Finding Peace in Silence: A Spiritual Approach

SPEAKER 02 : 0:01

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, April 21st. Today’s message marks the beginning of a series designed to encourage Christian growth by exploring key aspects of godly living. This series, Helps to Holiness, starts by emphasizing the vital role of quietness in our spiritual journey.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:22

Would you turn please to 1 Thessalonians 4, and I want us to read the first 12 verses of that chapter. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 1 through 12. Now this morning I’m going to begin a little series on helps to holiness. And I think one of the first ones is our inability for or our lack of quietness in our life. So let’s begin in chapter 4, verse 1. Furthermore, then, we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received of us how you ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. For we know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication.” that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God, that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter. because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God who hath also given unto us his Holy Spirit. But as touching brotherly love, you need not that I write unto you, for you yourselves are taught of God to love one another. And indeed you do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia. But we beseech you, brethren, that you increase more and more. Now, verses 11 and 12 are the two primary ones I want to deal with this morning. He says, “…and that you study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands as we commanded you, that you may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that you may have lack of nothing.” Now, verse 7 says that, “…God has called us not to uncleanness, but unto holy living.” And when you and I think of the attitudes and the experiences that call for and help to our holy living, usually we limit those to reading the Bible, praying, giving, and witnessing, and so forth. But I think there’s some others that are very, very important. And the first one, that of learning how to be quiet. I was up in Detroit, and I’d been preaching, and that night I’d preached a couple of hours, and then that morning a couple, and the next morning when I arose, I was tired. I was weary. And I opened the Bible, and I began to read, and I was reading in 1 Thessalonians, this fourth chapter, and when I came to that 11th verse, it was as if everything else just blotted out of the page, and those two verses just rose up to say to me, “‘Be quiet.'” So I began to thumb through the scriptures and looking for verses on quiet and quietness, and I began to study that. And I had the strangest feeling. The more I read, I thought, now, Lord, you are trying to say something to me. Well, when I got home from Detroit, I realized what he was saying. That was just a little pre-warning of the fact that he was going to make me get quiet. And so for three weeks, that’s what I did. I just got quiet. And I began to think about this matter of quietness and the responsibility of the believer to be quiet and how little quietness we have today. People move to the city, make lots of money in order to move back to the country where they were to get as quiet as they were before they thought they wanted to move to the city. People take a vacation. What do they do? They go to the mountains where it’s quiet. They go to the seashore where the only thing they hear is the breaking of the waves upon the sand. All of us like to get quiet at times, except for some, which we will identify in a few moments. And we like a little peace and quietness, we say. Now, there’s something about noise. There’s something about loud sounds, and especially certain kind of sounds, that do affect the mind and the emotion and the physical body of the person who’s hearing it. And if I should ask you, what is quietness? You’d probably give me some, you know, off-the-cuff answer. Well, it’s a lack of noise and so forth. But quietness is much more than that. And I want us to see in this fourth chapter of 1 Thessalonians some very specific and clear commands that God has given to us who are believers about quietness. Now, you don’t expect a lost man to be quiet. He may keep his mouth closed, but a man can keep his mouth shut and be as loud as ever. So we’re not talking about just verbal silence. Now, I want you to notice several things. First of all, I want us to notice, and I hope you’ll get your pencil and paper out. And first of all, let’s look at this matter of the command that God gives us through the apostle Paul to be quiet. And notice how he says it. He says, having told them that God has called us not to uncleanness but to holiness and talks about love and so forth. Then he says, and that you study to be quiet. Now how many of us, don’t raise your hand, how many of us have ever studied how to be quiet? Not many of us have. He says, study to be quiet. Well, how in the world do you study to be quiet? He says, study to be quiet. and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands as we commanded you, in order that you may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that you may have lack of nothing. Now, let’s look at this for a moment. What he’s saying here is, in this phrase, study, he says, diligently pursue, endeavor, have