Stillness and the believer

“Be still and know that I am God”

Psalm 46:10

In all of physical Creation there is no greater intellect than the human intellect, and this is because we alone of all physical creatures most fully bear the Image of God, Who thinks and reasons. Simply put, our minds are absolutely amazing! And because they are the vehicles through which we might know and communicate with our loving Creator, our minds should be considered our most cherished possession.

While life demands, and rightly so, that we must fill our minds with abilities and thoughts not strictly God-centered, we must always bear in mind that great and ultimate purpose of our minds – to know God. The human intellect is capable of great and deep thought, even amidst a busy life, but must be focused in order to do so.

Such focus requires sustained effort; it also requires stillness. This is why God exhorts us in Psalm 46:10 to “Be still and know that I am God.” God is orderly and calm, and cannot be known through disorder and flurry. Please understand, I am not saying that we cannot know God’s presence in times of disorder, chaos, calamity and busy-ness, for Scripture and our recent fires teach us otherwise. What I am saying is that God Himself may not be deeply known or understood apart from stillness, and by this I mean a stillness of the mind before Him. For our wonderful minds to do that for which they were most intended, they must spend significant time in calm, still, focused and reverent thought upon God and His Word.

But the sad truth is that even we who call ourselves Believers know very little, if anything, about such stillness. From the moment we awaken in the morning to the moment we lie down for the night’s sleep, barely a second goes by in which our minds are not constantly barraged by the noise of television, radio, music, video games, computers, cell phones or conversation. How many minutes of focused stillness did each of us achieve yesterday?

We are living in a time in which stillness has been obliterated, and with it our ability to truly know God. This is by sinister design, for our great Enemy would keep all people from either knowing their Creator, or from knowing Him well. And, sadly enough, most Believers unwittingly play right into those sinister hands, for we must bear in mind that as far as obliterating stillness is concerned, any noise will do – even Christian noise.

I must confess that the longer I live, the wiser to me seem the Amish, who refrain from both the amenities and pitfalls of modern life, choosing rather to live the simple, quiet, pastoral life of nearly two centuries past. I envy the stillness they are able to achieve. In this season of resolving how we might best live the coming year, might I humbly suggest that we rethink the noise in our lives, choosing rather that blessed stillness by which we might better know our Savior?