One of the foundational spiritual disciplines I practice regularly is the discipline of solitude. Every few weeks, I find a place to get away from the office, away from the phones, and text messages and social media, and just focus on listening to God speak into my life.

I bring my Bible, my journal, a legal pad and a book or two, along with some snack food and drinks, and I just take in what God has to say to me.

Solitude has been one of the biggest impacts for my spiritual life in recent years, as I establish a habit of practicing it regularly. And the biggest and best opportunity for this comes each year when I attend CIY Wilderness.

Wilderness is a retreat designed for ministers, specifically youth ministers, to get away and spend some time caring for their own spiritual nourishment. Ministry tends to be a place where people give and give, but if there is no replenishment, then the giving will soon come to a halt. Wilderness seeks to help with that.

Each year I go, greatly anticipating some incredible solitude, just me and God, in the mountains of Colorado. And each year, I come home renewed and restored, ready to tackle the challenges that ministry brings.

I’ve written about Wilderness before, explaining why I won’t miss Wilderness, the way it revives my spirit, and some of my experiences while traveling. What I’d like to share with you in this post is how God uses the solitude of Wilderness to grow my soul.

The very first time I attended Wilderness, the daily process was explained to me, and it hasn’t changed in the years I’ve attended. I love this routine.

First thing in the morning, when we wake up, no one speaks. The goal is to maintain silence. Granted there may be the occasional word or phrase passed here and there as we move around one another, getting the day going. But the goal is to keep our silence. We gather together before breakfast, and we break our silence together with Scripture and song.

From there, we head to breakfast, and eat together. At that point, the Wilderness leadership team gives us our topic for the day, centered around some aspect of our being, maybe as a husband and father, perhaps as a leader. At that point we are free to leave. Taking my Bible, my journal, and a book or two, I head out and find a spot to sit and take in all that God has to offer me, from his Word, from the scenery, and from simply listening to him speak into my heart.

That takes up the morning, and when I finish up, I find that it’s time for lunch. At first, I wondered just how I was supposed to fill four hours with that, but what I found that I craved more and more time with God. It wasn’t difficult at all.

After lunch, the afternoons are free to go hiking, climbing, take a nap, head into town (Colorado Springs), or do whatever sounds interesting. One year, a few of us found and toured the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine. I have a rock from that mine to remind me of the occasion.

After dinner, we gather for a time of worship, and a message and challenge on the day’s topic. Once that has concluded, we divide into what are called mentoring groups. These are groups of six to eight guys, all in similar stages of life and ministry. One group may be younger, single guys. Another will be men who have been in ministry longer, and with families. During that time, we discuss life and ministry, mostly staying on the day’s topic.

My group, over the years, has spent a lot of time together in mentoring groups. Sometimes, our discussions will long outlast the other groups, and we will still be going strong. It’s solid relationship time, and very encouraging. Some of my strongest friendships are men who have shared in that group with me. We laugh together. We cry together. We realize that someone else is experiencing the exact same things we are experiencing, or they’ve been there. We relate. We grow.

This opportunity every October to experience solitude and spend time with like minded men in ministry is some of the best growing times I’ve had in my life. God uses this annual event to impact my life like nothing else has. A day may come when I no longer attend this retreat, when there are other things that fill this space in my life. But that time has not yet appeared. And I hope it doesn’t for a long time to come.

God uses this event and the solitude I experience to speak more clearly into my life than the rest of the year, when the busy aspects of ministry threaten to drown out everything else. In the stillness, in the quiet, God speaks. His voice is clear, and it’s so much easier to focus on him.

I won’t miss opportunities such as this to experience a deeper closeness with God. Before I ever experienced it, I never knew I needed it. But once I tasted the benefits of such solitude, I won’t live without incorporating it into my life in some fashion.

I encourage you to do the same.

Question: What do you do to create times where you can stop and be still and listen to God for more than a few moments? Do you have anything like Wilderness? You can leave a comment by clicking here.