Getting Alone

Have you ever been alone with God? Oswald Chambers

When He was alone, the twelve . . . asked of Him . . .
Mark 4:10

Later, when Jesus was alone with the twelve disciples and with the others who were gathered around, they asked him what the parables meant.NLT

His Solitude with us. When God gets us alone by affliction, heartbreak, or temptation, by disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted affection, by a broken friendship, or by a new friendship—when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are dumbfounded and cannot ask one question, then He begins to expound. Watch Jesus Christ's training of the twelve. It was the disciples, not the crowd outside, who were perplexed. They constantly asked Him questions, and He constantly expounded things to them; but they only understood after they had received the Holy Spirit (see John 14:26).
But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.NLT

If you are going on with God, the only thing that is clear to you, and the only thing God intends to be clear, is the way He deals with your own soul. Your brother's sorrows and perplexities are an absolute confusion to you. We imagine we understand where the other person is, until God gives us a dose of the plague of our own hearts. There are whole tracts of stubbornness and ignorance to be revealed by the Holy Spirit in each one of us, and it can only be done when Jesus gets us alone. Are we alone with Him now, or are we taken up with little fussy notions, fussy comradeships in God's service, fussy ideas about our bodies? Jesus can expound nothing until we get through all the noisy questions of the head and are alone with Him.

 

So as I read this devotion from Oswald it takes me back to Matthew 6:6

But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. NKJV My interpretation of this means, when you go to your secret place, leave all of your crap outside and then come in and close the door. The crawl up into your Daddy's lap to listen to the soft whisper and be comforted.
So I ask "What do you mean by all of this?" I hear "you don't get alone with me like this anymore you don't stop and just listen, yes you pray and yes you read, but you don't get quiet and just listen. I need you to focus on me." So now I am thinking I am hearing him right? So I feel this is Him drawing me into a deeper relationship than what I feel I have and to do that I am going to have to slow down and listen. Go to the secret place. I wonder if I am afraid of going there ….. Afraid of what He might show me. Now isn't that just pathetic. If you don't change ……. Then you won't change.