I have this friend Marissa. She’s great. She is very in tune with hearing God’s voice and gave a devo the other morning on something the Lord is walking her through- “Being still. ” So basicially all I’m going to ramble about is credited to her sharing !
People say slow down, breathe, be present, all the time. To me, sayings like that have always been reminders not to trip over your own feet and to smell the roses. But recently I’ve begun to see stillness as more than that.
The Lord calls us to constant communion with Him. And that’s something I tried to step into, but at the same time I often didn’t fully understand. It’s not just reading my bible in the morning, praying, talking with Jesus before I start my day. And yes that is important, but sometimes I regard that as a to-do checked off a list, and live the rest of my day however I want. But a successful day is one where I’ve shared everything with God- highs, lows, celebration, struggles, because that’s what He desires for his children.
Getting to that place ? I’ve learned that you have to know how to be in touch with God’s presence if you want to share your days with Him. And the good news is that God’s presence is inside our hearts- we have the Holy Spirit! And learning how to become more aware of the way the Holy Spirit moves goes hand in hand with stillness.
We know peace is the embodiment of His presence. To find that, meditation helps. Asking the Lord to take away all voices and going to a peaceful nature place in my mind is usually what I do. Mar likes to play meditation music, like what you would find in a spa or something, that doesn’t have any words and that’s nice because its not distracting.
So when I’m in this peaceful nature place, the goal is to sit and just be with God. Because being close to Him is more than enough. The goal is to be a human “be-ing” and not a human “do-ing”(something Eileen says is important to remember, thanks Eileen) The goal is simply to love God with every breath and to feel him love you back, because communion is a two sided thing.
When thoughts come, you gotta let them go. Marissa says she likes to sit on the edge of a canyon and throws the thoughts off the side of the cliff. Very effective. Someone else mentioned being in a river and sending thoughts down the water and watching them float away, forgetting about them. Lots of times I’m at the lake on the edge of a dock, my feet in the water. And when thoughts come, I just drop them into the water and watch them sink down to the fishies.
The whole point of this for me is identifying the loving peace that comes from meditation, communion, and recognizing that as God’s presence. At the same time, when you find that, you find the Holy Spirit. So when days go by, you can press into that, lift up celebrations and struggles to God.
This is such an interesting practice to spend time in ! Its funny how much you can learn from not even trying to learn anything. This stillness has shown me that its important to come back to your center and is definitely an aspect of the Lord that I hope to become more in tune with.
