Peter SmytheA Different Kind of Word Preacher

Running breathless on the treadmill this morning after a short vacation reminded me of the importance of ritual. Even though we were gone less than a week, as I ramped up the treadmill to my regular speed, I could tell that I had lost a smidgen of a step. It usually takes me a couple of workouts to get back to my pre-vacation level. Sure enough, the same can be said for my life in the Spirit.

In our American culture, we pride ourselves as mavericks, not beholden to any kind of ritual or tradition. The fact is, however, that we all have our rituals. We wake up, get out of bed, fix coffee, brush our teeth, yada, yada, yada, in the same form and fashion day after day. While some might say that they don’t subscribe to any mundane routines, they just stumble out of bed, their stumbles all look the same day in and day out. The queer thing about our daily rituals is that few of us have given any thought to them. We’ve somehow set them in motion and we don’t give them the time of day in our thought-life unless some catastrophe occurs.

For over four years now, my wife and I have continued a daily ritual of waking up early, working out at the gym, and then coming home for a time of prayer and study before the start of the workday. The prime reason for this mundane routine was to practice the ritual of solitude before the Lord. Initially, it was hard to come by. We had to consciously change many of our regular habits that had been subconsciously ingrained by our market-drive culture and social conventions. We had to change our eating habits, our sleeping habits, our study habits, and our social habits. Throughout the years we’ve borne the brunt of the “why do you go to bed so early?”, “why do you have to go?”, “you eat when?” to even “what’s wrong with you?” by both family and friends. In an ironic twist, while they have loved to cackle about our “weird ways,” they stand clueless as to the why’s of their own ritual habits.

but the more was the report [fame] going abroad concerning him, and great multitudes were coming together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities, and he was withdrawing himself in the desert places and was praying. (Luke 5.15-16, Young’s Literal Translation) (emphasis supplied)

Luke 5.16 stands as an anachronism to our present-day churchianity with its emphasis on meetings, programs, social events, and “meeting needs.” In this verse, we see that even as Jesus was besieged by His own fame and the crowds’ needs, He stuck to His ritual of solitude with the Father. He knew that of Himself He could do nothing and that it was His communion with the Father that caused the fame and could heal the crowds. Indeed, Jesus’s ministry may be said to be the fruit of his constant communion with the Father.

For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God; for no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries. (1 Corinthians 14.2, NASB)

I give thanks unto God! More than ye all am I speaking with tongues. (1 Corinthians 14.18, Rotherham)

While we overtly see Jesus’s own ritual of communion with the Father in Luke, it doesn’t take much to see that solitude in prayer and the Word was also Pauline. In 1 Corinthians 14.2, Paul speaks of the nature of unknown tongues; they are a form of prayer where a man can speak unto God not understood by natural men. Later on in the book, he boasts to the Corinthians that he “speaks in tongues more than y’all” (note the Texas twang). When you lay these verses side-by-side, you see that, while Paul was a foundational apostle who went on missionary journeys and spent years in certain areas establishing the Early Church, he spent a great deal of time in solitude with the Lord.

The eminent John Lake, who is said to have had the most dramatic healing ministry since the days of the apostles, also imitated this ritual of solitude:

I want to talk with the utmost frankness and say to you that tongues have been to me the making of my ministry. It is that peculiar communication with God when God reveals to my soul the truth I utter to you day by day in my ministry. But that time of communication with me is mostly in the night. Many a time I climb out of bed, take my pencil and pad, and jot down the beautiful things of God, the wonderful things of God that He talks out of my spirit, reveals to my heart. (John G. Lake, The New John G. Lake Sermons, “The Baptism of the Holy Ghost” (Christ for the Nations 2000) at 17).

While vacations are a great time for rest, a change of scenery, and visiting with family and friends, they are also disruptive - disruptive of those sacred rituals of solitude where God eagerly reveals Himself to a man’s soul.