Leave Me Alone... With God

Welcome to Covenant's Pulpit Ministry. Covenant Evangelical Free Church believes that the Bible is the Word of God, and that God's Word is vital for life-transforming Christianity. We trust that you will grow to know the Word of God, and more importantly, the God of the Word, as you hear this message today. May God bless you as you open your heart to His Word. May the Lord bless you and give you peace. The title and theme of my message today is, "Leave me alone." Please say it with me. Leave me alone. The text is Matthew 6, verses 5 to 6, please find it in your Bible. Our theme is contemplative prayer. What is contemplation? When I was shopping for my first computer back in the Stone Age, I asked the salesman, how much is this one? And then he gave the price and he said, "But that's without the software." And I said, "What is software?" What is contemplation? What software does for a computer? Contemplation does for a Christian. Contemplation is the prayer of the heart. A constant secret communion with God in the innermost part of your being. Contemplative prayer is not easy, but it's simple, as simple as one, two, three. One, go into your room. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, or they love to pray standing in the synagogues and the street corners, in order that they may be seen by men. Similarly, I say to you, they have very wide, but you, when you pray, go into your room. There is something unique about these verses. In the Greek text, all the pronouns you and your are in the singular. This is extraordinary because Jesus almost always addresses His disciples collectively using the plural forms of you and your, but here, all the pronouns in the entire text are in the singular, you, when you pray, go into your room. Jesus addresses you and you alone as a single solitary individual and invite you to pray. Contemplative prayer is personal private communion with God between you and God. When you pray, go into your room. The Greek word for room is tamayan, please say it with me, tamayan. The tamayan is an inner room or a storeroom which could be found in every Palestinian farmhouse in the time of Jesus, like the storeroom in your HDB flat. A tamayan has no windows, it's dark, it's secluded, it's secret. Just the Bible, such a room is said to be used in various ways. For example, as a treasury for storing precious things, as a bridal chamber, a place to weep, a place to hide, nine times the Bible uses the word tamayan in reference to a place to hide. It's also a place for secret, where secret private conversation takes place four times. It's used that way and idiomatically, tamayan refers to the inner room, the innermost part of the heart of man. That's where contemplative prayer really takes place in the innermost part of your heart when you pray, go into your room. This stands in stark contrast to those who love to pray in public in order to be seen by others. I affirm all pastors and leaders who lead us in congregational prayer, as Pastor Darwin just did, without drawing attention to himself in the least, but to facilitate corporate prayer. But when it comes to personal prayer, Jesus says, "Go into your room." And secondly, shut your door. A door does two things. It shuts it out and it shuts in. Go into your room and shut out the world. The noisy busy world, shut out your status, your titles, your timeline, your to-do list, your flowchart, slam the door on every distraction, intrusive thought, gripe, or grievance, hobby or plan for today or tomorrow, shut out everything, all social media and especially AI and shut yourself in with God. You and you alone in lockdown with God. In this respect, the COVID-19 circuit breaker was actually a treat for me. Contemplative prayer is simple. Go into your room, shut your door, and pray to your father in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you. Contemplative prayer does not rule out other forms of prayer, such as intercession, congregational prayer, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and so on. The contemplative prayer is different from all those other forms of prayer. It's a closed door meeting between you and God alone in secret. The phrase in secret in Greek is encryptose, say it with me, encryptose. Do I need to define that? I don't think so. Like digital encryption, contemplation is hidden, even from the one praying in certain ways. At some point your heart says to your mind, stand aside, I'll take it from here. And now you are in direct, hot to heart, spirit to spirit communion, conversation with God. Words are no longer needed, in fact they get in the way. Now the heart prays by itself, sending and receiving coded messages up and down the ladder of heaven. You may not even know what's going on, but something deep is happening in your heart. There are three essential conditions or dimensions of contemplative prayer. The first dimension is solitude, both externally and internally. We deprive ourselves of human consolation, not because we're anti-social, but in order to receive divine consolation. The aim of solitude is to awaken within our hearts a deep longing for God, like the bride in the song of Solomon who is sick with love for the groom, and like the psalmist who cries out, "Oh God, my soul thirst for you, my flesh, thanks for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water." its intense longing for God is the threshold of compassion. contemplative prayer. When I was a young boy, when we'd get home from school, my brothers and