Turn your Cave into a Cathedral

Life in the city never stops. The traffic, whether it's Gurgaon or whether it's Delhi, the last thing you want to do is spend your life on the roads in Delhi. Or the constant notifications, the constant noise, as if silence has become a luxury. Millions of dollars are being spent on something known as ANC, active noise cancellation. When I was a child, when I was in my teens, and we had that little Walkman with the headphones, the ones with the cheap sponge that would kind of wear off, and then one would be hard, and you can't find another sponge. So one side will be poking your ear, another side will be very comfortable, but we will sleep on that, we'll walk with that, we'll do everything, and we had our Walkmans. We could hear everything else, the construction, the bus, everything along with it. Today, the first thing you talk about, whether it's Apple AirPods or any other earphones, is noise cancellation. Money is being invested in cancelling the noise of the world. Maybe we're on to something.

It's as if silence has become a luxury for many believers. For many believers, the greatest challenge isn't unbelief, it’s exhaustion. For many believers, it's not the faith aspect. It's not the belief aspect. It's just exhaustion. Some are not in church because they're just tired from the day off, because the day off is more busy than the working days all through the week. We run from meeting to meeting, crisis to crisis. We're almost bored when there's no crisis. We forget that God invites us to a deeper something, a hiding place. 

I'm speaking to men. I'm speaking to women. I'm speaking to professionals. I'm speaking to those who are waiting for their jobs. I'm speaking to young people. We're all living with a lot of noise. We're all living with a storm in our hearts. Maybe your schedule is not full, but your brain is full, so much so that you can't even fall asleep because you're waiting for everything to just calm down. Sometimes you have to watch TV or watch a program or watch something just to kind of center down. It's too much, too much happening.

Psalm 32:7 You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

You are my hiding place… It's not a room. It's not a place. It's not a situation. It's not a time at the end when all the work is done. The hiding place is a person. The quiet space is a person. The place where you get in touch with yourself, where you reconnect, where you start again, where you hit reboot is a person. Unfortunately, persons come with relationship obligations. They come with relationship responsibility. So you need to be responsible for maintaining that relationship for that person to remain the person they are, but you are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble, and you will surround me with songs of deliverance. What a promise that God himself, he won't send peace. He won't send solutions. He won't send treats. He won't send good news. He will be there. He himself becomes a quiet room where our souls can breathe again. 

I hope we're not listening to this at the end of our game, at the bottom of the barrel. I hope we're not at the end of our tether, so to speak. I hope we're not listening to this where we've come to the absolute end. We're about ready to give up, and there we then cling on to God, run to God, go to him. If you're there, by all means, you need to do it. If you're stressed beyond measure and you're stressed and you're tense, oh, by all means, but if you're not, don't wait to get to that point. Don't wait for everything to fall apart. Don't say, oh, I still have within me one battery left. I still have two bars left. I can still push to the end. When I've got nothing left, then I'll run to God. No, we need a hiding place no matter what. We need to start there. 

We all have this go-to place where when life gets heavy, when life gets a little full, when the noise gets too much, we all have this go-to place. Either it's a coffee shop, maybe it's a gym for you. Maybe it's a park, some particular park, or I don't know, some nice quiet place, in touch with nature maybe. Maybe it's a Spotify playlist. But none of these truly shelter the heart. They don't actually take care of the heart. They can distract, but they cannot restore. The world is wonderful with its solutions and its religions and its therapies.They'll offer an escape, but they won't offer a refuge. God offers a refuge because he is that, he is peace. He is in himself peace. So he can offer you to come into him and be in a place at peace. Many of you are struggling, and the struggles you have aren't with faith. It's not with the big negotiables of life. It's often just your schedule. It's the commute to work. It's the difficult person on your team. It's the child in your life. It's your spouse. It's one endless irritable in your life that just you cannot get rid of. It's there to stay. And you can't get rid of it. It's a reality. None of these are true shelter for the heart. They can distract, but they cannot restore. And the world will offer you in all sorts of ways an escape. And you keep considering the need to have a break. We need to get away. We need a break. We need to get away. I need some time. I need me time. All of those things are an escape. You're not dealing with the problem and remaining at peace. You're running from it and then hoping to get some sort of recharge to come back and deal with the very same problem that is already still there.

