"Be Still"

My girls love to go to the paint café and use their creative juices on a piece of pottery. We always go in the late summer when our summer reading earns us a free paint session. The last few years I’ve picked a square tile to use as a coaster by my bed that I will see again and again. I choose a verse that I sense God wants to use in my life that year and paint it on the tile. This time it was Psalms 46:10, “Be Still and Know that I Am God”. Not only did I sense God reminding my heart of it’s truth in this busy season but it showed up in my morning devotional that day as well. I always know God is really wanting me to learn something if it comes up over and over again. God has been helping me to better understand and apply “Be still” by looking at just one word at a time.

BE

STILL

& KNOW

I AM

GOD

“BE”! BE means to exist, abide, and breathe. BE communicates to me that God is not only ok with, but even commands me to be at complete ease with him. To feel the freedom to just “BE” with someone is a rare and valuable thing. We know we have a true comfort with someone when we don’t feel the need to impress, produce or try to meet some unspoken expectation. That is a person we can wear our most worn out sweats with, wear no make-up, have oily hair and even ugly cry with and yet still know we are accepted and safe with them. That is the comfort level God wants us to have when we come to Him. He wants us to know that we are fully accepted and loved by Him through Christ. We never have to try to pretend and put on false pretenses to impress Him. We aren’t trying to prove anything or explain ourselves, our thoughts or our conduct. We can just “BE”.

“STILL” For us to “be still” means that we are at rest, quiet, hushed, peaceful, silent, serene, untroubled, tranquil. The opposite of “being still” is to be agitated, troubled, irritated, disturbed, stirred up, anxious, worried, or busy. I unfortunately live a lot of my world with these sort of emotions, so when I come to the Lord, I am still often in this state. Wound-up. Being still with God means that I quiet those anxious circling thoughts, and I rest in Him. I hush the busy demands of the mental to-do list and I settle into Him, a place with no demands. To come to Him and “be still” means that I can find a peaceful respite from the things in life that stir me up and agitate or irritate me. When I think of stillness; I think of water. I love water in nature, a lake, a river, a stream; it doesn’t matter they are all beautiful to me, but sometimes when my kids play in a creek they throw & pile rocks, stir the water with sticks and swirl their legs all around. They agitate the water and it loses that serene stillness I find so beautiful.   Or maybe the agitation cycle in the washing machine is a more powerful visual for you; I know how many hours of life we spend over that machine. When it is in agitation cycle you can visualize the inner blades of the late models tossing & swishing the clothes back & forth. Picture that as your mind, your heart, your soul. I think there are many things in life that we let agitate the waters of our souls and God’s invitation in this verse is to come to Him and find our calm again.

“KNOW” To know means to understand, to be familiar with, to have established or fixed in mind and memory, to have learned, to comprehend, to grasp. God wants us to know Him. God wants us to have the truth of all that He is established and fixed in our minds. Satan’s oldest trick in the book beginning in Genesis is to lie about what God is like. Satan loves to misrepresent God, to twist His words, and cast doubt on His character.   For us to know God means that we have learned, understood, and comprehended His great love for us. To know means we have grasped His divine affection for us. To know means we do not question or second-guess His loving nature towards us, and who is it, we are knowing?

“I AM” He is and always has been. This is the name God uses for Himself. When Moses asked God what His name was He said, “I AM” Exodus 3:14. God is “I AM”, eternally self-existent, transcendent to time and space meaning He is not hindered. He holds all power and all knowledge. The Old Testament closes up with God reminding us that “I AM the Lord, I change not” Malachi 3:6. God’s character is unchanging and He is never inhibited.

“God” God, creator and ruler of the universe, the source of all life, the supreme being,

That is the “I AM GOD” that asks us to come and “STILL” ourselves to “BE” with Him. “Since He is for us, who (or what) can be against us?” Rom 8:31. Our troubles grow small in light of all He is.

2015/09/18 at 4:30 pm