Sacred Rhythms | Strategic Hiding | Dr. Jeremy DeWeerdt

I want to give a special shout out to everybody that got baptized today at all of our locations. Come on. Put your hands together. We celebrate God. We celebrate this choice that you made. It's a life-changing choice and I want to really highlight real quickly, especially God behind bars, our hearty correctional center, you baptized seven guys this weekend. So the seven of you, we celebrate God in you and all that he is doing. We celebrate God behind bars, we love God behind bars. So anyway, we are in a series right now called Sacred Rhythms. We're talking about holy habits that help us get in touch with God. And this entire month, every week, we're going to talk about this because we know that God is always present, even if we don't feel him, he's always present, but a relationship with him requires intentionality. With any other relationship, it requires a little bit of work. And God is always with us, but closeness with God has to be cultivated. And so that's what we're talking about in this series. I have a question for us. Have you ever frantically been looking for someone and you cannot find them? Have you ever done that before? Like you're panicked. You're trying to find somebody and you cannot. I remember when I was young and I mean, I'm talking real, real young. I went to the department store with my mom and we were walking through kind of the sportswear area. I was pretty bored. And so I decided I was going to do something that I thought was fun. And I thought, I'm going to let my mom walk a little bit ahead of me. And when she's not looking, I'm going to go hide. And so I decided that's what I was going to do.

And I did just that. My mom walked about 10 feet in front of me. And when she wasn't looking, I really quickly jetted into the middle of one of those circular clothing racks. You know what I'm talking about? And I got in there and had like a little like cross bars and I kind of perched myself on top of them so that you couldn't see my feet or anything like that. And then I just waited because this was going to be awesome. And also my mom noticed that I was gone and I heard her voice. She's like, Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy. And as she is talking, I'm hearing, because I can't see, I'm in the middle of the clothes, I get to hear her voice over here and then over here. And then over here, it's like, she's walking around the store trying to find me. And then I hear her talking to one of the sales associates. And basically saying, hey, I can't find my son. I think he might have ran off or something. Can you help me? So now all of a sudden the sales associate is helping everybody walk around, Jeremy, and I'm thinking, this is awesome, so much fun, you know. Five minutes goes by, 10 minutes goes by, 15 minutes goes by. And at that moment, I like jumped out of the clothing rack and I'm like, here I am, but I thought this is so funny. My mom did not think it was funny at all. No one thought it was funny. Everyone was looking for me. I was having the time of my life as a little kid, but I didn't realize it was upsetting everybody. Sometimes when you hide, it upsets things. And today I want to talk about a different kind of hiding that isn't irresponsible like what I was doing as a little child.

I want to talk about a hiding that's actually strategic and it's going to upset things in a good way because there are moments when you need to intentionally become unavailable to everyone so that you can become fully accessible to God. This needs to be a holy habit. It needs to be a sacred rhythm. It is something that you need to do often. In fact, I'm going to back this up by looking at the life of our Savior Jesus Christ. If you have your Bibles, you can turn open to Mark chapter 1. It's in the New Testament and this is a story of Jesus. We're going to look specifically at verses 32 through 39. Let me paraphrase for you a little bit of this. Jesus is just experienced a very many people would say successful day of ministry. In fact, he was in this small town and people were getting healed. People's lives were being changed, many were getting saved, you could say. And you know what, even demons were being driven out. I mean, it was a very, very powerful day in this town. Jesus is doing all kinds of great work and the town is just upside down over this. It's amazing. In fact, in the book of Mark it says that the whole town gathered at the door where Jesus and then they followed him to a house where him and the disciples were kind of like staying and as guests and they just kind of camped out there and they waited. Jesus is in great demand. He is, his ministry at this point is really exploding. Word is traveling around, you know, the Middle East area and everybody wants something from him. They want, you know, maybe a healing or maybe they want to see this incredible many people thought of prophet or, you know,

