Welcome to 721 Live, the video arm of 721 Ministries. I'm Sam Hunter. I'm glad that you're with us today. Thank you for joining us. I spent last week, Monday afternoon through Friday morning, at Mepkin Abbey with the monks. Mepkin Abbey is right outside of Charleston in Moncks Corner, it's not the same spelling, but it was the most unusual week I think I've ever experienced. It was difficult, it was challenging, it was a mental challenge for me, it was somewhat of an emotional challenge. I did it in silence and solitude from Monday afternoon till Friday morning, and I wanna tell you all about it, and I wanna tell you what I learned, the things that surprised me about myself, about my own mental capacity, And perhaps you'll be able to apply some of this to yourself. So let's jump right in. I've got a picture here of Mepkin Abbey. I just want you to zoom in and see how beautiful the grounds were. I'm not afraid to oversell anybody going out to Mepkin Abbey for a tour just to see the grounds. It's got a public area, and it was absolutely stunning. When I drove in the front gate Monday afternoon, I had a fair, to say I had a fair amount of anxiety is exaggerating, but I had a low-level sense of unease about it. I just didn't know what the next four days were gonna be like, and I had committed myself to silence and solitude for those four days, and I pulled into that front entranceway, and I was overwhelmed with the beauty. I was overwhelmed with the beauty, As I drove in it just got it got lovelier and lovelier And it was as if I were in an old southern plantation which is in fact is an old southern plantation and the Abbey part where the monks live and live out their lives is Situated on the same grounds where I was staying we didn't really interact with the monks unless you wanted to go to their worship services but it was such a Startling week for me, and I just want you to pause and slow down and think for a minute about what it would be like if Check in at three o'clock. I was a little early, so I walked around the ground, saw how beautiful it was. It's perched right next to the Cooper River, which flows down into Charleston, into the Charleston Harbor, into the ocean, so it's gorgeous. We had a little orientation at four o'clock. There were 14 other people doing it as I was doing it. They called us retreatants, and we had a little short meeting with the head monk, and then he showed us where we would be eating, and then he showed us where the church was, and then he, Then you're on your own. I don't typically eat on Mondays. I fast on Monday, so I didn't go to the little supper. I went back to my room, and I sat down in my room at five o'clock on Monday afternoon, and I thought, Yikes! What am I going to do for the next four days? What am I going to do tonight, Tuesday, Tuesday night, Wednesday, Wednesday night, Thursday, Thursday night, get up and leave Friday morning? I was not at ease about this. Now, you may think that it would be wonderful and lovely, but I challenge you to try it. But I'll give you another challenge before we finish today about how you could sort of dip your toe in the water on this. And I want to tell you the genesis of this, how this all came about. Twelve years ago, I was in New York, and I was attending a very small, I only allowed 99 people to sign up for it, a two-day Q&A with Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the man that translated the message. Now, he's written other books, and he was a pastor himself, and he was very much of an outdoorsman and lived, I think, out in Montana or someplace out west like that. And in that, during that two days, part of the Q&A was his time that he would do each year going to an abbey for this type of silence and solitude retreat. And I call this my week with the monks. And Eugene Peterson, and when he talked about it, he said, stay in your cell. Your cell will teach you everything. Now my room was not a cell. My room was a relatively nice dorm room. I would have loved to have had it back in college. But back in 2012, when Eugene Peterson kept talking about his experience, and it just resonated with me, I thought, I really want to try this sometime. He did have an interesting remark. He said, you know, and this wasn't exactly how it went when I did it, but when he did it, you check in, you have the orientation, the head monk, the abbot. He said this to the retreatants. He said, now you're going to have a monk take you to your cell and help you get settled in. And when he leaves and you're unpacking, and you remember something that you left that you cannot live without, go see your monk and he'll show you how to live without it. which caught my attention 12 years ago. And so I decided finally that I would try it with this Mepkin Abbey, relatively accessible for me living in South Carolina. It's interesting, I have an Oswald Chambers, my utmost, for his highest daily devotional. And I keep little records in each one of these