ambition for the capacity to be quiet. Now, I want you to notice three things here about this matter of quietness. When he says study to be quiet, he does not mean study how to keep your mouth closed. That is not what he’s saying. But there are three things involved and three areas involved in quietness. Number one, I am to learn to be quiet, first of all. That is to be able to close my ears or to put myself in a place or position where I do not have to listen to all the sounds that barrage and harass me every day. So there is an audible quietness that he’s speaking of here. The second quietness is an inner quietness. It is a mental quietness. That is the resting, the quietness of the mind. You say, well, my mind is always quiet. No, it’s not. For example, Have you ever gone to bed at night and the lights are cut off and there you are lying there looking up into the darkness and you close your eyes, you’re going to sleep. But in spite of your attempt to go to sleep, what happens? Your mind just gets in gear and the more you tell yourself you’re not going to think about all this, the faster you seem to travel until finally, you know what’s happening? Here you are lying in the bed and if someone else walked in, they’d see you all stretched out and relaxed. not moving a muscle, eyes closed, everything just perfectly calm and relaxed. What they can’t see is that your mind is blaring out at you, crying out to you, shattering your silence, disturbing your sleep, perturbing you, creating anxiety in your life. You see, humanly, physically, outwardly, we can be very quiet. But until the mind learns to rest and to be quiet, a man is not quiet. There’s a third area of quietness, and that is the quietness of the emotion. physical quietness, mental quietness, emotional quietness. Now, you see, God did not intend for us to walk quietly and never say anything or do anything and never get in a hurry. He never intended for us never to rush about anything. What would you say about a man who’s drowning? Would a fellow just politely and very quietly take off his clothes and little by little never get in a hurt to save someone who’s drowning? No. There are times when rushing is absolutely essential. Now, Emotional quietness is, in essence, emotional control. That is, my emotions are resting when they’re under control. And you see, fear means that my emotions are out of control. Fear and anxiety and frustration and loneliness and guilt are all loud, clamoring voices clamoring in our emotions and keeping us from being quiet. And so that many, many people are ill today because they are continuously being harassed from without and from within. There is no quietness. There’s no rest. There’s no stillness. And what happens? Eventually, they have a nervous breakdown. They cannot cope with the noises of life. Now, do you understand what he meant when he said, study, be diligent in your pursuit and your ambition and your endeavoring to be quiet? Now let me tell you what this quietness does not mean. Let’s look at the character of this quietness for a moment. Two or three things here. First of all, I want to give you a precaution here. Verse 11 he says, now watch it. Study to be quiet, and he follows that up immediately, and to do your own business and to work with your own hands as we commanded you, which was Paul’s precaution in his command, lest we imply or infer from that… That quietness means do nothing. He says we’re to study to be quiet while we are laboring diligently and faithfully. And look in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, verse 12. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ that with quietness they work and eat their own bread. Now, what is Paul doing? But he’s simply adding that in order that we not get the wrong idea about what quietness is. I know a lot of folks who’d like to be quiet, just sit around and do nothing, let somebody else do everything for them. That is not what he’s talking about. He’s talking about, now watch this, the quality of quietness, whereby a man can fulfill the purpose of God in his life, where he can be diligently working and doing the work that God has placed there for him. And at the same time, be able to live with an inner sense of tranquility and quietness that anchors his soul, stabilizes him amidst all of the harassment of life. And that’s the kind of life he intends for us to live. Now, let me tell you what that does not mean. When he says we’re decided to be quiet, that does not mean that we can’t have a bubbling personality. It doesn’t mean you can’t be happy and charming and personable. It doesn’t mean you can’t laugh and enjoy life. But rather, it simply means quietness is an inner sense of rest that is based on your confidence that He has everything under control. You see, inner tranquility and quietness is based on your confidence in Him that He has everything in your life under control. Now, if you’ll just take that and run it through the spectrum, if He’s in control of your life, there’s no need to be lonely. If you’re totally confident he’s in control of your life, you won’t be upset. If you’re totally confident that he is in control of your life, you won’t be worried and frustrated about life. You see, it is a study of the inner tranquility of the mind and heart, regardless of outside circumstances. Now, when Paul and Silas were in prison, they had all the reason in the world to be very noisy about