1Series

The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. [31] Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest."

If you could spend a whole day with some famous person—anyone on earth at all—who would it be? Some people would naturally be drawn to powerful political leaders, and they might choose a head of state, like the president, or the Prime Minister of England or India, etc. Others are more interested in entertainers, and they would pick their favorite actress, or singer. Maybe you are a sports nut, and there’s a coach, or a quarterback that you would give anything to spend a day with. Maybe you’re a business person and a day with a Fortune 500 CEO would be fabulous. Who would it be for you?

This passage in Mark 6 surely has to be the most amazing invitation ever given. The Man who can calm a storm, feed thousands of people with one sack lunch, cast out demons with a word, heal the sick and raise the dead—this man invites us to come spend time with Him! What a privilege! What an honor! What a joy to spend uninterrupted time in His presence!

And it is necessary as well. Because many of us are too busy. And by that, I mean we are, in fact, not just busier than we would like to be, but busier than we should be. Paul said, “To me, to live is Christ.” Christ was the most important thing in his life. If that is to be true of us, then we need to have time to nurture our relationship with Jesus. If we don’t have time for that, then we are literally too busy.

The disciples needed this time away with Jesus. They had been out on their own, preaching the kingdom of God, healing the sick, casting out demons, and they were exhausted—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. They needed time to regroup, to talk things over with Him, to get His perspective on what had happened on their mission trip. But when they got back to Jesus, there was a crowd there (as usual) and they couldn’t really get time alone with Him. So Jesus said (note who it was who issued this invitation!), Come away with Me. When you have been pushing hard for a season, whether it is a project at work, or a phase the kids are in, or you are spending more time than usual in your volunteer ministry, you need a break. And you need to hear Jesus saying to you, “Come with me by yourself to a quiet place and get some rest.”

Believe it or not, Jesus wants to be with you. It’s easy to see why we would want to spend time with someone like Jesus; it is less obvious why He would want to spend time with us. But that was His invitation to the disciples, and that is His invitation to us.

I don’t know how you think of your relationship with God, but most of us have a title or name that we use most often when talking to Him or referring to Him. WHAT ARE SOME? All of those are biblical, but there are two terms Jesus uses for us that are reciprocal, i.e. they go both ways, that we may not think of very often. One is that of brother: Hebrews says that because Jesus and we have the same Father, He is not ashamed to call us brothers. Jesus pointed to the people around Him and said, Mark 3:35, “Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother." So we could call Him our Brother.

But an even higher relationship than that is friend. John 15:15, I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” Jesus has called us His friends. Are you kidding me? The One who created the universe calls me His friend? —and invites me to go on outings with Him alone, just the two of us, where we can talk over life, where I can be completely open and honest with Him about my doubts and fears and hopes and dreams? That’s right. Listen to Him: “Come with me.” He wants to be with you—friend with friend.

Now, it’s also true that Jesus is our Lord, and sometimes when we are alone with Him, He will remind us of that. He’ll point out something that is amiss in our lives, or He’ll challenge us to some new act of obedience and service. But always, it is in the context of His incredible love for us. Why would you turn down His invitation?

He says this to the group of disciples, so they are not actually going to be alone with Him individually. But that’s because of the limitations that were imposed by His physical body. The best they could do was get alone with Him in a group, away from the crowds. He couldn’t be with each of them alone at the same time. But now He can. Now Jesus can be with every person on the face of the earth simultaneously by His Spirit who is not bound by a physical body. So the invitation to us really is to each of us individually: come with me by yourself.

For some people, this is a very appealing invitation, because they thrive in solitude, but for others, it feels more like a punishment, because they are uncomfortable being alone. Which is it? Really, it is a blessing for both, but the latter have to work harder at it to experience the benefits. Extraverts love to be around people; they get energized by being around others. So to say to them, “come by yourself and spend a day alone” is not a happy prospect. What does Jesus say to them? He says, You will have to work harder at getting to the blessings of this time away, but you need it perhaps more than the others, because you don’t take the time alone in your normal routine. You will need to fight the urge to get up and talk to someone, or go be in a social situation of some sort. Just like introverts feel claustrophobic in certain social situations and have to fight the urge to run away and be by themselves, so extraverts have to discipline themselves to be alone with the Lord. But there is blessing for each when you work against your natural inclinations.

We live in a very noisy world. Almost everywhere we go, there is noise of some sort. Machinery, traffic, people talking, kids crying, cell phones ringing. Music is almost everywhere—in elevators, in stores, in our homes, in our cars, and now, thanks to the mp3 player, even in solitude. I’ve seen people hiking in the National Park with their iPods surgically implanted in their ears. Pitiful! (Unless they are listening to Haydn’s Creation, which I doubt!)

Having said that, I need to say clearly that sometimes recorded Christian music will usher me into the presence of God more quickly than anything else. I think you have to choose the songs wisely, but if you do, that can be a great opening into the spiritual realm.