days, what I was doing that day, if it was significant in my life. And during the time I was at the Abbey, was the time I was in New York listening to Eugene talk about being in the Abbey. So, stay in your cell, your cell will teach you everything. And really what I would say is, try silence and solitude, because it'll teach you everything. It'll teach you everything you want to know about yourself. And I want to kind of give you a sort of a breakdown on how this all went, but let me first give you this. And this is eating, doing nothing, being silent and alone, reading and praying. Eating, doing nothing, being silent and alone, reading and praying. Now, I want you to know, that I, with all of my faults, I excel at all of these. I eat really well. As a matter of fact, I fast on Mondays. I intermittent fast during most of the week, which means I rarely eat after five or 5.30. I'm pretty stringent in the way I eat, very healthy. I like my cheeseburgers and I like my french fries on the weekends, but so the eating part of it, that's something I feel very good about where I am in life. Being alone and silent is something I love. I'm an introvert. Now, an introvert has nothing to do with your personality. An introvert gains energy being alone. An extrovert gains energy being around other people. I have to have alone time to reboot, to recharge, and not just that, I love it. So, being alone and doing nothing is pretty easy for me. Being silent, that's pretty easy. Reading, I do a lot of reading. I always keep a novel going. Read a lot of scripture. I read a lot of Christian books. So reading is no big deal Praying is something I do in a conversational walk each day. I don't spend that much time on my knees Maybe I should spend more time But I spend a lot of time during the day in a conversational relationship with my heavenly father with Jesus as we go throughout the day But I want to tell you what happened for these four days When this was all I could do When the meals were from five o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock, lunch, and all you had at breakfast was, you could have a boiled egg or two, you could have some toast, you could have some cereal. And then maybe they might have a little cut up fruit. And coffee, I don't drink coffee, so I drink tea. That's it for breakfast. Lunch was from 11.55 to 12.25, and you better not miss that slot, and it was all vegetarian. And it might be a vegetable in one dish and something like a tofu stir fry in the other. And then maybe a salad and some bread. And that was it. And then at 5 o'clock the first Tuesday, the first day I went in for dinner, I walked in and the first thing I saw was a layout with cheese, different types of cheese, mayonnaise, mustard, and what looked like ketchup. I don't know if it was. And I thought to myself, great, yeah, they're going to serve us hot dogs. No, that was for a cheese sandwich. I've never had a cheese sandwich in my life. And as I mentioned earlier, I usually don't eat much past 5.30 anyway, but when you tell me this is all you're gonna have. Then I got hungry and I was hungry the whole time which is ridiculous now Let me let me also say I could have left at any point I could have gotten in my car and gone and gotten snacks. I could have gotten a cheeseburger I could have brought a beer or wine or anything. I wanted back There was no supervision when it came to that, but I had decided I was gonna do whatever the monks did what they ate I was gonna eat so Isn't that amazing how my brain rebelled when I was doing the same thing I typically do but when you tell me this is my only choice? Now when it comes to, you know, I don't watch much TV. During the week I don't watch it hardly at all unless I'm working out in my garage. But with no TV, no electronics, no cell phone for the week, It wasn't that I missed it. It's just I realized that I missed the distraction. I missed the stimulus. I missed the voids that it filled. And so my brain is not really thinking about that. It's just thinking, what am I going to do? I'm bored. I'm bored to death. Reading. I love to read. When that's all you're going to do for four days, it starts to get a little little crazy in your mind and then the praying thing you would think that you could dedicate so you know I would think I've been walking with Jesus almost 30 years that I could I could really take this time and just pray but all I could think about was what am I gonna do tomorrow and what I'm gonna do the next day so it wasn't I had a very uncomfortable night, Monday night. I had a very uncomfortable day, Tuesday, although I walked around the grounds, I went out by the river in red, and it was very peaceful, but I couldn't settle my mind down. And I had determined, and you'd have to know me, and if you know me, you'll laugh about this, but I had determined that I was going to, it was beautiful grounds, maybe a hundred acres or more. that I was going to get three or four miles in in the