At the Spiritual Rhythms Retreat, we all spent six hours practicing the spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude. I was personally looking forward to this, as I love spending time alone. In the session before we went out, Dr. Andy Pettigrew gave us a talk on the proper approach to the discipline of solitude. In this talk, he presented the idea that silence and solitude—and all of the spiritual disciplines—start and end with God. What he meant by this was that they are dedicated to God and are empowered by God.
The disciplines are for giving something to God, not getting something from Him.
This idea was revolutionary to me, as I had always approached the spiritual disciplines primarily for my own sake, with glorifying God as a sort of side effect. It was because of Dr. Pettigrew’s talk that I resolved to change my disposition going into silence and solitude.
I spent the first hour and a half of my time alone sitting in my hammock and rehearsing to myself both the truth of the Gospel and the attributes of God, then sitting in silence to reflect and let the Holy Spirit guide my prayers of adoration back to Him. This process wasn’t easy, as I caught my mind wandering on multiple occasions. However, this forced me to depend on God and surrender to Him all that was on my mind. Because of this, I felt a truly open and deep connection with my Father in Heaven as I let the truth of the Gospel and His character wash over all that’s going on in my life.
I’ve been reading Desiring God by John Piper, and his thesis in that book is that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. Through this, Dr. Pettigrew’s teaching, and putting the discipline into practice, I was able to experience for a moment the joy of self-forgetfulness, as my mind was filled with the knowledge of my God. During the experience of silence and solitude, I obeyed the command in Psalm 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God.”
Something the Lord has been convicting me of lately is that far too often I do things for the recognition and approval of others, and gain more satisfaction from that than in God Himself. I want to continue the spiritual discipline of silence and solitude in my life, but with a renewed vision of its purpose. I want to have the heart posture of seeking to cut out the noise in my life for a moment to give God my undivided adoration, and thereby be fully satisfied in His character alone. Although I won’t be able to do six hours of it regularly, I can still dedicate the quiet hours of the morning to orient my heart toward my Lord. As the old hymn says, “Then the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”
Justus Tam, Class of 2027
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