When life presses in, God doesn't call us to run away, but to run to him. For many of us, including myself, in seasons of my life, God ceases to be the place of refuge. I myself need to get my Bible. I need to buy a new notebook. I need to buy a pen and I need to buy some time. And I need to sit down with my book, with my Bible, my notebook, my pen, and put on that noise cancellation that might be required and shut down and shut in with God. I need to do that. You don't do it because there's stress or because there's noise. You need to do it because that's where a believer begins. To know that you have that right and that access and then to not start there is sacrilege. The world will definitely offer escapes, and you might pay for it and you might get some good deals, but God is the one who offers refuge. When life presses in, God doesn't call you to run away from it. He calls you to run to him. 

Think about David, for instance. This man was hounded. This man was worn out. This man was hiding in caves. Yet, even as a fugitive, he wrote psalms. He wrote songs that sound more like love songs in the middle of his laments. Why? Because the cave had become a cathedral. The very place you're running to, to run away from, can become the place where God meets and strengthens you. In solitude, in separation, he discovered that God wasn't absent in silence. He was present in his silence. My friend, I don't know who needs to hear this. I need to hear it and I'm reminding myself, and in turn reminding you that for many of us, that private time, that private moment of devotion, that sacred space, is missing. It's not there, and I don't say this to guilt trip. I say this as an encouragement that that's where we need to go to. We need to find, buy, reinstall, reinvent, rediscover that private space, that private devotion, whatever you want to call it. Some people call it quiet time. Some people call it private devotion. Some people call it their hour with God. Doesn't matter. But true restoration will not happen in crowds. It happens in your quiet space where your heart meets God without performance and without filters.

Before you run to the madding crowd, before you run to your class of screaming children or your company of busy teammates, announcements, emails, before your mind is bombarded by the information and the conversations, you need to be quiet with him. If your spirit is catered to, your body, your mind, your heart can handle what the world gives. It can, it can. You don't need a break from it. If you're physically stressed, you take a break from that and you give your body a break. If you're emotionally stressed, you take a break from that relationship and you give your emotions a break. But you come right back to the same thing. It's your spirit that's not getting what it needs. If your spirit was full, nourished, strong, your body and your emotions will be able to handle any amount of wear and tear. The spirit is the problem. The spirit is the one that's needy. The spirit is the one that's saying to you, come away with me, but then you say you don't have time. You're too boring. I need something physical. I need something emotional. I need a distraction. Spirit is saying, I need time. I need to get away with God. Every part within you says, I need to get right with God. I need to be alone with God. I need to be in worship. I need to be in prayer. The thought of prayer is so beautiful. The thought of being in the Word is so beautiful, but do we ever get that? No. Do we ever find our time? No. Are you feeling me? I'm very frustrated with myself because I love all these things, but I don't do what I know I love and what I know is good for me, but I give my body a break on the weekends or whatever. I give my emotions a break from certain people or whatever. And I just come back to the same thing and repeat. True restoration doesn't happen in crowds. It happens in the quiet where your heart meets with God without performance, without filters.

I mean, look at three things. Number one, reflection. Reflection is where we pause to think. When I go back and I rethink on God's goodness, and  when I think about God's goodness, my anxiety starts to lose its hold. When I think about God's goodness, his strength and his presence, my anxiety starts to lose its hold. David says, when I lie on my bed, I think about you. When I sleep, I dream about you. When I wake up, you are there. Like you're on my thoughts constantly. And the more I reflect on you, the more my life seems to lose its grip on me. My fears seem to lose their grip on me. Remember, you are living in a world which is both spiritual and physical. You're not living only in a physical world. And the spiritual world is both angels and demons, both very present and very real. And the primary attack, the primary source of weaponry that demons use to work with you, are twofold. They’re fear and anxiety. You can even club them into one. They have no trip on your mind, and they have no trip on your spirit. You're a believer, you're guarded by the Spirit of God, but they can get to you through your anxiety and through your fears. And the primary ways that the demonic world controls the physical world, the primary way it gets to you, whether by country, whether by people groups, whether by nations, whether by large numbers of people, down to families, down to tribes, down to minorities, and down to individuals, is by using fear. If you can fight fear, if you can break fear, you are unbeatable. So when I reflect on God's goodness, his strength and his presence, when I reflect on him, the fears and anxieties on me are broken. When I lie down, David says, I think about you.

Another one is meditation. Reflection is on who God is and what he has done, but meditation is more on the Word, what he has said, what you break it down to. When we dwell on his Word, truth, the Word of God starts to rewrite our fears. David says, I will meditate on your word. Your word brings life. Your word makes me smarter than my teachers. Your word preserves my soul. Your word keeps me from falling away, going astray, going down a stupid path, a ridiculous path, a wrong path. He says, I will meditate. I will let your word have dominance in my mind. So there's reflection, there's meditation. 

