Plus why silence takes "deliberate practice" and how we can cultivate the skill of being bored
In this episode, authors Mark Batterson (Win the Day and Do it for a Day) and Jordan Raynor (Redeeming Your Time) discuss:
Want to go deeper on these topics? Pick-up a copy of Mark's books (Win the Day and Do it for a Day) and Jordan's (Redeeming Your Time).
[00:00:11] JR: Hey everybody, welcome to the Redeem the Day Podcast, a seven episode series aimed at helping you be more purposeful, present and productive. I'm Jordan Raynor, author of Redeeming Your Time. And I'm joined in Washington, DC by Mark Batterson, author of Do it For a Day and Win the Day. So today, we're talking about dissenting from the kingdom of noise. And we borrowed this phrase from C.S. Lewis in his terrific book, The Screwtape Letters. Lewis has his fictional devil Screwtape say that he and his fellow demons are going to make the world a kingdom of noise in order to stop God's people from being effective.
Mark, he wrote those words 80 years ago. Can you imagine what he would say today?
[00:01:04] MB: No.
[00:01:05] JR: This is crazy.
[00:01:06] MB: Yeah.
[00:01:06] JR: I love it. Yeah, listen, to cite the cliché of all clichés, we’re living in a time of crazy unprecedented noise, nonstop news, entertainment, the buzzing of the devices in our pockets and purses. So in this episode of Redeem the Day, here's where we're going. Number one, we're going to talk about what all this noise has to do with redeeming our time and redeeming our days. We're going to talk about how radical Jesus was about dissenting from the kingdom of noise, and how we can practically descend from the kingdom of noise today. So, Mark, let's start here. For you, how have you found the noise of nonstop news, and social media, and podcasts, et cetera, negatively affect your ability to redeem your days?
[00:01:49] MB: Well, there's a question that I keep asking the church that I have the privilege of pastoring. But I asked it in myself as well. What percentage of your thoughts, words and actions are a regurgitation of the news you're watching and the social media you're following? And what percentage of your thoughts, words and actions are a revelation that you're getting from God's Word? And maybe the real question is who is the loudest voice in your life? Is it the still small voice of the Holy Spirit? Or is it that white noise that is so hard to turn down? So it is an incredible challenge that we face right now?
[00:02:29] JR: Yeah. So in my book Redeem Your Time I wrote about five ways, that non-stop, I love how you put it, white noise, blocks our ability to manage our time well. I find that noise limits my ability to be creative. And I think this is related to what you were just talking about, right? Because if we're constantly in taking information, we have no new thoughts, or no revelations that we can hear from the Holy Spirit, right? Like, for you, Mark, where do you have your most creative ideas? When does this happen?
[00:03:01] MB: Well, I think it's absolutely when I have silent solitude, when I have margin. Now, I want to be careful, Jordan, because in my experience there are two different kinds of people in terms of how they process creativity. One is interpersonal, that they get their best ideas brainstorming with a bunch of other people. And then there are intrapersonal processors, and I tend to fall in that latter category. And trust me, I brainstorm with our team and we refine ideas. But generally speaking, it's when I'm by myself either taking a prayer walk or up on top of the rooftop at Ebenezer pacing and praying, or I go on to a silent retreat that maybe we can talk about. Some of those creative ideas tend to happen in those spaces or places. I think you got to find a whispering spot is the language that I like, using a place where you have pretty good track record hearing the voice of God. You get five bars of reception so to speak.
[00:04:10] JR: I want to come back to the whispering spot idea in a second. But I want to come in to what you just said, because it's not just that noise limits our ability to think and be creative. It limits our ability to listen to God's voice, right? Because for me the problem with noise, news, whatever, is less about what noise I'm allowing into my mind. It's more about what I'm drowning out, the voice of God. I loved this quote you had in Win the Day from the English poet John Donne, “I neglect God and His angels for the noise of a fly.”