morning, doing my 15-minute pace, which is a pretty little quick stride. And I was going to do it again in the afternoon. I was going to wander around. Man, I was thinking, I'll get six, eight miles a day just walking on this beautiful plantation. And so I did that on Tuesday. It didn't help. The entranceway, I marked it off with my steps, because my steps were about a yard, so I marked it off as 500 steps from the entry gate into the, moving into the grounds, and I would do that, and it felt like it would take forever, as I would see all the way to the end, it felt like it would take forever to get out to the end, and then to come back. Had another bad night of sleep Tuesday night, and then I woke up Wednesday morning, And in my prayer, I heard the Holy Spirit say, slow down, Sam. Slow down. Stop this striding. Stop this walking three to six miles or whatever. Stop that. And I remembered the way the head monk had walked when he showed us where to find where we eat and the church. He walked with his hands behind his back, and they lean over a little bit, and they walk really slowly. We were following him that first Monday afternoon I was tripping over my feet trying to walk out slow just having to take a little baby steps and the Holy Spirit said to me Walk like the monks walk Sam quit this exercising quit this 15-minute pay quit this and That made all the difference in the world That changed everything when I started to slow down and walk like the monks walk And that is one of the stories of this week. Now, all around the grounds, they've got this little sign that says, listen and silent have the same letters. And it is interesting. It's a nice little poster or a placard or something. Listen and silent have the same letters. You cannot listen to someone unless you're silent. And you know what we all do when we're listening is we jump ahead thinking how we're going to respond. But as you slow down, and you spend, I didn't have any trouble going from Monday to Friday morning, not talking to anybody. I'll share with you my Thursday night, one conversation I had with one of the other retreatants. But I didn't have any trouble not talking. I actually enjoyed that, but it was just the what am I gonna do next syndrome that was causing me all the problems. And that Wednesday morning, when I slowed down, it started to change everything. Now, during Wednesday and Thursday, my mind would jump out of my little silence and solitude and start fretting about, what am I going to do tomorrow? I'm bored. What are we going to do when we get out? I could leave on Thursday night and nobody would know the difference. I can get out of here. I can go see my wife. I can have a glass of wine if I want to. I can turn on a TV and watch a movie or a basketball game. My mind would jump out of the present and go to the future. Or it might jump out of the present and go to the past. And I would have to say, stay in the moment. Stay in the moment, Sam. Stay in the moment. And I was able to do that. So Monday and Tuesday, didn't sleep well. Nervous energy. Was enjoying the grounds. If you'd have talked to me, you wouldn't have known that. But inside, it was a real struggle. It was a mental battle for me. And it surprised me. as i moved on through the next two days i was able to absorb i read uh... and i'll i'll show you this next week but i read brother lawrence's practicing the presence of god he is an actual he was an actual monk and that helped slow me down i read john eldridge's book get your life back which is excellent and i'll show that to you next week and that helped slow me down i was reading the scriptures and i had two novels and i was enjoying them both so much i read them both One, I'd read 100 pages or 50 pages in one. Normally I fall asleep. I'm in my bed each night at quarter to seven. There's nothing else to do. It's dark outside. What are you gonna do? So I'd get into bed and I'd try to read for a couple hours so I could at least stay up till nine o'clock. It was an incredible challenge. And I have some thoughts going throughout the week and I wanna share those with you. And one other thing I want to mention I had talked in the past few videos about What Satan does to us he gets our mind off of the lavish and gets us stuck on the focus on the lack You know Adam and Eve they were surrounded by this incredible garden just like this incredible plantation They were surrounded by these luscious trees and fruit and Satan got them to focus on the one thing they couldn't have and that was that tree the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and That was Sam for the first two days. I couldn't see the lavish because I was focused on the lack, what I cannot do. I'm bored, what I cannot eat without my own lack of freedom of choice, which I put on myself. So that was an epiphany for me that I had let Satan trick me into missing the lavish and focusing on the lack. I also thought about this. Being still and quiet when