There's also instruction. To actually follow the Word of God. When we let scripture, I use the word let. When I let scripture correct and shape me, when I let Him do that, when I let scripture do that, I'm strengthened on the inside. Most of us struggle with that weakness. I can't do it, yeah. It's not me, yeah. In the moment, though, I'm too weak, yeah. I can't do it, yeah. Well, He changes that. He strengthens you on the inside. That private worship, that time that you spend, either it's in your bed, hopefully not lying down, but in your bed. Maybe it's a couch that's hidden away in some corner of the house. Don't say on the way to work, don't say that. Don't say when I'm driving, I listen to podcasts. Don't give me that. That you do by all means. But you need to completely shut down so you're not operating in the flesh, you're not operating in the emotions, you are absolutely available 100%, then your private worship is like a secret place, unseen by the world, yet fragrant with God's presence. Stop trying to manage your life, but try instead to feed your spirit. And God, having fed your spirit, will manage your life and the people in your life and the difficulties and the irritabilities and the struggles. He will because he loves you and he wants for you. And he hates to see a moment of your distress. He hates to see you strung out. He hates to see you miss out on a good moment with a friend or with a loved one or with a spouse or with a family member. He hates to see you go through seasons of broken fellowship with people simply because you're trying to cope. Your private worship is like a secret place. 

David says, your word is my teacher, unseen by the world, yet fragrant with God's presence. Listen to this. It's where your faith stops being borrowed (somebody else's) and becomes your own. It's not just stress. There's healing too. Because every now and then there's cuts and bruises from all the work, from all the cutting and all the work that you do. There's just cuts and bruises. Suddenly you see one and think I don't know where I got that cut from… What was I doing? I don't know. So along the way, words, people, situations, there's a lot of cuts and bruises to the spirit, to the mind, to the heart. You don't know where it came from. You don't know who said what. And you just kind of like, suddenly you're feeling, when did that happen? And you need to heal. You need to be in a quiet place where God heals you. Healing of the spirit, healing of the mind, healing of the memories, healing of the words that have been said, because voices are important. 

Your hiding place is not a bunker where you hide and then just wait for the war to finish. Your hiding place is a place of healing as well, where you come out whole, you come out healed. Psalm 23 reminds us that he restores our soul. Restoration is a process that happens when we slow down enough to let the shepherd tend to us. That's a very traumatic line there. He makes me lie down in green pastures.What are you thinking? Nicely stretching and chilling and just lying down in the beautiful green grass. It's not like that. The shepherd makes you to lie down in green pastures is when you have a wound, when you have some, you know, gnats, or other insects that have gone into the ears of the sheep or into the nose, or you have a gash, or you have some problem with the sheep, the sheep is struggling, struggling, struggling. What the shepherd does is a hairline fracture. He breaks the hind leg of the sheep and soon as he does that, the sheep is paralyzed and lies down. He just lies down. But he lies down in green pastures. So he makes me to lie down in, why? Because when you calm down, then he's able to deal with you. He's able to take the problem apart. He's able to take that gnat out. He's able to move the thing out of that place. Restoration is a process that happens when we slow down enough to let the shepherd tend to us. Do you think it's going to be a little painful? Yeah. Uncomfortable? Yeah. Especially the leg that was broken because you can't calm down. But that's what the shepherd does. And when he's done that, after that, for a little period of time, the sheep can't walk. So what does the shepherd do? Carries him on his shoulders. 

In those personal moments of worship, my friend, the callousness over the wound is softened and opened, and God is able to comfort and heal that wound. You suddenly come out and you're like, I'm fine. No, no, I'm fine. I don't need to address it. I don't need to go back to the source and deal with it. God just took care of it. I am becoming new every day. On the outside, I'm decaying, but inside I'm becoming new. Understand what God's word is saying here. Confusion turns to clarity as his truth settles in. As you're meditating and the word of God settles in, it brings clarity to the confusion of the things you're not sure about, the things you don't have a conviction about. Pressure gives way to peace. You just release all that pressure out in the presence of God. You just release it and you come out ready for the world, ready for work, ready for people, because you're no longer carrying it alone. Your wounds are softened. Your confusion turns to clarity. Your pressure gives way to peace. Whether it's prayer, whether it's journaling, or whether you're listening to worship music or simply sitting in silence, these are not religious duties. These are moments of therapy for the Spirit of God to do his work. And in that space, God becomes your healer. He becomes your counsellor. The Bible says the Holy Spirit is a wonderful counsellor. So when is he doing that counselling? It becomes a place of rest. I am your healer, he says. I will give you a spirit. He will be a wonderful counsellor to you. 