who this person was. And day after day, his reputation was building and after a successful day, what did Jesus do? He goes back to the house and we find in verse 35 this is what it says. The next day, very early in the morning while it was still dark, the sun hadn't come up, Jesus got up, left the house with nobody awake, nobody knew it and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Jesus is strategically hiding here. He gets out of the house before the disciples or the owners of the house got up and even he didn't slip out 'cause he was being mischievous. He didn't slip out because he doesn't love people. He didn't slip out because he's dodging responsibility. He intentionally makes himself unavailable. And when the disciples wake up, especially the Apostle Peter, they're all looking for him. They're like, Jesus, Jesus, if you've seen Jesus, it's time for breakfast. He needs to multiply the hotcakes. Where are you, Jesus? Jesus, they can't find him. So they go into the city streets, into the town and they're like, Jesus, Jesus, and they start to get a little bit panicked. Everybody starts looking and then finally they find Jesus and Peter says something that almost sounds exactly

like the tone of my mom decades ago. And he looks at Jesus and he goes, "Everyone is looking for you." Now, notice this is a direct quote out of the word of God out of the NIV version. Notice the exclamation point. This isn't a, "Hey, everyone's looking for you." No, this has a motion. This maybe even has a little bit of irritation. He's like, "Everyone is looking for you." And he says, "Hey, Jesus, you know what, people need you." And probably you looked at him and said, "We've been having great momentum here." I mean, yesterday's day of ministry was awesome and there's already people gathered at the door and they want to get healed and they want you to preach to them. And there's all this opportunity, let's go, you know? And Peter's saying this and Jesus says, "No, I was strategically hiding." Why? Because why does Jesus hide? There are moments when the most spiritual thing you can do is become hard to find. Even in 2026, this is almost the opposite of what our culture tells us and how we're living. And I'm going to unpack this and make sense of it, because some of you are like going, "I don't quite understand this." But our culture has trained us to be constantly findable. Like our phone, text messages, email, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, DMs, notifications, sporting alerts, news alerts, always, bing, bing, bing, buzz, buzz, buzz, right? We are always accessible. People can find you almost everywhere. We don't carry a phone anymore. We carry a portal through

which the entire world can access us and we can access it. Like literally, that little thing, it's not bad, but guess what? It can be bad because it is a portal in which people can constantly interrupt, constantly find you. You know, we don't stand in line anymore as human beings. We scroll. We don't wait at an appointment anymore as human beings. We scroll. We don't sit at a stoplight anymore. We reach for our phones to see if anybody texted us. And before we do that, we look around and see if there's any cops. We don't even go to the bathroom anymore without taking the whole world with us. It's kind of weird. We don't do anything without the little portal that accesses us to the world and the world to us. You almost can't hide anywhere anymore. Here's the thing. We're always watching. We're always scrolling. We're always listening to something. It's constant noise. None of those things are bad. Hear me, hear me. This is not a sermon about anti-tech. This is not a sermon about anti-smartphones. This is a sermon about saying, "Watch out the volume in which you use these devices." Because Jesus had a strategic rhythm. It was a sacred rhythm. There were a lot of people putting demand on his life and he's like, "You know what? "I'm going to purposely strategically hide." Why? Because you have to hide from the noise to hear heaven's voice. You can't hear heaven when everything else is shouting at you. Jesus purposely hid to create space so that he could hear God the Father

and he could communicate back and he could think and he could reflect. In fact, it even says in Luke chapter five, another instance, it says, "But Jesus, what's that word?" Often, let's all say it together. Ready, one, two, three, often. Often means frequently. Often means more than once a week. Often does not mean once in a blue moon. It means it happened a lot. He often withdrew to lonely, lonely places and prayed. What was the last time that you purposely became lonely? See, we do everything we can to not be lonely. We do everything we can to be preoccupied. We do everything we can to always have something to do, right? Jesus sought out solitude because he knew that when everything has your attention, nothing has your full attention, including God himself. What do we do? We wake up in the morning, first thing we grab, most of us, a phone. We drive, listening to a podcast. Work out, put in the earbuds. Eat, scroll, right? Waiting, look at YouTube. Go to bed, fall asleep with the phone or the iPad in our hands. This happens to most of us here. And here's the thing, then we look to heaven