But in terms of other kinds of noise, it is just distracting if we are trying to focus our minds on God. Some people are afraid of silence, which is why they keep the music or the TV on all the time. Barbie had an uncle who turned the TV on when he got up in the morning, and turned it off when he went to bed. It was on all day. He didn’t always pay attention to it—he just liked the background noise. What was he afraid of? What did he not want to hear if it was quiet?

I think some people are afraid of their own thoughts, so they drown them out with the noise of life. Or maybe they are actually afraid of hearing from the Holy Spirit. Keep talking; keep playing the music; keep watching TV. Because they are afraid of what might surface if they were quiet.

But it is important, Jesus says, to get to a quiet place with Him. Sometimes, God speaks so softly you can hardly hear Him. He says, Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Think about that for a minute. How often do you do that? We all say we want to know God better and be closer to Him and have a greater appreciation for His power and majesty, but we don’t take the time to do the one thing He says will open the door to those benefits, namely, be still in His presence.

1 Kings 19:11-13, The Lord said [to Elijah], "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. [12] After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. [13] When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

Listen for God! You certainly won’t hear Him with a bunch of noise blaring in the background. Get to a quiet place and listen attentively with your spirit. Just be still, and listen for the gentle whisper, the “still, small voice” of God.

I think it is possible to hear the voice of the Lord in the midst of noise. I frequently stop singing in our worship services to listen to what the Spirit might be saying. But I think that discerning His voice is a skill that we develop in the quiet places, and then we learn how to pick His voice out of the noise in other situations.

It is in the quiet places, lying down in a field, or sitting silently beside a lake or a slowly moving stream, that God restores our souls. We are extremely fortunate to live so near many quiet places where we can get away. The (Rocky Mountain) National Park is God’s gift to all of us, and we should take advantage of it every chance we get. On occasion, I have spent my monthly day away at the office, or in my home, because of weather or schedule, and even though I wasn’t interrupted, it just wasn’t the same as getting away. Mark says they headed out in the boat to a solitary place, and I think that is part of the key for us as well.

Many of us define ourselves by what we do. Men, especially, are likely to ask each other when meeting another man for the first time, “So what do you do?” And that answer is used to size the other up in terms of physical, mental, social abilities. A man’s job tells us many important things about him. This is why so many men have such a hard time with retirement—they have defined themselves all their lives by what they do, and now they have “nothing” do to—at least nothing that is required of them. So they typically flounder for a while before they find something else “to do”. Women do this too, of course, whether they are pursuing a career, or work part time, or are stay at home moms. We all see ourselves primarily in terms of the roles we play in the different settings of life.

When Jesus invites us to come away with Him and get some rest, I think He means that at multiple levels.

we may just be tired. We may need a chance to catch up on our sleep. Barbie and I attended a pastors’ retreat a few years ago, and the first night we gathered, the leader of our time stopped at one point and said, “This is the tiredest bunch I’ve seen in a long time. If you just need to go to bed early, you have my permission. Give yourself permission, and know that that may be the most important thing you could do this evening.” And several people did just that. Or maybe it isn’t sleep you need, but just physical rest—a time to relax, to not exert yourself physically.

If you have a very mentally or emotionally demanding job, or if the little children are getting to you with their constant demands for attention, you may need to just sit and “veg” for a while. Or go on a long walk with the Lord and not think about much of anything. Give your mind time to squeeze the sponge out and let it refill slowly. You don’t have to be intensely praying, or studying your Bible with commentaries in order to spend quality time with Jesus. Just “be with” Him. That’s His invitation: “come with me” and get some rest.

We are all closet legalists at one level or another. We say we believe in grace, but we act as though we really believe that God is only pleased with us when we are busy, busy, busy for Him. We are working hard to earn His pleasure and favor, when what we really need to do is get alone with Him and give Him time to whisper in our hearts how much He already loves us.

Jesus said, Matthew 11:28-30, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. [29] Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [30] For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." The people of His day were being told by the Pharisees and the teachers of the law that they had to do this, do that, not do this, not do that, in order to please the Lord. There was a very long list of requirements and obligations that people felt they had to accomplish if they were to measure up to God’s standards. Jesus said, just stop! Come to me and rest. Lay down that load of requirements. Don’t carry it another step—just dump it right there on the ground. Find rest for your soul in my grace, in that place where there is nothing you can do to make me love you more than I already do; and there is nothing you can do that will make me love you less than I do right now. Rest in Me.

As you examine your life, are there things you are doing that are designed primarily to earn God’s favor? You feel like you have to do these things in order to make Him happy with you? Hear Jesus say, “Come with my by yourself to a quiet place and get some rest for your soul.”

Physical rest, mental and emotional rest, and spiritual rest all combine together into just “being” not doing. We call ourselves “human beings” but the fact is that most of the time we are “human doings”, or “humans doing” whatever we can. And the point here is much like that of silence. It is only when we are still, when we are not actively doing something else, that we can detect the movement of the Spirit on our souls.

