Underground ReLOVEution

I'm sitting in a coffee shop, enjoying some beautiful latte art with my headphones on, listening to Hillsong United's new CD, surrounded by people as isolated as me. What is it about the cafe culture that causes us to desire singularity. I find that I love to be in community, to hang out with my friends and live life with them, yet there are moments when I need to step away and just be by myself. Where should this fit into my life with Jesus? Is this ok? Is it ok to be a loner?

1) God calls his people to be in community.
One thing is clear from the Bible, is that God is a communal God. The trinity is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in perfect unity and community, and before God made man, he had perfect relationship. It's important to know this because we need to realize that God didn't create us because he was lonely. Not only that, but the only thing that wasn't good in God's creation was the fact that man was lonely, so God made woman for the man to have community. Mark Driscoll states it that man had the creatures below him and God above him, but no one beside him so he created woman. When man fell, the relationship between man and God and man and woman was broken. Adam and Eve covered themselves up and there was shame where before they were shameless before each other. Since then, people have had a problem living in community with each other. People are sinful and do sinful things to each other, and so we have to deal with these things and sometimes community can get broken and messed up. At the same time, we can see that there is a yearning in everybody to have relationships and be in community. It is ingrained in us and God calls us to be in relationship as well. So isolation is not part of the equation in being a Christian. For better and for worse, God calls us to live in friendships with fellow Christians and learn to forgive and be forgiven by them when we sin/are sinned against.

2) On the other hand, personal quiet time and reflection was a huge part of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, so maybe we can learn something from that. It says in Mark 6:30-32 that Jesus calls his disciples to come with him to have some time of solitude after some awesome time of ministry. These disciples have been going out and doing the work that Jesus commanded and now they are tired so Jesus tells them that it is time to take some time to rest. Still, later on we see that the people come to Jesus as he and the disciples are leaving and Jesus has compassion on them and starts to teach them. The disciples get frustrated because they want their time with Jesus. I think that I can learn from this that Jesus desperately wants us to have time of solacy but he doesn't want us to ignore the needs of the hurting. Is my heart beating along with Jesus for the needs of this world and is my heart moved. If I view my ministry to the youth group as a duty, then when it's "my time" I'm going to get pissed off becasue "I've done my duty" rather than having compassion and time to spare. Solitude is great, but not at the expense of the heart of Jesus. The second example we have is when Jesus is talking to the people on the Mount of Olives and explains to them to not pray like the hypocrites who yell out in the streets, but rather to go into solitude and pray to Jesus one-on-one. (Matthew 6:8-15) This is a different idea but there are some truths we can glean from this. First of all, Jesus is calling us to pray, not to ignore it, but to do it for the right reasons. The Pharisees would pray out loud in the streets to look pious and make sure everyone heard them, so Jesus calls them out on it and shows us that prayer is between us and God, no one else. As I pray at youth group, it can become easy to get into the trap of praying so that people will hear and be inspired, but at the core of it, prayer is about my relationship with Jesus. In that sense, is your time of solitude used to grow closer to Jesus? Do you have a passion for God that spills into your "personal time". This isn't about daily quiet times, but rather having a heart for God. You can plan your schedule, but it doesn't matter if your heart isn't changed.

So where does personal time come into play. I don't know if it is ever spoken about or condemned in the Bible, but the message that seems to come through clear can be seen in Jesus talking about the Greatest Commandment. Love God and love your neighbor with everything. Is your time geared towards these things. Do you give of yourselves in your time? Do you look to serve others and grow closer to God with everything you do? If the answers are no to these questions, then like me, let's confess to God and ask him to change our heart and how we see our time and the people around us. Although personal time may not be a bad thing, we really have to search our hearts and see if they are beating along with Jesus'.