Be Still and Know

 

Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10).

Be still is not a command two-year-old grandson understands. I think he might spontaneously combust if he were made to be still. I know after a weekend of keeping him, though my heart will be overflowing with happiness, I’ll be both physically and mentally exhausted.

The command to be still is God-given, but I wonder if sometimes I’m a little too much like my grandson.

I’d like to blame it all on Proverbs 31—She sets about her work vigorously (v17)—but that would 
be an easy excuse when the truth is more along the lines of “I can’t stop believing there is a certain expectation I need meet in order to be a good—or real—Christian.”

Afterall, when was the last time any of us sat through the announcements at church and heard the words “we’ve got everything covered, no need for volunteers to work the nursery, teach Sunday school, visit the shut-ins…” and the list goes on. We live in a broken world where the need will always be greater than we can handle, but does that mean we aren’t also encouraged to be still?

The guilt that consumes me—and I’m thinking maybe others can relate—when I say no to helping with some activity or joining another Bible study makes it hard to believe I am also commanded to be still.

Then there are verses like Proverbs 19:15, “Laziness casts one into a deep sleep and an idle person will suffer hunger.” I don’t like being hungry.

So what’s a “good Christian” to do?

This isn’t a message of works-based theology. I know my salvation is not works based, but my love for Jesus compels me to serve him and love his people.

I also know Satan hates Jesus and wants to break our fellowship with Him. He knows it’s easier to convince us to do too much than it is to convince us to do too little. Guilt is a powerful motivator.

The enemy comes in to kill, steal, and destroy the best part of loving Jesus—our fellowship with him. 

If Satan can keep us overly busy, he knows we may eventually succumb to exhaustion. But what he loves most is that our busyness will keep us from deepening our relationship with Jesus. That broken relationship is one of his favorite things.

He’s subtly distorted our interpretation of certain Scriptures so that we convince ourselves that, though our names are secure in the Lamb’s Book of Life, if we don’t perform well or do enough our names will be listed on some sort of Failures of the Faith list (as opposed to what is referred to as the Hebrews Hall of Faith given in Hebrews 11). Nobody wants to be on that list.

Good news—that list doesn’t exist!

Perhaps no other time of year highlights our plans for overachieving busyness—no matter how well-intentioned—than the new year with our new goals and resolutions.

How many of us ever make a resolution to do less…to be still? Being still is not the same as being lazy. It is the key ingredient to a having a more impactful spiritual life and experiencing a deeper relationship with Jesus.

In this world that screams at us to do more and be more 24/7 three hundred and sixty-five days a year, it takes some intentional effort to tune out the demonic guilt trips (isn’t that what they are?) and stay focused on God’s will for us.

There are three aspects of being still I need to focus on when I am seeking deeper moments with God:

• Physical – Perhaps this is the easiest and most obvious. Just stop moving and be still, right? In 1 Kings 19:11, God tells Elijah to “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” Just stand… that’s all. And when Elijah did, he experienced the presence of the Lord in a still small voice—the kind of voice only heard in the hush of stillness.   

 Being physically still helps reduce the distractions that will disrupt us. I love this verse from 1  Kings. Elijah was seeking God, looking for a glimpse of His Creator with the confident expectation that he would find him. But he got still to do it, and God showed up.

• Emotional – It is hard to shut off our emotions, even for just a few moments. Thanks to the constant inflow of gut-wrenching images on social media and news outlets, urgent and heart-breaking prayer requests from our friends and families, and the collective grief we share with all of mankind suffering under the effects of the fallen world. But Jesus tells us to “cast all our care upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

In Mark 4:19, Jesus tells us in the Parable of the Sower, that the cares of the world will choke out the Word of God. And in Luke 21:34, He tells us to be careful that our hearts don’t become weighed down by the cares of the world. This isn’t a call to indifference on our part. It’s a call to remember Christ first and turn our anxieties over to Him knowing we can trust Him with everything that troubles us.

Quiet your emotions by consciously placing them all in the hands of our Savior.

• Spiritual – Spiritual stillness is not a state of spiritual inactivity. It is a time of tremendous spiritual growth because it is then that we can know. God declared this to be true when He said, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

This doesn’t contradict the command in 2 Peter 3:18 to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

It is perhaps the most vital way we do grow.

(For more on growing in grace and knowledge, check out my post,  The First Duty of Love.)

One day my grandson will settle down. He’ll be still because he has a need that can only be met in stillness, whether it is learning to read, practicing law, flying an airplane, or figuring out how to poke the little pointy straw through the tiny hole covered in Kevlar (anyone else almost lost their witness trying to stick a straw in a juice pouch?).

And we too, as Christians, must remember how to be still.

In the stillness there is knowing and in the knowing there is hope.

Question:

What keeps you from experiencing the stillness? And is it worth it?