and we say, God, why can't I hear you? God, why can't I sense you? You feel like you're a thousand miles away, maybe, just maybe. He isn't a thousand miles away. And maybe, just maybe, he's constantly talking, but we are constantly filling our eyes and ears with noise and visuals. We're not giving them any space. In first Kings chapter 19, there's a prophet by the name of Elijah. And I'm just gonna kind of give you the FedEx version of the story, but really, he's had a great day also, just like Jesus would many years later. Great day of ministry. I mean, he basically looked at 400 pagan priests and challenged them to a dare. And he basically said this. He goes, your pagan gods against the real God, let's see who wins. And Elijah called down fire from heaven and revival broke out in the land and the pagan gods were shamed and found out to be false. And I mean, like all this amazing stuff is happening and Elijah is really tired after a long day of successful ministry. And so then God shows up to speak to Elijah and the Bible says this,

that God's voice was not a thunderous voice and God's voice did not shake the earth, but instead God spoke to Elijah in a whisper. It's interesting. Sometimes God shouts in our circumstances and sometimes he whispers to our souls. You cannot hear a whisper unless it's quiet. You ever try to whisper something to somebody while it's really loud and noisy? They can't hear you. Maybe, just maybe God whispers sometimes because it requires us to then have a closer proximity and to become still. What happens when you whisper to somebody? Many times you kind of cup your hands around your mouth and you get up real close and you whisper into their ear or you get real close in proximity. And I thought to this many times, many times I thought, God whispers because he wants us to get closer and to be still. He doesn't always communicate in loud volume. Sometimes it's low volume. So that makes us lean in a little bit more. Has God been whispering to you lately? Have you been able to hear him amongst all the noise? Sometimes when you strategically hide, I'm gonna be honest, it feels kind of boring. Like I know I'm talking right now and some of you are looking at me, you're like going,

man, the last thing I wanna do Like, that sounds so boring, right? It's like, if I don't bring my phone with me, while I go to the bathroom, I'm going to be so bored. Think about that for a moment, how weird that is. But we many times don't want to drive in the car in silence. We don't want to sit in a place of stillness because we get bored. And boredom has become an emergency in our culture. Like, it's 911, I'm bored, something must be wrong, I need to be stimulated, I need to be entertained, I need just something to do. No one wants to be bored anymore. And here's the thing, maybe boredom is necessary sometimes. You know, I remember when our kids are two oldest ones, Caden and Connor were older, or younger, excuse me, when they were younger, we'd go to the store and we'd maybe go like a grocery store or something. Every kid's dream, right? It's like the Disney store. You know, you're in the vegetable aisle or whatever else. And I remember this that one of them would make time to be like, I'm bored, and Jen would turn around and say, and I'm not a cruise director and you're going to be okay. You don't always have to entertain your kids, you know that, right? And you don't always have to be entertained, you know that, right? I didn't get as big of an amen on that one. It's okay to be bored. It's okay to not have anything to do. You know, many times we avoid those moments at all costs because the moment nothing is happening, we reach for something.

We've trained ourselves to believe this, that an unstimulated moment is a wasted moment. And that is a lie. In fact, even research will show you that boredom sometimes serves a purpose. It actually can produce something that is very meaningful. You know what sometimes boredom or having nothing to do can actually generate. Here it is, ready? Ready? This is going to be a revelation. It generates thinking. Thinking, like literally we think. Like we're able to like think and reflect and meditate. Now, I mean, that term has been hijacked by Eastern mysticism. Do you know that the term meditation was there before that Eastern mysticism took it, all right? In the Old Testament, it says to meditate on the word of the Lord day and night. You're not finding Zen. What you're doing is you're looking at the word of God and you're just saying, how does this apply to my life? What is God trying to speak to me right now? When you're quiet, you can think. There are even business executives like the previous CEO of LinkedIn even said that he blocks off two hours a day, just to think. Because when you are wall to wall to wall to wall to wall with appointments and things to do, or in between those things to do, you're entertaining yourself. You have stimulation, you're not bored, you're not thinking. There's no stillness.

