We live in such an impatient, give it to me yesterday society. We don’t have time to finish our “to do” list. We are in too much of a hurry to eat healthy meals. It takes too long to actually cook a meal that we will microwave it. Our hurried lifestyles manifest themselves in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. We want the Lord to answer our prayers now, or He doesn’t exist. We don’t have time to study God’s word, care for God’s people, or do God’s will. However, what seems to have suffered the most in our hurried lifestyle is our need for contemplative prayer. It is as if when we approach God, we have a “to do” list to pray to Him. Once we are finished, we say, “in Jesus’ name, Amen,” and we are off to our next task.
As I was reading Brennan Manning’s book, The Signature of Jesus, I began to realize that this is exactly what I do. I do not give God time to speak. I want Him to hear my voice, meet my demands, and move on. However, right now, I think God wants more silence from me. He wants me to sit with Him, dwell on His presence through His word.
I am reminded of Psalm 46. In this chapter, the world is in an uproar, Israel is at battle or preparing to go to battle like they often were, yet in their desire to go to war, team up with other nations, so that they can be victorious, God tells them in verse 10, “Be still and know that I am God.” In other words, stop trying to fight this battle and win this battle under your own strength, in your own time, with you resources. God is saying, STOP…be still before Me!
“On the journey from belief to experience, it takes more effort to be still than to run. Most of us live such a frenetic lifestyle that we are afraid of stillness, silence, and solitude.” (Brennan Manning, The Signature of Jesus)
God wants us to be still in His presence, so that we may experience Him. It is in this experience with Him that we get to taste of His heart. It is in this stillness that we recognize that He is the Judge; He is in control; the world is His and everything in it; He is the one to be exalted! It is only in this stillness that we can set aside ourselves and truly experience Him.
Tuesday, August 19, 2003