isolated and insulated. That's one thing. That's what I was doing. I was being still and quiet. I was isolated and I was insulated. And that was an incredible challenge. Number two might be even more of a challenge, being still in your heart while still moving with a calm, relaxed pace. Number three, being Mary in a Martha world. And we'll talk about that in a moment. Being still in a storm. You see, I had to learn to be still while I was isolated and insulated from the world. I want to take that stillness as I continue with a calm, relaxed pace. The pace of the monks. But I was still moving. None of us are talking about sitting in a closet all day and praying and expecting God to take care of your life. There is a pace. But is yours a calm, relaxed pace? And then being silent, being still in my heart when I have to get a lot of things done. When the press of the world and the press of my business or the press of your business or whatever, when I have things that have to get done, when there are preparations to be made, when people are coming for dinner or I've got a meeting and I've got to be prepared for it, can I be still in that frenetic preparation time? And then fourth, can I be still in a storm? Can my heart be still in a storm? Let's take them one at a time as we go through this. being still and quiet when isolated and insulated. This is a familiar story. Right at the beginning of Mark's Gospel, he tells us this. Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Jesus knew he wanted and he needed to get out and be alone with his heavenly father So he left everyone and went out to a solitary place where he prayed Simon and his companions went to look for him and when they found him they exclaimed everyone's looking for you. I Jesus probably said yeah, that's why I came out here because everyone's looking for me everyone's pressing in I Need to I need to isolate myself. I need some solitude. I need what I had for four days silence and solitude Jesus needed it if Jesus needed it we're gonna need it so Jesus gives us the example of that and at the very beginning of Mark's gospel. Blaise Pascal. Blaise Pascal was the French philosopher who did a lot of things. One of the things he's credited for is laying the groundwork for the math that became calculus. And he made this statement, which seems to me to be a bit of hyperbole, but nevertheless, there is some truth in it. All human evil comes from a single cause, men's inability to sit still in a room. I want you to focus on that for just a minute. Man's inability to sit still in a room. How good are you at sitting still in a room? How good are you at sitting still? One of the challenges I want to give you You know, I think you ought to try it. To sit still for one hour. Find a place, like I have a back deck on my house and it looks into my backyard and it's fairly isolated. I mean, I have houses around me, but there are trees and fences and bushes and I can sit back there for an hour in the chair with nothing to read, no cell phone. Put myself on just inside the door so I can hear it when an hour goes off or sometimes I'll do it for two hours. I challenge you to try that to sit still and When blaze says all human evil comes from a single cause that is a little bit of an exaggeration But think about how many times you've made mistakes because you couldn't sit still You had to do something You had to make something happen And because you had to make something happen and could not sit still and wait on the Lord to move. Well, wait on the Lord to open up your heart, then you made mistakes. So Blaze is on to something here. Being still as Jesus was in silence and solitude, you try that. I challenge you. I don't think you can do it, quite frankly. One hour, you take a little notepad if you want to write notes so that they don't keep rolling around in your head, but just try to sit still for an hour with nothing else going on. Try it. Even you mothers with children, if you would say that would be the most glorious thing I could ever do. Well, arrange for your husband to take care of the children. You go do it and watch how your mind starts to war against you. It wants to get you out of that chair. It wants to jump out from anywhere from where you are in the moment. Being still while moving with a calm, relaxed pace. This is a story in Luke 8. As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. Picture that. Hundreds of people are crowding around, crushing in on Jesus. It's almost like the Michael Jordan effect. