From the Home Place

August 9, 2025

All day yesterday, we cut angles on heavy-duty steel roofing. Because of the steep angle, we can’t use a sheer, so each sheet has to be cut by hand. Between difficult cutting, climb back up the ladder, exact fitting each piece, climbing back down the ladder and starting the process again and again and again.

Does that sound like your Christian life? Sometimes it is difficult to maintain a healthy Christian walk. You know: devotions, prayers, reading, serving, worship, up the ladder, down the ladder, this activity, that activity, again and again and again. Sometimes we just need to step away.

That’s what the Bible calls solitude. I’m sure that on occasion God wants us to step away from the day-to-day and just sit with Him. No, I’m not talking about skipping church to go fishing or play golf. I’m talking about taking a day away from the normal and being alone with God.

Throughout the Gospels we read of Jesus going away to an isolated place and praying. Read Mark 1:29ff. Jesus spends the night healing all sorts of folks (v.34), but in v. 35 we read, “In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there.”

Why did Jesus go away to pray? Verse 37 tells us that there were still plenty of people seeking healing back in town. Why would Jesus, leave “ministry” opportunities, walk away and pray? It seems to me that there possibly two elements to the answer: 1) When the woman with the “issue” touched the cloak of Christ, His response was the He “felt the power go out of Him.” 2) Jesus knew that it was possible to get so involved in ministry that He could easily lose the “why” of life. To say it simply, Jesus went to a “secluded” place to recharge and reconnect.

Verse 38, “He said to them, ‘Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for.’” There will always be ministry and demands upon your Christian life. How do you keep those demands in proper priority? By getting away, visiting with God and being reminded why you were called to salvation, “Go and make disciples…”

If your salvation was the main point of Christ’s death, then wouldn’t He have taken you to heaven the moment you bowed your knee to Jesus? Salvation is the entry point, making disciples is the purpose! And I can’t say exactly for you, but it is very easy for me to get so busy doing good things, that I forget the most important thing – spending quiet time away from everyone and everything with GOD!

Practicing solitude with you, Neal