https://vimeo.com/70201888

I'm Wayne Jacobson, and this is Engage. Not too many people get a special place as this. Sarah's garden to sit and enjoy the Lord. But I want to talk to you about finding a quiet place in your life, to have this conversation with him, to salt in your heart the place where God makes himself known. My friend Kevin from Australia told a banker one day he was struggling to hear God's voice, struggling to see if God's real for him. And he said, listen, why don't you go to the most peaceful place you know of? Where you just really feel at rest. And there, ask God what you want to ask him and see what he puts in your heart. So he said, I have this little pond down the bottom of my property and I always feel peaceful there. And he went down there and it opened a door for him to have the kind of communication with God we're talking about. You may not have a pond on your property or Sarah's garden. But finding a quiet place seems to be an important part of opening our heart to where God wants to make himself known to us. Unfortunately the world we live in lives at a frantic pace and in the 21st century probably worse than any other time in history with iPods and iPhones and entertainment and TV and movies and sports and work and you just name it, our lives are so full of noise. Our lives are so full of those things that draw our hearts away from that quiet inner space where God likes to make himself known. And it's pulling away from that frantic pace, from the demands and distractions of our world, from the fears and anxiety that it causes us living here is the same thing that will dull our heart to that spiritual sensitivity that grows within. We've got to make a choice at some point, not to find quiet places so that we can earn a relationship but quiet our hearts. It really isn't the place after all. It's really the heart that quiets down enough so that it listens to a different rhythm than just the rhythms of our life and our fears and our anxieties and what we feel driven by in the world we live in. By what other people think of us and by how successful we are and all of those things are not helpful to cultivating an inner life of listening to the still small voice and of knowing God. For me it's usually a long walk in the woods. Sometimes it's sitting here in the garden but it's a place where I just get quiet. I don't always look for God to talk to me there. I look to quiet my heart there. I look to just enjoy knowing that He's with me and providing the opportunity for Him to say anything He might want to say to me. But as I've said to you throughout these videos, it's not just here. It's when I'm driving to an appointment or picking up a phone call of somebody that wants to talk to me. It's always finding that quiet space. Maybe we inculcate it in places like this. We make it a possible place in our hearts so more at the spur of the moment we can draw into that place when we're in a difficult conversation or we're stressing about something at work that will have the freedom to draw into that. Jesus often spent a whole night walking with his father in prayer, getting off the loan by himself. It's an important part of this journey. You can't dismiss it. And finding that place is where we get to really listen to him and live in the moment instead of our fears about the future. When my daughter was 12 she had a difficult decision to make and she thought I was going to tell her she needed to do a certain thing. She presented this to us. But we told her from age 12 on there were going to be more decisions she would make. And so I said, honey, if you don't want to do what I think is best here, you're free to do what you think best. The next question she asked was intriguing. She said, well, how do I make a decision then? And I said, well, if you don't have a preference that's clear, why don't you ask God maybe he does? She said, how do I do that? And I said, I'll just go to your room. Go to some quiet place and just ask him. I thought she'd do it over the next day or two. 20 minutes later she came back to me and she was actually choosing to do the thing she didn't want to do. And I said, what happened, darling? She said, I just got up and sat on my bed and I just said, God, do you have a will here? Is there something you want me to do? And it just seemed clear in my heart that he wanted me to do what I didn't want to do. And since she did it with great joy, I don't think listening to God's complicated. He doesn't always speak what we want when we want. If you've got a question you've been asking God for weeks and months and years and he doesn't respond, as we've said before, relax. He'll let you know when you need to know. But the more you can find some quiet moments in a garden, a walk in the woods, the more you'll learn to rest out of the pace of this world and embrace the pace of his. One of my favorite passages in the message is in Matthew chapter 9, verses 28 through 30. This is Jesus talking to his disciples. Are you tired? Are you worn out? Are you burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. Can't emphasize enough how much God and you need to find a quiet place in your heart and life because that's where he makes himself known. It's then that we're more open to hearing that nudge and being drawn into that place. Find some time to learn to live freely and lightly. Find a place just to sit, even if you don't think of anything or hear anything. You just sit for a moment at rest in his presence. Enjoy what God's putting around you and you'll be less drawn in to what the world is.