we achieve it? We have to choose it and decide for it. We have to see the importance and choose to make it part of our lives. This gets down to making decisions. Deciding to do these things means not doing other things. It means that we have to say no to other things. We will have to turn things off and put things away from us. We don’t have to get away or move to a secluded area to implement these things. But we do have to be intentional, diligent, and disciplined for them to happen. It’s all about making choices.

About The Straight Truth Podcast

The Straight Truth Podcast: Christian Opinions in an Increasingly Secular World. Join Dr. Richard Caldwell, Dr. Josh Philpot, and their guests as they discuss news events, current affairs, and cultural issues from a Biblical point of view. Find the truth at www.straighttruth.net

The Straight Truth Podcast is a weekly opinion show hosted by Dr. Richard Caldwell and Dr. Josh Philpot. Straight Truth is available as an audio podcast on iTunes or as a video podcast through YouTube or Vimeo.  The duration of the podcast is approximately 10 minutes. We release new episodes every Thursday.

The topics discussed in the Straight Truth Podcast are current events, matters that challenge traditional Christian values, and questions submitted by audience members. Dr. Caldwell, Dr. Philpot, and their guests seek to answer these questions with Biblical truths and from a Christian conservative point of view. The Holy Bible is the inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word of God; it alone is and will be the basis and authority of
answering any and all questions.

The Straight Truth Podcast is the perfect podcast for those seeking to strengthen their faith, to be informed on how to broach difficult topics with a Christian point of view, to share their faith with unbelieving friends, to challenge the status quo of their own beliefs by viewing them under the lens of the Scriptures, to interpret current news events from a Biblical point of view, and more.

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Season 28 Credits Produced by
Juan Carlos Claveria Executive Producers
Joshua Philpot
David Anders Hosted by
Joshua Philpot Social Media Descriptions by
Michele Watson Graphic Design
David Navejas DP / EDITING / COLOR
JUAN CARLOS CLAVERIA SPECIAL THANKS TO THE
FOUNDERS BAPTIST CHURCH
MEDIA TEAM VOLUNTEERS Special Thanks to
El Centro Network Music by
LynneMusic Motion Graphics
The Media Stock Set Decorator
Molly Atchison