summer-2025

Devotional Life: Practice of Solitude

Berkeley Gomez

Practicing the Way

The Practices:

1. Sabbath
2. Prayer
3. Fasting
4. Solitude
5. Generosity
6. Scripture
7. Community
8. Service
9. Witness

Today we are examining solitude.

We are the first generation to ever apprentice under Jesus in the digital age.

What if the greatest threat to the Christian faith today isn’t secularism but distraction?

Solitude is not

Solitude is not loneliness Solitude is not isolation

Luke 5:15-16

Greek word “Eremos” “Lonely place” or the “quiet place”

Solitude is intentional time in the quiet with ourselves and God.

Bishop Kallistos Ware

Feelings in solitude:

• Exhaustion
• Fear
• Sadness

Instead …

Matthew 26:37-39

The Gethsemane prayer

• Jesus met God in his pain.
• Jesus gives God his feelings, his desires, and his trust.

What are the ways you distract yourself from the pain in your life?

Jesus shows us how to give God our feelings, our desires, and our trust. Which do you have the hardest time giving to God?

Matthew 4: Jesus is tempted in the desert

The Eremos is a place not to flee but to fight. Not to escape but to engage. Not to play defense but to run offense.

Mark 1:35-38

We emerge from solitude with a clear vision of our identity and calling.

Identity: who we experience ourselves to be Calling: God’s direction in our life

We must listen.

• Listen to Scripture
• Listen to the circumstances of our life (where is God at work? what is God drawing out of me?)
• Listen to our heart (what am I desiring?)
• Listen to God’s voice (what is God saying?)

Old self vs. new self