Sunday Sermon

Sermon # 1008
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Dr. Ed Pettus

“A Quiet Life”

I wonder what you thought when you first read the sermon title today, “A Quiet Life”. Did you read into it something of a yearning: “Oh I wish my life were more quiet”? Or did you read it another way: “I don’t care much for quiet”? Modern life is loud, noisy, and filled with words, music, sound, hectic schedules, just very busy. Modern life is also filled with violence, abuse, conflict, war, and unrest.

When Paul wrote these words of a life of quiet and peace, he was no doubt referring to a life free of violence, persecution, and imprisonment that was a real possibility for Christians in his day. Paul himself suffered many beatings, jail time, and various sufferings because of his faith, so it is no wonder that he would desire to live in peace and quiet. That might be our desire as well, even if in a different way.

But we know too that Paul desired a quiet and peaceful inner life. He once spoke of being content even in the face of hardship: “Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). It is on this kind of quiet, peaceful life that I want to set our focus today.

Quiet – the joy of silence. Most of the time we avoid quiet. We get into the car and turn on the radio. We come home – turn on the TV. I challenge you to find a teenager without either a set of earphones stuck in her ears or a cell phone glued to the side of his head.

We sometimes call moments of silence, awkward. One of my favorite movie scenes is the kitchen table scene at the end of Moonstruck when the family is sitting in a somewhat comedic tension about the engagement situation for the character played by Cher and after a quiet tense filled 30 seconds the old man, the Italian grandfather cannot stand the tension any longer and as they sit at table almost pretending to eat, he says: “Someone tell a joke!”

The quiet is sometimes too much to bear because we have become so accustom to noise. But the noise, the busyness is the enemy of the quiet inner life. The hectic world of words and sounds and sound bites threaten our ability to listen for and to God. In Paul’s day the desire was certainly for a quiet life without threat from an oppressive government and so it is still today in some parts of the world. But for us, at the moment, the threat is from a life that is so loud we cannot hear God. The risk is becoming so engaged in the loud that we completely ignore the quiet.

We need quiet time! It is a common practice among Christians to have precisely that, a quiet time each day to read the scriptures, to pray, to listen, to reflect. Most believers who practice this discipline do so in the morning. Jesus did this as well. We read in Mark 1:35 “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” It is believed that this was a typical day for Jesus. In my younger days I spent time like that at night, but no more, I have come around to the Jesus way and have some time during the morning hours when I can stay awake!

It is very much a Christian disciple to cultivate a time of quiet reflection, scripture meditation, prayer, silent time of listening for the word of God. Such listening is always aided by knowledge of scripture. But such quiet time is hindered when all we have is noise in our life. We see in scripture this theme of quiet devotion:

I have calmed and quieted my soul ~ Psalm 131:2

Why would the Psalmist calm and quiet his soul? Perhaps to simply be in the presence of God like a weaned child with its mother. Perhaps to focus the heart and mind on God. Perhaps to rest in God. We do not know precisely why this position of calm and quiet is taken, but it is surely a common practice among the faithful in the scriptures.

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. Psalm 62:1
In Psalm 62 we wait for God in the silence. We wait to hear a word, an insight, an answer to prayer. Waiting is time consuming. Waiting, especially waiting in silence, is not something we are used to.

‘Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46:10
In Psalm 46 we become still that we can know that God is God. This is a great reason to quiet and still ourselves – to know that God is God.

In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Isaiah 30:15
In Isaiah 30 the admonition is that we are strengthened in the quiet. No need for anxiety and worry, in fact, the very opposite is called upon – quiet and trust.

All of these testimonies speak to the benefit of the quiet life.

For some of us the quiet life seems too far removed from our everyday existence. We don’t have the time or we cannot seem to ever get quieted. For others there is plenty of room for quiet but we do not know exactly what to do with the quiet. We all need that familiar voice of our teacher, you know the voice I’m talking about, she raised her voice above the chatter of students and called out” “Be quiet, class!” We need to heed the action of Jesus who fostered his life through the practice of prayer and silence.
We spend just a few seconds at the beginning of worship practicing silence, fostering quiet.

The practice of quiet time: read a scripture passage, focus on a phrase or word that you like, close your eyes and focus on that word or phrase. Think about what it means, who is speaking. You might want to journal, silent prayers to God, quiet reflections of your day. Quiet time is about calming the soul that is so bombarded every day, feeding the soul that is starved by busyness. Take some time to be quiet. We were quiet together for about 30 seconds at the beginning of worship.
What about sixty seconds, or ninety, imagine 20 minutes? It drives some of us crazy to disengage from the world for such a long period or what can seem like a long period of time. St. Augustine once said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. “Almighty God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.” One of the goals of our silence is rest in God. We can live in quietness all the time and yet not have the rest that is needed in the soul. The quiet we need is not just an absence of noise, but an intentional focus of quiet within.
A time to sigh,
to release,
to pray (listening),
to truly be still and know that God is God.

Let’s try sixty seconds of quiet, focused silence. You may bow your heads, close your eyes and simply repeat a prayer in your thoughts: “Quiet my soul”. Repeat that prayer. If you find your mind wondering off to what someone else on your pew might be doing, come back to your prayer: “quiet my soul”. We were joking last Wednesday at Bible Study that we could not do this exercise if our service was on the radio. Silence is not the radio’s friend, but it can a tremendous benefit to us as we seek to grow in Christ through quieting our souls. I’ll keep an eye on the second hand! Sixty seconds of quiet: “Lord, quiet my soul”.

(sixty seconds)

After about ten seconds we start to sense the awkwardness. After thirty seconds we start to think this has to be sixty seconds by now. But if you tried to focus through the prayer perhaps you began to feel a little bit refreshed. I hope that in sixty seconds you could begin to feel the refreshment of silence. I hope that such an exercise would lead us to consider longer periods of quiet. This is not some new age nonsense, but it is a practice centered in the life of Christ’s church. This is one practice or discipline that fosters a soul at peace. The quieted life, an inner quiet, can lead us to be content with our circumstances, to be at peace, and to rest in God’s presence. It lowers blood pressure too! Bonus! Consider the goal of living a quiet and peaceful life. We do not have to drop out of the modern life, but we do have to be more intentional in nurturing the soul and setting aside the time for the quiet. “O Lord, quiet our souls!” Amen.