Get Alone: Solitude Red – Answer Questions | Blue – Read Scripture Remember how we said lovers want to get alone? Well, romance does that to us all. Once again, the same is true with Disciples who start loving God back. They look for Get-Alone time with him. This time is intentional, not accidental. Planned, not haphazard. It can become intense, even passionate, like romance develops. Practicing Solitude enables us to deepen our love of and respond quickly to God. Solitude is one of four major disciplines a Disciple should develop. (The others are Silence, Study and Worship). Solitude and Silence are Get-Alone disciplines. Just God and me, no one else intruding in our lover’s romance. Worship and Study are Get-Together disciplines. They intensify our passion for God as we interact with other Christians. (Give personal stories of the disciplines in your life: your struggle to find time, the benefits you’ve received. Help a Disciple analyze their own life: what do they look like for them? What would have to change to do Get-Alone and Get-Together? Urge them to be intentional and intense with God, like what would happen in a romance.) Why Solitude? Simple. When two people love each other, they delight in one another’s company. Perhaps they talk non-stop; perhaps not at all. Solitude is the undistracted time two lovers enjoy together. (Discuss Solitude: this is how romance works with us, how our relationship should develop with God. Urge one another to make this your intention: My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.” And my heart responds, “LORD, I am coming.” (Psalm 27:8) Suggest memorizing and making the verse your prayer.) Jesus’ Example: Jesus lived in unbroken connection to Father-God. At times he deliberately found time for solitude. Before daybreak the next morning [after a full day of teaching and healing], Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. (Mark 1.35) ... vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer. (Luke 5:15-16) ... Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles. (Luke 6:1213)
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