Teaching | The Power of Quiet in a World of Noise | Unhurrying With a Rule of Life E04
Practicing the Way with John Mark Comer
Practicing the Way
4.9 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2022
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
What if the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism, but distraction? John Mark discusses the importance of making time for silence and solitude in our rule of life, and the benefits of quiet in our spiritual walk: helping us accept reality, experiencing God’s love, yielding to God’s will, hearing God’s voice, and ultimately becoming people of love.
Key Scripture Passage: Luke 5v15, Matthew 6v5-6
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the John Mark Comer teachings podcast by practicing the way. |
| 0:05.0 | This teaching was first given at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon as a part of the Unhurrying with the Rule of Life series. |
| 0:17.0 | The Pulitzer Prize winning biographer David Garrow tells a fascinating story from the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. |
| 0:28.9 | On January 27, 1956, just a month after King was elected to the Montgomery Improvement Association, |
| 0:35.6 | which was the organization that was started in response |
| 0:38.0 | to Rosa Parks' arrest, King was already a month in at a breaking point. He thought that the |
| 0:43.2 | boycott would not last more than a few weeks, but as it dragged on, it became clear that the city |
| 0:47.9 | was not going to budge. And then he started to receive death threats. On January 26, the day before, |
| 0:55.3 | he was jailed or arrested for driving 30 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone and then jailed overnight. |
| 1:01.5 | Upon his release on the 27th, he came home to a whole new round of anonymous phone calls and |
| 1:06.7 | death threats with harm to his family. And that night, as you can imagine, he could not sleep |
| 1:12.5 | out of fear for his own body and that of his wife and children. So he got up and went to the kitchen |
| 1:17.5 | to make himself a cup of coffee and deal with his anxiety. Years later in a sermon, he said this |
| 1:23.4 | about that fateful night. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I never will forget it. |
| 1:29.8 | I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's |
| 1:35.8 | right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now. I'm faltering. I'm losing my courage. And it seemed at |
| 1:43.0 | that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, |
| 1:45.9 | Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, stand up for truth, |
| 1:52.0 | and lo, I will be with you even until the end of the world. |
| 1:57.0 | And at the risk of being another white guy quoting Dr. King, I was reading about this story |
| 2:03.6 | the other day in a blog post summary of this biographer. |
| 2:07.6 | And as I was, and the author was just making the point how important, I think it was Cal Newport, |
... |
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