Luk 5:16 “But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.”
Most Christians would probably agree that setting aside daily time to just be with God and do nothing else is an important event. Time alone with God is a time to connect with Jesus, our source of life and love. It’s a time to allow all of the busyness and distractions of life to fade away.
Reading scripture can be a good activity to spend time with God. If we are using the scripture as a diving board to trust the Lord and commune with Him, it is a good practice. Often though, the reading of scripture becomes another mental activity, resulting in only more pondering of concepts and theologies, without any true connection with Christ Himself.
Many Christians have no conviction of trying to be still before God and truly connect with Him, they are quite content with “believing the truth”, whether they connect with Jesus or not. Many others have decided that being busy is “just the way it is”, and they have given up on trying to really connect with Christ in the inner man in a deep way.
As I’ve discussed the activity of having time alone with God with other Christians, I frequently hear a common hindrance. “I just can’t seem to get my brain to stop”. Or, “I get so distracted when I try to focus on God and just be with Him”.
A busy mind is the result of a busy heart. The thoughts you have in your mind and the feelings you experience in your emotions all come from the much deeper place. Trying to stop your mind from being busy without dealing with the inner man, is a losing battle. It would be like trying to repair a leaking faucet by putting tape around the leak. No matter how much tape you use and no matter how hard you try to stop the water, it’s going to keep coming out. We must deal with the deeper problem.
How do we remedy a busy mind, which is actually a busy heart?
Let me explain it like this: When my children were younger, my wife and I used to take them to a pizza restaurant that had an arcade game room. One of the games my kids loved to play was what they called the “pop-up game”. The pop-up game had a large, soft mallet the player would hold in his hands. On the game board, there were about 8 holes that a little wooden character would “pop-up” from. The player’s job was to hit the wooden pop-up character with the mallet as soon as it popped up. The problem was, as soon as you hit the wooden pop-up character, another one would pop up from a different place on the board. The faster you would hit them, the faster they came out. You simply couldn’t win.
The busy heart and mind are much the same way. You can’t win. The more you try to quiet and still the heart, the more distracted it becomes. What is the solution? The solution is not to play.
While my kids were feverishly trying to beat this impossible game, I peacefully sat on the bench behind them observing the whole event with a peaceful grin. If you wrestle with the flesh according to the rules of the flesh you will lose every time. The secret is to go to a different place that has different rules.
Trying to stop your mind from being busy only produces more busyness. If you try to stop your mind from being busy, now you become busy trying to get your mind to stop (I write from experience). The only way to win the game, is to not play the game. Instead of “trying” to get your mind to stop its busyness, you must take a different approach.
Let’s focus on the word “realization”. To realize something, means that you become aware something is real. You are not trying to make it real; you simply realize it is ALREADY real. If you were to become aware that there is a pair of socks on your feet right now, you would realize that you are wearing socks right now. Before you realized that you were wearing socks, you were not aware of it, but you were still wearing socks none the less. The fact that you realized it, did not make it true. It was true, whether you realized it or not.
This is how faith works. Faith is realizing what is already true. It is having conviction of things you cannot see. And, this is a major key in curing the dilemma of the busy and distracted mind.
Trying to connect with God is difficult. Trying to get your mind and heart to stop from being distracted is nearly impossible. But realizing what is already true in the Kingdom of God is easily accomplished.
Let’s go back to our pop-up game illustration. If our goal was to find peace and quiet, yet these stupid pop up things keep popping up, our natural tendency would be to keep hitting them with the mallet to make them all stay down. Our inclination is to think, “If I can just get them to stop popping up, then I can rest”.
-“Only when I get all of my problems taken care of, can I find peace”.
-“When everything is perfect, then I will trust God.”
-“When I get the noise to stop, then I can hear from the Lord”.
The noise will never stop. Everything will never be perfect. You will always have problems. The pop-up game will NEVER stop.
Jesus says, “…each day has enough trouble of its own”. –Mat. 6:34
Instead of getting everything solved, everything fixed, and your mind to stop being busy…simply focus your attention on another place. Realize and becomeaware that all is well, even in the midst of noise and distraction. Instead of hitting all the pop-ups, focus your attention on the peaceful bench in the corner of the room. Sit down and your find your peace in the middle of the arcade. Ignore your desire to correct everything, to fix everything, to solve what is troubling you. Ignore your desire to hit the pop-ups. Doing that will only produce more trouble.
How do we engage in faith and quiet our busy hearts? Simply realize and become aware that you are already loved. You are loved by God if you are aware of it or not. Realize that you have already been cleansed by the blood of His cross. Focus your attention on being aware that you already have God’s heart of kindness pouring out toward you. Realize that everything has already been finished, there is nothing else that you can do become more righteous. It is the blood of Jesus and the grace of God that makes you right with Him and nothing else (Heb. 11:6, Gal. 2:16, 2 Ti. 1:9, Eph. 2:9, Rom. 4:2).
Nothing has happened or will happen, the God has not allowed.
If you give yourself to realizing what is already true, what has already been accomplished for you, and stop trying to “have time with God”; you will suddenly realize that you are connecting and fellowshipping with our wonderful Savior much more easily.