So let me close with this. So the beauty of dwelling in God's presence privately is that it changes how you stand publicly. My friend, in all the hustle and bustle and all the craziness of the world you call life, some of you are feeling lost in the process. You feel like you're losing yourself in the process. Mothers, women, you've got your baby, you've got your work, you've got your house, you've got your husband, you've got all of these things that you're juggling. And in the middle of all of these things that you're doing, you feel that you yourself are lost in the process. Men, you feel like you're juggling everything, trying to meet everybody's needs, trying to make everybody happy, trying to keep up everybody's emotions, trying to be the best guy possible to everyone in your life. And at the end of the day, you feel nobody actually cares for me. Who actually, actually cares for me? And everybody wants from you. Everybody's taking from you. And you know what? That's absolutely fine because that's how life is. Nobody said that they need to give to you. Nobody owes you anything. If you're still waiting for people to give to you, you're the one who needs to be called on. You are the one who needs to rethink. The truth is we feel lost in the process. And that is where you start becoming resentful.That's when you begin to say, the spouse who you love or the child who you love or the home that you love starts becoming resentful to you because it is taking away… Now you're not doing it out of love. Now you're doing it out of resentment. And it becomes that over a period of time. And all I'm saying is that you lose yourself in the process. They are not the ones that made you lose yourself. You are the one who needs to go into the presence of God and go back to the one who designed you to live with him in fellowship with him and get from him what only he can give. And when you have spent time, good time, guarded time, quality time in his presence, and you have been quiet and you've been healed and you've been restored and you've been nourished, then you can go out and you can serve from joy and you can give from peace. And nobody can take that from you. Nobody can take your peace. Nobody can take your sanctum. Nobody can take your quiet space. Nobody can take your identity. Nobody can take the me from me. Nobody can take that. I can feel that you are taking it, but nobody can take that. If I feel I've lost this, I need to take responsibility. I need to get back there. I need to find myself.

Remember, I'm preaching this message first to me, and you are overhearing me preach to me. So when you know how to hide in Him, you become less shaken by the criticism, less defined by the chaos and less driven by comparison. That irritable one-liner that a colleague just shot out first thing in the morning as you arrived at work will not take your trip. It will not get you down. It will not unravel you so much that all the joy of who you are and what you do is lost. No, it won't. That one email that you check on the way to work, that just absolutely unravels you. And now you've got nothing left but resentment and upsetness, and now you deal with the day... It doesn't have to be like that. What you do is you cut off the emails, cut off this, cut off that, don't listen to anybody. If there is an irritable in your workplace, avoid, avoid, avoid him, avoid him. You can try that. How's it working? But instead go to the Lord and make sure that from six o'clock to 6.30, five o'clock to 5.30, wake up at four if you have to, be in His presence, get from His word, let Him release the pressure, release the stress, release everything, be in His presence, gain from Him, feed your spirit. I repeat, feed your spirit and then go out. No email is going to get you down. No face that only a mother can love can get you down. Nobody can go and cross your path and mess your day up. Nobody can rob your day, rob your peace, rob your me. Nobody, nobody is that powerful because the Bible says, You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You. Why? Because they trust You. 

The word steadfast means anchored, anchored down. So maybe you've been running on empty, doing good things, but from a drained soul. God is calling you back to a quiet place, not to perform, but to rest, not to be evaluated, but to be loved, to be embraced. God is calling you back. Let your personal time with him become your daily refuge, your prayer carpet, your prayer room, your prayer couch, not to perform, but just to rest, to be in his presence. A sacred rhythm of reflection, of meditation and of instruction. This is where the burnout turns into worship, pressure turns to peace and striving turns to stillness. Don’t end up in God’s presence, start there. 

Father in Heaven thank you so much for your word, let people experience the work of the Holy Spirit in their life because you are the God who gives peace, the God who leave peace with us, you’re the God who leads us into peace. Thank you God for your goodness, for you word. Some of us want to come running back to you today. We want to re-set our lives, guard that time, we want to go back to being filled and recharged in the spirit, Lord. We want to perhaps confess that we have neglected the Spirit and we want to restore that, and come back to you, Lord. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.