I would always go out and play on the farm. We had a hundred acres of farmland and a hundred acres of forest. But on certain days, when I reached home, when we reached home, I noticed that my parents were not in the house and somehow I felt a deep sense of longing and loneliness for my parents. And so while my brothers would stay out playing, I would go into the house and sit down and watch the window waiting longing for my parents. And that's how in contemplative prayer we train our hearts to be sensitive to the longing for God that's always there, but sometimes we are not aware of it. Years ago when I was still studying at Fuller, I was invited to do some teaching in Malaysia. My wife is from Malaysia, her family's there. And so she went ahead of me with my two boys while I finished my school assignments. And then when I was finished, I went. So there was a period of time when I was not able to be in conversation with them. But when I was finally able to get to a phone and make a phone call on a land phone, of course, after speaking for a few moments with my wife with liking, she said, you need to talk to justice. And I could tell by the tone of her voice that something was wrong. Justice had just not been himself for the whole time that he was separated from me. There was a longing in his heart for his papa. And when she gave the phone to justice, he took the phone and he literally screamed into the receiver. I won't demonstrate. But if you would have heard that whale, you would have wept. The heart of a son crying. And the Bible says that that God has shunned forth the spirit of his son into our hearts crying. Father, and the purpose of solitude is to help us to get in touch with the heart, the depths of our heart, where the spirit himself cries. And our hearts also cry. Father, do you know, have you experienced this deep loneliness, this love sickness? For God. If you wait long enough in your quiet place of prayer, you should feel it. And that's the beginning of contemplation, a mysterious longing for God in the depths of your heart. A second dimension of contemplative prayer is stillness of both body and soul. Stillness is a physical and spiritual posture of waiting for God to act both in our inner life and active life. Isaiah 64 6, God acts for those who wait for him. Another translation says God works for him. God works for those who worked for him. A friend of mine once said, I don't work for God. God works for me. Hallelujah. God works for those who wait for him, not those who run ahead of him, but those who wait for him. And Psalm 4610, read it with me from the screen, together aloud, be still and know that I am God. There are some things about God you will never know, until you learn to sit still long enough in His presence. Contemplation is not another activity to perform in our hyperactive world. Contemplation is an inactivity that enhances and enriches both our inner life and our public life. Solitude, stillness, and a third dimension of contemplative prayer is silence. For the past 20+ years I have been trying to learn God's first language, which is silence. Blessed silence is a posture of listening to God or listening for God. Listen to me in silence says the Lord. Isaiah 41 and Psalm 62 1 forgot alone my soul waits in silence. External silence is meant to cultivate within us a deep inner silence where we can hear God with our spiritual ears. And it takes time and effort to shut down the physical senses so that the spiritual senses, including the ability to hear God, are awakened deep inside of us. So how do we acquire these three conditions or dimensions for contemplative prayer, stillness, solitude, and silence in practical terms. Extract yourself from the hustle of the herd, withdrawal from human company and consolation and sit in your quiet place, assume a posture in which you can be both relaxed and alert and not fall asleep. And then fix your mind exclusively on Jesus who dwells in the inner room of your heart even if you don't feel him there. Give Jesus your undefided attention, affection, and allegiance, block out all other thoughts that knock at the door and let the one part of Jesus so feel your heart and soul so that all other thoughts are silenced and expelled. I discovered contemplative prayer before I ever heard the word before I knew what it was just like I didn't know what software was. I didn't know what contemplation was. But in my first year as a disciple of Jesus when I was so hungry for God, every night I would kneel beside my bed before crawling into it to fall asleep and I would pray. And one night something happened. Something happened. I just felt that what I just described to you, that mysterious longing for God. And so I put aside all of the thoughts and all of the prayers and somehow I was able to block out all the intrusive thoughts that are constantly flooding our minds like notifications on your handphone. I was able to block them all out. And the one thought of Jesus so fielded my mind and you know I was living in one of these little mobile homes you know with the walls are so thin and it was next to the busy street, the main street through the town where I lived, there was noise on this traffic on the road. But miraculously I was able to block all that out where I was not aware of anything else around me, except Jesus. And that one encounter has encouraged me for the past 51 years as a disciple of Jesus. Give Jesus, get alone in your prayer closet or go find a place outside where you can be alone regularly and sit