Well, then what happens is your brain just starts kind of getting scrambled. Your thoughts are everywhere. You're not finding peace, and you're definitely not hearing the whisper of God. Every time your soul gets quiet, do you hand it a screen? So quiet. There was a Dutch Catholic priest and he was a theologian and also a longtime professor at Yale and Harvard. It's a pretty good resume. His name was Henry Nowam. And Henry has now passed and he's gone to heaven, but he wrote all kinds of great books. And one of the things that he said is this, he goes without solitude, it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life. And I couldn't agree with him more. And you know what? That doesn't mean that I do it right. In fact, I even told previous services. I'm like, I am preaching this message to myself as much as I am preaching it to you. Because for me, it's a habit. Sometimes just to grab that screen, grab that phone, look at my emails, whatever else, it's just a habit to do it. We've become this in our culture. This is not a sermon again that is anti-tech. You know what this is a sermon of? Prohuman. In other words, let's become human again. Let's be able to talk to one another face-to-face, to have times of silence, to have times of boredom even, times where our brain and our bodies can rest and we're not constantly chasing that dopamine hit. What if these moments that we are calling boring

are actually opportunities to process, to notice things that maybe you don't notice when you're running around with your hair on fire? Maybe it's time to pray. Maybe it's some time to read the Word of God, some time to listen to the voice of God, to evaluate how things are going in life, to be able to think. I am not saying, 'cause I can tell some of you, especially maybe even some of you in a younger generation, you know, you maybe grew up your whole life with smart devices and you're like going, "I don't know anything but this." Well, there was a time when you literally drove in the back of your parents' car and had to stare out the window. That actually existed and we lived, which was really great. And I would even say we thrived. I am not saying that you have to take hours every day and turn off all devices and just sit in silence and contemplate your spiritual belly button. That's not what I'm saying. Most people do not have time to do that. You got kids, you got obligations, you have work, you have school, you have all of these things. But what I am saying is this, is Jesus who is in very high demand and I would say he had the most important job description and mission on the face of the earth, all right?

He found time to get away and be silent, which means you and I can too. He had a lot of people depending on him, just like you. And yet he was able to find places of solitude. He chose periodically to hide strategically, to pursue stillness. I want to encourage each and every one of you to play hide and seek. Hide and seek, hide and seek. You can find 15 minutes. You can find 15 to 30 minutes. Maybe some of you can find a little bit more, but 15 to 30 minutes. If you can tell me the latest thing in the news cycle right now, if you can tell me the latest thing on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, if you can tell me what the hottest streaming movie is right now, if you know any of these things that you have time to be able to get in a still place for 15 minutes, because you are filling your time gaining this information that quite honestly a week from now isn't gonna matter, you have time to take 15 minutes. You have time to take 30 minutes. Sometimes the best place to hide is somewhere God made. I'm gonna give you a little help here. You don't have to do this, but I'm just saying this will help you. Jesus repetitively went into solitary places. We believe these were outside places. They weren't inside places, they were outside places.

In fact, a few years ago, when Jen and I landed in Tel Aviv on the day that the war started between Hamas and Israel, which was fun. Anyway, we did get to go to one place before we had to try to get out of the country and flee through Jordan and try to get back to America. And one of the places we went to, the one place that we went to was this hillside and part of the hillside, there's this carved out, it was not really a cave, but it kind of is like a carved out space, looked a little bit like a cave. And many archeologists believe this was one of the places Jesus went when he would get away. And it was just out in nature. Now, I am not saying you have to book a flight to Yosemite to find God. You don't even have to spend money. You can go to a park, you can sit by some water. If you're here in the state line area, go down to the bike path, right? Next to the river, it's a beautiful place. I mean, like just even for like 15 minutes, you can walk in your neighborhood. You can drink coffee in the morning on the porch. Don't grab the phone first. Go sit on the porch, take the word of God with you. Take a cup of coffee, spend some time outside. Take a 20 minute walk on your lunch break. Just try to get outside.

There's something and again, I'm not gonna give you all the science on this. You can Google it, chat it, you know, whatever. Quad it, okay? You can find it. There is great benefit to humans when they actually get out in nature. When they're outside breathing air, they're not underneath fluorescent lights all day. You know, here's the thing. If you do that though, I'm gonna challenge you. Don't take the noise with you. And if you have to bring a phone or something, you're like, "Well, I'm a parent, I need..." Okay, good, okay. Then put it on, do not disturb. And if the people that need to get a hold of you are in your favorites, they will call twice and it will go through to you. So if there's an emergency during that 15 minutes, they will get a hold of you, okay? It's kind of interesting. Back in the day, when I was young, I used to leave during summers in the morning at like 9.30 in the morning on my bicycle. I didn't come home until eight o'clock at night. And there wasn't, you know, we lived. You could probably go 15 minutes without the phone. Don't put earbuds in, don't listen to a podcast, don't make phone calls, don't return text messages.