Dallas Willard is a man who has thought and written a lot on the spiritual disciplines. He suggests that the reason we find it hard to practice solitude and silence, to really get away and rest in God, is that we are always trying to make things happen ourselves. We are so busy doing things, we never feel like we have the time for this kind of rest. But we don’t need more time, because unless we come at life a completely different way, we will just fill up that “more time” with the same busy, frantic, hectic, rat-race kinds of things we packed into the rest of our lives. The only way to get free from that and to rest in Jesus is through a decision and a practice. We have to decide to get away with Jesus, and then we have to do it.

This is not a decision to not act at all, though in some situations it may come to that. It is more of a decision about how we will act—namely, in dependence on God. We will not take charge of outcomes. We will not feel like we alone are responsible for making things happen. When King Saul assumed the priestly role and offered sacrifices rather than wait for Samuel (I Samuel 13:812), he decided to “make things happen.” He trusted the “arm of the flesh” or his natural abilities to get his way.[1] Jesus invites us to learn by experience that everything is perfectly safe in God’s hands. We can be active, if we need to be, but we do it in confidence that God is in charge. Choosing to spend time alone with Jesus helps us believe that, to actually trust Him with our lives. You cannot rest while you are pedaling like mad. This is not a matter of shifting to a higher gear on your bike so you don’t have to pedal as fast; it is getting off the bike, laying it down, and then lying down beside it on the grass, trusting that God will get you across the finish line when you need to be there.

Stephen Covey, in his book, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, offers as Habit #7, “Sharpen the Saw”. He says,

Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.

“Can’t you see?” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree.”

“Well, why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?” you inquire. “I’m sure it would go a lot faster.”

“I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing!”[2]

Taking Jesus up on His invitation to get away alone with Him to get some rest is a lot like what Covey calls “sharpening the saw”. We may not think we have enough time to do that, but if you look at how hard you are working at life, you don’t have time not to do it. A little time here and there, carved out of a busy life, in order to sharpen the spiritual edges of our lives, will make us far more effective at the heavy sawing we have to do from day to day.

You want to be sharp for God—i.e. you want to be mentally alert, spiritually attuned to what the Spirit is saying moment by moment; you want to be filled with the Fruit of the Spirit, so that you represent Jesus well in every situation; you want to be sensitive to others around you, looking out for their needs and interests, not just absorbed in yourself. The way to do all that is to take time out periodically in order to sharpen the spiritual saw.

We need to cultivate a relationship with the Holy Spirit of being open and available to Him, of learning how to hear His voice, even in the clamor of the day, of being instantly obedient to His nudges, no matter how odd they may seem to us at the time. All of those things happen as we spend time in His presence away from all other distractions. If we just keep sawing, we’ll lose our edge, and it will be exhausting. But if we stop periodically to sharpen the saw, we will be far more efficient and effective in whatever we are doing, because we will do it in the power of the Spirit, rather than in our own strength.

Let me put it to you this way: Another term God uses for Himself in relation to us is “husband”. We are trying to cultivate a love relationship with Jesus. Married couples often discover that after they are married, life has a way of crowding in on them and squeezing out their special alone times together. The kids and the work and the relatives and their own personal needs for recreation and guy/girl time all compete in a 168 hour week for time with just each other. Oh—and entertainment is expensive, so there might not be enough for that and the babysitter. It all adds up to benign neglect of their relationship. And then one day they wake up and realize, “I don’t think I love this person any more.” How did that happen? It wasn’t through malice, or intentionality. It just happened through neglect.

In much the same way, our love relationship with Jesus can deteriorate through neglect to the point where we really don’t feel the same passion and enthusiasm for Him that we once did. The Bible calls this “losing our first love,” and it’s a serious matter. We need to recapture the romance in that relationship.

When couples come to me in that difficult place relationally, where the romance is all gone, I tell them that it is very possible—easy, even—for them to regain the same passion and delight in each other that they had when they were first married. But they will have to make the time to be alone together, doing things they both enjoy. And so it is with Jesus. If we want to fall in love with Him again, if we want to be excited about our relationship with Him, we will have to accept Jesus’ gracious invitation often: Come with me by yourself to a quiet place and get some rest.

Listen: He loves you! He’s calling to you. He wants that time with you. Will you deny Him? Will you willfully neglect Him? This is the Lover of your soul! This is the One who died in your place. This is the One who loves you more than anyone on earth! Don’t blow Him off. Run to Him! Thank Him for inviting and calling you! Apologize for having neglected Him for so long. Let Him wrap you up in His great everlasting arms and hold you close. Find your security in Him. Trust Him to work out the details of your life. Let the tension seep out of your body and your mind; commit your way to Him and leave it there. Hear Him say, “Rest, my child, rest.”

[1] Dallas Willard, in the Preface to Invitation to Solitude and Silence, Ruth Haley Barton, 2004

[2] Stephen R. Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People (New York: Fireside/Simon and Schuster, 1989), p.287.