down and give him your undivided affection, the love of your heart, your attention and your allegiance. And try to keep that up until you begin to reach that place of deep inner silence where you can hear God in your heart. I confess to you that I never hear the voice of God and I am a bit nervous around people who seem to hear it every day. And that's why I like Dallas Willard's book Hearing God because he didn't call it hearing the voice of God just hearing. in God. I've never heard the audible voice of God, but I do hear God in silence, solitude, and stillness. Short, simple phrases. One short sentence at the most, usually all in one syllable words are mostly one syllable words. God is simple. And I haven't forgotten those words, and they have given meaning and direction to my life over the past 51 years. And I've very seldom shared these words with anyone, because they are a secret conversation between God and me. You may never hear. You may never hear the audible voice of God, and it might be dangerous to try. But if you want to converse with God in the depths of your heart, learn his first language. Silence. But you may ask, does God really pay attention to Salah prayer? I used to have a hang-up about, hang-up about this. I always felt them, you know, in my private prayer time that I had to speak out loud. But God does hear silent prayer. I believe Jesus practiced silent prayer as biblical as it is Jewish. For example, Elieza, when seeking a bride for Isaac, he talks to God in his heart silently. In his heart, that's what the text says. And Jesus heard and answered his prayer. When Hannah was praying for her son, her mouth moved, but there was no sound. And Eli thought she was drunk, but God heard and answered her prayer. When Nehemiah was before the King of Persian, and had a burden on his heart to go back and restore Jerusalem and build the walls around the city, he prayed silently to God in the presence of the Persian king and God heard and answered his prayer. The psalmist prays before God, before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it. And Jesus said, "Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him." And Paul wrote the Holy Spirit himself "Size, within us, groans, sighing and groaning too deep for words, too deep for words." But what if I don't have a private room to pray in? Doesn't every HDB flat have a storeroom? That's what I use. That's what I've been using for many, many years. Well, you say, "Mine is a landfill." Well, clean it out or just go sit there among the landfill. I've done that, too. Any place where you can be alone with God, the indoors are outdoors. Jesus didn't have a home, much less a room to pray, and he would go out to secluded deserted places to pray. The desert was his prayer room. We all need a secluded spot indoors or outdoors. Go climb a tree if you have to. Do what you need to do, but find a place where you can be alone with God. And remember the Greek word for room and our text, "Tamayan can also refer to the inner room of your heart." Every temple has a shrine where some deity dwells. Aren't you the temple of God? Yes, you are the temple of God, and there is a secret shrine in your heart where God dwells. And we need to find our way into that room and pray to our Father in secret. Even when Jesus was present with his disciples, he could go into the inner room of his soul and pray to his Father alone. Luke 9 verse 18, for example, now it happened that Jesus was praying alone, the disciples were with him. Now how do you explain that? "Praying alone and the disciples were with him." You can be alone with God, even in a crowd. Frank LaBocque was a missionary to the Morrow people on the island of Mindanao into Southern Philippines. He specialized in literacy training, which is brain work, but his greatest achievement was his heart work. The work he did in his own heart. There was a hill behind his house called Signal Hill, significantly, and he would climb that hill in the evenings and spend time alone with God. And with much effort and discipline, he trained himself to keep God on his mind every minute of every day. Even when he was busy with literacy work, his heart was in communion with God. Many others say, "In spite of history, have been able to achieve that." In the letter to his father, Frank LaBocque said, "This was the hottest thing he ever did, but when he achieved it, everything else became easy." He wrote in this book these letters. These are the letters he wrote to his father. It wasn't meant to be published, but now it is. I encourage you to get the book and read it to the letters of a modern mystic. And this is what he wrote. "This concentration upon God is strenuous, but everything else has ceased to be so." The one essential thing of sitting at the feet of Jesus and keeping God on his mind even when he was doing busy work. This gave meaning to everything else in his life. He also wrote in another letter, "Where is the faded away like ugly clouds and my soul rests in the sunshine of perpetual peace." But what if I just don't have the time for contemplative prayer? You are not alone. A cobbler lamented that he had no time to pray. His customers were poor, laborious, with only one pair of shoes, eat. And so this cobbler would collect their shoes in the evenings, and he would spend most of the night fixing them so that his customers could wear them to work next morning. And so he asked his rabbi, "What can I do about my prayer life?" The rabbi answered what a question as rabbi's often