a lot of things. But how do I know they were quiet? I’ll tell you. You know what broke the silence of that prison? They began to sing. You know why they could sing, bleeding and hands and feet in stocks? Was it because their outward circumstances created tranquility and calmness when they were bleeding and very, very uncomfortable? No. It was an inner tranquility, an inner sense of confidence. My Father has everything under control. And it is that sense of confidence that creates tranquility and quietness in the human heart. So, when you talk about quietness, here’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about an inner sense of tranquility that is based upon confidence that my Father has everything under control, and because I am submitting to His will… Therefore, I am trusting in him, and if I’m trusting in him, I’m going to be obeying him. And where there is confidence and faith and obedience, there’s going to be quietness. Where there is the lack of either one of those, there’s going to be noise in the soul. Listen, the worst and most destructive kind of noise is not audible noise, but mental, emotional noise. They will harass you. They will try you. They will disturb you. They will make your soul wretched on the inside. You can smile on the outside and you may fake the world out. But my friends, you’re not quiet until you’re quiet on the inside. And this is the kind of quietness he’s speaking of here. Now, I want you to notice something. If you look in Proverbs chapter 17, and I want you to notice the priority with which the Bible… places quietness. Proverbs chapter 17 and verse 1. We’ll take about three of these verses here. Here’s the value that God places on quietness. Proverbs 17, 1. He says, Better is a dry morsel, that is an old crusty piece of dried up bread that may have a little old bit of mold on it. Better is a dry piece of crusted bread and quietness. therewith than a house full of sacrifices, what? With strife. You see, God says that quietness is of such value that the ability, the capacity for a man to live tranquil in his soul, absolute trusting in him for everything that he has everything under control. He says that is more valuable to a man than a house full of sacrifices if the only thing he possesses is dried, crusted bread, but quietness in his heart. Look, if you will, in Ecclesiastes, just one book over now, chapter 4 and verse 6. He sort of says the same thing. Verse 6, He says, man, if you’ve got to make a choice between having quietness in the human heart and a sense of resting in Him and trusting in Him and going about your work diligently with confidence in Him than having hordes of wealth around you. He says, in God’s eyes, quietness and one handful is better than both hands running over a whole basket full if you’ve got vexation of spirit, if you’re troubled on the inside, disturbed, you’re anxious, frustrated, lonely, afraid, afraid of losing this and losing that. and you see you and i live in a world which says brother if it means lose everything you have on the inside get get get get get get all you can get because what you get is important it’s not important at all now there are some very wealthy people who are quiet on the inside you know why they’ve learned that the wealth has nothing to do within a tranquility you see it’s not what you possess that creates tranquility it’s what you think If you’re willing to recognize that your quietness is due to your confidence in His absolute supremacy and control of your life, it matters not what your outward circumstances may be. Look in 1 Peter. Peter is saying in this first epistle, chapter 3, he’s talking about wives being in subjection to their husbands and how they ought to dress and so forth. And then I think this is a beautiful, beautiful phrase here in verse 4. He says… Speaking of their adornment, what they wear, he says, but let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament, the necklace of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. Now listen, how much more beautiful could he have said that, that in the eyes of God, a quiet, teachable spirit is from God’s viewpoint, is of great price because I believe that’s God’s purpose and plan for all of us. But you see, these two things go together. A meek spirit is a teachable, submissive spirit. And teachableness and submission are traveling companions with a quiet spirit. You see, a man who has no quiet spirit is not very teachable because he has a divided mind, because noise divides the mind. And what he’s saying here in these three verses I’ve given you is we ought to put priority on quietness. That is, it’s more valuable to us to have one dried, crusty piece of bread and to have inner quietness than to have great wealth. It’s better to have one handful and be quiet than to have so much that you lose it with vexation of spirit. that in the eyes of God to wear the ornament of a quiet and meek spirit from God’s viewpoint is of great value. That is, however you may have dressed this morning, you may wear the finest suit or the finest dress. God’s not impressed by the quality of the threads. He is impressed by the quality of what we think. Tranquil of heart, meekness of spirit.

SPEAKER 02 : 18:50

Thank you for listening to today’s podcast titled Quietness. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our 24-7 online station. And if you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.