Instead, walk, sit, notice, pray, read, listen. Maybe God will whisper something. Psalms 19 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, "the skies proclaim the works of His hands." Listen, we get into nature not because we worship nature. Some people are like, I need to get in touch with nature. Listen, we don't worship nature. Nature points us to the one who created it. Creation slows you down enough to notice that there is a creator. God created nature for you and I and for him, you know that. He created it for our benefit and for his. Like everything he made, the Bible says in Genesis, was good. So let's get out and let's get a breath of fresh air. Let's maybe exercise a little bit, let's walk. Let's do something, something happens to you when you actually get out and take a little 10 minute walk and not have everything in your eyes and in your ears. You're just with God. The Bible says in Psalms 46, "Be still and know that I am God." I want you to keep that verse up there. Notice this, stillness comes before knowing. So you have to have stillness before you know God. That's very important. There's an if-then, does that make sense? And so here's the thing, strategic hiding isn't running away. It isn't just escaping. It's preparing you to actually go back and deal with the rest of your life. Jesus didn't stay in his solitary place.

He would go for a little bit and then he came back. Biblical solitude is not isolation. So it's not like going, well, the pastor gave me permission. I don't like people, so I'm gonna stay away from everyone. No, that's not what I'm saying. The pastor was like, yeah, get away. So leave me alone, no, no, no. It's not about blowing off responsibilities. It's not about sitting in your room all day. No, that's not what Jesus modeled. Strategic hiding has a return date. In other words, Jesus would get away and then he would come back to the people. He'd come back to the ministry, come back to what he was doing, the work he was doing, but he was clearer, he was stronger, and he was more focused. There's a difference between hiding from your life and hiding for your life. I want you to hide for your life. See, when Jesus would hide, it was for his relationship with God. It was for the health of his soul and body. It was for his mission. He hid for what was next. And I think some of us feel guilty if we become unavailable. If we don't return that text message right away, if we don't return that email right away, if we don't know everything happening in the world, every single moment of the day,

and what's going on in Washington, and what's happening over in the Middle East, and what's going on in the economy, and if we don't know everything right now, you know what, there's gonna, something's gonna happen. Well, I'll tell you what's gonna happen. If you take every moment of your day and fill it with work, scrolling, noise, and all of the information that culture has for you, you're gonna find that you will not find peace. You will not hear the whisper of God. You will not be able to breathe. Your soul doesn't breathe. You need to get away from all that for a little bit. Yeah. Jesus even said this way, why do you worry about tomorrow? Today has enough worries for itself. You can't change it. So in other words, when we fill ourselves with all this information, all this noise, all this entertainment, our soul is not breathing the way it should. So I dare you to hide like Jesus did. because the world will sometimes stay this to you. Everyone is looking for you, Jeremy. Everyone is looking for you. You fill in your name. I wanna encourage you, when everyone's looking for you,

let 'em not find you for a hot minute. Let 'em search. Notice in the story, they found Jesus. Jesus didn't go, "Hey, I'm over here." If it was a good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for us. Hide with God. Hide with Him. And when you come back, and you enter back into the text messages and the emails and you're scrolling, and you go back to work and school, and you get back to the family obligations and all the things, when you come back, after you've hid, you're gonna bring something that the noise could never give you. And it is a biblical term that I'm gonna make popular again in 2026. This is what you're gonna bring with you, communion with God. Communion is not just an action. It's a state of your soul. I'm in communion with God. Make this your sacred rhythm. This is not the most exciting sacred rhythm this month. I knew it going into this. I knew preaching it. It's like, this one is like, we're not gonna get a lot of amends 'cause it's not that exciting. And also probably a little bit,

