STILLNESS

the absence of movement or sound.

Did you cringe, too? These past few days have been eye-opening for me. With so many seemingly pressing obligations that could stand to have my attention at once, God calls me to be still. The funny thing is, I would get so frustrated when I felt those subtle nudges that encouraged me to abandon the work to sit with the father (as if there were more important places to be). Reason said, ‘if you stop now, then you will never finish. You won’t meet your deadline. You won’t make that payment’ So I would succumb to that pressure

ANXIETY

a feeling of fear, dread, or uneasiness that can be a normal reaction to stress or perceived danger.

Anxiety blows my phone up more often than I like to admit. I also answer said phone more often than I care to admit. One day recently, I felt God calling me to stillness. Begrudgingly, I slid to the floor, bowed beside my bed and waited. I felt the tension. My heart started beating uncontrollably. The more I tried to focus on being still, the worse it got. Then the revelation dawned on me:

I ACTUALLY DON’T TRUST MYSELF

I would often feel so afraid to be still in the presence of God because I was unsure of what he was going to say and also if He would ask something of me that was outside of my own ability. 

I addressed the simple truth: I don’t trust myself. In that same instance, the anxiety broke completely. This puzzled me at first because I was always taught/told that I should trust myself. However now I realize that all of that self-trust has to bow in the presence of God, too. 

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD. I LACK NOTHING.

Being raised in the church, memorizing scripture was a given. Psalm 23 was the first on the list. However, after this anxious episode, I started looking at the psalm differently.

Nowhere in Psalm 23 did God say that I had to lead myself beside still waters or make myself lie in green pastures. He has always delighted in leading me down the right path for His namesake. So what qualifies me , all of a sudden, to rely on my own strength when it was never required to begin with? 

Relying on the Shepherd is first acknowledging the fact that I don’t have my life together in the slightest and I NEED HELP! 

That is where freedom rings in the hearts of the anxious!

Rather than being riddled with shame and guilt about my insufficiencies, I just started saying in my heart that I am choosing to trust God over what I think and feel. Words cannot describe how free I have felt ever since. Fear had me on a tight leash, but the lord set me free and keeps on rescuing me (even from myself).

I realized that stillness is all about shifting your trust from what you know to what God knows. It is a complete removal of pride and an embrace of childlike faith to follow their father to the ends of the earth knowing that He is incapable of failing. 

Stillness is removing the load and allowing rest to fill your weary soul because God would never put more on you than you can bear. It’s stripping ourselves of every role, title, position, power, and influence and settling in a consistent state of being. 

BE

to exist.

I’ll never forget God expressing to me in the midst of my anxious thoughts, ‘your existence is enough’. When I heard it, a whole weep erupted from my soul. I felt this great purging/shedding of who I thought I needed to be just to reveal the tenderness and softness of simply being 

• BEING led
• BEING guided
• BEING taught
• BEING fed
• BEING loved

Hallelujah for the truth! There is no pressure that comes with being with God. When I trust him more than myself and shed these layers of life, I’m truly free to BE. 

These pastures are starting to look a lot more green.