[00:04:44] MB: Right? And these days, maybe he would say for the noise of whatever ringtone you have on your phone and even when it's on silent. Let's be honest. We can feel the vibrate mode. And it is just is distracting. In fact, maybe the best advice we could give on this particular episode, Jordan, is there is a do not disturb button on your phone. And yes, it's magical. And you might really want to think about using it more frequently.
[00:05:18] JR: What I find really compelling is that our lack of solitude in silence just stands in stark contrast to the lifestyle and habits of Christ in the gospels, right? When you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the number of times it shows Jesus withdrawing to a lonely or a solitary place is mind boggling to me. Have you ever studied this? And if so, Mark, what do you make of Jesus's love of lonely places?
[00:05:47] MB: Yeah, Mark 1:35 is one of those verses that I've studied for years and really tried to model that as much as I can in my own life. It is absolutely fascinating. And I wonder if there's a backdrop here, Jordan, that when you study the Old Testament, it's interesting that the Tent of Meeting, which is where Moses and, of course, is a decamp Joshua, where he would go to seek God, I find it fascinating that that Tent of Meeting according to tradition was, I believe, 2000 cubits outside the camp cubit was about a foot and a half. And so I think it was close enough to see it, but it was far enough to be out of earshot. And it's also interesting that 2000 cubits is the distance that an Orthodox Jew would be allowed to walk on Sabbath.
So somehow, we have to find these places that get us out of earshot. And sometimes it's just putting on noise cancelling headphones too on the airplane, or in the coffee shop, and really just dialing in and maybe praying a simple, yet bold, prayer, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” It’s that ancient prayer that, of course, Samuel, as a young boy prayed, and it changed the trajectory of his life. He became this prophet that didn't just have a prophetic voice, I'm more concerned about having a prophetic ear. And that usually means dialing some things out so that we can dial in the voice of God.
[00:07:24] JR: You mentioned Mark 1:35. This is after Jesus had a crazy, busy day of healing, the day before, and his disciples find him in a solitary place the next morning. The scene that's most striking to me in the Gospels is right after Jesus’ baptism, right? So Jesus comes out of the water, and an audible voice from the heavens declares, “This is my son, in whom I'm well pleased,” right? If there was ever a moment in which you would think Jesus would kick off his preaching ministry and start talking, it's right then when he hears this father's voice. But instead, the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness for 40 days of silence and solitude. And it's only after that that he's at the height of his spiritual powers and comes back and does battle with Satan, and kicks off his public ministry, right?
It's like, man, if Jesus, who's fully God and fully man, needed this much time dissenting from the kingdom of noise, how much more do we today? And you pointed this out in Win the Day, Mark. This takes practice, right? I think the exact quote was something like, “Silence takes deliberate practice,” which I think is right. I couldn't agree more. So how do you practice silence? You mentioned whisper spots, whisper rooms. You mentioned a silent retreat. Give us some practical stuff for how we can descend from the kingdom of noise.
[00:08:57] MB: Yeah, maybe a starting point would be Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” Occasionally, I will just take five minutes, seven minutes to meditate on each of those words, Jordan. So, be, “Okay. I'm a human being. Not a human doing.” And I'll just kind of think about am I fully present right now? Or I'll even take a deep breath. Do I feel that air filling my lungs? Because that's something to be grateful for? And then be still? And what's the chatter in my mind? What's the internal dialogue? How do I calm down, still my mind so to speak? And so what I'll do is I'll just kind of go through those be still and know. What do I know that I know? And then finally, that I am God, and I'll start to just meditate on who God is.
And so it's a simple five minute meditation that can maybe help you be a little bit more centered at the beginning, or if you needed, at the end of the day. And then I think this idea of a silent retreat. And boy, it's hard. If you're an extrovert, it's going to be really hard because it's almost like detox if you go on a silent retreat for 24 or 48 hours and you don't have any inputs, except maybe your Bible, and a journal, and conversation with God.
I have a sound engineer who records my audio books. And he talks about how sound engineers they have to do your cleansing, Jordan. They need a little bit of time where there's just silence to cleanse their ears so that now they have an ear for what they're trying to hear. And I may flip the question on you. What are some of those best practices that you've employed that have helped you hear that still small voice a little bit better?
