One night earlier this month, God blessed me with a conversation with a teammate about living a life of stillness and waiting on the Lord. That conversation made me realize something about myself: I have a difficult time turning off my mind and just being still. I seem to be more of a human doing than a human being. If I were to identify my greatest sins and errors of judgment in the last ten years of following Christ, they would each go back to a failure to wait on the Lord. The thing is, when we don’t wait on the Lord and just keep moving on in our own way, we miss out on hearing from him and risk stepping out of the will of God.
John Piper says that as he approaches the Word, he prays for the gift of reading slowly, to really hear God in His Word. That is my own desire, but I would take it a step further and pray that God would give me the gift to live life slowly. I want to hear God not just in the allotted sections of my day marked “alone time with God,” but when He decides to speak in unexpected times and unique ways, I want my soul and mind not to be racing around in circles looking for solutions and problems to solve but instead be in a place of continual stillness, so that I might experience deeply what He has prepared to show me.
It looks good on paper. And it’s what I want, but yet it is an hourly battle to embrace the quiet. Since my conversation with my teammate about stillness that night, I have been thinking a lot about stillness, solitude, and silence. I am realizing how addicted I am to activity and noise. I don’t think I’m the only one, it’s difficult in our society. Noise crowds into every empty space, leaving us spiritually, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. Busyness almost seems like a core value and something to be proud of in our society. This is a problem.
When I reflect on this, I think of the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Jesus and his disciples visited the home of two sisters, Mary and Martha. During their visit, Martha was pulled away by all she had to do in the kitchen, while Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet hanging onto every word he said. Martha got frustrated with her sister, and said to Jesus, “Lord, don’t you care that I’m slaving away in the kitchen trying to prepare everything while my sister just sits there? Tell her to help me.” But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”
This is spot on. Martha was keeping herself busy, and felt like she had to earn the approval of Jesus by striving and doing all of these things. But Mary discovered the best thing…the discipline of being still in the presence of Jesus and listening to his voice.
I’m learning how to really be still. To calm my mind, trust in God, and just BE. To surrender to Him my control…my restlessness. Listening…and truly resting. This way of living allows you to step out of your present condition and start to get an honest look at life.
Will you take the challenge with me to “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him?” (Ps 46:10)