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. Who touched me? Jesus asked. Now, in Luke 8, Jesus has literally calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee. The next thing he did, because they were on the way over to the other side, he calmed the storm inside the man who had the legion of demons, where the pigs all ran off into the light. So he just calmed an outer storm and an inner storm. And he's moving at a calm, relaxed pace, even with the crowds crushing in on him. So relaxed. And you know, Dallas Willard, who you'll hear me quote often, he said, if you asked me one word to describe Jesus, one word to describe Jesus, then most of us would say love. He said, no, it'd be relaxed. He had a calm, relaxed pace. So much so that with this crowd pressing in on him, he feels this woman touch him. He feels the power go out of him. So he's moving in a direction to heal Jairus' daughter who's dying, but he's moving at a calm, relaxed pace. Do you move at a calm, relaxed pace? Then there's the third one, being merry in a Martha world. Now, I heard this for the first time from one of my friend's wives, and she had been at what we men jokingly refer to as a feminar. You know, men get together and they like to make little jokes about that. But she was talking, the name of it was being merry in a Martha world. And you know the story, Martha is preparing dinner, preparing a meal for Jesus and his companions, And she's scurrying about trying to get it already and mary is not helping her mary is sitting at the feet of jesus Listening to him teach and it's driving mary nuts. And finally she comes to jesus and hollers out at him. So let's pick this up Martha she had martha had a sister called mary who sat at the lord's feet listening to what he said But martha was distracted. That's a key word there distracted by all the preparations that had to be made She came to him and asked, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me! Can you just picture her? Can you just picture Martha? She's frazzled, she's frayed, she's hurried, she's harried, she's hassled, which is what most of us look like each day. And she finally has enough of it. She goes to Jesus and says, well, I'm sick of this. Get her doing something. And Jesus said, Martha, let her be. She's being. We're human beings, not human doings. She's being. Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, you are worried and upset about many, many things, but few things are needed, or indeed only one, only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. That word distraction, along with busyness. That is what was totally absent during my four days at Mepkin Abbey. There were no distractions. There was no busyness. There was nothing to do. And I was about as frazzled as Martha until I was able to slow myself down and be in the moment. And I want to continue to say it was a struggle. It got easier, but my mind would still try to jump out of the present and go to the future or go back to the past. As a matter of fact, here's another thing I discovered walking slowly like the monks. That 500 yards out to the entryway and back, which if you focused on the entrance, It felt like it took forever to get there. And then it took forever to come back. But when I slowly paced with my arms behind my back and I looked around, it was like I got there in an instant. I walked more slowly and got there faster, at least in my mind, because now I was not distracted by the destination. I was investing in the journey. And you know, I've heard that saying, you've heard the saying, don't miss the forest for the trees. And it means don't get so bogged down in the details that you miss the big picture. Well, I was missing the big picture. I was missing the tree, excuse me, because I was so bogged down in the big picture. I was the complete opposite. I couldn't see these unbelievable trees that you see in the background. I could see them and I could appreciate them, but I wasn't absorbing them. I wasn't in the moment with them because I was distracted by the forest, by all the things to do, the things to think about, the distractions that I kept trying to get into my head. Martha being Mary in a world that we all live in a Martha world We all have things we have to do. Can you find that stillness and be in the moment? even when you've got a dinner to prepare even when you've got a meeting to get ready for and Then being still on a storm and you know the story of Jesus being on the Lake of Galilee but I wanted to go back and reference an Older Testament Psalm 107 and They reeled and staggered like drunkards. They were at their wits end. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distress. He calmed the storm inside of them. And then we find the same story that was in Luke 8, Matthew 8. The disciples went and woke him, saying, Lord, save us. We're going to drown. Galilee has turned into a turbulent storm. And he replied, you of little faith, why are you so afraid? And then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. Jesus can calm the storms around us, but he can always calm the storms in us if we'll let him. Dallas Fuller had another observation that I want to share with you. And tell me if you think this is accurate, if this applies to you. We are dominated by values that rule American culture, pursuit of happiness, unrestricted freedom of choice, disdain for authority. Pursuit of happiness, what