Getting Alone with God
Is Always in Season

A compilation

Life can get busy for anyone, and this is certainly no different for pastors. And for pastors, there is a rhythm to our year that involves seasons of more intense ministry, like Christmas and Easter.

Regardless of the season you’re in right now, it’s always appropriate to withdraw and spend time seeking God’s favor on your life and ministry.

If we want to fulfill God’s vision for our lives and ministries, we must continually hear from God. We must believe that hearing from God daily is a requirement for us to truly shepherd our congregations. It is not just an add-on to our list of things to do; it is a necessity for being a loving and effective pastor.

The prophet Habakkuk says, “I will climb up to my watchtower.”¹

This is his way of saying, I’m going to get alone with God.

It doesn’t matter where you get alone with God. You just need to find a place. I happen to like outside.

When my kids were growing up, I actually built a little prayer garden down on the slope behind my house where I could get away to pray and focus on God.

You need to have a place that’s quiet, a place where you habitually go to meet with God. Make it special and specific.

The Bible says, “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”² This was a habit with Jesus, and it needs to become a habit in your life.

If you want to get God’s vision and hear God’s direction for each new year and each new season of ministry, you need to meet with him daily.

Let him set your priorities.

Jesus says, “Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”³

God wants to meet with you. He wants you to know him as well as he knows you. There is nothing in your life or in your church that doesn’t interest God.—Rick Warren⁴

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The shepherd has to be fed with the hand of his Creator, and the hand of his Shepherd, if he’s going to feed the sheep and bring them the same peace.

The main job of anyone who cares for others is to keep in touch with the Lord, to begin the day with praise and fellowship with Him. We have to learn how to first of all rest at the Lord’s feet. The secret of that calm and peace and rest and patience and faith and love is that resting in the Lord!—Getting calm before the Lord and praising the Lord and seeking the Lord first. And then you just impart this to others—it’s a spirit; you impart that very atmosphere.

This is why you cannot even make a move until you have first found that place of rest and calm and sweet peace in the Lord, and have sat down and played your pipe to the Lord. That sweet rest is a sign of real faith, which brings patience. As your spirit communes with the Lord and is in harmony with Him, it communicates that peace to others. We comfort others with the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted.⁵—David Brandt Berg

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Throughout the Gospels we read of Jesus separating Himself from those He was ministering to, and even from His closest friends and followers, to spend time alone in prayer and communion with His Father. Before beginning His ministry, we see Him being led by the Holy Spirit to spend forty days alone in fasting and prayer.⁶ Before deciding which of His followers to designate as the twelve apostles, we’re told that “He went out to the mountain to pray, and all night He continued in prayer to God. And when day came, He called His disciples and chose from them twelve, whom He named apostles.”⁷ After hearing of the death of John the Baptist, Jesus “withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by Himself.”⁸ When the crowds gathered to hear Him and to be healed, He sometimes “would withdraw to desolate places and pray.”⁹ After miraculously feeding the five thousand, He sent His disciples off in a boat, then, “After He had dismissed the crowds, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. When evening came, He was there alone.”¹⁰

It was common for Jesus to separate Himself from others to be alone with God. Even when He was extremely busy, very needed, and doing great things, He still made a point of getting away from everyone to have time alone with His Father.

“That evening at sundown they brought to Him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And He healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. … And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, He departed and went out to a desolate place, and there He prayed.”¹¹

Carving out time to be alone to commune with the Lord gives us the opportunity to pray and hear His voice without distraction. Solitude allows us to focus on connecting deeply with God, knowing we won’t be interrupted by others, especially when we add silence to the mix by disconnecting from all communication devices, phones, computers, etc. Of course, it isn’t always necessary to get away from noise and conversation to hear the voice of the Lord, as He can speak to us in any situation, but there are times when it’s beneficial to be alone and in quietness as we seek Him and listen to Him.—Peter Amsterdam

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There is no place where the mind can be as fully renewed as in the secret place of prayer, alone with God. When we come aside from the temporal things that distract and harass us, and there in the presence of God we put our mind on the things of God, the transforming power of God then begins to work in us, and we are changed, renewed.—Virginia Brandt Berg

Published on Anchor February 2019. Read by Jerry Paladino.
Music by Michael Dooley.

Posted in: audio, compilation, leadership, prayer, prophecy, relationship with the lord

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