do. "Well, what have you been doing until now?" Well, said the cobbler. "In the morning, I'm so tired. I can't keep my eyes open. All I can do is sigh. And during the day when I raise up my hammer sometimes to drive a nail, I sigh and come evening. When all I can think about is those shoes that will keep me awake all night, again, I sigh." And the rabbi said, "Look, if I were God, I would value that sigh, more than a thousand prayers." Didn't Jesus say, "When you pray, don't babble like the Gentiles, for they think that it will be heard, that they will be heard because of their much speaking. Don't be like them, for your Father knows what you need. Before you ask Him, so do the best you can with the little time you have. And don't waste that time just babbling like the Gentiles with many, many words, but let your heart cry, let your heart sigh, "Ah, Abba, Father, and do that as long as you can, God will take that sigh and value that sigh more than a thousand prayers, but don't abuse that. If you have the time, if you have more time, use it and don't rush off from the presence of God prematurely. Jesus longed for your fellowship, more than you longed for His. He said, I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in." He said, "Anyone, this is another of those rare occasions where Jesus is speaking in the singular. Any one of you, any one of you in this room, any one of you, Jesus knocks. And if you hear, that's another thing we need to train ourselves to hear Jesus knocking. And when He knocks without delay, open the door. And He will come in and feast with you at a table for two, you and you alone. He takes the initiative. How can we deny Him? How can? Isn't contemplation a waste of time? I'm sorry, I got ahead of myself. Let me go back. Do the best you can with the time you have. Several years ago, I was invited to speak at a mission's conference, and I did, and I delivered my sermon, and I felt so relieved. I walked off the platform. I was ready to go home because I wasn't attending the entire conference. And then the brother that was looking after me said, "I will now take you to your workshop." And I said, "Workshop? What workshop?" And he said, "Yeah, you're supposed to do a workshop." And apparently, I guess it was probably my mistake. I missed something. Sorry. I said, "What's the topic?" And he gave me the topic, and I said, "Where's the room?" And on the way to the room, we passed by a washroom, and I said, "Give me a moment." And I went inside the washroom, and I opened the cubicle, and I went inside, and I shot the door. I put down the lid of the toilet seat, and I sat down, and that cubicle became my turmoil. I only had a few moments with God, along with God, but God came. And God helped me, and I was able to walk out and go into that room, and I was able to do what was required of me. And so, well, some of you might think, "Well, then if that's the case, isn't contemplation a waste of time?" No, it doesn't work that way always. Okay, so don't abuse that either. "Didn't Jesus say go into all the world and make disciples?" Yes, He did, but it's not either are. It's both aren't. Loving God and loving neighbor. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the life and work of Aidan of Lindeswan, a spiritual descendant of St. Patrick. Aidan was a missionary to the Angles of England in the seventh century. Angled with today, we call them Anglos, as in Anglo-Chinese school. Back then, they were called Anglos. It was a large tribe in England, and Aidan was sent there as a missionary. And for his base, he chose the tiny island of Lindeswan off the northeast coast of England. This is the island here, and it's only an island twice a day when high tides cut it off of the mainland, as you see in this Google satellite image. Twice a day before the tide came in, Aidan would retreat to this island and spend time alone with God. And then at low tide, when the tide went out, he could cross over into the mainland to continue his work of evangelizing the Angles. His prayer, the famous prayer of Aidan, which we will pray later on embodies the essence of his Celtic spirituality, the inward journey to God and the outward journey into the world. Please close your eyes and listen to the prayer of Aidan as I pray it. Bow your heads close your eyes, listen with your heart. Leave me alone with God as much as maybe, as the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore. Make me an island, set apart, alone with you, God, holy to you. Then with the turning of the tide, prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world beyond the world that rushes in on me till the waters come again and fold me back to you. Between Aidan and his successors, the Angles were completely evangelized before the end of the seventh century. And that tribe of Christians we now call Anglicans, that's the fruit of their labor. So then this contemplation, a waste of time, judge for yourself or just ask an Anglican. If contemplation is a waste of time, then I say, let us waste boldly. Prayer is the work of God. The work he does in us in private and the work he does through us in public. In secret, he works in our heart. In public, he works through us in ministry to the world. Pray to your Father, when you pray go into your room and pray to your Father, in solitude longing for him, in stillness waiting for him, in silence listening for him, in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Please stand to your feet if you can. And we hope that the message has ministered to you.