Remember having a really bad day when it seemed everything you tried to do didn’t work? Perhaps it is today. Your dreams seem to have collapsed around you, and you feel like sitting down and having a good cry or maybe sticking your fist through a wall.
The psalmist was having a really bad day! Everything around him seemed to have gone out of control. His problems were so severe that it seemed the sea was raging with foam and dissolving the mountains around him and a major earthquake was causing the earth to tremble! On the political front, the nearby nations were in chaos with several tottering like a drunk man. He felt threatened on every side. Within himself his soul was being torn between the uncertainties around him while in his spirit he wanted to believe God was in total control.
In the midst of all the mixed messages he was receiving, God spoke to him and said calmly, “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalm 46:10, ESV)! Please notice, God did not promise an immediate calming of the proverbial waters. He said “I will…” but didn’t indicate a tangible how or when. When I have experienced that, my mind and emotions shout, “Yeah, but what do I do right now while You wait until all things are right—until all the stars get in alignment?” His answer is, “Be still.”
The Lord wasn’t in a mental or emotional frazzle as David or you and I might be in those times. He didn’t call for an angelic emergency council and bark out orders that snapped them into action in order to meet David’s felt need. Nor did He tell David to prepare for defensive or offensive action. He wanted David to see life on earth as He saw life on earth. Paul essentially said the same thing when he wrote, [the Spirit] raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6, ESV). From that vantage point, we have no reason to become all worked up when our national political climate, our personal health, finances, relationships or dreams feel like they are crumbling. The only way to know when He is calling us to exhaust our strength, resources, time or energy is to first take time to “be still” before Him and then toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within [us] (Colossians 1:29, ESV). We are then responding out of our God-inspired intuition and conviction rather than our mind and emotions.
Normally that is hard to do when your mind and emotions are swirling with all the sensory data you see and hear. But when that happens, it should be like a yellow light on our car dashboard telling us to Be still, and know that I am God. How well are you learning to respond to life around you looking at your circumstance from God’s perspective rather than yours? It has been slow, but I’m discovering I am less and less influenced by fads, bad news or good news, or words spoken around me. To that I give the Holy Spirit the glory because I know it has not been within my toolbox of disciplines to bring about those changes within me. Please know this is doable. Let’s work on it together.