I think will bring me happy, unrestricted freedom of choice, and disdain for authority. I didn't have any authority at Mepkin Abbey for these four days. There was nobody telling me what to do or not to do. I could do whatever I wanted to do, within limits, as long as I was silent. I could get in my car and leave any time I wanted to. But I had put the authority of the discipline of staying there, and I was bucking, kicking against the guards the whole time, or at least until Wednesday when I finally got myself to slow down. This is what Dallas says, I think Dallas is right about this. And I'm gonna finish with this, be still and know that I am God, Psalm 4610. And the Passion Translation says, surrender your anxiety, be still, and realize that I am God. This is one of those psalms, one of those passages that really resonates, and I'm sure you're familiar with it, but be still. And be still. And that's the only way you're gonna know that I'm God. if you're not still in your heart if you don't slow down you're not going to know him as your heavenly father because you're gonna miss the trees for the forest the forest of all the things there is to do the forest of all the all the complications of life in the moment in the moment in the moment be still coming out of psalm 4610 is the same word that happens in this little story and then this is where I'm gonna wrap things up Saul was supposed to take care of he was supposed to destroy the entire army of his enemies even their sheep and their cattle Samuel approaches and he sent and Samuel says what then you're you didn't do what you're supposed to do Saul What then is this bleeding of sheep in my ears? what is this long of cattle that I hear and Saul then starts giving him all kind of excuses and All kind of, this is why it happened. And you can just see him blabbering on. The soldiers brought them from the Mammalikites, and they spared the best of the sheep and the cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but we were totally, we totally trust. Stop! Enough, Samuel says. It's the same word as be still. Just stop. Stop striving. Stop making excuses. Stop thinking about tomorrow. Stop thinking about in the past. I mean, Jesus himself said, don't think about tomorrow. Tomorrow's going to get here. There'll be things to deal with. Stay in the moment. Now, next week, we're going to pick it up here. And I'm going to do this little exercise. Be still and know that I am God. And I'm going to drop one letter off, one word off each time. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know that I, be still and know that, be still and know, be still and, be still and be. So my challenge to you is to think about being still and actually to try to take an hour and sit still in silence and solitude and see what happens in your mind. Because it is going to be an interesting exercise. And then imagine what it might have been like for my brain if I was trying to process four days of the same thing. And the last thing that I want you to think about between now and next week, I want you to think deeply about this. Looking back over your life, and let's just say we started when you became a young adult. You were in your 20s. What percentage of all of that time would you say that you were in the moment? that you were fully present in the moment. What percentage? That you weren't thinking about the past, you weren't thinking about the future, you were distracted like Martha, you had a lot of things going on, you had storms around you or storms inside you. What percentage of all those years would you say you were really living in the moment? You were present. As I told you, my brain kept trying to get out of the moment. And I'm 67, and I hope I live another 30 years. But whenever, and if I'm fortunate enough to live that long, what I don't wanna do, or if I get a bad diagnosis. Said to someone just jokingly if I die tragically and said you're going to heaven it can be no tragic death Which I thought was pretty interesting, but I don't want to look back and go I missed it I missed it it went by so fast and I was not present at any point I was always thinking about something else I missed it and I don't want that for you and I sure don't want it for me and that was one of the takeaways that I came with was I gotta stay in the moment. I gotta stay in the moment. I gotta be still in my heart and learn to walk like the monks do, even if I have a little quicker pace. We'll talk about some more about my time with the monks at the Abbey next week. I hope you'll come back, because I think you'll find it very interesting how we take this be still and know that I am God and break that down a little bit and talk a little bit more about one other epiphany I had, which I'll share with you next week. I hope you will, because you know that there's more. There's more, and you absolutely know there is. Come and follow Jesus in silence and solitude at times, being still and knowing.