The Quiet Mind

The Lord will fight for you; you 
need only to be still. 
Exodus 14:14

I am not a “still” person.  If something feels lacking in me, I do a personal inventory and then come up with a plan to fix it.  But I finally realized that my relationship with God needed to be approached differently.  I sat on the edge of my bed one day years ago and cried out to God like the unbelieving Israelites: “Where are you?  I’ve done a lot of stuff to make you happy but you just aren’t here for me!”

Me, me, me, me.  What “I have done for God.”  The Israelites were constantly complaining to Moses about having sacrificed leaving their homes in Egypt only to find themselves without food or water.  They romanticized their old lives – one which they were prisoners to pharaoh.  And in the verse today they found themselves at the edge of the sea with no obvious way to cross.  From behind, pharaoh’s men were approaching to kill them all.  And the complaining began.

Moses reminds us to be still.  To stop fretting and complaining about our situation.  To stop whirling our minds around worldly solutions.  To stop grasping at fixing things ourselves and working so hard on our sanctification path.  Be still.

That day I complained so loudly to the Lord and He spoke even louder back to me.  “What have you really done?” He asked me.  In my frenzied, “doer” world I thought that I needed to take the bull by the horns and join more Bible studies, volunteer more at church, wear my cross around my neck more often.  But what He was telling me was to stop and pray.  To stop and just believe.  To stop and listen to Him.

The Lord will fight for you and me.  We need to stop and listen to what He actually wants us to do.  For the Israelites it was to pray and then, in faith, step into the water.  For me it was to set aside my “to do” list and dive deep into His Word every day.

The Lord has fought for me.  And when I listen, He tells me when to break camp and when to settle in.  Make stillness a priority today.  Let the world’s problems swirl around the outside while you sit with Him.  He’s got this.