Learning to be still

'"BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD..."' PSALM 46:10 KJV

Former CBS anchorman, Dan Rather, found himself unprepared for a television interview with Mother Teresa. Ron Mehl described the encounter this way: 'All of Dan's standard approaches were inadequate. And the little nun from Calcutta didn't seem inclined to make his task easier’. 'When you pray,' asked Dan, 'what do you say to God?' 'I don't say anything,' she replied. 'I listen.' Dan tried another tack. 'Well, okay.. .when God speaks to you, then, what does He say?' 'He doesn't say anything. He listens.' Dan looked bewildered. For an instant, he didn't know what to say. 'And if you don't understand that,' Mother Teresa added, 'I can't explain it to you.'

Psalms 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

It's in the place of silence that the Holy Spirit boils the truth we receive from Scripture down to its essence, reveals specific insights that are pertinent, and then applies them to our most perplexing problems and our most stubborn misconceptions. As He transforms our heart to beat in sync with His, our decisions begin to accomplish His will and we begin to reflect His character.

Go ahead, try it. Open the Word of God in a peaceful place and sit in quietness before Him. In time, the Holy Spirit will illuminate a passage and it will come to life in your mind. Before you know it, the knotty situation that drove you to distraction will unravel. As you learn to 'be still' in God's presence, your greatest problems will suddenly become more manageable. He will reveal Himself to you. He will calm your emotions and relieve your mind. You'll discover new direction, freedom from worry, and a fresh sense of peace.

Hungering for God's Word

A baby won't rest until its hunger is satisfied. It's irrelevant that mummy's been up all day and is tired. 3 am means nothing. When a baby is ready to eat, the world stops.

Peter referred to God's Word as 'pure milk,' which means undiluted, the real stuff. As the old commercials used to say: 'no substitutes added.' Pure milk is the opposite of a dummy, which looks real but provides no nourishment. Too many of us are spiritually undernourished because we're feeding on substitutes. We're teething on dummies instead of drinking the pure milk of the Word. No baby ever grew feeding on a dummy. Don't get fooled into accepting anything but the authentic, undiluted truth of Scripture.

1Peter 2:2 As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:

What's more, the only truth that will cause you to grow is the truth that's heard - and put into action. And notice something else: babies don't drink all the milk they can in two hours on Sunday morning. Yet that's what we do, and then we wonder why we're not growing in God. Babies eat regularly for one simple reason -they're hungry.

Why don't we feed on God's Word more than we do? Either because we aren't hungry for it, or because we've been trying to satisfy our hunger with dummies and substitutes. Understand this: without a daily diet of God's Word you'll end up weak and vulnerable to defeat! Only when you want to hear from God through His Word more than you want to eat, are you on your way to developing a healthy hunger for the Scriptures.