[00:11:04] JR: It’s really good. Well, first of all, I just want to comment too on the Psalm, “Be still and know that I'm God.” I think it was author Emily P. Freeman who said, “The stillness is what makes way for the knowing.” I think it's true. Like I think we got to be still to really like hear who God is and who he says he is and his work. Yeah, for me, I agree, we need a lot of deliberate practice here. And so I offer nine practices for doing this in my book, Redeeming Your Time. Two of the ones that are most powerful for me, one is just stopping filling the crevices of my day with noise. I think if we stop and pay attention, we realize there're lots of nooks and crannies of our days. The five minutes you're standing in a line at Ebenezer Coffee Shop or your local Starbucks, right?
[00:11:53] MB: Yes.
[00:11:54] JR: Instead of pressing play on the podcast, or scrolling through Instagram, be the one person in line that's not looking at their phone, the one person, right? Another example, the next time you hop in your car to have a 10-minute errand, don't press play on the podcast, even if it's this one, right? Just turn it off. Sit there and be still and listen to how the Holy Spirit is connecting the word to your work in your life, or just like think and be creative, right?
Another one for me, and this is a little bit more extreme. Because listen, I think social media and digital devices are the easiest culprits to criticize when we're talking about noise. But I think we need to have an honest conversation about how news is contributing to this noise and blocking out our ability to think. Because, listen, most of the news is not noble, or trustworthy, or true. It's just noise, right? And it's making us anxious. And it's drowning out our ability to be productive. And so I, about six years ago – And Mark, I worked in DC. I was a news junkie for years. I worked for a brief stint in the Bush White House. I love the news. And about six years ago, I just quit cold turkey 100%. No news, podcast, websites, whatever.
And here's what I wish somebody had told me before I did this, because I would have done it a lot sooner. I wasn't ignorant to my surprise, because my friends started curating the news for me, right? They would tell me about everything that mattered to my life. Have you ever done like a news detox, or like temporarily paused the news, Mark?
[00:13:35] MB: Oh, yeah.
[00:13:36] JR: Did you miss anything that really mattered?
[00:13:38] MB: Nope.
[00:13:41] JR: Right? Here's the deal, right? Like I live in Florida. So hurricanes matter to my life. I hear about every coming hurricane, every pandemic. I hear about race riots and trends in the media. I hear about every West Wing reunion rumor, because that's very important in my life. And I hear about all of it without having to spend a single second on these news services, because my friends bring me back that information. I know it's extreme for a lot of people. But for me, it's been incredibly life-giving.
[00:14:09] MB: Well, that's so good, Jordan. And, hey, would you be willing to comment? I think it's practice number eight, right to think.
[00:14:16] JR: Yeah, yeah, sure. So practice 8 in chapter three of my book, Redeeming Your Time, is right to think. Yeah, I just find that once the noise has been turned down and I'm ready to think, what do you do with that silence? Writing for me is one of those things. And not writing for the sake of a book or whatever, just writing for myself and journaling. If I'm stuck and I'm unclear about a big decision for my family or a big decision at work, if I just write in full length prose, just write out my thoughts to God, usually a decision becomes pretty clear. Do you do this, Mark? Do you journal like this?
[00:14:56] MB: I do. I'm a pretty avid journaler. And so when I saw that practice, I was curious as to how you employed it. Because I do think that writing produces a little bit of extra clarity. And I would even say that a gratitude journal as a form of writing what you're thinking really solidifies that attitude of gratitude and might be a pretty good application of that principle number eight as well.
[00:15:30] JR: I love that. And since you’re in DC, I'll leave us with this. Eisenhower was famous for this, writing what he thought. And he credited the practice for being critical as he was leading the world essentially as president for those eight years.
Hey, guys, we're praying today's episode served you incredibly well. We're hoping it helps you redeem your day in the model of our Redeemer. Hey, on the next episode of the Redeem the Day Podcast, Mark and I are talking about why Christians should be marked, set apart by the epic size of our goals and how practically we can do that. How do we set bigger goals for our lives and for our work? We'll see you there.
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