it's otherworldly for how our culture has formed us. We actually are going to disconnect for a little bit and connect with God. Like, like, who does this? Who purposely seeks silence nowadays? Well, city first, I hope it's us. I hope it's you and I hope it's me. Let's play hide and seek. Let's hide and seek. And then, like Jesus, return back to the mission. Let's go ahead and pray. Heavenly Father, I just thank you. I ask that you would help us take this sermon to heart. Even tomorrow morning, we wake up and by habit, the first thing we go to grab is that phone. God, I pray we remember. Seek stillness. Seek solitude. God, I pray even right now. The quietness of this environment, I ask that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit. Like Jen talked about last week, breath prayers, I pray that God, we would hear your voice. And we would stop often to hear your whisper. We would embrace lonely places, that we would not look at unstimulated moments as wasteful moments, but rather instead divine moments. God, some us right now, this moment of silence is the first quiet moment we've had all week, 'cause life has been crazy.

Fill us, God, surround us. May our souls breathe again. May we become human again. Thank you, Jesus. Something begins to melt off of us when we stop all the stress. The load we carry, the burdens we have. May we go to this place often, I pray. With every head bowed and never I close before we dismiss, if you say, "You know what I came here today, I don't even know Jesus." You may be here celebrating one of your friends or loved ones that got baptized, and you say, "You know what I really would like to make Jesus the leader and the forgiver of my life." And what that really means is that you acknowledge that you've done wrong, we've all done wrong. We all have what the Bible calls sin. That's what we celebrate with Good Friday and Easter. That He died to pay the price for our sin because we can't pay the price. It can't be good enough. And so if you say, "I want forgiveness and I want Jesus to lead my life and I want to have Him fill me and restore my soul." I need to breathe again, I need to have life again, or maybe life for the first time. Jesus promises not a rehabbed life. He promises a new life, a forgiven life, a brand new start. So if that's you and you say, "I want to make Jesus the leader and the forgiver of my life," just go ahead and real quickly, just raise your hand and put it right back down. I'll pray for you. And if you raise your hand or you didn't, you know what we're going to do, we're all

going to pray this prayer. And if you did raise your hand, God knows your heart and He sees you and He loves you with an unconditional love. You can't earn it. He literally loves you to the fullest He could love you. He created you. And He wants a relationship with you. We're going to pray this prayer and as we pray it, He hears your voice. He's listening to you. Even though we're all praying, He's listening to you. He wants a personal relationship. So let's all go ahead and let's all say this prayer after me and realize that God is listening to us. All right? Why don't you say this prayer? Dear Jesus, I come to you today and I invite you into my heart and into my life. Forgive me for all my sin and all I've done wrong. I believe you died for me, I want to live for you. Thank you for loving me with an unconditional love. Thank you that you want a relationship with me in Jesus' name. Everybody said, Amen, Amen, can we give God a huge round of applause? What an amazing time together, City First Family. If you just prayed that prayer to make Jesus the leader and forgiver of your life, we are celebrating with you, that is the best decision that you will ever make and we would love to come alongside you in this journey of faith. So we have a few next steps for you. That's right. First, we want to encourage you to tell somebody about the decision that you made. We are not meant to walk this life alone. And secondly, we have a free resource for you.

It's called the New Beginnings Resource. It's a simple but powerful 14-day devotional as you start growing in your relationship with Jesus. Yes. And when you sign up for this resource, you're also going to receive a link to a few videos from our senior pastors, Jeremy and Jen. And these videos are going to help guide you through how to pray, how to read the Bible and how to build Christ-centered friendships in your life. And as you start this journey, please let us know if you have any questions at all. You can drop a line in the chat or DM us on social media. We would love to connect with you. Yes. And then after you kind of go through that New Beginnings Resource, a great next step for you is growth track. It starts the first Sunday of every single month and it's a great way for you to discover your God-given purpose and design. You can also attend in person if you're close to a location or online. So if you'd like more information or you want to sign up, visit the app or scan the QR code. Yes. And finally, if you need prayer for anything at all, make sure to visit the City First app and you can enter your prayer requests there. We have people praying over them all the time consistently. And the best thing you can do City First Church family is to come back to church when we gather together. We grow exponentially more in our face. That's right. We love you guys. We're praying for you church and we will see you back here next week. [MUSIC PLAYING]