Sometimes the biggest challenges for me are the days where my color-coded calendar only has one item on the to-do list. These are the days where my house is quiet and what encircles me is the ticking of the clock. Sometimes these are the most beautiful days, where my mind can be at rest but other times these days tick second by second. It can be the most challenging for me because during these times I hear my raw thoughts within my head instead of being able to distract myself and jumping to the next surface level thought.
The past few weeks leading up to training camp was anything but that. I felt like I was on my own never ending to-do list where I was swarmed with shifts at work and if I wasn’t working I was driving around like a woman on a mission trying to purchase all of my gear I needed for an entire year. I felt like I was on a race trying to have a peaceful understanding of the reasoning behind my checklist by finding glory in God through it, but never quite getting there. My head felt trapped inside of a pinball machine where the ball wanted to be at restful starting position, but someone kept hitting it, and letting it bounce off all of the other distractions just before it could be still.
I jumped into training camp with a heart desiring to learn and be challenged. When I went to World Race training camp I expected my days to be tightly packed with cultural preparation, physical training, and sermons for growth in all aspects of my life. Those days were filled with those elements, but I was not expecting the first few days to be complemented with silence. Yes, my time at camp was filled with world race “scenario challenges”, a three mile hike with a 40 lb. pack in 50 minutes, and sermons that dug at my heart spiritually, but through it all I experienced silence. Silence is not emptiness. Silence is a mind ready to hear truth be spoken instead of filling our minds with clutter until truth is spoken. Only when our minds are silent, can truth go from thoughts to resonate in your heart.
In our society today our default is to have our mind cluttered with our thoughts to the point when we make time in our day to be at rest we feel shame for not doing “more”. I learned that silence is the best cultivating way for us to listen and truth to breathe past the layer of “spiritual snaps”. God was challenging me to peel back the layers of my mind to my heart so that God could free me; layers I didn’t even realize I had. It’s only when we allow silence in our life, we are able to ask with our heart and not just our mind for God to fill us. God wants our ashes not so that He can just get rid of them, but so that He can return them to beauty.
Silence is a way for us to hear from the beautiful voice that breathes song and life into our hearts. This voice tells us that we are worthy and He wants to change our hearts to look more like Jesus every day. This voice shares love with us to the point where He challenges us to step out on a bending limb that has the possibility of breaking so that He can show us just how much He wants us to seek His comfort in His arms. This voice breathes fire into our veins to the point where our soul is on fire with ways to not just change this world we live in, but a permanent change in the life beyond this world for what is yet to come. This voice wants us to live in a childlike freedom so we can be free from the brokenness of this world, not because we are hidden from it but we see who has already won all trials of this world. What if instead of constantly doing, we ask and listen to the Lord more by letting silence speak? Let our silence turn into an opportunity for God to speak to us. Let silence speak.
For the Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still. Exodus 14:14
